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As Foreign Secretary, Johnson licensed bombs two days after Saudi forces destroyed a food factory killing 14 people. And a day before a school was bombed, killing 10 children. Two months later, Saudi forces bombed a funeral killing 140 people. In the weeks that followed, Johnson signed another arms transfers for bombs.

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Boris Johnson’s ascension to Prime Minister has dominated the news agenda. For the last few days our screens have shown images of him addressing parliament and meeting the Queen. With Brexit on the horizon, there has been endless talk about the different vision and approach he will take to the UK’s role on the world stage.

Unfortunately, one area where we are very unlikely to see any meaningful change is in Johnson’s approach to relations with the brutal Saudi Arabian regime and Government’s role in championing  the arms industry.

Johnson may have caused the Saudi dictatorship some embarrassment in 2016, when he accused it of ‘puppeteering‘ and ‘twisting and abusing religion’ but he soon made up for it with a toadying visit Riyadh and all the arms sales it could want.

During his tenure as Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson approved hundreds of millions of pounds worth of arms sales to the brutal Saudi regime. These weapons have played a central role in creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Government statistics show that during his tenure as Foreign Secretary, Johnson approved £1.2 billion worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. This included £270 million worth of ML10 licences (aircraft etc) and £880 million worth of ML4 licences (bombs and missiles etc).

Arms export licence applications are formally the decision of the Secretary of State for International Trade. However, following the start of the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen this was changed for arms exports to the Saudi-led coalition for use in the war (see page 12 of this Foreign Affairs Select Committee Report).

Fourth Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 2016–17

A recent FoI showed that in August 2016, Johnson signed off on the transfer of bombs only two days after Saudi forces had destroyed a food factory killing 14 people.

The following day the Saudi Air Force bombed a school killing 10 children. Two months later, Saudi forces bombed a funeral killing 140 people. In the weeks that followed, Johnson signed another arms transfer for bombs.

Of course there is nothing unique about the approach that Johnson took. He was following a long-standing and institutional policy of supporting the Saudi dictatorship at all costs. His successor at the Foreign Office, and leadership rival, Jeremy Hunt followed the exact same policies, and it is likely that his new appointment, Gavin Williamson, will as well.

After leaving office, Johnson remained close to Saudi Royalty, enjoying £14,000 worth of hospitality in Riyadh shortly after his resignation.

Unfortunately, despite the atrocities that have been inflicted on Yemen, there is no reason to believe that the Government will change policy off its own accord. All of the signs suggest that as PM he will continue to offer his uncritical political and military support to some of the most abusive dictatorships in the world.

Last month the Court of Appeal found that it was ‘irrational and therefore unlawful’ for the Government to have allowed the sale of UK-made arms to Saudi forces for use in Yemen without making at least some assessment as to whether or not past incidents amounted to breaches of International Humanitarian Law.

The Government was ordered not to approve any new licences and to retake the decisions on extant licences in a lawful manner.

Unfortunately, even if the review process sees all extant licences revoked it cannot undo the terrible damage that has already been inflicted. Nor can it guarantee that a Johnson-led Government wouldn’t do the exact thing if faced with similar circumstances in the future. It is not just these arms sales that need to be stopped, it is the political mindset that allowed them in the first place.

Johnson may present himself as a jovial joker, but the arms sales he supported have had devastating consequences. It is time for new thinking from Downing Street, not the same failed policies that have done so much damage and cost so many lives.

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Andrew Smith is a spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

Featured image is from Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

In his first day in office, new prime minister controversially returns his brother to former brief as science and universities minister, while pledging to liberate UK bioscience and develop UK satnav rival to Galileo

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Boris Johnson pledged to abandon European environmental rules that have curtailed development of genetically modified (GM) crop plants and farm animals in the UK, in his first speech as prime minister on Wednesday.

“Let’s liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules. Let’s develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world,” Johnson said.

Johnson also reiterated a pledge to build a rival satellite navigation system to the EU’s Galileo network and promised to change tax rules to benefit investments in capital and research.

On a busy first day in office, Brexiter Johnson also returned his Remainer brother Jo to his former brief as universities and science minister, replacing Chris Skidmore, who had served in the role since 2018.

Jo Johnson resigned from the post in January 2018, after opposing plans to cut tuition fees for universities, and subsequently resigned from government entirely in protest at a Brexit deal he said required choosing between “vassalage and chaos”.

At the time, Jo Johnson advocated a second referendum and said a no-deal Brexit “will inflict untold damage on our nation.”

He now faces strong criticism for signing up to his brother’s policy to leave on October 31, deal or no deal.

“There was a moment in time when you actually said what you thought and suddenly became a leading light of reason for this country,” Mike Galsworthy, the head of activist group Scientists for EU, tweeted on Thursday. “Now you have become a sell-out in one fell swoop.”

Fresh approach welcomed

Plant breeders were more positive about Boris Johnson’s commitment to shake up restrictive rules around GM.

Only one type of GM crop seed, Monsanto’s 810 maize, has commercial approval in Europe, in line with the EU’s traditionally cautious approach to biotechnology in food and agriculture. Any GM imports are subject to strict safety assessments imposed on a case-by-case basis.

US farming groups portray such restrictions as trade barriers and are demanding they be dropped in initial discussions with the UK over a post-Brexit trade deal.

In January, the US National Grain and Feed Association and North American Export Grain Association said a new deal could create a trans-Atlantic market “that can act as a bastion against the EU’s precautionary advances and its ongoing aggressive attempts to spread its influence around the globe”.

Potential gains from genetic technologies include a reduction in agrochemicals use, which would reduce the carbon footprint, said Dale Sanders, director of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which specialises in crop genetics.

However, other researchers warned that while the UK may be leaving the EU, it should not rip up rules around GM safety assessments.

“Any technology for intervention in a system as complex as a plant or an animal must be proportionately sophisticated. Even with the latest genome modification techniques like CRISPR, it takes a great deal of work to make sure that only the desired changes have been induced,” said John Dupre, professor in philosophy of science at the University of Exeter.

As prime minister, Boris Johnson’s scope for ditching EU rules will depend on the outcome of Brexit negotiations with Brussels.

According to the withdrawal agreement drafted between the previous prime minister and the EU – the Brexit deal Johnson says is dead in its current form – EU requirements on GM would remain in UK law.

Any GM product would continue to require prior authorisation, and this would only be granted if there were no safety concerns.

And in a no-deal scenario, UK businesses would still only be able to export GM products to mainland Europe with EU marketing approval.

“You need a lawyer, not a molecular geneticist, to judge how [all of this] may be implemented,” said Huw Jones, professor of translational genomics for plant breeding at Aberystwyth University. “However, plant breeding in all its guises will clearly form part of sustainable future farming.”

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Thanks to a ‘broken regulatory process,’ the Federal Aviation Administration has been passing off routine oversight tasks to manufacturers for years. In the case of the beleagured 737 Max, however, the plane was so advanced that the regulator “handed nearly complete control to Boeing,” which was able to sign off on its own safety certificates, according to the New York Times. 

The lack of regulatory oversight meant that the FAA had no clue how Boeing’s automated anti-stall system, known as MCAS, worked. In fact, “regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software” when they issued a 2017 approval for the plane.

The company performed its own assessments of the system, which were not stress-tested by the regulator. Turnover at the agency left two relatively inexperienced engineers overseeing Boeing’s early work on the system.

The F.A.A. eventually handed over responsibility for approval of MCAS to the manufacturer. After that, Boeing didn’t have to share the details of the system with the two agency engineers. They weren’t aware of its intricacies, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. –New York Times

During the late stages of the Max’s development, Boeing engineers decided to increase the plane’s reliance on MCAS to fly smoothly.  Unfortunately, a new version of the system relied on a single sensor which could malfunction and push the plane into a nosedive.

Boeing never submitted a formal assessment of the MCAS system following its upgrade – which wasn’t required by FAA rules. An agency official claims that an engineering test pilot was familiar with the changes, however his job was to evaluate its effect on how the plane flew – not on its safety.

The jet was eventually certified as safe to fly, and the FAA required very little pilot training until the second Max crashed less than five months after the first.

The plane remains grounded as regulators await a fix from Boeing. If the ban persists much longer, Boeing said this past week that it could be forced to halt production.

The F.A.A. and Boeing have defended the plane’s certification, saying they followed proper procedures and adhered to the highest standards. –New York Times

“The agency’s certification processes are well-established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs,” said the FAA in a Friday statement undoubtedly written by lawyers. “The 737 Max certification program involved 110,000 hours of work on the part of F.A.A. personnel, including flying or supporting 297 test flights.”

Boeing, meanwhile, said that “the F.A.A.’s rigor and regulatory leadership has driven ever-increasing levels of safety over the decades,” adding that “the 737 Max met the F.A.A.’s stringent standards and requirements as it was certified through the F.A.A.’s processes.”

Chris Hart, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board is trying to get to the bottom of these regulatory shortcuts.

“Did MCAS get the attention it needed? That’s one of the things we’re looking at,” said Hart, who now leads a multiagency task force investigating the Max’s approval. “As it evolved from a less robust system to a more powerful system, were the certifiers aware of the changes?”

Rushed Orders

In an effort to compete with its rival Airbus, Boeing was “racing to finish” the 737, according to the report. And when it came to cutting through red tape to speed that process along, the FAA handing the regulatory reigns over to Boeing was crucial. 

At crucial moments in the Max’s development, the agency operated in the background, mainly monitoring Boeing’s progress and checking paperwork. The nation’s largest aerospace manufacturer, Boeing was treated as a client, with F.A.A. officials making decisions based on the company’s deadlines and budget.

It has long been a cozy relationship. Top agency officials have shuffled between the government and the industry.

During the Max certification, senior leaders at the F.A.A. sometimes overruled their own staff members’ recommendations after Boeing pushed back. For safety reasons, many agency engineers wanted Boeing to redesign a pair of cables, part of a major system unrelated to MCAS. The company resisted, and F.A.A. managers took Boeing’s side, according to internal agency documents. –New York Times

The FAA, meanwhile, was ‘surprised’ to learn after last October’s Lion Air crash that they didn’t have a complete analysis of the MCAS system – including the fact that the system could “aggressively push down the nose of the plane and trigger repeatedly, making it difficult to regain control of the aircraft, as it did on the doomed Lion Air flight.”

And what did the agency do after the October incident? Instead of grounding the plane, they issued a notice reminding pilots of existing emergency procedures (which made no mention of how the MCAS system works – after an FAA manager told agency engineers to remove the only mention of the system).

Read the rest of the Times report here.

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Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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This article was first published on September 12, 2018

Since the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria of September 2017, the world has heard of Puerto Rico’s economic, social and environmental crisis. This crisis is not new nor even due primarily to the hurricanes, but is the culmination of the savage colonialist domination and capitalist exploitation that the United States of America has imposed ever since its 1898 military invasion of Puerto Rico.

On October 27, 2018, activists and witnesses from Puerto Rico (including eyewitnesses to US crimes), the Puerto Rican diaspora, the US and the world, met in New York City to take part in a colonial crimes tribunal. The tribunal will present a people’s investigation of the role of the US government during its 120-year colonial rule, and particularly since the hurricane’s devastation put Puerto Rico in the world’s media. They will be joined by renowned Nicaraguan legal scholar and attorney Dr. Augusto Zamora, who will serve as prosecutor, and a distinguished jury of US and international human rights leaders.

Call to Action

What is happening now in Puerto Rico is the culmination of a process of national destruction that began with the US military invasion of Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898.

Almost immediately the US commenced destruction of Puerto Rico’s autonomous economy, suppression of historical knowledge, and repression of the independence movement. US colonial rule imposed a parasitic economic model that blocked self-sufficient development. The US imposed its own citizenship, which provided cheap labor as well as cannon fodder for its bloody imperialist wars. Puerto Rico’s economic dismantling continues today, with the US imposition of an illegitimate and unpayable public debt, and since 2016 the Fiscal Control Board (called “La Junta” in Puerto Rico) created by Congress’ “Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act” (PROMESA). The Junta’s members represent colonial government and corporate interests who ran up the debt and sold out to Wall Street. This is like putting wolves in charge of sheep.

The world has heard of Puerto Rico’s crisis as a result of the September 2017 hurricanes, which demonstrated the power of nature and the failure of capitalism to prioritize the most basic of needs: our planet’s health. But the aftermath of the hurricanes also demonstrated the criminal cruelty with which the US has responded to devastation by speeding up its plans to restructure Puerto Rico for corporate and imperialist profit. Nearly a year after the hurricanes, Puerto Rico has not made real progress in its recovery. On the contrary, “real progress” refers to imposing the most terrible austerity policies, from privatization of basic services such as electricity and education, to cost of living increases while reducing benefits, pensions, and workplace security. The Puerto Rican people are being suffocated by a neoliberal economic policy, combined with a colonial political status that sequesters its sovereignty in Washington. On the one hand, the US does not provide the necessary disaster recovery assistance, while on the other hand, prohibits the entry of solidarity aid from neighboring countries.

This is the colonial, neoliberal vision of a thoroughly privatized Puerto Rico; vision that the current policies regarding the reforms of education and other essential services contemplate: A country being bought up and “resettled” by vulture capitalists and other foreign billionaires, with the sole purpose of increasing their income free of all restrictions, free of taxes or oversight, who are served by impoverished, poorly educated, politically repressed youth. With a diminished population since thousands of Boricuas have been forced to migrate in order to survive. This vision contemplates a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans – echoing the martyred independence leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos’ warning that the US “wanted the cage without the bird.” Ethnic cleansing and population substitution are recognized internationally as war crimes.

It is for the Puerto Rican movement – for decolonization, for independence and sovereignty, for social and economic justice – to give a strong response to this assault. As part of this effort, our international tribunal proposal aims to expose the policies and their consequences, for which the US has an enormous responsibility.

The Puerto Rico Tribunal AdHoc Committee is convening this important colonial crimes tribunal in order to expose the true nature of the U.S. war against Puerto Rico. This call for action is not made solely for the sake of posterity, but also seeks to strengthen the worldwide struggle for self-determination today. What is happening in Puerto Rico is different only in scale and duration from US-perpetrated destruction elsewhere.

Only a people’s campaign in solidarity with the Puerto Rican struggle for decolonization, self-determination, and justice can begin to end the continued U.S. presence and domination not only of Puerto Rico, but in the Caribbean, Latin America and elsewhere. We hope that your organization can endorse this very important organizing effort and can join with us on October 27th in New York City.

Click here to know how to endorse the organization.

When Michelle Alexander, a distinguished African-American scholar, wrote her now famous column in The New York Times, ‘Time to Break the Silence on Palestine’,her sympathetic words toward Palestinians received huge attention. Her article became a “watershed moment … with arguably even more impact on mainstream U.S. opinion than Israel’s onslaught last spring against Gaza’s Great March of Return, which left more than 150 Palestinians dead and another 5800 wounded by live ammunition.”

In commenting about the astonishing impact of Alexander’s column, James North expressed puzzlement. After all, it wasn’t the first time that The New York Times had published a piece favorable to Palestinians. At the top of a list of tentative explanations for the furor generated by Alexander’s column, North listed the following:

First, Alexander reveals an open secret — that many mainstream American progressives have been afraid to speak out against Israel because they fear losing funding for their other important causes, or they fear being smeared by the pro-Israel forces.

I believe North’s explanation above, the “open secret” he refers to, is behind so-called progressive African-American Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s (D-Mass.) discordant vote on HRes246 — i.e., her vote in favor of the anti-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel) House resolution that was passed overwhelmingly.

Her motivation is an “open secret”. Some are saying she caved in to pressure from pro-Israel groups such as J-Street. Others speculate that Pressley was set up by such groups, from the very beginning, in order to unseat a progressive democrat in Massachusetts who had been willing to be approached by his constituents on the issue of Palestine.

All the indications for the rumors above are there. Until she was prevented from doing so by an injury, Pressley was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser dinner celebrating immigrants organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Zionist, anti-Palestinian organization. Unlike her predecessor longtime Rep. Michael Capuano, who was approachable on Palestine, she has reportedly consistently stonewalled all attempts to reach her by Palestinian solidarity activists in her state and surrounded herself by advisers associated with Zionist groups.

That Ayanna Pressley is a supposedly progressive, young rising black politician makes her vote on HRes246 and her positioning on the issue of Palestine especially shocking and disconcerting.

In an interview on “CBS This Morning” regarding Trump’s attacks against Pressley and the three other freshmen lawmakers targeted by racist Trump tweets (Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Pressley described the so-called “Squad” as coming together on the issue of immigration. She made the point that,

Each of us represent very different districts and each of us bring our unique and our authentic voice to this body. We govern in our own way. What we are four women who have an alignment of values, shared policy priorities. There is no insurgency here. …What we are four lawmakers who happened to land in the same place on the same issue [immigration] time and time again.

I am compelled to ask, though, just how “authentic” is Ayanna Pressley’s voice both as a black woman and as a progressive? Her policy adviser Lynese Wallace describes Pressley’s “guiding principle” as the belief that “the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power driving and informing policymaking.”

Why then do her values, principles and pain land in a dark place on the issue of the Palestinian struggle for freedom — land far apart from her three other colleagues and in sync with “Conservative Democrat” Dan Lipinski (a white male), who represents Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District, and who also voted yes to condemning the BDS movement in the House, despite the fact that his district has the highest concentration of Palestinians in the state? Such a “landing” doesn’t “just happen”.

Commenting on Pressley’s vote against BDS, Eoin Higgins (Common Dreams) says:

If Pressley doesn’t get Palestine on this most basic and limited point she’s made her position clear. This is an Israel lobby resolution targeting a nonviolent resistance movement.

When will Pressley realize that “the pain” she is feeling is the identical pain Palestinians feel?

I invite her to read Hamid Dabashi’s article in AL Jazeera Black Lives Matter and Palestine: A historic alliance: A new generation of civil rights uprising has now picked up where the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s left off.

In the Al Jazeera article, Dabashi writes:

Progressive forces now gathered around this noble movement for the dignity of black lives and beyond are in fact late in joining the rest of the civilised world denouncing the systemic violence at the core of the Israeli settler colony.

Ayanna Pressley is better advised not to tarry any longer in joining the civilized world and her truly progressive colleagues in the “Squad” on the issue of Palestinian liberation.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Ukraine’s most senior military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, announced yesterday that the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) had seized the Russian tanker Nika Spirit at the port of Izmail and detained the crew, including at least 7 Russian nationals. Matios alleged that the tanker was involved in the Kerch Strait incident in November, during which Ukrainian naval vessels were seized by the Russian Coastguard for attempting to illegally enter Russian territorial waters, and 24 Ukrainian sailors arrested. Anatoly Matios has claimed that the Russian tanker was seized yesterday as material evidence in the ongoing Ukrainian investigation into the Kerch Strait incident.

In response to this news, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that

“If this amounts to taking Russians hostage, it will qualify as a blatant violation of international law and the consequences will not be long in coming.”

The Ukrainian government, and numerous western governments, had also claimed that the seizure of the Ukrainian naval vessels in November constituted a violation of international law.

These events quickly follow the seizure of the Panamanian-registered, Iranian-owned Grace 1 supertanker off Gibraltar by the Royal Marines on July 4th, and the seizure of the Swedish-owned, British-registered tanker Stena Impero  by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on July 19th. Yesterday Iranian president Hassan Rouhani suggested a swap. The British legal argument for the seizure of the Iranian tanker on July 4th was that it was involved in smuggling oil to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions.

We understand perfectly well, of course, that the appeals to “international law” by the various sides are strictly pro forma. While the relevance and meaningfulness of the concept of “international law” has steadily eroded since 2001, we might still argue that this new tanker-war makes that process of the decay of international law more explicit than it has been at any point since 2001. The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deliberate destruction of Libya, have all created humanitarian catastrophes and created a historical precedent of reckless military unilateralism, the normalization of wars of aggression. However, in even those appalling events, the demise of international law was only implicit. Once widespread piracy re-appears, we can say that the concept of “international law” is well and truly dead.

As Europe’s first de facto failed state, as the European equivalent of Somalia, it is entirely to be expected that Ukraine is one of the first countries to graduate to the new maritime culture of neo-piracy.

However, this very point concerning the demise of international law in itself makes the various sides’ appeals to the concept of “international law” all the more necessary. Once it is admitted that “international law” is now an irrelevant, meaningless concept, it opens up an even more appalling vista. De facto, we are in the preliminary stages of a third world war. Everybody knows this. This is precisely why all sides are still engaging in pro forma appeals to “international law” – the logic of this deliberate obtuseness is that, if we admit that international law is dead, then it accelerates the escalation of the impending global conflict. Everybody is in denial, but that denial is a matter of pragmatic necessity. Once the denial-phase ends, the third world war begins in earnest. Everybody is trying to delay that for as long as possible. Denial is an existential imperative in this case.

This existential imperative to deny the obvious closely mirrors the economic forces primarily driving the process of gradual escalation. The overly financialized western liberal economic model is unsustainable. It has always required subsidization by the natural resources of other nations, and always will.

We may accuse western governments of hypocrisy regarding their self-serving and selective appeals to “international law” (which was only ever a euphemism for quasi-legalized western hegemony), but the point should not be overlooked that this hypocrisy is also seen by the Occident’s political elites as an existential imperative, not only because it is partially devised to maximally delay the outbreak of a third world war, but also because the western world’s entire social and economic structure cannot possibly survive without this hypocrisy.

When your entire social order is premised on denying the obvious, civilizational self-negation sooner rather than later is inevitable, but you still don’t have a choice. Therefore, critiques of western hypocrisy do not go deep enough – the point is overlooked that, from the Occidental point of view, this hypocrisy is actually an existential imperative. Western liberal hypocrisy is an absolutely logical manifestation of neo-imperial capitalism’s ideological superstructure, made inevitable by the realities of its economic base.

There is no point in trying to postulate an “objective” ethical position. All ethical truths are temporary, because their purpose is ultimately to sustain a particular social order, and all social orders ultimately self-negate. That is to say, all truths are temporary because all truths are ultimately expedient. Lenin’s observation that realty itself is inherently ideological (somewhat adapted from Hegel) is highly applicable here.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Featured image is a screenshot from Youtube via Citizen Truth

Puerto Rico is a US Colony, its people grievously harmed by the presence of US military bases.

After colonizing Puerto Rico in 1898, the US denied its residents control over their lives, welfare, and future.

For over 120 years, Puerto Ricans have been exploited to serve US interests, notably corporate America’s.

The island state is part of the US, its residents US citizens without rights. Under international and US law, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a US colony, its sovereign independence denied by its colonial master.

In 1981, a statement by Puerto Rican Independentistas, falsely convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” said the following:

“Our position remains clear. Puerto Rico is a nation intervened, militarily conquered and colonized by the United States,” adding:

“We are prisoners of war captured by the enemy. Our actions have always been and continue to be in the nature of fighting a war of independence, a war of national liberation.”

“The US interventionist government has absolutely no right, no say so whatsoever in regards to Puerto Rico, ourselves, or any Puerto Rican prisoner of war.”

“The US interventionist government has only one choice…and that is to GET OUT!”

“It is our right to regain and secure our national sovereignty. Nothing will stand in the way of achieving our goal.”

For decades, the UN Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples — called on “the Government of the United States to expedite a process enabling the people of Puerto Rico to exercise fully their right to self‑determination and independence, and to take decisions in a sovereign manner to address their challenges.”

“It also noted with concern (in 2018) that, by virtue of the decision by the United States Congress under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act — known as PROMESA — the already weakened area outside which the prevailing regime of political and economic subordination in Puerto Rico operated had been reduced even further.”

The Special Committee called on the UN General Assembly to prioritize the question of Puerto Rican independence as soon as possible.

The issue became especially of concern following Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, devastating the island state and its people, killing around 5,000, wrecking the lives and welfare of most others.

In their aftermath, the Trump regime denied devastated islanders funding to rebuild their homes, shattered lives and welfare.

Hospitals were ordered not to report deaths to conceal an accurate body count.

Organization for Culture of Hispanic Origins’ Walter Alomar joined other petitioners for vitally needed US aid, accusing the Trump regime of “tossing out paper towels to my people, mocking their plight and insulting them, (so) we we’re coming together and rising up.”

Other Puerto Rican activists accused the Trump regime of “economic terrorism.” It continues unabated, supported by the White House and vast majority of congressional members.

Like his predecessors, widely despised Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello betrayed islanders by serving US interests, working in cahoots with the Trump regime.

He ignored the vital needs of his people, focusing instead on disaster capitalism — pursuing greater privatizations than already so US business interests could more greatly exploit islanders.

After mass protests throughout much of July, demanding his ouster, he announced his resignation, effective Friday August 2.

Popular anger boiled over. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans mass protested in San Juan and elsewhere, leaving Rossello no choice but to step down.

Either that, be impeached and removed from office, or face possible rebellion to forcefully remove him.

A change of the guard won’t likely help long-suffering Puerto Ricans, cabinet member/Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez Garced replacing him as governor, a figure also involved in dubious practices.

She’s despised for being complicit with Rossello, signs carried by protestors saying: “Wanda, we don’t want you either!” Some protesters chanted “Wanda, you’re next!”

Corruption and other wrongdoing by island officials pale in comparison to Washington’s complicity with monied interests at the expense of equity and justice for ordinary Americans, exploited to serve their interests.

It’s why the only solution is national grassroots revolution, voting a waste of time in farcical elections, assuring dirty business as usual always wins.

Following Rossello’s resignation, mass protests continue, opposing his appointed successor, mass anger directed at ruling authorities, serving US political and business interests, including forced-feeding austerity, imposing greater hardships on beleaguered islanders.

Trump regime hardliners, most congressional members, and their press agent media want Puerto Rico’s mass uprising prevented from spreading to the mainland — where it’s most needed.

Right wing Wall Street Journal editors expressed concern about the threat of “democratic socialism,” fearing “bondholders will be scalped.”

They called for the congressionally established Financial Oversight and Management Board to “impose discipline,” wanting exploitive business as usual continued.

To contain mass revolutionary fervor by Puerto Ricans, Plan A in Washington may be to throw crumbs on the fire to try assuaging public anger — likely too little too late if this step is taken.

Whatever happens ahead, US political and business interests will continue exploiting long-suffering Puerto Ricans, the same thing happening on the mainland.

US ruling authorities assure that privileged interests are served exclusively at the expense of ordinary people everywhere. Governance of, by, and for everyone equitably is a notion long ago rejected.

Ordinary Americans and Puerto Ricans have few allies in Washington, none in positions of power, notably not in the White House under both right wings of one-party state rule.

People have power when they use it. Sustained grassroots commitment matters most. Americans did it before. Anti-war activists helped end war in Southeast Asia almost 45 years ago.

Abolitionists ended slavery. Civil and labor rights were won. They’re lost because energy waned.

Change requires longterm struggle. Former Supreme Court Justice William Douglas (1898 – 1980) once said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

US politics doesn’t work. Replacing bums with new ones assures same old, same old.

America’s political system is too debauched to fix — reflecting how power corrupts and absolute power does absolutely.

The late Doug Dowd once called the US “a sick and dangerous nation run by a handful of the politically powerful.” Public dismissiveness lets them get away with mass murder and much more.

Transformational change is needed. Sustained collective defiance alone can make a difference.

Will Puerto Ricans continue their liberating struggle, or will public energy wane the way things happen time and again in Western societies and elsewhere?

Hardships propel people to collective action, but mobilized disruptive power usually fades.

Puerto Ricans suffered under the yoke of US colonial exploitation since 1898. If past is prologue, little is likely to change ahead for its long-suffering people.

The same is true for the vast majority of Americans, used and abused by their ruling authorities.

Democracy in the country is pure fantasy. Powerful monied interests run things, the way it’s always been from inception — notably since the neoliberal 90s, accelerated post-9/11.

Nothing in prospect suggests positive change, not for Puerto Ricans or Americans on the mainland — not as long as powerful interests run things for their own benefit exclusively.

The self-styled “land of the free and home of the brave” is pure illusion.

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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.

On July 25, warplanes of the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces bombed positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and its allies near the villages of al-Bawabiya, al-Atarib, Qammari, al-Barqoum, Urem al-Kubra, and Kafr Halab, and the Base 46 area. According to pro-militant sources, the Syrians and Russians delivered dozens of airstrikes aiming gatherings of equipment and military infrastructure.

The strikes came in response to the July 24 rocket shelling on Aleppo’s city center that killed at least 3 civilians and injured many others. Pro-government activists accused Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation of carrying out the attack.

On the same day, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham announced that its special forces had ambushed a unit of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) near Qasabiyeh in northern Hama. A military source denied HTS’ claims and told SouthFront that northern Hama did not witness any infiltration attempt during the mentioned period. This explains why the terrorist group’s claims did not include the results of the supposed attack.

Mashhour Zaydan, a Syrian commander affiliated with Hezbollah, was killed in western Damascus, Syrian sources confirmed on July 22. Zyadan was killed in the morning of July 21 when a guided projectile hit his car near Sasa in western Damascus. The strike also killed a 3-year old girl and injured three women, who were near.

Israel repeatedly claimed that Hezbollah is establishing a network in al-Qunitra’s countryside in cooperation with local commanders and warned that it will not tolerate such developments.

On July 24, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) struck SAA positions at Tell al-Harrah in western Daraa and Tell al- Ahmar in al-Quneitra’s countryside. Nonetheless, the strike led to no casualties among SAA personnel. According to Syrian sources, the IDF used Spike NLOS ground-to-ground missiles.

Additionally, the IDF accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons and missile manufacturing materials through Beirut Port. Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee claimed that Hezbollah is doing this in cooperation with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

These remarks went in the framework of Israel’s general policy in the region that is mostly based on opposing the growing influence of Iran and Hezbollah. In 2018, Israeli officials even threatened to strike supposed Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon.

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Syrian refugees in Turkey are facing an uncertain future.  Turkey did not grant them citizenship, or permanent residency; but, instead a ‘temporary guest’ status, which can be revoked at any time.  For many, that time has come, and hundreds have been forcibly deported without warning.

Like the house guest who as worn out his welcome, they are facing a free bus ride to Idlib.  In 2011 they were the face of the Syrian chapter of the Arab Spring.  Turkey had the tents set up on the border to house the refugees from the outset, sparking accusations of a conspiracy with the U.S., their close ally under Pres. Obama.  The western media hovered at the refugee camps on the Syrian-Turkish border, highlighting the numbers of people fleeing, and using those desperate faces to demonize the Syrian government.   Angelina Jolie and the UN played their role, making a bad situation look even worse.

Turkey had been secular for decades, dating back to the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.  He urged his countrymen to look West, abandon the old Arabic script, adopt the English alphabet and to look forward to modern society: more like Europe than the Middle East.  He saw Islam as a personal religion, and not a political ideology, and urged women to shake off the veil and take their place in society, further distancing Turkey from the backward Arab social order.

Turkey was becoming a modern nation, with tourism and a growing economy. The only females wearing headscarves were the elderly living in remote villages.  Turkey even had a female Prime Minister; however, that all came to a screeching halt when an ultra-religious fanatic happened to be elected, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Over 20 years, he caused the social fabric of Turkey to be interwoven with Radical Islam, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, who he embraced and highlighted.

Secular Turkey was transformed into a sea of military-style, floor-length trench coats worn by women, with elaborately wrapped silk turbans imported from Italy.  Erdogan had Turkey marching backward.  His AKP party played to that religious fervor, which fed off the Arab Gulf’s exporting of Radical Islam, which is neither a religion, nor a sect, but a political ideology.

The Arab Spring was a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.  The U.S and NATO had long planned the Arab Spring, and U.S. General Wesley Clark had been forewarned.

Erdogan played his role as U.S. ally in the destruction of Syria.  Accepting the Syrian refugees was part of the package.  After 8 years, the project failed.  The Turkish people are in deep economic distress, and blame everything on Erdogan and his foreign policy failure in Syria.  The Turkish voters dealt Erdogan a blow by electing the opposition party, CHP, to important offices across Turkey, and most notably to the office of Mayor of Istanbul, which was Erdogan’s stepping stone to power.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the new Mayor of Istanbul, of the secular Republican People’s Party, was blaming Erdogan’s failed foreign policy in Syria, and the resulting Syrian refugee influx as the biggest problem in Turkey today.  He called the poor economic situation a by-product of Erdogan’s participation in the failed war in Syria, which has caused the Turkish population to suffer from the Syrian refugees and their drain on resources, and the strain on the social fabric of secular Turkey, with more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees.

Some analysts see this chapter in Turkey as a natural correction to the regressive Erdogan era.  Many feel that Turkey will return to their secular values, and can become a modern Turkey once again.

Not all Syrian refugees are Muslim Brotherhood supporters or opposition.  Syria has a 40-year history as the only secular nation in the Middle East.  The Syrians who left Syria, and were educated, and not following Radical Islam, are in Canada, Germany, and Sweden.  The Syrians in Turkey were mainly under-educated, and many were easily swayed by the Muslim Brotherhood, who brainwashed them into blaming the Syrian government for all their problems while holding up Pres. Erdogan as their savior and defender.  Initially, they were offered many perks for living in Turkey, which over the years has dwindled into broken promises.

Syrian refugees in Turkey now face a dilemma: where can they go?  They may not choose to go home knowing Syria is not in a position to rebuild and recover, while under U.S and EU sanctions which prevent building supplies, and even basic needs from being imported.  They might head the boats toward Greece route while the summer weather is in their favor.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel might have to make room for more refugees soon.

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The two most pressing issues on newly appointed UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plate right now are Brexit and Iran. Will the UK leave the EU on October 31st regardless of whether they have a new deal, as he has stated previously? Will he choose diplomacy with Iran over increased sanctions and a military confrontation?

Brexit

On July 23rd it was announced that Boris Johnson was the winner of the Conservative Party leadership. Theresa May stepped down having failed to take Britain out of the European Union.

On July 24th Boris Johnson was formally appointed as the new Prime Minister of the UK, by Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace. Shortly after his Johnson began appointing his Senior Ministers: Finance Minister: Sajid Javid, Interior Minister Priti Patel, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab, Brexit Minister Stephen Barclay, and Defense Minister Ben Wallace.

In his first speech as PM on July 24th Boris Johnson has addressed the first issue, he said

“We are going to fulfill the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts.”

Johnson continued on to say

“We will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximize the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe based on free trade and mutual support. I have every confidence that in 99 days’ time we will have cracked it. But you know what —-we aren’t going to wait 99 days because the British people have had enough of waiting. The time has come to act, to take decisions, to give strong leadership and to change this country for the better,” he said.

Iran

Theresa May was more aligned with the views of Brussels, Berlin, and Paris when it came to the JCPOA or Iran Deal. Whereas some experts are saying that Johnson might shift and realign himself and the UK, with the United States and follow in their steps by imposing increased sanctions. So far it isn’t clear what path he will take but if his recent statements are any indication it would appear that he prefers diplomacy over military confrontation.

On July 15th, while speaking at a leadership debate Johnson made statements that would indicate that the UK would not support US-led military strikes against Iran. Johnson also said that he didn’t see going to war with Iran as a sensible option. He went on to say that “Diplomacy must be the best way forward”. Jeremy Hunt UK Foreign secretary said he was on the same page as Johnson on the issue of Iran and warned of the risk of accidental war.

On July 22nd, 2019, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif spoke about the United Kingdom doing the bidding of the Trump Administration, while at a press conference in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua.

Zarif stated

“The excuses that the United Kingdom and Gibraltar authorities provided for the confiscation of the ship that was carrying Iranian oil, it was not an Iranian ship, but it was a ship carrying Iranian oil, was clearly unfounded, the EU does not apply its rules to third parties, as a matter of principle and the United Kingdom on its way out of the EU is becoming holier than the pope, in doing things that the EU itself would not do and it has said publicly it would not do”.

Zarif went on to say,

“It was clear from the very beginning that the United Kingdom was doing the bidding for the Trump administration, this is not the first time the united kingdom started doing bidding for the United States administration, as soon as president Trump got elected and before he entered into office, the United Kingdom prevented implementation of agreements that we had reached with the previous government of the United states on behalf of President trump and the Iranian people have not forgotten that.”

In a tweet that Zarif made on July 23rd he congratulated Johnson on his PM victory while making it clear that although Iran does not want confrontation, they will protect their coastline. The tweet said

“The May governments seizure of Iranian oil at behest of the US is piracy, pure and simple. I congratulate my former counterpart, Boris Johnson on becoming UK Prime Minister. Iran does not seek confrontation. But we have 1,500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline. These are our waters and we will protect them.”

JCPOA

On July 28th, five world powers will be meeting in Vienna to discuss increased tensions in the Persian Gulf and how they can try to save the JCPOA. The nations attending are France, Britain, Germany, Russia and Iran. Last year U.S. President Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and implemented increased sanctions on Iran.

Harsh sanctions have not only crippled the private and public sectors in Iran but have directly impacted the most vulnerable members of Iranian society. Iran has referred to these sanctions as “economic terrorism”. China has also used the same terminology when referring to the sanctions imposed by the United States against Iran. Three of the six members of the Iran Nuclear Deal have proposed a system to provide economic relief to Iran through a complicated barter system but recent activity in the Strait of Hormuz has had an impact on that.

It will be very interesting to see what path Johnson takes after this meeting. Iran has made it clear that it does not seek confrontation but will protect its coastline.

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Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. For media inquiries please email [email protected]

“Telecommunications companies worldwide, with the support of governments, are poised within the next two years to roll out the fifth-generation wireless network (5G). This is set to deliver what is acknowledged to be unprecedented societal change on a global scale. We will have “smart” homes, “smart” businesses, “smart” highways, “smart” cities and self-driving cars.

Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming. The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies.

If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today.” (Excerpt from Text of International Appeal Stop 5G on Earth and in Space 

5G will result in a massive increase in inescapable, involuntary exposure to wireless radiation

The Centre of Research on Globalization (CRG) has endorsed the International Appeal.

We call upon our readers to sign this important initiative.

Below is the executive summary of the International Appeal.

To sign the Appeal Click below, click the International Appeal, Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (below): 

Executive Summary of Stop 5G International Appeal

To Read the Complete text of the Stop 5G International Appeal Click Here

In Dostoevsky’s Demons, liberal academic Stepan Trofimovich says before dying:

“I’ve been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth …. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I lie. The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie.”

It’s because lies are behaviour. Dostoevsky’s characters “eat” ideas. They don’t believe them, but more important, they don’t know they don’t believe them.

Some beliefs are tacit, presupposed, not acknowledged, just lived.

This aspect of thinking is known in Cuba. It is why its independence traditions, centuries-long, are so interesting, philosophically, although it’s largely unrecognized. In 1999 in Caracus, Fidel Castro said,

“They discovered smart weapons. We discovered something more important: people think and feel.”

It is not trivial. It has to do with lies that are lived and how to know them.

José de la Luz y Caballero, in early 19^th century Cuba, taught philosophy because of a lie: slavery. Progressives accepted it.  They couldn’t imagine life without slavery. Luz taught philosophy so privileged youth could know injustice when injustice is identity: lived lies.

José Martí, later, identified another lie. He built a revolution around it, not just the lie, but how to know it: a revolution in thinking. He said the South didn’t need to look North to live well. That lie is lived still. We can’t imagine life without a dominating North.

Both Luz and Martí taught that “people think and feel”. It’s about reciprocity. A new book on the US medical system identifies just such thinking, known to science, but hard to practise. Reciprocity involves experiencing – that is, feeling – relations between people, and becoming motivated, even humanized.

Anyone seriously ill (in Canada too), knows medicine is not about care. Soul of Care, by Harvard psychiatrist, Arthur Kleinman, explains why.[i] The failure is systemic. He cites an educator at a major medical school, who feels like a “hypocrite” teaching about care. She knows doctors don’t have time to listen and aren’t supported to try.

Medicine is about “cost, efficiency, management talk”. Survival “depends on cutting corners, spending as little time as you can get away with in human interactions that can be emotionally and morally taxing.”

As Kleinman tells his personal story, of caring for his beloved wife, Joan, he offers a different view.  Caregiving is not a moral obligation; it is existential. At its heart is reciprocity, the ““invisible glue that holds societies together”. In caregiving, one finds within oneself “a tender mercy and a need to act on it”. Caregiving, Kleinman argues, made him more human

Reciprocity offers solutions not identifiable previously. It matters for science, for truth. But the capacity must be cultivated. “Being present” means submitting intellectual judgment, on occasion, to experience of feelings. One can’t just decide to do it without preparation. Yet such training is not happening. It’s not likely to. It contradicts “politically useful fictions” like the “self-made man”.

Kleinman says medicine needs help from sociology and “even philosophy”. But the myth of the self-made man is taught in philosophy. It’s called philosophical liberalism, providing ideas of identity, rationality and autonomy assumed in social sciences.  It denies person-making reciprocity.

Marx taught such reciprocity – the kind that recognizes receiving back, cause and effect, giving. So did Lenin, the Buddha, and Christian philosophers, Thomas Merton, Jean Vanier and Ivan Illich. We don’t teach these philosophers. We barely recognize them.

Caregiving is so alien to medical practise that Kleinman’s “modest proposal” is to omit it from the curriculum altogether. Nonetheless, health institutions claim to care about care. Kleinman’s colleague says: “We can’t even tell ourselves lies we can believe in”.

But they can. Whole societies can. I was reminded of this reading a recent book on hippie communes of the 70s.[ii] Having lived in such communes most of that decade, I spent subsequent decades figuring out lies: How to explain to students. Those communes weren’t about love and peace. They couldn’t be.  You can’t love when you’re self-absorbed and morally superior. It doesn’t work.

We didn’t know that we didn’t believe in love, or even know what it is. When Dostoevsky’s characters begin redemption, they fall, or are thrown, to the earth and “water it with tears”. Raskolnikov, after confessing, berates himself for “submitting”. But he:

could not understand that even then, when he was standing over the river, he may have sensed a profound lie in himself and in his convictions. He did not understand that this sense might herald a future break in his life, his future resurrection, his future new vision of life.

He must wait for “something completely different” to work itself out. Waiting, submission, is not the “self-made man”. The “self-made man” seizes control of their destiny.

That’s what autonomy means, supposedly. Che Guevara saw the myth as an iron cage, blocking truth. If you believe it, there areno lies, not about you. Truth is whatever you want it to be. It’s easy but limiting – humanly so.

Some understand Cuba’s famous medical internationalism as a mere moral achievement. They undervalue it. Being “good” doesn’t motivate sacrifice. Reciprocity does. It energizes, compels.

It beats “smart weapons” because it’s about truth. Che Guevara told medical students in 1960:

“If we all use the new weapon of solidarity [i.e. reciprocity] then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. … [and we] will gain from individual experience.”

He meant capacities direction. Reciprocity means giving but also receiving back, humanly.

José Engenieros, brilliant Argentinean psychiatrist, early 20^th century, dedicated himself to educational reform across the continent. Philosophical liberalism, grounding medical education, had convinced Latin Americans, with its false freedoms, to support imperialism in World War 1.

It convinces North Americans to “follow dreams” just because we have them. It makes it hard to live and not lie.

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Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014). She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Penguin Random House, 2019. Review forthcoming at https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/

[ii] Hippie Woman Wild (Wyatt-MacKenzie, 2019). See review https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/

On July 27, 1980, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi finally succumbed to cancer in Cairo, Egypt. In 1953, he was installed as the dictator of Iran after the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. 

There are a few tributes to the brutal dictator posted on social media ahead of this anniversary. Most are nostalgic for the good old days when the Shah ruled with an iron fist and unleashed his notorious and brutal SAVAK secret police on Iranians opposed to his rule. 

O Emperors of the mightiest light
Shahanshah
Spirit of the blest
The Gurdian of children of light
The Aryan Faith
Captain of the hosts of the Lord
Oh King of Heavenly hosts, by the power of God
He who sees God
He who is like God
He who is the Knight of Heaven
Emperor of Gods. pic.twitter.com/HpBEEHuJg9

— SPQR (@SPQR73844943) July 26, 2019

As the corporate media dwells on the mullahs, it doesn’t bother to explain how the Islamic Republic of Iran came to be and why. It’s basically ignored. For those interested, a few links follow.

SAVAK is listed on this page as number six of “10 of the Most Brutal Secret Police Forces in History,” right up there with the Gestapo, the Stasi, and the Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot. 

It took a couple decades after the revolution for The New York Times to publish an expose on the Shah’s torture. Years of Torture in Iran Comes to Light.

In 2009, The Inquisitor nominated the Shah “Despot of the Week.” 

The Shah and his family amassed a huge fortune—estimated at $20 billion in 1979—said at that time to be “a staggering sum that would probably exceed or at least equal the wealth of any of the other royal families of Middle East Oil-producing states.” 

“By 1977 [two years before the Revolution] the sheer scale of corruption had reached a boiling point… Even conservative estimates indicate that such [bureaucratic] corruption involved at least a billion dollars between 1973 and 1976,” according to research by IPFS. 

Americans wonder why Iranians chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Soon after the Revolution, students began compiling an archive of memos, titled “Documents from the US Espionage Den, Iran Embassy—CIA Station 1979.” The documents reveal in detail how the CIA collaborated with SAVAK. 

Ya’acov Nimrodi, Israel’s military attaché to Iran prior to the Revolution, admitted Mossad helped build-up and fine-tune SAVAK. In the book The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, Johnathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter write that Nimrodi was “the Mossad agent who could properly boast of having ‘built’ SAVAK into an efficient if brutal intelligence service.”

There is much more to the story we’re not told as the media continues to demonize the current government of Iran. The rule of the Shi’a theocracy is a direct result of meddling by the United States, Britain, and Israel. The Iranian parliament (the Majlis) elected Mohammad Mosaddegh and his National Front was popular with the Iranian people. 

The trouble began when Mosaddegh declared Iran’s oil belonged to the people, not the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Chemicals Regulation Division (HSE) in the UK claiming that the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup has poisoned her nature reserve in South Wales and is also poisoning people across the UK (she includes herself here, as she struggles with a neurodegenerative condition). She notes that the widespread spraying of glyphosate went against the advice of directive 2009/128/EC of the European parliament but was carried out at the behest of the agrochemicals industry.

Mason has sent a 24-page fully referenced document with her letter in support of her claims. It can be accessed in full here. What follows is a brief summary of just a few of the take-home points. There is a lot more in Mason’s document, much of which touches on issues she has previously covered but which nonetheless remain relevant.

The thrust of her open letter to these agencies is that glyphosate is a major contributory factor in spiralling rates of disease and conditions affecting the UK population. She also makes it clear that official narratives – pushed by the pesticides industry, the media and various key agencies – have deliberately downplayed or ignored the role of agrochemicals in this. Instead, the focus has been on the role of alcohol use and obesity, conveniently placing the blame on individual behaviour and the failure of people to opt for ‘healthy lifestyle’ choices.

Mason argues that Monsanto emails released into the public domain have revealed that Roundup was kept on the market by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud. In addition, she notes that documents show that the European Commission bowed to the demands of pesticide lobbies. Former PM David Cameron, Defra, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency all ignored the warnings that GM crops and Roundup were hazardous to human health and the environment.

In the run-up to the relicensing of glyphosate in the EU, Mason states that in its analysis the Glyphosate Task Force omitted key studies from South America (where herbicide-tolerant GM crops are grown) that associate Roundup with cancer, birth defects, infertility, DNA damage and neurotoxicity. She refers to many studies in support of her claim that glyphosate is deleterious to human health and the environment. It is worth noting that the European Chemicals Agency has classified glyphosate as a substance causing serious eye damage and toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects.

Mason reserves a special place for Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in her letter, saying that the agency has been hi-jacked by the pesticides industry and has persuaded key figures in the medical establishment to repeat certain claims: that alcohol, cigarette smoking and obesity are the main causes of cancer. She argues that Monsanto and the US EPA have known for a long time that Roundup is carcinogenic.

CRUK recently made a bold statement about its vision to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. However, Mason asserts this is fantasy for public consumption. She argues there are a huge number of cancers in the UK and their prevalence is increasing each year in tandem with the rising use of glyphosate and other agrochemicals.

Mason provides the statistics:

“In the UK, there were 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2015 (and 4,920 deaths in 2016): there were 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.”

Arguing that UK farmers are “drowning” their crops in pesticides, Mason notes that it is therefore not surprising that 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). However, Mason says that when PAN-UK sent its findings to the DOH, the agency was told that pesticides are not the concern of the DoH.

Perhaps they should be, given what Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, stated in 2017:

“Our children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weed killers, insecticides and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds. Many governments insist that our standards of protection from these pesticides are strong enough. But as a scientist and a lawyer who specialises in chemicals and their potential impact on people’s fundamental rights, I beg to differ.”

He added:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a ‘silent pandemic’ of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes, and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe, and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals. Increasing evidence shows that even at ‘low’ doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result.”

Tuncak says that most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease and this limits our ability to hold those responsible to account. But this is changing. The public is becoming increasingly aware of the industry’s criminal strategy for keeping Roundup on the market, thanks to the various high-profile litigations in the US. Maybe it’s time for the (taxpayer-funded) agencies Rosemary Mason has continually written to over the years to finally act in the public interest. Or would that be too much to expect?

In finishing, we should take note of the current orchestrated campaign (cheer-led by those outside of India with industry links) to get herbicide-tolerant seeds planted in India. Aside from Bt cotton, GM crops are not allowed in the country. This cynical campaign is aimed at increasing GM seed, glyphosate and other toxic agrochemical sales. Given increasingly saturated markets elsewhere, the global GM seed and herbicide industry regards India as a massive potential money spinner.

However, Punjab took the lead in 2018 and banned glyphosate. Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have since followed. But there is still no nationwide ban. With this in mind, author and academic Ashwani Mahajan has started a petition campaign (here) to stop the use of glyphosate in India.

He says that pesticide companies are taking advantage of farmers’ ignorance about the deadly risks associated with glyphosate. Mahajan notes that industry is sending its agents to approach farmers directly and trap them with attractive promotional offers. This is part of a wider strategy to get farmers to break with effective traditional practices and lure them onto agrochemical (and GMO) treadmills as described in the 2017 paper The Ox Fall Down: Path Breaking and Technology Treadmills in Indian Cotton Agriculture (Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs).

Farmers are being subjected to slick PR and lured because they are told this herbicide is a cost-effective method to kill weeds quickly. What they are not told is that its effectiveness is limited, that it’s a health and environmental hazard and that it’s a risk to their lives. But it’s not just farmers’ lives that are at risk. We just need to look at the statistics provided earlier in this article to realise the risk to the wider public health.

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

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Intimacies from an Awful War. “For Sama” by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, July 28, 2019

If you think you’ve seen enough of conflict, especially the war in Syria, you haven’t. From love of nation and loathing of military rule, from inchoate hope of redemption and improbable determination, indebted to lost friends and seeded in the birth of your child, comes an intimate demonstration of how war happens to you and how it tests humanity.

More Evidence on the Srebrenica “Numbers Game”

By George Pumphrey, July 28, 2019

For nearly a quarter of a century, the massacre of Srebrenica has been reappearing in the headlines of the western media. The usual allegation: 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred on July 11, 1995, in “the worst war crime since World War II.” The Hague Tribunal has ruled that these assumed 8,000 executed males constitutes “genocide.”

The Malaysian Airlines MH17 Tragedy, Suppression and Tampering of the Evidence. New Documentary

By John Helmer, July 27, 2019

A new documentary from Yana Yerlashova and Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials;  suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes;  and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time.

Addressing the Climate Crisis, Worldwide Reforestation and Industrial Hemp

By Ellen Brown, July 27, 2019

For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems of mass species extinction and environmental pollution, which are well documented. A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that loss of biodiversity impacts ecosystems as much as climate change and pollution.

Presidential Candidates Kamala Harris or Tulsi Gabbard

By Renee Parsons, July 27, 2019

It has been decades since a bona fide anti-war candidate ran for US President; that is, a candidate who ‘felt’ peace in their bones rather than a political calculation to be exploited.  By my reckoning, that last campaign would be Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 peace candidacy which came at the height of the Vietnam war.

The Caracas Manifesto: Proposal and Promise at the Sao Paulo Forum 2019

By Nino Pagliccia, July 27, 2019

The 25^th Annual Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum is taking place July 25-28 in Caracas, Venezuela. The first meeting was held in 1990 in São Paulo, Brazil, with 48 political organizations and social movements led by Fidel Castro of the governing Communist Party of Cuba, and Lula Da Silva of the opposition Workers Party of Brazil.

Destabilizing Pakistan: Bookending Washington’s China Policy

By Tony Cartalucci, July 26, 2019

Much is being said of US activities aimed at China. Recent protests in Hong Kong together with a US-led propaganda campaign aimed at Beijing’s attempts to quell a growing terrorist threat in Xinjiang are aimed at pressuring the nation to fall back into line within Washington’s enduring unipolar international order.

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For nearly a quarter of a century, the massacre of Srebrenica has been reappearing in the headlines of the western media. The usual allegation: 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred on July 11, 1995, in “the worst war crime since World War II.” The Hague Tribunal has ruled that these assumed 8,000 executed males constitutes “genocide.”

In NATO countries – most recently Canada – efforts are being made to outlaw discussion of Srebrenica, particularly discussion of whether the presumed “mass execution” ever happened, but also whether the presumed “mass execution” of only men constitutes “genocide”– when the women, children and the elderly had been orderly evacuated to the Muslim lines.

The figure of “8.000 victims” is repeated mantra-like without much interest in the origins of this figure. This is particularly worrying, since no evidence of 8,000 execution victims has been found, yet everyone continues to use this figure.

It would be a major contribution to the ongoing investigation into what actually happened in Srebrenica to learn the origin of the “8,000” figure. This is the figure used to justify the “genocide” charge brought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) against Bosnian Serb leaders. This in turn forms the basis for demands on Serbian political figures to publicly accept responsibility for the “genocide” assumed to have been committed by Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica.

Over the past two and a half decades, there have been few who have been interested enough to look deeper into what happened in Srebrenica in July 1995. Some, who question the “genocide” verdict, assume that the figure of “8,000” is merely an arbitrary “guesstimate.”

On the other hand, research of media and eyewitness reports of the period gives a different picture, one of deliberate falsification. These “guesstimates” actually had their origins in concrete numbers, which were then inflated.

One thing should be clear – contrary to what the media would have us believe – the Serb troops, who walked into Srebrenica, were not an “invading force,” but rather Srebrenica, along with Zepa and Gorazde, was being handed over to the Serb side in exchange for Serb enclaves in predominantly Muslim or Croat regions, in preparation of imminent peace negotiations.

Two months after Srebrenica was handed over to Serb forces the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued the following press statement:

“The ICRC’s head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths.

“The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia. (…) ”

However, Angelo Gnaedinger’s unnamed “witnesses” were the United Nations Dutch Blue Helmet Protection Force (UNPROFOR), stationed in Srebrenica. When the Dutchbat were evacuated from Srebrenica, journalists asked them, among other things, about the behavior of Serb troops. In their answers they mentioned a quite different figure.

The New York Times reported:

“Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica (…) say that Bosnian Serbian invaders (…) abducted from 150 ‑ 300 men aged 16 ‑ 60. (…)”

In other words the 300 “abducted” Muslim men taken prisoner by Serb troops upon entering Srebrenica, became 3,000 (multiplied by ten) in the Red Cross press statement even while referring to what these “witnesses” had reported. The 200 prisoners the Red Cross had visited in custody, comes much closer to 300 prisoners, the Dutchbat had seen being arrested, than to the Red Cross allegation of 3,000, especially since the Dutchbat had estimated “from 150 ‑ 300 men”.

The hyperbole in the Red Cross press statement became even further exaggerated in an AP news item picked up by the US flagship daily, the New York Times:

“About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica. (…) Among the missing were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. (…) In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 ‘have simply disappeared.” (See also the AP original)

There is no mention of the fact that the Red Cross statement says that “some of [the 5,000 had [already] reached central Bosnia.” In the AP/New York Times article, they “simply disappeared.”

Already by the time the two ICRC news items hit the wires, it had long since been established that most of the 5,000 were safe. In fact, they had “disappeared” behind Muslim lines:

The New York Times itself informs that:

“Some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory. The group, which included wounded refugees, sneaked past Serb lines under fire and crossed some 30 miles through forests to safety.”

And the Times of London wrote:

“Thousands of the ‘missing’ Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica who have been at the center of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla. Monitoring the safe escape of Muslim soldiers and civilians from (…) Srebrenica and Zepa has proved a nightmare for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica ‘without their families being informed’, a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area. [1]

Even those of the 5,000 who went to defend Zepa were also accounted for:

“The wounded troops were left behind, and when the Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their journey in Srebrenica and fled into the hills when that ‘safe area’ fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of Zepa instead. ‘Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica and make it into Zepa,’ said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today. (…) They said they had not been mistreated by their Serb captors.”

In a previous text I asked the reader to simply use logic: “It might seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Zepa would abandon their wounded comrades and that 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation – at least in the media – of being sadists, and rapists seeking to commit ‘genocide.’ Could it be that these Muslim soldiers knew that they need not be particularly worried about their women, children and wounded comrades falling into the hands of their Serb countrymen? The Serb forces had the wounded Muslim soldiers evacuated behind Muslim lines to their Muslim hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one goes about committing genocide? Is this the military force compared to Nazis? What a trivialization of Nazi barbarism! Even the fact that the Serbs provided safe passage to women and children is interpreted as sinister, when it is proof that ‘genocide’ was not happening.”

Two weeks before the above Red Cross representatives gave their inflated figures to the press, another spokesperson for the International Red Cross in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier, provided an important detail, picked up two weeks later in the Gnaedinger statement above. In an interview for the German daily Junge Welt, he explained:

“All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double counting… Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing (…) because we have not received their names.” [2]

Since the number of “missing” (and therefore presumed dead) has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past quarter of a century, it is reasonable to assume that the Muslim government had never furnished the Red Cross with the names of those who had reached Muslim lines.

Also to be noted is that when Prof. Milivoje Ivanisevic at the University of Belgrade scrutinized the Red Cross’ list, he discovered it contained the names of 500 people who had died already before Bosnian Serb troops had entered Srebrenica. Even more interesting, when he compared the Red Cross’ list with the Bosnian electoral lists for the 1996 fall elections, he found that 3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as “missing” were on the electoral lists the following year. [3]  This means that either the Muslims were having their dead vote in the elections – election fraud – or the voters were in fact alive – additional evidence that the massacre is a hoax.

Then there were the 300 prisoners of war. What happened to them? A few examples will suffice.

“Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp – at Sljivovica. (…) A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before Christmas [1995] (…). But some 800 others remain incarcerated in Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia (…). The Red Cross in Belgrade has been negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy, Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland. (…) Since late August, the Red Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office. (…) Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to question and take evidence from the men.” [4]

“[The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who, (…) had been detained in Serb camps and give them refugee status.” [5]

“‘[One] Hundred‑three Bosnian soldiers who were recently released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their will,’ claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the UNHCR, whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face criminal charges as deserters there. ‘This is not true,’ says Zimic. Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was informed [of] Zimic’s allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra and that the investigation was initiated.” [6]

“The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, especially since they had been in the camps in Serbia, which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia. The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his will.” [7]

The main evidence of the gigantic massacre in Srebrenica is the testimony of Drazen Erdemovic, who had claimed to have been a member of a Serb execution detachment, which had executed 1,200 Muslims in the course of five hours. The author, Germinal Civikov, who was an observer of various ICTY trial cases, mathematically demonstrated that the timetable Erdemovic claims to have been the cadence to carry out 1,200 executions, ranged from extremely doubtful to impossible.

In her article published in “The Nation” (USA), Diana Johnstone, author of the book “Fools Crusade, Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions” points to the travesty of justice in plea bargaining trials (i.e. the extortion of a “guilty” plea in exchange for a lighter sentence). In the Erdemovic case, the accused  pleaded guilty not only to flee prosecution in Serbia for mass murder, but also because the ICTY had promised him a light sentence, a new identity, and safe residence in a third country in exchange for his tailored, incriminating testimony against Serb political leaders. His testimony was intended to fill the gaping hole left by the absence of hard evidence supporting the charges.

Diana Johnstone points to the fact that:

“(…) inasmuch as [Erdemovic] confessed to his crimes, there was no formal trial and no presentation of material evidence to corroborate his story. In any case, since he had turned ‘state’s evidence’, there would have been no rigorous cross-examination from either a contented prosecution or a complaisant defense regarding the discrepancy between the number of Muslims he testified having helped execute at a farm near Pilica – 1,200 – and the number of bodies actually found there by the Tribunal’s forensic team: about 150 to 200.” [8]

Again, the figure used in this “evidence” was nearly multiplied by 10 in relationship to the number of bodies actually found.

In his written statement, Erdemovic had alleged that men of all ethnicities had participated in the executions. During the course of the Milosevic trial cross examination by the defendant himself, Erdemovic was asked, whether he had seen or heard Serbs from neighboring Serbia participating in the shootings. Erdemovic admitted that he had not.

Among the information introduced into evidence by the defendant, President Milosevic, during his cross examination of the tribunal’s key witness, was that, in fact, Erdemovic’ execution detachment had been a group of mercenaries commanded by the secret service of a NATO country. As Germinal Civikov’s exposes in his book, ”Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge” (Wien: Promedia, 2009) President Milosevic’ cross examination was persistently interrupted by Judge Richard May obviously to protect the prosecution’s case from being discredited.

Still the defendant was able to bring to light that on November 11, 1999, a group of mercenaries was arrested in Belgrade. One of the members of the group, Milorad Pelemis, had been Drazen Erdemovic’s commander in the Srebrenica execution unit. This detachment, working for France’s DGSE, foreign intelligence service, had been operating for ten years on Yugoslav territory under the name “Pauk” (the Spider). It had been committing various atrocities in Srebrenica and in Kosovo, for which Serb forces were subsequently accused. Some of its members were with the French Foreign Legion and held French citizenship. Among their planned operations was also the overthrow the government of President Milosevic. This is what had led to their discovery and arrest in Belgrade.[9]

Gen. Radislav Krstic was the first Serb to be convicted of “genocide” for Srebrenica. According to the New York Times, when the guilty verdict “for his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims” was announced, “tribunal investigators ha[d] exhumed 2,028 bodies from mass graves in the region. An additional 2,500 bodies ha[d] been located.”

But he was pronounced guilty of the murder of “more than 7,000.” Where is the evidence? “Located” bodies do not count. Ever since 1996 – the first year of exhumations – in press conferences, the ICTY’s specialists have been making estimates of how many bodies they suppose to be in the unopened “mass grave,” only to sheepishly re-close the grave with a much smaller count.

It should be remembered, 1) that during the exhumations, no attempts were made to learn the identities of the bodies, the time or circumstances of death, and 2) that this was a region, where civil war had raged for nearly four years, making victims on all sides. However, the tribunal would like for us to believe that Serbs were the only ones shooting and Muslims the only ones dying. This is why all bodies were counted as “victims of Srebrenica” and why their identities, time, and cause of death were unimportant to the forensic teams.

During exhumations another fact came to light: Reuters News Agency published the following information in the spring of 1998: During “the opening of a mass grave in Bosnia, according to the United Nations, experts found the remains of skulls, clothes and hundreds of spent rounds.” Further down in the article, one learns that “more than 1,500 spent rounds have been discovered in this area over the past two years.” [10]

This means that the tribunal was not only lacking bodies, but bullets as well. Or are we to believe that every shot fired by a Serb killed more than five Muslims?

The above-mentioned AP falsification of the Red Cross’ hyperbole is an often-used method of US intelligence services. AP is one of the CIA’s preferred conduits of its disinformation and the New York Times lends it credibility. AP, having journalists and stringers all over the world, can be called upon to make “interviews,” where parts of statements are then taken out of context and redacted to produce the government’s desired impression.

Already back in the 1970s when CIA manipulation of the press was still a scandal, the International Herald Tribune wrote:

“An agency official said that the CIA had in the past used paid agents in the foreign bureaus of the Associated Press and United Press International to slip agency-prepared dispatches onto the news wire. In some cases, as in the AP’s Singapore bureau in the early 1950s, the agents were natives known as ‘local hires.’ But in others they were Americans.” [11]

In July 1995, with not even enough time to investigate whether a crime had been committed in Srebrenica, and if so, who could have been responsible, President of the ICTY, Antonio Cassese, boasted in an interview, that “‘the decision [to indict Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic] marks a fundamental step,’ Antonio Cassese, an Italian, told the newspaper L’Unita. ‘I challenge anyone to sit down at the negotiating table with someone accused of genocide,’ he said.”

However he was contradicted by the spokesman for the United Nations, Ahmad Fawzi, who told reporters: “‘It’s a dilemma, I think, that we’ve been thinking about for some time,’ (…) ‘When you are in a war situation you negotiate with all the parties in that field of operation,’ he told reporters.” [12] Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic were not permitted to participate in the Dayton negotiations. The question, however, is, what do phony political indictments have to do with the judicial process?

Long before Serb troops walked into Srebrenica, it had been determined that the number of those supposedly killed by Serbs in Srebrenica had to range somewhere beyond 5,000 to credibly justify other major developments in international politics.

Former President of the (Muslim) Social Democratic Party in Srebrenica, Hakija Meholjic, who also served there as police chief, gave an interview to the Muslim journal Dani. In the course of his interview, he exposed a very important element of background information.

In September 1993, Meholjic had been a member of Srebrenica’s delegation to his party’s congress in Sarajevo. He recounted that before the congress Izetbegovic had taken the Srebrenica delegation aside in confidence. Izetbegovic then explained:

“You know, I [Izetbegovic] was offered by [US President Bill] Clinton in April 1993 (…) that [if] the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, (…) there will be a [NATO-US] military intervention.” (Hakija Meholjic: “5,000 Muslim Lives for Military Intervention, Interview by Hasan Hadzic,” Dani, 22 June 1998, also mentioned in §115 of the Srebrenica Report of the UN Secretary General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35 (1998) (S. A/54/549)

Though the Srebrenica delegates turned down the offer, this indicates what the US needed in order to to sway Western public opinion into accepting a NATO intervention outside of NATO’s area of engagement (“out of area”) in the Bosnian Civil War on the Muslim/Croat side – and against the Serbs. The Clinton and Izetbegovic governments had already hatched the idea of a “Srebrenica massacre,” long before Srebrenica was turned over to Serb forces. Their objective was to lock Bosnian Serbs into a strategic position where they could only accept terms dictated by the West.

Serb forces, under the illusion of a territory exchange, had no reason to commit a massacre. After all, it is evident that not even Serb forces can massacre soldiers that had fled before they arrived.

The way the Muslim combatants in Zepa were treated by the Serb forces should serve as a good indication of Serb military discipline and character.

However, as far as summary executions are concerned: Yes, according to eyewitnesses, there had been summary executions in Srebrenica:

“(…) Lieutenant Gen. Hans Couzy, the commander‑in chief of Dutch ground forces, said Dutch troops had witnessed no incidents of rape and were aware of only limited incidents that could be labeled war crimes.

“In one incident, Bosnian Serb invaders had taken a Muslim man, placed him against a wall and shot him in the back of the head. In another, nine men had been executed in a house, shot in the back in the same room.

These may be war crimes, but they seem never to have interested the tribunal.

Political “Plea Bargain” Offer

Given the fact that neither NATO, its kangaroo court in The Hague, nor its EU auxiliary in Brussels can provide tangible evidence of a “mass execution of 8,000 men” in Srebrenica, they have begun applying pressure on Serb politicians – particularly those in Serbia, (who have nothing to do with what Bosnian Serbs may or may not have done in Bosnia), to force them to “admit” and accept responsibility for a “genocide” that (Bosnian) Serbs are alleged to have committed in Srebrenica. Consideration for eventual EU membership would be the “thirty pieces of silver” for making this kowtow. (Serbia need only look at neighboring EU-member Greece to see just how poisoned this “gift” would be.)

Once such a kowtow is made, it is permanent, and without guarantee that the other side will uphold its side of the deal. Giving in to blackmail whets the appetite of the blackmailer. Suppose they then ask for recognition of Kosovo?

The EU is offering Serbia a “plea bargain”

The purpose of a plea bargain is to spare the court system the duty of having to furnish proof 1) that a crime has been committed, and 2) that the defendant was personally involved in the commission of that crime. If the defendant pleads guilty– even to a crime that had never been committed or even to a lesser crime – the state has its conviction and no longer needs to prove guilt. In practice, the plea bargain today serves a similar purpose to torture in the middle ages. The defendant has been put under such pressure that he/she would prefer to shorten the agony that still awaits him/her.

This is why the highest political authorities of Serbia are being subjected to this pressure. Should Serbian authorities bow to that pressure, in the eyes of the world they will be assuming for the 21^st century the historical role in international collective memory that the Nazis had held in the second half of the 20^th century – with the difference, that the Serbs are innocent. The kangaroo court in The Hague was incapable of providing proof of a massacre, let alone “genocide,” so they now seek to induce Serbian authorities to “voluntarily” accept this role, so that they can “close their books” claiming “justice has been served.” As seen in Judge Antonio Cassese’s statement above, the ICTY has always mistaken politics for justice.

The anti-Serb World War II symbolism in the propaganda images surrounding Srebrenica was no accident. It was aimed at US public opinion, but it did not originate there. It was tailored to German political needs.

The image of Srebrenica was designed to exonerate the German government of its World War II Holocaust stigma, and have it replaced with a Serb “Srebrenica” stigma.

Srebrenica was intended to humiliate and “expose” the United Nations – a post-war instrument designed for and working best in a bipolar international balance of power – as being “out of date” for the new – unipolar – world order with the claim that the UN had been powerless to prevent “genocide” from happening on its watch. So, NATO must take over “to prevent genocide and restore ‘human rights.’”

However, most important is that the depiction of Srebrenica, was to furnish justification for NATO’s new mission allowing it to leave the confines of its post-war “collective defense” area of operations – limited to the defense of the territories of the member nations – to become a globally operating alliance of military aggression.[13] For this, it needed a “humanitarian” façade. “Genocide” would do the trick. It was for this reinvention of NATO that Clinton needed his body count of more than 5,000.

Throughout the 90s, Bosnian Serbs had been accused of one “Nazi-like” crime after the other, from refugee camps becoming “concentration camps” to “genocide” by rape and forced insemination – the first genocide in history that ends with a larger population than when it began.

Therefore, a certain number of victims had to be created by media organs. A kangaroo “court” – with no justifiable jurisdiction over the territory or the population it claimed to judge – was created to make the criminalization of the victim of this aggression, seem justifiable.

This is also why Srebrenica cannot be solely seen as a “Serbian” or a “Serb” issue, it is a global issue.

Serb politicians today are standing at the frontline of defense that will determine whether humanity will continue to suffer this rollback to an international law of the jungle or regain its momentum that began with the United Nations and the establishment of the equality of the sovereignty of nations under the UN Charter.

As was exposed during the inquisition of President Slobodan Milosevic, one of the objectives in forming the ICTY was to break the Serbs. Arguing against Slobodan Milosevic’s continued self-representation, Michael Scharf, one of the participants in the establishment of the UN ad hoc courts, enumerated in a Washington Post op-ed the ICTY’s objectives:

“In creating the Yugoslavia tribunal statute, the U.N. Security Council set three objectives: first, to educate the Serbian people, who were long misled by Milosevic’s propaganda, about the acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his regime; second, to facilitate national reconciliation by pinning prime responsibility on Milosevic and other top leaders and disclosing the ways in which the Milosevic regime had induced ordinary Serbs to commit atrocities; and third, to promote political catharsis while enabling Serbia’s newly elected leaders to distance themselves from the repressive policies of the past. [Judge Richard] May’s decision to allow Milosevic to represent himself has seriously undercut these aims.” [14]

This is but another piece of evidence that the ICTY – from its inception – had nothing to do with being a judicial entity. It was a political body already in its conceptualization.

This is why the steadfastness demonstrated, so far, by Serb politicians in their resistance to these attempts to extort a political “plea-bargain” can only be applauded. They deserve the full solidarity and support of all of us continuing the fight for justice.

Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabić demonstrated this resilience in her November 15, 2018 interview – actually a cross examination by a journalist seeming to mistake himself for a chief prosecutor – in the government-funded German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The interviewer sought, in the last series of questions, to get the prime minister to say that Srebrenica was “genocide.” (Srebrenica questioning begins at Minute 22.49)

Having no tangible proof of a massacre, the interviewer used the usual argument that “Two courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice both ruled that it was genocide.” Prime Minister Brnabić held her ground.

Of course, Germany’s state television will not remind its audience that West Germany, which, by law, is identical to the German Empire, has NEVER recognized either the verdicts of the Nuremberg trials nor the Potsdam Agreements.

Besides, courts make mistakes in their rulings. That is the reason for having courts of appeal, to correct the rulings.

As for the ICTY, it has recognized one such mistake in the Milosevic trial. After having refused the defendant the needed medical help, which led to his death, the court posthumously exonerated President Milosevic during the course of the Karadzic trial in recognizing that:

“With regard to the evidence presented in this case in relation to Slobodan Milošević and his membership in the JCE, the Chamber recalls that he shared and endorsed the political objective of the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership to preserve Yugoslavia and to prevent the separation or independence of BiH and co-operated closely with the Accused during this time. The Chamber also recalls that Milošević provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions, and arms to the Bosnian Serbs during the conflict. However, based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milošević’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership, the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan.” [15]

As for the ICTY’s “genocide” verdict, the verdict itself admits that Gen. Krstic was not convicted on the basis of the internationally recognized UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide but rather on Article 4 of its own statutes. The statutes of the ICTY have no further jurisdiction than within the walls of the ICTY.

The verdict states:

“541. The Trial Chamber must interpret Article 4 of the [ICTY]] Statute taking into account the state of customary international law at the time the events in Srebrenica took place  (…)

598.The Chamber concludes that the intent to kill all the Bosnian Muslim men of military age in Srebrenica constitutes an intent to destroy in part the Bosnian Muslim group within the meaning of Article 4 and therefore must be qualified as a genocide.”

However, in spite of this open admission that the internationally recognized UN Genocide Convention was not the basis of the ICTY judgment, the International Court of Justice ruled that the ICTY’s judgment was correct, based on the Genocide Convention. The judges appear not to have read the Krstic verdict or were following instructions not to rule otherwise.

If the ICJ ruling stands, the Genocide Convention – which Prime Minister Brnabić quoted from in her interview on German television, has been rendered null and void.

Keep up your resilience. Do not allow them to make it appear as if you have agreed to your own subjugation.

You are truly upholding the very best traditions of the Non-Aligned Nations.

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This article was originally published on Srebrenica Historical Project.

Notes

[1] Evans, Michael and Kallenbach, Michael:”’Missing’ enclave troops found,” The Times, 2 August 1995, p. 9.

[2] Pierre Gaultier (interview), “Wo sind die Vermißten aus Srebrenica?” Junge Welt, 30.8.95

[3] “Faux électeurs … ou faux cadavres,” Balkans Infos, Paris; Oct. 1996 – No. 6; See also Ivanisevic, Milivoje; “Un Dossier qui pose bien des Questions,” Balkans Infos, Paris; Dec. 1996 No. 8

[4] Ed Vulliamy, ”Bosnia: The secret War – Serbs ‘run secret camps’: Men freed from clandestine detention tell Ed Vulliamy of random beatings and ‘mobile torture machines’,” Guardian, 17 January 1996

[5] S.K., Another Two Mass Graves   Discovered, Press TWRA, 19 January 1996

[6] A.S., ”Bosnian Soldiers in Australia Against Their Will,” Press TWRA,  6 February, 1996

[7] A.S.,”Investigation on Deportation of Bosniaks Requested,” Press TWRA, 9 March 1996

[8] Selective Justice in The Hague: “The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule,” The Nation, 22. September 1997

[9] Germinal Civikov, “Srebrenica, Der Kronzeuge” [Promedia, Vienna, 2009], page 130

[10] lae/gwa: ”Schädelreste und Kugeln in Massengrab in Bosnien,” Reuters (Germany) 20 April 1998

[11] John M. Crewdson, “CIA Secretly Built, Manipulated a Global Propaganda Network,” International Herald Tribune, January 3, 1978

[12] ANP English News Bulletin Karadzic a Pariah, Says War Crimes Tribunal Chief, Stichting Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau, July 27, 1995

[13] As the US Senator Richard Lugar once put it, NATO must go “out of area, or out of business.”)

[14] Michael Scharf, ‘‘Making a Spectacle of Himself: Milosevic Wants a Stage, Not the Right to Provide His Own Defense,’’ Washington Post (August 29th, 2004), p. B2, quoted by Dr. Tiphaine Dickson in ”The World’s Court of Justice”: http://milosevic.co/929/tiphaine-dickson-historiography-of-war-crimes-prosecutions/

[15] Paragraph 3460: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf , quoted by Andy Wilcoxson in http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/01/the-exoneration-of-milosevic-the-ictys-surprise-ruling/

The first rush of enthusiasm on looking at this is clear: a high-achieving swimmer on the circuit – the Australian Mack Horton – decides to take a stance.  It’s not about refugees, Donald Trump or climate change.  Unlike other sportspeople of history, his opposition is directed at his sport, his spear of indignation sharpened against a target closer to home (or pool).  He will not share a podium with others who have won medals, taking what he no doubts regards as a principled position.  He has nabbed the silver in the 400m freestyle, but it is clear who Mr Gold is.  At the world swimming titles in Gwangju, it was China’s Sun Yang, a sporting titan with a blemished record.

Horton’s stance – in this case, a visible one of standing back from the podium and refusing to share the stage with Sun – might be seen as more ethical than political; divorcing these, however, is often an exercise in futility.  In the 200m freestyle, British bronze medallist Duncan Scott decided to take a leaf out of Horton’s book of protest, and give Sun the same treatment.

Sun served a three-month doping ban in 2014 and is facing a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing in September over claims he smashed a vial of his own blood due for drug testing.  A panel of the international swimming federation FINA bought Sun’s account; the World Anti-Doping Agency duly appealed the decision.

“His actions and how it has been handled,” explained Horton on Sun, “speaks louder than anything I could say.”  At the Rio Olympic Games in 2016, Sun splashed Horton in the warm-up pool.  Horton sniped, telling the media that Sun “splashed me to say hi and I ignored him because I don’t have time for drug cheats.”

Sun returned the watery serve, suggesting that Horton was using “cheap tricks” to unsettle him in an overly inflated psychodrama. “I have done what it takes to prove I’m clean… all athletes should be shown respect.”  His current riposte directed at the Australian swimmer is to conflate the issue of performance and country: “disrespecting me was OK, but disrespecting China was unfortunate.”

This latest display of indignation did not impress the executive of FINA.  Administrators, in the great filing tradition, tend to see moral matters in sport as matters best left aside: it if can be placed in a cabinet, preferably marked “secret”, all the better.  If not, punish the principled irritant.  Issuing a curt warning to Horton, FINA claimed to respect “the principle of freedom of speech” but such freedoms could only be exercised “in the right conduct.”

This stance is a fairly shoddy one, treating athletes as apolitical beings who are meant to partake in the show with a blissfully untroubled conscience.  Accordingly, they are to follow regulations and sporting policy with mute approval.  “As in all major sports organisations, our athletes and their entourages are aware of their responsibilities to respect FINA regulations and not use FINA events to make personal statements or gestures.”

Sun has qualified support from, curiously enough, former chief executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, Richard Ings.

“I am no fan of Sun Yang,” he observed. “But he has served his suspension for a doping violation and he has been cleared by a FINA panel of refusing to provide a sample.  Innocent unless and until proven guilty.  Not standing on the podium with him should attract a hefty penalty.”

Never you mind that WADA has appealed the decision, casting a lengthy cloud over aquatic proceedings.

It was left to such figures as Australian Olympic Committee chief executive Matt Carroll to offer his side order of support for Horton.  “The Australian Olympic Committee is all for supporting and protecting clean athletes.”  Horton was “obviously an athlete of great conviction, a strong young man and we respect Mack for his conviction”.

Now Sun’s body, like most elite athletes, is not his own.  He is the property of the state, real estate and flesh in water, an owned athletic porpoise.  In a sense, he is right to suggest that repudiating him as swimmer is not merely personal, but a broader rejection of a policy, an idea.  Systems come into play, and we are faced, not only with individual decisions, but those of higher powers.  Sporting bodies straddle the middle, often compromised ground.

Horton’s judgment may seem extreme to those more interested in ceremony than substance. Such a view reduces protest to the level of spiteful choice in a jungle of competitive instincts.  All professional, sponsored athletes are in the business, desperate to win and belied into thinking that their own efforts are somehow elevated in their distance from the manipulation of state.

Whatever the disgruntlement or the disagreement with Horton, it is admirable to see a figure who at least knows his mind.  We can question it, probe its failings, question its righteous self-importance.  But the reprimand from FINA is unimpressive, showing again how sporting administrators remain fickle when it comes to public displays of opinion on the part of sports personalities.

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

Featured image is CC BY-SA 4.0

Former FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday over the findings of his report into so-called “Russian collusion,” and Republicans took him to the woodshed.

Throughout the hearing, Republican members of the committee exposed Mueller’s inconsistencies, including his refusal to investigate the origins of the FBI probe into Trump and Russia, his decision to hire over a dozen Hillary-supporting Democrat investigators, and the double standard he used when indicting certain individuals but ignoring others for lying.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) first exposed Mueller’s backward standard of due process, noting that prosecutors don’t “exonerate” subjects of investigations.

This is exactly what you need to understand about the Mueller report. Listen to my friend @RepRatcliffe decimate the narrative of guilt surrounding the President.
pic.twitter.com/rHhLKDaDxJ

— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) July 24, 2019

Rep. Jim Jordan pointed out that Mueller refused to charge Joseph Mifsud – the individual who sparked the entire FBI probe – for lying to the FBI while indicting others like Gen. Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen for committing the same crime.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) also pointed out Mueller’s double standard of justice.

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) noted that Mueller did not seek to find out the origins of the Steele Dossier, despite its use in obtaining FISA warrants against Trump associates in 2016.

This exchange between Rep. Steve Chabot and Robert Mueller raised eyebrows in our live chat.

“If Mueller doesn't know who Fusion GPS is, this could be a long hearing,” said reporter @joshgerstein.

Live analysis: https://t.co/7S5ElYTkj8 pic.twitter.com/bnS2e1l596

— POLITICO (@politico) July 24, 2019

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) highlighted Mueller’s decision to hire all Hillary Clinton-supporting Democrats and zero Republicans onto his investigative team.

So what Mueller is saying is that he couldn't find people capable of doing the job 'quickly, seriously, with integrity' that weren't ANGRY DEMOCRATS with ties to the Clintons ..

INTERESTING … VERY. 🧐🧐🧐🧐#MuellerHearings pic.twitter.com/fzpDMQM5UP

— Stephanie Hamill (@STEPHMHAMILL) July 24, 2019

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) criticized Mueller’s appearance of bias by his hiring anti-Trump lawyers and his handling of lead agent Peter Strzok’s anti-Trump text messages, saying he “perpetuated injustice.”

Here's the full exchanged between Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Special Counsel Robert Mueller pic.twitter.com/AAYgl0YkD0

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 24, 2019

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) criticized Mueller’s witch hunt, noting his report tried to paint President Trump as a criminal despite him finding no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of the phony investigation.

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) tore into Mueller’s findings, calling Volume II of the report “regurgitated press stories” containing nothing the average American couldn’t find in the New York Times or watch on cable news.

Here’s more highlights:

Watch Mueller’s full testimony before the House Judiciary Committee below:

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Featured image is a screenshot from Youtube via Infowars.com

A new documentary by Yana Yerlashova (Director) and Max van der Werff, (independent investigator) of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials;  suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes;  and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time.

The sources of the breakthrough are Malaysian — Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamad Mahathir; Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the officer in charge of the MH17 investigation for the Prime Minister’s Department and Malaysia’s National Security Council following the crash on July 17, 2014; and a forensic analysis by Malaysia’s OG IT Forensic Services of Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) telephone tapes which Dutch prosecutors have announced as genuine.

The 298 casualties of MH17 included 192 Dutch; 44 Malaysians; 27 Australians; 15 Indonesians.  The nationality counts vary because the airline manifest does not identify dual nationals of Australia, the UK, and the US.

The new film throws the full weight of the Malaysian Government, one of the five members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), against the published findings and the recent indictment of Russian suspects reported by the Dutch officials in charge of the JIT; in addition to Malaysia and The Netherlands, the members of the JIT are Australia, Ukraine and Belgium. Malaysia’s exclusion from the JIT at the outset, and Belgium’s inclusion (4 Belgian nationals were listed on the MH17 passenger manifest), have never been explained.

The film reveals the Malaysian Government’s evidence for judging the JIT’s witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution in a Malaysian or other national or international court.

For the first time also, the Malaysian Government reveals how it got in the way of attempts the US was organizing during the first week after the crash to launch a NATO military attack on eastern Ukraine. The cover story for that was to rescue the plane, passenger bodies, and evidence of what had caused the crash. In fact, the operation was aimed at defeating the separatist  movements in the Donbass, and to move against Russian-held Crimea.

The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing the US and Ukraine from seizing them.  The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government’s opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch to call off the invasion on July 27.  

The 28-minute documentary by Max van der Werff and Yana Yerlashova has just been released. Yerlashova was the film director and co-producer with van der Werff and Ahmed Rifazal. Vitaly Biryukov directed the photography. Watch it in full here or below.

The full interview with Prime Minister Mahathir was released in advance; it can be viewed and read here.

Mahathir reveals why the US, Dutch and Australian governments attempted to exclude Malaysia from membership of the JIT in the first months of the investigation. During that period, US, Dutch, Australian and NATO officials initiated a plan for 9,000 troops to enter eastern Ukraine, ostensibly to secure the crash scene, the aircraft and passenger remains, and in response to the alleged Russian role in the destruction of MH17 on July 17; for details of that scheme, read this.

Although German opposition to military intervention forced its cancellation, the Australians sent a 200-man special forces unit to The Netherlands and then Kiev. The European Union and the US followed with economic sanctions against Russia on July 29.

Malaysian resistance to the US attempts to blame Moscow for the aircraft shoot-down was made clear in the first hours after the incident to then-President Barack Obama by Malaysia’s Prime Minister at the time, Najib Razak. That story can be followed here and here.

In an unusual decision to speak in the new documentary, Najib’s successor Prime Minister Mahathir announced:

“They never allowed us to be involved from the very beginning.  This is unfair and unusual. So we can see they are not really looking at the causes of the crash and who was responsible. But already they have decided it must be Russia. So we cannot accept that kind of attitude. We are interested in the rule of law, in justice for everyone irrespective of who is involved. We have to know who actually fired the missile, and only then can we accept the report as the complete truth.”

On July 18, in the first Malaysian Government press conference after the shoot-down, Najib (right) announced agreements he had already reached by telephone with Obama and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President. “ ‘Obama and I agreed that the investigation will not be hidden and the international teams have to be given access to the crash scene.’ [Najib] said the Ukrainian president ‎has pledged that there would be a full, thorough and independent investigation and Malaysian officials would be invited to take part. ‘He also confirmed that his government will negotiate with rebels in the east of the country in order to establish a humanitarian corridor to the crash site,’ said Najib. He also said that no one should remove any debris or the black box from the scene. The Government of Malaysia is dispatching a special flight to Kiev, carrying a Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, as well as a medical team. But we must – and we will – find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone can be left unturned.”

The new film reveals in an interview with Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, what happened next.  Sakri’s evidence, filmed in his office at Putrajaya, is the first to be reported by the press outside Malaysia in five years. A year ago, Sakri gave a partial account of his mission to a Malaysian newspaper.

“I talked to my prime minister [Najib],” Colonel Sakri says. “He directed me to go to the crash site immediately.” At the time Sakri was a senior security official at the Disaster Management Division of the Prime Minister’s Department. Sakri says that after arriving in Kiev, Poroshenko’s officials blocked the Malaysians. “We were not allowed to go there…so I took a small team to leave Kiev going to Donetsk secretly.” There Sakri toured the crash site, and met with officials of the Donetsk separatist administration headed by Alexander Borodai.

With eleven men, including two medical specialists, a signalman, and Malaysian Army commandos, Sakri had raced to the site ahead of an armed convoy of Australian, Dutch and Ukrainian government men. The latter were blocked by Donetsk separatist units. The Australian state press agency ABC reported   their military convoy, prodded from Kiev by the appearance of Australian and Dutch foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Frans Timmermans, had been forced to abandon their mission. That was after Colonel Sakri had taken custody of the MH17 black boxes in a handover ceremony filmed at Borodai’s office in Donetsk on July 22.

US sources told the Wall Street Journal  at the time “the [Sakri] mission’s success delivered a political victory for Mr. Najib’s government… it also handed a gift to the rebels in the form of an accord, signed by the top Malaysian official present in Donetsk, calling the crash site ‘the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.’…That recognition could antagonize Kiev and Washington, which have striven not to give any credibility to the rebels, whose main leaders are Russian citizens with few ties to the area. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a briefing Monday that the negotiation ‘in no way legitimizes’ separatists.”

The Australian state radio then reported the Ukrainian government as claiming the black box evidence showed “the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion.” This was a fabrication – the evidence of the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, first reported six weeks later in September by the Dutch Safety Board, showed nothing of the kind; read what their evidence revealed.

Foreign Minister Bishop,  in Kiev on July 24, claimed she was negotiating with the Ukrainians for the Australian team in the country to carry arms. “I don’t envisage that we will ever resort to [arms],” she told her state news agency, “but it is a contingency planning, and you would be reckless not to include it in this kind of agreement. But I stress our mission is unarmed because it is [a] humanitarian mission.”

By the time she spoke to her state radio, Bishop was concealing that the plan for armed intervention, including 3,000 Australian troops, had been called off.  She was also concealing that the black boxes were already in Colonel Sakri’s possession.

The document signed by Sakri for the handover of the black boxes is visible in the new documentary. Sakri signed himself and added the stamp of the National Security Council of Malaysia.

Col. Sakri says on film the Donetsk leaders expressed surprise at the delay of the Malaysians in arriving at the crash site to recover the black boxes. “Why are you so late”, [Borodai] said…I think [that was] very funny.” Source:  https://www.youtube.com/Min. 05:47.

Sakri goes on to say he was asked by the OSCE’s special monitoring mission for Ukraine to hand over the black boxes; he refused. He was then met by agents of the FBI (Min 6:56). “They approached me to show them the black box. I said no.” He also reports that in Kiev the Ukrainian Government tried “forcing me to leave the black boxes with them. We said no. We cannot. We cannot allow.”

 The handover ceremony in Donetsk, July 22, 2014: on far left, the two black boxes from MH17; in the centre, shaking hands, Alexander Borodai and Mohamad Sakri.

Permission for Colonel Sakri to speak to the press has been authorized by his superiors at the prime minister’s office  in Putrajaya, and his disclosures agreed with them in advance.

Subsequent releases from the Kiev government to substantiate the allegation of Russian involvement in the shoot-down have included telephone tape recordings. These were presented last month by the JIT as their evidence for indictment of four Russians; for details, read this.

Van der Werff and Yerlashova contracted with OG IT Forensic Services,  a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, to examine the telephone tapes.  The Kuala Lumpur firm has been endorsed by the Malaysian Bar.  The full 143-page technical report can be read here.

The findings reported by Akash Rosen and illustrated on camera are that the telephone recordings have been cut, edited and fabricated. The source of the tapes, according to the JIT press conference on June 19 by Dutch police officer Paulissen, head of the National Criminal Investigation Service of The Netherlands, was the Ukrainian SBU. Similar findings of tape fabrication and evidence tampering are reported on camera in the van der Werff film by a German analyst, Norman Ritter.

Left: Dutch police chief Paulissen grins as he acknowledged during the June 19, 2019, press conference of JIT that the telephone tape evidence on which the charges against the four accused Russians came from the Ukrainian SBU.   Minute 16:02 Right: Norman Ritter presented his analysis to interviewer Billy Sixt to show the telephone tape evidence has been forged in nine separate “manipulations”.  One of the four accused by the JIT last month, Sergei Dubinsky, testifies from Min. 17 of the documentary. He says his men recovered the black boxes from the crash site and delivered them to Borodai at 2300 hours on July 17; the destruction of the aircraft occurred at 1320. Dubinsky testifies that he had no orders for and took no part in the shoot-down. As for the telephone tape-recording evidence against him, Dubinsky says the calls were made days before July 17, and edited by the SBU. “I dare them to publish the uncut conversations, and then you will get a real picture of what was discussed.” (Min. 17:59).  

Van der Werff and Yerlashova filmed at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. Several local witnesses were interviewed, including a man named Alexander from Torez town, and Valentina Kovalenko, a woman from the farming village of Red October. The man said the missile equipment alleged by the JIT to have been transported from across the Russian border on July 17 was in Torez at least one, possibly two days before the shoot-down on July 17; he did not confirm details the JIT has identified as a Buk system.

Kovalenko, first portrayed in a BBC documentary three years ago (starting at Min.26:50) as a “unique” eye-witness to the missile launch, clarifies more precisely than the BBC reported where the missile she saw had been fired from.

BBC documentary, “The Conspiracy Files. Who Shot Down MH17” — Min. 27:00. The BBC broadcast its claims over three episodes in April-May 2016. For a published summary, read this. 

This was not the location identified in press statements by JIT. Van der Werff explains: “we specifically asked [Kovalenko] to point exactly in the direction the missile came from. I then asked twice if maybe it was from the direction of the JIT launch site. She did not see a launch nor a plume from there. Notice the JIT ‘launch site’ is less than two kilometres from her house and garden. The BBC omitted this crucial part of her testimony.”

According to Kovalenko in the new documentary, at the firing location she has now identified precisely, “at that moment the Ukrainian Army were there.”

Kovalenko also remembers that on the days preceding the July 17 missile firing she witnessed,  there had been Ukrainian military aircraft operating in the sky above her village. She says they used evasion techniques including flying in the shadow of civilian aircraft she also saw at the same time.

On July 17, three other villagers told van der Werff they had seen a Ukrainian military jet in the vicinity and at the time of the MH17 crash.

Concluding the documentary, van der Werff and Yerlashova present an earlier interview filmed in Donetsk by independent Dutch journalist Stefan Beck, whom JIT officials had tried to warn off visiting the area. Beck interviewed Yevgeny Volkov, who was an air controller for the Ukrainian Air Force in July 2014. Volkov was asked to comment on Ukrainian Government statements, endorsed by the Dutch Safety Board report into the crash and in subsequent reports by the JIT, that there were no radar records of the airspace at the time of the shoot-down because Ukrainian military radars were not operational.

Volkov explained that on July 17 there were three radar units at Chuguev on “full alert” because “fighter jets were taking off from there;” Chuguev is 200 kilometres northwest of the crash site.  He disputed that the repairs to one unit meant none of the three was operating. Ukrainian radar records of the location and time of the MH17 attack were made and kept, Volkov said. “There [they] have it. In Ukraine they have it.”

Last month, at the JIT press conference in The Netherlands on June 19, the Malaysian representative present,  Mohammed Hanafiah Bin Al Zakaria,  one of three Solicitors-General of the Malaysian Attorney General’s ministry,  refused to endorse for the Malaysian Governnment the JIT evidence or its charges against Russia. “Malaysia would like to reiterate our commitment to the JIT seeking justice for the victims,” Zakaria said.  “The objective of the JIT is to complete the investigations and gathering of evidence of all witnesses for the purpose of prosecuting the wrongdoers and Malaysia stands by the rule of law and the due process.” [Question: do you support the conclusions?] “Part of the conclusions [inaudible] – do not change our positions.”

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All images in this article are from the author and screenshots from the documentary film.

Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a July 4 article in The Guardian, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains:

As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.

For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems of mass species extinction and environmental pollution, which are well documented. A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that loss of biodiversity impacts ecosystems as much as climate change and pollution. Forests shelter plant and animal life in their diverse forms, and trees remove air pollution by the interception of particulate matter on plant surfaces and the absorption of gaseous pollutants through the leaves.

The July analytical review in Science calculated how many additional trees could be planted globally without encroaching on crop land or urban areas. It found that there are 1.7 billion hectares (4.2 billion acres) of treeless land on which 1.2 trillion native tree saplings would naturally grow. Using the most efficient methods, 1 trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – less than 2 percent of the lower range of estimates for the Green New Deal introduced by progressive Democrats in February 2019.

The Guardian quoted Prof. Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who said,

“What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”

He said it was also by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed. The chief drawback of reforestation as a solution to the climate crisis, per The Guardian, is that trees grow slowly. The projected restoration could take 50 to 100 years to reach its full carbon sequestering potential.

A Faster, More Efficient Solution

Fortunately, as of December 2018 there is now a cheaper, faster and more efficient alternative – one that was suppressed for nearly a century but was legalized on a national scale when President Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. This is the widespread cultivation of industrial hemp, the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, food and other purposes. Hemp grows to 13 feet in 100 days, making it one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available. Industrial hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils with very small amounts of water and no fertilizers.

Hemp products can promote biodiversity and reverse environmental pollution by replacing petrochemical-based plastics, which are now being dumped into the ocean at the rate of one garbage truck per minute. One million seabirds die each year from ingesting plastic, and up to 90 percent have plastic in their guts. Microplastic (resulting from the breakdown of larger pieces by sunlight and waves) and microbeads (used in body washes and facial cleansers) have been called the ocean’s smog. They absorb toxins in the water, enter the food chain, and ultimately wind up in humans. To avoid all that, we can use plastic made from hemp, which is biodegradable and non-toxic.

Other environmental toxins come from the textile industry, which is second only to agriculture in the amount of pollution it creates and the voluminous amounts of water it uses. Hemp can be grown with minimal water, and hemp fabrics can be made without the use of toxic chemicals.

Environmental pollution from the burning of fossil fuels can also be reversed with hemp, which is more efficient and environmentally friendly even than wheat and corn as a clean-burning biofuel.

Hemp cultivation also encourages biodiversity in the soil, by regenerating farmland that has long been depleted from the use of toxic chemicals. It is a “weed” and grows like one, ubiquitously, beating out other plants without pesticides or herbicides; and its long tap root holds the soil, channeling moisture deeper into it. Unlike most forestry projects, hemp can be grown on existing agricultural land and included as part of a farm’s crop rotation, with positive effects on the yields and the profits from subsequent crops.

A Self-funding Solution

Hemp cultivation is profitable in many other ways – so profitable that it is effectively a self-funding solution to the environmental crisis. According to an April 2019 article in Forbes titled “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency,” crop yields from hemp can range from $20,000 to $50,000 per acre. Its widespread cultivation can happen without government subsidies. Investment in research, development and incentives would speed the process, but market forces will propel these transformations even if Congress fails to act. All farmers need for incentive is a market for the products, which hemp legalization has provided. Due to the crop’s century-long suppression, the infrastructure to capitalize on its diverse uses still needs to be developed, but the infrastructure should come with the newly opened markets.

Hemp can break our dependency on petrochemicals not only for fuel but for plastics, textiles, construction materials and much more. It has actually been grown for industrial and medicinal purposes for millennia, and today it is legally grown for industrial use in hundreds of countries outside the US. Before the US ban, a 1938 article in Popular Mechanics claimed it was a billion-dollar crop (the equivalent of about $16 billion today), useful in 25,000 products ranging from dynamite to cellophane. New uses continue to be found, including eliminating smog from fuels, creating a cleaner energy source that can replace nuclear power, removing radioactive water from the soil, and providing a very nutritious food source for humans and animals. Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive derivative of hemp, has recently been shown to help curb opioid addiction, now a national epidemic.

Hemp can also help save our shrinking forests by eliminating the need to clear-cut them for paper pulp. According to the USDA, one acre planted in hemp produces as much pulp is 4.1 acres of trees; and unlike trees, hemp can be harvested two or three times a year. Hemp paper is also finer, stronger and lasts longer than wood-based paper. Benjamin Franklin’s paper mill used hemp. Until 1883, it was one of the largest agricultural crops (some say the largest), and 80 to 90% of all paper in the world was made from it.  It was also the material from which most fabric, soap, fuel and fiber were made; and it was an essential resource for any country with a shipping industry, since sails were made from it. In early America, growing hemp was considered so important that it was illegal for farmers not to grow it. Hemp was legal tender from 1631 until the early 1800s, and taxes could even be paid with it.

Banned by the Competition?

The competitive threat to other industries of this supremely useful plant may have been a chief driver of its apparently groundless criminalization in the 1930s. Hemp is not marijuana and is so low in psychoactive components that it cannot produce a marijuana “high.” It was banned for nearly a century simply because it was in the same plant species as marijuana. Cannabis came under attack in the 1930s in all its forms. Why? Hemp competed not only with the lumber industry but with the oil industry, the cotton industry, the petrochemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. Many have speculated that it was suppressed by these powerful competitors.

William Randolf Hearst, the newspaper mogul, owned vast tracts of forest land, which he intended to use for making wood-pulp paper. Cheap hemp-based paper would make his forest investments a major money loser. Hearst was a master of “yellow journalism,” and a favorite target of his editorials was “reefer madness.” He was allied with the DuPont Corporation, which provided the chemicals to bleach and process the wood pulp used in the paper-making process. DuPont was also ready to introduce petroleum-based fibers such as nylon, and hemp fabrics competed with that new market.

In fact hemp products threatened the whole petroleum industry. Henry Ford first designed his cars to run on alcohol from biofuels, but the criminalization of both alcohol and hemp forced him to switch to the dirtier, less efficient fossil fuels that dominate the industry today. A biofuel-based infrastructure would create a completely decentralized power grid, eliminating the giant monopolistic power companies. Communities could provide their own energy using easily renewable plants.

None of this is new news. Hemp historians have been writing about hemp’s myriad uses and its senseless prohibition for decades. (See e.g. The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer, 1992; Hemp for Victory: A Global Warming Solution by Richard Davis, 2009.) What is news is that hemp cultivation is finally legal across the country. The time is short to save the planet and its vanishing diversity of species. Rather than engaging in endless debates over carbon taxes and Silicon Valley-style technological fixes, we need to be regenerating our soils, our forests and our oceans with nature’s own plant solutions.

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This article was originally published on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Philip Steffan / CC BY 2.0

We were informed that the Department of Justice will release tomorrow (Friday July 26) the findings of an external review of Dr. Hassan Diab‘s extradition to France in 2014.

The external review was conducted by Murray Segal, former Deputy Attorney General of Ontario. Mr. Segal was asked to assess whether Department of Justice officials followed the law and departmental procedures while pursuing France’s request to extradite Diab.

Background

Dr. Hassan Diab is a Canadian citizen and sociology professor who lives in Ottawa. He was extradited from Canada to France in November 2014, even though the Canadian extradition judge, Robert Maranger, described the evidence presented against Diab as “very problematic”, “convoluted”, “illogical”, and “suspect”. However, given the low threshold of evidence in Canada’s Extradition Act, the judge felt compelled to order Diab’s extradition.

Diab spent more than three years in prison in France while the decades-long investigation in his case was ongoing – this despite the fact that Canada’s Extradition Act only authorizes extradition to stand trial, not to continue an investigation.

In January 2018, the French investigating judges dismissed all charges against Diab and ordered his release. They stated that there is consistent evidence that Diab was not in France at the time of the 1980 bombing in Paris that tragically killed four people and injured dozens. They also notably underlined the numerous contradictions and misstatements contained in the anonymous intelligence, and cast serious doubts about its reliability. The investigating judges also stressed that all fingerprint and palm print analysis excluded Diab.

Shortly thereafter, Diab was released from prison in France, and returned to his home and family in Canada. He had spent almost ten years of his life either imprisoned or living under draconian bail conditions, including more than three years in near solitary confinement in a French jail.

In June 2018, CBC News reported that a key fingerprint analysis exonerating Diab was not disclosed to the court in Canada during the extradition proceedings. The court in Canada was told that no such evidence existed, when in fact the fingerprint analysis that excluded Diab was done in early 2008, many months before France requested Diab’s extradition. CBC News also reported that in 2009 a senior lawyer at the Canadian Department of Justice (DOJ) urged the French authorities to obtain new handwriting ‘evidence’ against Diab when the extradition case was about to collapse. In another effort to shore up the case, the DOJ lawyer requested another fingerprint analysis of a police document signed by the suspect as he believed that the evidence would be very powerful in getting Hassan extradited. When the RCMP fingerprint analysis excluded Diab, the DOJ lawyer never disclosed this fact to the court in Canada or to the defense.

Numerous human rights, civil society organisations, and labor unions – including Amnesty International Canada, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), among others – have called on the Canadian government to conduct an independent public inquiry into Diab’s extradition, as well as to undertake a complete review of the Extradition Act so no other Canadian would go through what Hassan Diab and his family had to endure.

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Featured image is from Ottawa Citizen

At a juvenile detention center in Fes (Morocco), it feels like summer camp is all year round. There, “maximum security” is an open, white building complex, “delinquents” are watering plants and planting seeds, and the only guard in sight, if you’re lucky, is a wild peacock patrolling the grounds.

For many of us, the term “juvenile detention center” does not strike summertime sentiments. But in Fes, the all-boys Center for the Protection of Children deviates from the norm in more ways than one. Beyond its disarming quietude, the center distinguishes itself from most of its kind by showing how agricultural expertise can augment youth rehabilitation and social reintegration.

Atman Khayi, director of operations, explains that the goal of this center is “not to punish” but rather to “educate” the youth they take in. Instead of experiencing traditional disciplinary methods—like isolation, punishment, and restriction of movement—detained boys are given opportunities to work, learn, and grow as they serve out their sentences. While the boys live under constant watch, they are also afforded responsibility in the form of agricultural skill building. They are trained and taught hard skills such as water irrigation, crop management, weeding, and tree grafting. With thirty-six boys at the center on one given day—and that number fluctuates with the daily intake and release process—the effect of the center’s active approach to agricultural skill building is visible.

One such boy at the center comes from a rural farming family. On a recent site visit, him and nine other residents took a small group of High Atlas Foundation staff members on a walking tour of the facilities and nurseries. When we asked him, “What’s something you’ve learned here that you didn’t know back home?” he paused for a minute. “I’ve learned how to plant and take care of trees since my home mainly focuses on wheat and barley,” he answered.

Most boys at the center come from backgrounds like his: rural farming households that derive their income from low market-valued cereal crops, like barley. The low market-value of these traditional staple crops has made subsistence agriculture unsustainable. The Ministry of Agriculture reported in 2019 that while the staples occupy approximately 75% of usable agricultural land, they represent only 10-15% of agricultural revenue and only 5-10% of employment in the sector. Concurrently, the Ministry of Agriculture’s goal as part of their Green Morocco Plan is the creation of 600,000 new jobs.

Boys like the one just mentioned pose a unique solution to both concerns. Once their sentence is served the boys are released to their families, taking with them important environmental and agricultural practices they developed at the center—not the least of which being the cultivation of organic, non-cereal crops. Not only do the boys benefit from applying their expertise at home—thereby improving their employability—but the families also learn improved methods of farming. The agricultural value chain grows with every boy who comes through the center and every family that adopts sustainable, high-demand practices.

How does this inter-dependent approach expedite youth rehabilitation? Perhaps it’s the freedom of choice that the center’s staff affords the boys. While nursery tending is a primary interest of most of the boys, they have the freedom to engage in other activities they find more enjoyable. One boy told us that he doesn’t like “being in the farm in the summer,” so instead he spends his time welding, building, and painting. His interests are made useful and valuable by the staff, who believe that the boys should be engaged in some hands-on activity, whatever it may be. There is enough diversity in activities that the boys are never idle for too long. Their productivity reaps real, tangible results they can point to as the fruit of their labor. When they can see the direct result of their work, they learn that there are financial, personal, and even environmental benefits in becoming productive members of society.

The center’s bountiful array of activities highlights a more pressing concern facing Morocco today: recruitment of stigmatized youth by radical political groups. For boys seeking a purpose in life after time served, the center offers opportunities to enter the job market with industry-specific skills and knowledge. But the future of idle youth who are not engaging in agricultural skill building is unclear. Furthermore, this center is just one of twenty-one in all of Morocco; for the young boys who are not given the same responsibilities as those in Fes, they are entering a society more urbanized and more competitive than when they left it. Dissonance between the world they’ve entered and the world they’ve left leaves them vulnerable to radical groups with ideologies promising acceptance, purpose, and spiritual fulfillment.

As the gap between the skilled and the unskilled widens, it becomes more important than ever to invest in programs committed to giving unengaged youth a chance at employment. If there’s something to be learned from the Fes Child Protection Center’s approach, it’s that despite their prior transgressions in life every child should have a seat at the table, a chance at personal and professional betterment. Already, we see that the benefits of pulling an extra seat up are felt far beyond the center’s gates.

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This article was originally published on High Atlas Foundation.

Anya Karaman ([email protected]) is a student at the University of Virginia studying English and History. This summer, she is interning at the High Atlas Foundation in Morocco.

Featured image: Nursery at the Fes Child Protection Center (photo by Said Bennani).

The internet has become a staple of modern life. We use it to shop for what we need and want, talk to friends and family, run businesses, meet new people, watch movies and TV, and pretty much everything you can think of. In short, it has given birth to a new age in human history. 

Below are statistics and timeline of the internet which was sent to us by BroadbandSearch. To read the complete article with detailed analysis click here. 

Internet Statistics in 2019

Timeline of the Internet

Click here to read a detailed summary of the history of the internet.

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It has been decades since a bona fide anti-war candidate ran for US President; that is, a candidate who ‘felt’ peace in their bones rather than a political calculation to be exploited.  By my reckoning, that last campaign would be Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 peace candidacy which came at the height of the Vietnam war.  Post 911, there have been no comparable Presidential peace candidates although an alternative on economic issues in 2016, Bernie was not considered a ‘peace’ candidate.

A WWII hero who knew the horror of war firsthand like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi), McGovern would be able to relate to how the DNC and its media toadies sabotaged Bernie’s campaign in 2016 as the Democratic party and media establishments thoroughly undermined his own peace candidacy back in the day – just as they are doing today against Gabbard.

McGovern would scarcely recognize the Democrats today as it scarcely recognizes itself as the same political party prior to the 2016 election. Since election of the Orange One, the Dems have morphed into an identity politics regime with no rhetorical deviation allowance and a stern authoritarian edge as personified by the Antifa mob who appear confused by their own propaganda making it is easy to lose sight of which side the fascists are on.

If there seemed to be little difference between the Democratic candidates at the debate in June, that is because there is little difference between them.  As one MSNBC sycophant put it, “this is not an issues campaign.  This is who is the bully who can beat the bully.” It is true that the DNC’s manufactured extravaganza, with its heavy hand in favor of those most simpatico to the party line, offered a series of semi-trivial ‘questions’ as if they  represented the most urgent, the most pressing problems the country needs to address.

The two-night burlesque was awkward to watch as the party of quibbling dinosaurs unraveled before our eyes, approaching near total collapse just as the American Empire itself teeters between irrelevance and calamity. The upcoming 2020 election is enough to imbue any Pollyanna with a dread of the future.

As if the purity of the Democratic party is beyond reproach, the Dem establishment would prefer to avoid any mention of foreign policy because that is where there is near-unanimity with the Republicans as both are dominated by the deep state/neocons/illuminati.  Every bobbing head on the stage in June acquiesced until Gabbard dared to speak up. Given the dominance of foreign policy as a daily preoccupation in the Oval Office, the topic was mostly an outlier other than the ever-present Iran.  What the majority of candidates seem unable to grasp is that foreign policy dominates domestic policy including the People Programs.  In case they had not noticed, American infrastructure continues to crumble as $4 billion a month is diverted to the war in Afghanistan and saving the poppy fields.

Kamala

All of which brings us to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cal) whose star has shone brightly since the June debate as she portrayed herself  “as the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race.”   Initiating a premeditated skirmish with former vice president Joe Biden, Harris played the race card under the guise of her personal life experience.   It seemed presumptuous at the time to claim to be black as if to infer that she had been raised as an Afro American with an inner city black experience or to imply that she had been emotionally scarred by busing.   The public record does not bear out Harris’ self-assertions yet she would have us believe otherwise as she recounted to Biden “it’s personal and it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. I was that little girl.”

The truth is that Harris is the daughter of a  Indo-Caribbean Jamaican father with Irish ancestors  who was a Stanford University economics professor and a Tamil Indian mother who was a cancer research scientist; neither of which can be equated with being black Afro-Americans.  Born in 1964 into an affluent family who lived in the Berkeley hills, Harris was bused for three years until her parents divorced when she and her mother moved to Canada where she attended private schools.  Presumably Berkeley was not a hot-bed of racial strife or turbulence as her account of being ‘black’ came across as disingenuous, not unlike Barack Obama who was also a product of elite schools and mixed race parentage; neither with roots in the inner city urban experience.

Like many ambitious politicians, Harris can count the demographic vote within the Democratic party as she regularly over-states her ethnicity in a thinly veiled attempt to identify with African Americans who are a potent voting bloc.  She would have been more accurate to refer to herself as a woman of color, like mocha or latte but that would not have had the same political payback or brought her the bump in the polls.

Harris’ self-identity as ‘black,’ however, is in direct conflict with her record as California AG which indicates an insensitivity, even a hostility to the needs of Afro-American black community, especially as they process through the criminal justice system.   Assuming that Harris believes she has black roots (just as I believe a morsel of Mary, Queen of Scots flows in my veins), it is questionable how a truly black Afro American State AG could consistently treat their own with such disdain, indifference and cruelty.

As Attorney General it was her job as the State’s top legal officer to assure justice for all, not just to pursue convictions or increase incarcerations but to act as guardian of the legal rights of all California citizens.  Harris hypocrisies on criminal justice issues are widespread as her record speaks for itself and belies her claim to have been a progressive prosecutor.

The product of a fawning MSM, Harris opposed body cameras, was responsible for a state lab scandal with tainted evidence, failed to endorse an effort to reduce certain felonies to misdemeanors, criminally pursued parents whose children were truant and then laughed about it, defended the state’s three strikes law including a last strike of life imprisonment and supported the death penalty after a judicial determination of its unconstitutionality.

On foreign policy issues and as a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Intelligence Committees, she has easily identified herself as a lackey for Israel, otherwise known as the ‘power behind the throne’ directing American foreign policy in the middle east since 911 that is now infecting local US politics with their anti-BDS campaign.

Tulsi

From the outset, Gabbard’s has been an underdog campaign, alternately ignored or harassed by the DNC as its agents dismiss her as ‘unelectable’ with the added  frustration of notoriously unreliable ‘polls’ that have cleverly used their algorithms to deny her true standing.  Routinely dealing with hostile, in-her-face MSM interviews from Morning Joe, the Colbert Report, the View and others, their entrapment tricks presented an intense learning curve during her initial rollout as a cautious candidate.  As Gabbard represents a new emerging political consciousness, she has more than earned her place on stage unlike any candidate since 1972.   She has forthrightly looked the pro-war aficionados in the eye, and without flinching or a waiver in her voice, has spoken consistently and clearly for peace, for negotiation, for diplomacy and civility.   In case you are too young to relate or haven’t seen it since 1972, Gabbard’s actions were once described as political courage and speaking truth to power.

At the first June debate, the most notable moment came when Gabbard clashed with Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Oh) who is aligned with the old-guard pro-war Democrats.  Claiming his moment of fame as Chuck Todd gave Ryan a second shot to answer, Ryan expected to put the Aloha Girl in her place with a bright, shiny face but that did not happen.  Gabbard had already come too far to allow the moment to slip away as she pushed back multiple times, not allowing Ryan the last word to justify ‘staying engaged’ in Afghanistan.

Having remained calm and poised during the first hour, Gabbard bided her time with an inner knowing that an opportunity would come and when it did, she seized the moment.  After watching her, in a measured display of back-and-forth, she did not let Ryan off the hook.  During the upcoming 2020 campaign, there is no other Democrat who would dare confront Trump on the issue of war where they themselves are severely compromised. There is no doubt that when confronted with his betrayal of a non-interventionist promise, his failure to end the wars in Syria and Afghanistan and his appalling rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, it is Gabbard alone, as a combat veteran, who could reduce the Orange One into a Blubbering Blob of Nothingness,

As she takes the stage next week full of the confidence that her message resonates with the American people and committed to distinguish herself, this debate is another opportunity to show what moral leadership is about and to display the depth and breadth, the maturity, the integrity and the heart it would take to be a true Commander in Chief.

As she takes the stage, all eyes will be on Tulsi as the establishment toadies lie in wait to bring her down, perhaps early in the proceedings.  After her take-down of Ryan, she cannot be allowed to talk the peace talk or to challenge one of the party’s prominent shining stars.  It may come as an overt attack or a personal query such as “Since you voted for HR 246, will you support sanctions against the BDS movement?” or “How does the Equality Act (HR 5) protect the rights of women in sports?”

I am certainly not suggesting that Tulsi is being set up or that the DNC would ever stoop so low as to sabotage one of their own candidates….would they.

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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

The 25^th Annual Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum is taking place July 25-28 in Caracas, Venezuela. The first meeting was held in 1990 in São Paulo, Brazil, with 48 political organizations and social movements led by Fidel Castro of the governing Communist Party of Cuba, and Lula Da Silva of the opposition Workers Party of Brazil.

That first meting seemed to be an urgent gathering of leftist movements that could provide an assessment of what was a major political event with the collapse of the Socialist block in Europe. This 25^th Sao Paulo Forum will surely take a look at the causes of some political reversals since about 2009 in Latin America and how to put a stop to the continued attacks on the Bolivarian Revolution, which is today the bastion of anti-imperialism, and prevent the collapse of today’s socialist project in Venezuela and Latin America.

This is a meeting of progressive and left-wing political parties in the world that meet regularly to exchange experiences and share ideas to strengthen the peoples’ struggle for sovereignty and democracy, social justice, sustainable development and social inclusion.

The Sao Paulo Forum was born with two main purposes: on the one hand, to debate about the international state of affairs after the fall of the Berlin wall and the consequences of neoliberalism in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean; and, on the other hand, to lay the groundwork for the creation of an alliance of research laboratories of ideas and schools of thought where experts and analysts could offer intellectual reflections and analyses, and help develop social policies, economic, political and military strategies for the region.

Since Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1999, Latin America and the Caribbean had made huge progress in this direction. So much so that the US administration took notice and proceeded to attack every advance perceived to be contrary to the interests of its imperial hegemony. By its own declaration the US government has targeted Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua for regime change.

Today, the specific objectives are to continue deepening the debate, but more importantly to try to move forward with proposals for unity of action in the anti-imperialist struggle, and the promotion of exchanges around economic, political, social and cultural problems than the continental leftist movement faces.

Venezuela is giving the exemplary step of such unity.

Last July 19 ten political parties of the Venezuelan left signed the “Caracas Manifesto for Peace, Sovereignty and the Prosperity of Our America”, an eight-page document that synthesizes a consensus approach of the revolutionary organizations to be presented by the Venezuelan delegation in the Sao Paulo Forum.  [1]

The political coordinator of the event preparatory committee, Julio Chavez, argues that the forum will offer the opportunity to chart strategies that will allow changing the correlation of forces in favor of progressive processes in the region. He stated,

“We believe that the forum will be transcendental insofar as a battle plan for the hemisphere is advanced that will go beyond simple declarations.”

Julio Chavez, who is also a deputy in the National Constituent Assembly, said,

“25 years after the first Sao Paulo Forum there are two conflictive visions of the world: the Monroe doctrine vision, driven by Donald Trump, inspired in the doctrine of domination and of a unipolar world ruled by the hegemony of the United States, versus the Bolivarian doctrine that offers the building of a multipolar world. ” “Despite the differences”, he added, “the local left is united around the role that Venezuela plays in this transition” from one vision to the other.

After a recap of the world geopolitical context, and a review of Venezuela as the regional epicenter of US aggression in the Western Hemisphere, the Caracas Manifesto warns that regime change in Venezuela is the US most coveted goal to rebuild its hegemony in the continent. “The attack on Venezuela is an attack against a political process based on the diversity of social movements and political parties that in a united way claim independence and advocate socialism.” Therefore, “to defend Venezuela is to defend Our America.” Similarly, “the victory of peace in Venezuela will be the triumph of regional sovereignty.”

In order to achieve that, the Caracas Manifesto establishes ten “strategic objectives”. The first four objectives are:

1. Promote a new correlation of forces in the continent, capable of forming a political bloc in order to preserve the spaces of power conquered and to defeat imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.
2. Develop and implement a common continental plan for struggle … with the view of building an International Anti-imperialist Front.
3. Build consensus on the need to preserve peace in the continent, as declared by the heads of state at the CELAC Summit held in Havana (2014), by rejecting militarization and the presence of NATO military bases.
4. Promote socialism as people’s alternative to the general crisis that capitalism is confronting.

Concrete proposals for the Forum include 1. Endorsing a Forum-sponsored initiative to organize an International Conference to promote respect for international law and to prevent the illegal imposition of unilateral coercive measures; and 2. Encouraging the establishment of the Permanent “Bolívar versus Monroe” Chair as a space for the study and investigation of the political reality of the region.

Without doubt the revolutionary parties of Venezuela that subscribe the Caracas Manifesto take on the hardest responsibility, not only of the daily defense of the Bolivarian Revolution on the ground, but also by promising a commitment to the “task of working intensely for the unity of all popular and patriotic forces.

We wish to all delegates in Caracas a successful Sao Paulo Forum.

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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.

Note

[1] https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n344749.html

Featured image: A picture showing speakers at one of the panels of the Sao Paulo Forum. | Photo: teleSUR

Pompeo reportedly warned Turkey that it faces “more (US) sanctions” if its Russian S-400 air defense missiles become operational.

What’s the point of them if not able to protect against potential aerial threats. In 2018, US and Ankara officials discussed this issue.

The Trump regime demanded that Turkey buy US Patriot air defense missiles, not Russian S-400s, its officials rejecting the call.

A statement at the time said S-400s will be bought and deployed because Turkey needs them against potential threats, adding:

“All countries surrounding us have missile systems. Imagine if, for example, relations with Iran deteriorate over Syria and they launch missiles on us. How Turkey will be able to protect itself?”

Separately last year, a Trump regime statement said

“Turkey should not use the S-400s even if it does buy them from Russia.”

Ankara dismissed the idea, calling it unrealistic, adding it chose a “19-month delivery option so that we could prepare our technical works and use them under fully Turkish control. We are very sensitive on this.”

Ankara chose Russian S-400s because of their lower cost, state-of-the-art capabilities exceeding the best in the West, and its right to maintain full control when operational.

US air defense systems are controlled by rotating Pentagon chosen NATO crews, not nations buying these missiles.

With Pentagon commanders in control, US air defense missiles can only be used by nations buying them with their permission, subject to their will, an unacceptable arrangement Ankara rejected.

In response to Turkey’s S-400s purchase, the Trump regime removed the country from the F-35 program, a White House statement saying:

“Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible (sic).”

“The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities (sic).”

“Turkey has been a longstanding and trusted partner and NATO ally for over 65 years, but accepting the S-400 undermines the commitments all NATO allies made to each other to move away from Russian systems” — despite no Kremlin threat to alliance or other countries.

Pentagon officials said the door isn’t closed for Turkey to rejoin the F-35 program if it reverses its S-400 purchase decision, what clearly hasn’t happened.

Turkish F-35 personnel were ordered to leave the US by July 31 — where they’ve been undergoing training.

Ankara is an F-35 program partner, producing around 900 parts for the warplanes, its involvement reportedly to be wound down and ended by March 2020, according to US undersecretary of war for acquisition Ellen Lord and deputy war undersecretary for policy David Trachtenberg.

On Thursday, Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport head Alexander Mikheev said Moscow and Ankara are discussing production of S-400 component parts in Turkey.

“Now we are negotiating to continue our cooperation on this issue, including the organization of license production of certain component parts of the system in Turkey,” he said, adding:

Delivering S-400s to Turkey “strengthened the strategic partnership” between both countries.

“Rosoboronexport plans to expand its contacts with the Turkish side as much as possible to implement mutually beneficial projects in the fields of helicopter construction, combat aviation, and air defense.”

Delivery of S-400 equipment began on July 12 — continuing through April 2020 to complete what Turkey ordered, including installation, and making the air defense operational.

Ankara denies that S-400s are incompatible with NATO systems. It warned it’ll retaliate if the Trump regime imposes sanctions for its purchase, Turkish Foreign Minister Melvet Cavusoglu saying:

“If America has very negative steps toward us, if there are sanctions or further steps, we will have answers to America.”

Congressional leaders demanded imposition of sanctions, Trump holding off so far.

As of now, Turkish companies involved in the F-35 program haven’t officially been ordered to cease producing parts. They continue processing orders received, how much longer uncertain.

According to Turkish defense industry analyst Levent Ozgul, US signals are unfriendly.

Pulling Turkey from the F-35 program “exposed Trump’s weakness. The big wheel in Washington is spinning to Turkey’s detriment, despite Trump.”

“He will probably acquiesce to that wheel again and impose” sanctions on Turkey for buying Russian S-400s.

Ozgul believes suspending Turkey from the F-35 program is prelude to removing it permanently.

Last week, Russian Su-35 producer Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov said

“(i)f our Turkish colleagues express a desire, we are ready to work out deliveries of (these) fighter jets.”

A Turkish military source said President Erdogan would study the offer.

Sputnik News called the aircraft “a single-seat, twin-engine, supermaneuverable warplane designed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau. It is widely used by the Russian Airforce, while China and Indonesia have also ordered the aircraft.”

Perhaps Turkey will be the next foreign buyer. China reportedly is very pleased with the Su-35’s performance and may buy more of these fighter jets.

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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 InfoRos

Much is being said of US activities aimed at China. Recent protests in Hong Kong together with a US-led propaganda campaign aimed at Beijing’s attempts to quell a growing terrorist threat in Xinjiang are aimed at pressuring the nation to fall back into line within Washington’s enduring unipolar international order.

The latter of these two campaigns in particular – claims of Chinese authoritarianism as Beijing attempts to neutralize US-backed separatists and terrorists in Xinjiang – has also been spun as China “targeting Muslims.”

This ignores the fact that one of China’s closest and oldest allies in Eurasia is Pakistan – a Muslim-majority nation. It also ignores the fact that in Pakistan, the US is playing the same game aimed at cultivating violent extremism, separatism, violence, division, and even the dissolution of Pakistan’s current borders.

Balochistan – the other Xinjiang 

While all the focus has been directed by the Western media on Xinjiang and a supposed “anti-Muslim crackdown” in the region, Pakistan faces the same problem in its southwestern province of Balochistan. In Pakistan – attempts by the government to root out violent separatists surely is not “anti-Muslim.” 

In Balochistan, the US agencies involved in fanning the flames of separatism and violence instead portray Islamabad and the Pakistani military’s efforts to restore order as simply trampling “human rights.” 

US interference in Balochistan is just as extensive as it is in China’s Xinjiang.

Despite the recent move by Washington to list the armed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a terrorist organization – Islamabad has long accused Washington of funding and arming it along with segments of the Indian government aligned with US interests.

The fact that otherwise ignored activities by Balochistan separatists are covered by certain Indian newspapers even as recently as this year seems to give credence to these accusations. NDTV’s article, “Pro-Balochistan Slogans Raised During Imran Khan’s Address In US,” and India Today’s article, “16 EU Members of Parliament write letter to Trump to intervene in Balochistan,” are just two such examples.

US support is much easier to track down.

US-based Stanford University’s Mapping Militant Organizations project admits that the BLA receives much of its financial aid from the Balochi diaspora. The project’s profile on the Balochistan Liberation Army notes:

Due to high community support for autonomy and independence from people of the Balochistan, many analysts suspect that a large amount of the BLA’s income and weapons supply come from donations from the Balochi people. Balochi leaders have also claimed that financial contributions from the Balochi diaspora make it possible to procure arms and ammunition through the black market.

Thus, even if the US is not directly arming and funding the BLA, it is openly supporting pro-separatists among the Balochi diaspora who even Stanford University experts admit are – in turn – funding the BLA’s terrorism.

The US move to designate the BLA as a foreign terrorist organization holds little meaning. The BLA will find itself beside organizations like Jabhat Al Nusra in Syria which is all but openly funded and armed by the United States and a large cross-section of Washington’s closest European and Arab allies.

Arming militants is only half of the overall strategy seeking to destabilize Pakistan. Subverting national institutions and replacing them with those interlocking with US special interests is the other half.

US NED Working Hard in – and Against – Pakistan  

The US State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various subsidiaries are busy at work in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province as well as China’s Xinjiang.

NED has been directly funding and supporting the work of the “Balochistan Institute for Development” (BIFD) which claims to be:

“…the leading resource on democracy, development and human rights in Balochistan, Pakistan.”

In addition to organizing the annual NED-BFID “Workshop on Media, Democracy & Human Rights” BFID reports that USAID had provided funding for a “media-center” for the Baluchistan Assembly to “provide better facilities to reporters who cover the proceedings of the Balochistan Assembly.” It can be assumed that BFID meant reporters are “trained” at NED-BFID workshops and at its USAID-funded center.

There is also Voice of Balochistan whose every top-story is US-funded propaganda, including op-eds by US representatives promoting Balochi separatism, foundation-funded Reporters Without Borders, Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, and a direct message from the US State Department.

Like other US State Department funded propaganda outfits around the world – such as Thailand’s Prachatai – funding is generally obfuscated in order to main “credibility” even when the front’s constant torrent of obvious propaganda more than exposes the game.

The “Free Baluchistan” movement is a US and London-based organizations. The “Baloch Society of North America” serves as a useful aggregate and bellwether regarding US meddling in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The group’s founder, Dr. Wahid Baloch, openly admits he has met with US politicians in regards to Balochistan independence. This includes Neo-Conservative corporate-lobbyist and National Endowment for Democracy board member, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Dr. Wahid Baloch considers Balochistan province “occupied” by both the Iranian and Pakistani governments – he and his movement’s humanitarian hand-wringing gives Washington the perfect pretext to create an armed conflagration against either Iran or Pakistan, or both, as planned in detail by various US policy think-tanks.

There is also the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad, or BSO. While it maintains a presence in Pakistan, it has coordinators based in London. London-based BSO members include “information secretaries” that propagate their message via social media, just as US and British-funded youth organizations did during the West’s operations against other targeted nations during the US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011.

And just as US-funded agitators in China’s Xinjiang region coordinate their activities with other US-backed groups across the rest of China – such as in Hong Kong and Tibet – other US NED-funded fronts in Pakistan also contribute to a wider campaign of dividing and undermining Pakistan.The US State Department funds Voice of America Deewa focused on Pakistan’s Pashtuns who inhabit Pakistan’s northwest region along its border with Afghanistan.

Despite VOA Deewa’s supposed area of focus, it is actually based in Washington DC. While many of the organizations it provides support for do not admit their US funding, organizations like “AdvoPak” are regularly promoted by VOA Deewa. US NED’s online publication, “Democracy Digest,” also promotes, interviews, and defends groups who appear to be funded by Washington and undoubtedly serve US interests in Pakistan.

This includes the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) which was featured by the Digest earlier this year in an article titled, “Pakistan’s military targets protest movement, stifles dissent.” While PTM doesn’t disclose its funding, it is regularly accused of receiving support from and working for both India and the US.The Democracy Digest article featured a video interview with a PTM member – Gulalai Ismail – who is in fact an NED Fellow. There is also NED’s “Tribute to Gulalai Ismail at the 2013 Democracy Award.”And all of this is just scratching the surface of US meddling in Pakistan’s internal politics and of organizations committed to creating synergies with US-backed separatists in Balochistan.

What Does Pakistan’s Balochistan and China’s Xinjiang Have in Common? 

Balochistan and Xinjiang both appear to be suffering from separatist movements, terrorism, and political destabilization. The common factor is clearly US backing behind both separatist movements – but what is the common denominator that has attracted US attention in the first place?Both Xinjiang and Balochistan are settings for massive Chinese-led infrastructure and trade initiatives. Western publications like the Business Insider note the importance Xinjiang holds in terms of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative.

Many of the routes that lead out of China, across Central Asia, and eventually into the Middle East and Western Europe pass through Xinjiang. US attempts to destabilize the region in turn directly impact the viability of Beijing’s OBOR initiative and the economic wealth and influence it stands to grant Beijing.

Likewise, a significant leg of the OBOR initiative extends from China and across Pakistan from north to south, through Balochistan until reaching Gwadar Port. Thus, by destabilizing Balochistan, this essential corridor’s full potential is inhibited.

This is a truth US special interests and the media interests they own will never admit to. This is why – instead – diverse tales of China’s “anti-Muslim” crackdown and Pakistan’s “distain for human rights” in Balochistan are used to sell two different US-backed conflicts fuelled for a singular agenda – impeding China’s rise and that of its allies – including Pakistan.

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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.

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The Pentagon is desperate. Far too many millennials are criminals, so luring them in to become the latest crop of bullet stoppers for the state is a nonstarter. 

Solution? Recruit 16-year-olds. Most have yet graduated to petty and violent crime, although a lot of them are in video game training for a future of violence and self-destructive stupidity. 

It’s not being widely reported in the media. Recruiters are ready to go after tenth-graders. They are itching to snag kids before they engage in a life of crime, or before they have fully-mature brains (well, some of them) and decide to kill and be killed isn’t much of a career choice.

COMMENTARY: Why we should lower the age for recruitment to 16 https://t.co/CKn974qxis pic.twitter.com/y3BKi6z3PK

— ArmyTimes (@ArmyTimes) July 11, 2019

First, though, the state will have to give these little darlings the “right” to vote for a crop of handpicked carnival barkers, euphemistically called representatives of the people. 

I don’t know about you, but when I was sixteen all I thought about was cruising in my father’s car with a freshly minted state permission to drive card in my wallet as I searched desperately for girls willing to make-out in the backseat. 

It took a year or two before I was politically aware, mostly as a result of Richard Nixon’s plan to “draft” me (polite speak for slavery) into the meat grinder he inherited from LBJ, aka the Vietnam War, where I would either be minced, traumatized for life, or lucky enough to stay behind lines and scrub latrines while other kids fought and senselessly died. 

Around this time college, high school students and millions of other concerned Americans marched against the war, a truly remarkable one-time event now impossible in America because the military is “volunteer” and our wars are “humanitarian.” 

Most of these so-called volunteers “joined” the military because they have so few other career options (if you consider killing other people a career choice). Brought up in largely single-parent homes and taught all manner of nonsense in public schools that now resemble locked down prisons, these “volunteers” are completely ignorant of the reason the state needs them to fight and die. 

It’s all about the psychopathic dominance of a tiny elite. The elite doesn’t send its Harvard-bound kids into its neoliberal meat grinder (because so many of these silver spoon darlings have bone spurs and such). 

But this system is breaking down, mostly because the state upholds standards that worked in the 1940s and 50s, but are completely irrelevant now. They insist it is not permissible to fill the empty ranks with criminals. Hired killers must be held to the highest moral standard. 

So, like the United Kingdom, the US is looking to 16-year old kids to fight in the name of the corporate state and, of course, our freedom to live hand-to-mouth in a political and cultural cesspool. 

Democrats like the idea of 16-year-old voters. Most are far more impressionable and less cantankerous than your average middle-age deplorable. They also approve the idea of feeding kids into the military, but you don’t hear a lot about that because Democrats and progressives don’t think much about war. It’s a big blind spot for them. There are more important issues, for instance trans-gender bathrooms.

I don’t think this is going to turn out like they think it will. Far too many 16-year olds will flunk out of basic training. Most don’t have what it takes, never mind all those formative years killing bad guys on computer screens. 

If The Donald gets us into a big shooting war over in the Middle East or in the South China Sea, the mandatory servitude of conscription will be required. It won’t be a turkey shoot like Iraq or Libya. It will be an existential threat, so all males—criminally inclined or not—between 16 and 45 will be inducted, same as they were after FDR tricked the Japanese into invading Pearl Harbor, or Johnson said the North Vietnamese attacked our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. 

But the kids are oblivious. They were taught to be so. And the propaganda machine will tell them they’re sacrificing their lives (or limbs and mental health) for the noble cause of star-spangled democracy, which most of them know close to zero about. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Iran: How Bolton tricked Clueless UK Conservatives into Confrontation with Tehran

By Juan Cole, July 25, 2019

US national security adviser John Bolton tried to hoodwink both of them about the Grace I, a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker carrying Iranian petroleum through the Straits of Gibraltar.

Iran Imposes Its Rule of Engagement: “An Eye for an Eye”

By Elijah J. Magnier, July 25, 2019

Its clear objective is to corner the US President and his European allies, and indeed Iran seems aiming for a final withdrawal from the JCPOA. Also, despite the effect the US sanctions are having on the Iranian economy – and despite Iran’s determination to reject US hegemony – Iranian officials have publicly put on hold a Russian offer to support its oil sales.

Iran Seizure of a British Tanker. More than Tit for Tat. Towards a War Scenario?

By Peter Koenig, July 24, 2019

Shipping safety in the Strait of Hormuz is crucial. Between 20% and 30% of the world’s hydrocarbons are shipped through this narrow passage of international water way before entering the Gulf of Oman. The strait is closely watched by Iran, as it is of utmost security concern for Iran.

Will Persian Gulf ‘Tanker War’ Become a Shooting War?

By Rep. Ron Paul, July 23, 2019

As could be predicted, the US and UK media are reporting Iran’s seizure of the Stena Impero as if it were something out of the blue, pushing the war propaganda that “we” have been attacked and must retaliate.

Video: Gulf Conflict Report: Prospects of War Between Iran and the US

By South Front, July 23, 2019

On July 19, an unknown aircraft carried out a strike on positions of the Popular Mobilization Units at the Al-Shuhada base in the northern Saladin province north of Baghdad, Iraq.

A Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility. Crisis within the US Command Structure

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 21, 2019

Under present conditions, an Iraq style all out Blitzkrieg involving the simultaneous deployment of ground, air and naval  forces is an impossibility.

For several reasons. US hegemony in the Middle East has been weakened largely as a result of the evolving structure of military alliances.

Washington’s Bully Tactics Have Failed to Persuade Tehran to Negotiate a New Nuclear Deal

By Sarah Abed, July 21, 2019

In response to questions about whether Iran will agree to negotiate a brand-new deal with the Trump administration, Zarif has made it clear that Iran is not interested in a new deal. That the JCPOA took twelve years of negotiations, and that it is the best deal that all parties involved can hope for.

Piracy or War?

By Christopher Black, July 21, 2019

It is clear that in the case of the boarding and detention of the Iranian oil tanker Grace 1, registered in Panama, as many ships are, off the Spanish coast, near Gibraltar, that Britain had no legal right to order its marines to board the Iranian ship which was either in international waters as the Iranians claim or in Spanish waters near Gibraltar.

Provoking War? British Hijack Iranian Ship, Another Day, Another Dangerous Provocation

By Tony Cartalucci, July 17, 2019

As to why the UK believed it was justified to hijack the Iranian tanker – the article would cite “sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad” the UK and EU placed on Syria – which are in themselves illegal and an act of war.

How Iran’s Soviet Era Air Defense System Shot Down America’s Global Hawk UAV over Strait of Hormuz

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 16, 2019

Trump’s concern for casualties was a smokescreen. What the Pentagon was concerned with was not only Iran’s ability to defend itself in the case of a US attack, but also its potential to strike back,targeting US military facilities in the Middle East.

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The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has paid a British university hundreds of thousands of pounds for “cultural advice” on how to operate in former colonies.

Students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London have slammed the payments as “outrageous.”

At least £400,000 has passed between the military and the university since the end of 2016, according to freedom of information requests filed by student group Decolonising Our Minds.

The money has gone towards academic staff delivering study weeks on the history and culture of people in Africa, Asia and the Americas, including many former colonies.

A little-known MoD body, the Defence Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU), was at the centre of the payments.

The unit was formed in 2010 in response to the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has at least 64 cultural advisers deployed across 22 countries around the world.

The US military runs a similar unit called the Human Terrain System, which was condemned by the American Anthropologist Association for violating the ethical imperative to “do no harm to those they study.”

Connections between Soas and the British military are at odds with the university’s reputation as a left-wing and anti-imperialist campus.

Soas staff involved in the scheme include Professor Gilbert Achcar, who has co-authored a book with Noam Chomsky.

Mr Achcar has given four days of training to the MoD about “Islamic fundamentalism” and other topics, Soas records from 2017 and 2019 show.

In February, a Soas anthropologist gave military personnel an overview of the “war in the Sahel.”

On Monday, Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt announced that 250 British troops were being deployed to Mali as peacekeepers “in recognition of the increasing instability in the Sahel region.”

British special forces and three Chinook helicopters are already active in Mali.

A spokesperson from Soas Students’ Union said:

“We would like to join the Decolonising Our Minds collective in condemning Soas for supporting the militarisation of academia.

“It is outrageous that after recognising its complicity in past colonial power dynamics, the school is still engaging in such projects despite its institutionalised ‘decolonising’ agenda.

“Soas is furthering its hypocrisy and double standards when combating structural injustices.”

A Soas spokesperson told the Star:

“We reject any suggestion that we are ‘militarising’ higher education or perpetuating a colonial approach between the UK and other nations.

“We take a critical non-Eurocentric stance in relation to our regions, which challenges preconceived notions about politics, culture and society. It is right and important that such perspectives are brought to bear on bodies which are engaged with these regions.

“Soas University of London has world-leading expertise in our regions and provides research-informed training and advice to a range of international and national organisations, including United Nations, NGOs and government bodies.

“This is in line with best practice by all leading higher education institutions in the UK. Undertaking such work adds to capacity at UK institutions and enhances their ability to provide high-quality teaching to students.”

The MoD was approached for comment.

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On Monday during a press conference between Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump spoke rather casually of having reviewed plans to annihilate Afghanistan.

“I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump said. “I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth, it would be gone. It would be over in, literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to go that route.”

Trump’s seemingly blasé reference to a hypothetical mass murder on a scope and scale never seen in the history of mankind (it took Nazi Germany more than four years to kill six million Jews) was stunning. We know, given the state of play in Afghanistan, that it will never happen. But it wasn’t offhand. Such a policy of total destruction could also be seen as applying to Iran, and the potential for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a U.S.-Iranian conflict is far from hypothetical. He knew exactly what he was doing.

There is a tendency among observers of the Trump White House to be dismissive of the daily barrage of outlandish statements and tweets. Reporters who cover him have grown so inured to this endless stream of hyperbole that they forget that this man is the commander in chief of the greatest military force in history, possessive of enough nuclear firepower to destroy the world a hundred times over. In an era where tweets have become a forum for the expression of policy, it is also easy to forget that the traditional forms of policy expression, such as the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), continue to exist, and hold actual meaning.

According to the 2018 NPR, the United States “would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.” This is a heartening statement, but its value lies in the ability of the U.S. nuclear enterprise to deter nations from using nuclear weapons themselves. As the NPR noted, “if deterrence fails, the United States will strive to end any conflict at the lowest level of damage possible and on the best achievable terms for the United States, allies, and partners.”

Achieving a balance between “the lowest level of damage possible” and “the best achievable terms” for the U.S. and its allies is not something Washington has shown a propensity for achieving—one only need look at the devastation visited upon Kobani, Mosul, and Raqqa in the struggle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. That the U.S. would opt to level entire cities in order to defeat lightly armed insurgents possessing zero strategic capacity speaks volumes about the calculus behind any notion of “balance.” When one factors in the destructive power of modern nuclear weapons, it becomes clear that “the lowest level of damage possible” is an absurd standard that literally has no meaning.

As such, the question becomes at what threshold does the employment of the U.S. nuclear enterprise become likely. First and foremost, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan does not remotely enter into any equation regarding the potential employment of nuclear weapons by the United States. U.S. military officers ostensibly operate in strict adherence to the Vienna Convention and the Additional Protocols, as it deals with issues of reciprocity during armed conflict. The International Court of Justice has determined that the use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the laws of war.

However, U.S. and NATO military planners have carved out an exception, noting that once a conflict begins, traditional theories of humanitarianism and international law will become moot. But this exception would never apply to the current situation in Afghanistan, which makes a lie of President Trump’s claiming to have reviewed plans for such. There is simply no chance of America’s military leadership ever allowing such plans to be considered, let alone drawn up and prepared for implementation.

But Trump is clearly using Afghanistan to signal a very different conflict, one between the U.S. and Iran. Amid rising tensions between the two nations, Trump, during the same press conference where he threatened Afghanistan with nuclear annihilation, said of the situation with Iran, “We’re ready for the absolute worst.” Trying to define what Trump meant by “absolute worst” doesn’t take much imagination. Speaking to reporters on June 26, 2019, Trump stated that any war with Iran “wouldn’t last very long, I can tell you that. It would not last very long. I’m not talking boots on ground…or sending a million soldiers.”

This statement was made a day after Trump tweeted out similarly threatening words, declaring, “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.” There can be no doubt in any rational observer’s mind that the president was, and is, speaking about the use of nuclear weapons.

Unlike the situation vis-à-vis Afghanistan, where the mere consideration of using nuclear weapons on the scope and scale needed to kill 10 million people is inconceivable, the situation vis-à-vis Iran is a far different scenario. The 2018 NPR speaks specifically of the role played by U.S. nuclear deterrence in confronting Iran on several potential points of conflict.

First and foremost, the NPR states that “Iran retains the technological capability and much of the capacity necessary to develop a nuclear weapon within one year of a decision to do so.” It should be noted that the 2018 NPR was written and published while the U.S. was a member of the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (or JCPOA, popularly known as the Iran nuclear agreement). The U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018, and since that time has engaged in a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran to compel it to enter new negotiations about limiting its nuclear program. Rather than accede to this pressure, Iran has increased its nuclear capabilities beyond that permitted by the JCPOA, meaning that the one-year threshold mentioned in the 2018 NPR has been shortened considerably.

The U.S. is also concerned about nuclear proliferation and “denying terrorists access to finished weapons, material, or expertise.” Iran has been declared a state sponsor of terrorism, and its Revolutionary Guard Command, which plays a critical role in its nuclear program, a terrorist entity. The 2018 NPR declares that “Preventing the illicit acquisition of a nuclear weapon, nuclear materials, or related technology and expertise by a violent extremist organization is a significant U.S. national security priority.” It notes that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by “rogue states” such as Iran “that possess nuclear weapons or the materials, technology, and knowledge required to make them” increases the likelihood that terrorist organizations will acquire them. “Further,” the NPR notes, “given the nature of terrorist ideologies, we must assume that they would employ a nuclear weapon were they to acquire one.”

It doesn’t matter that Iran isn’t pursuing a nuclear weapon today, or that the designation of both Iran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command as terrorist entities by the U.S. is an entirely political move devoid of reality. The fact remains that, when it comes to the issue of U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, the theoretical ability and intent on the part of Iran to both acquire nuclear weapons and share this technology with terrorist organizations has been solidified in American policy. As such, any declaration by the U.S. that deterrence has failed creates the very “extreme situation” under which Washington can consider the employment of nuclear weapons  “to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.”

It would take the United States, using nuclear weapons, less than a week to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and eliminate their government and ancillary organizations, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. The numbers of Iranians who would be killed in such an attack could very well exceed 10 million. President Trump understood that his reference to annihilating Afghanistan was nonsensical. But his willingness to use nuclear weapons to achieve a short, decisive military victory was not.

The fact that the United States has defined conditions that would legitimize the use of nuclear weapons against Iran should frighten all Americans. The fact that the current crisis could meet these conditions should alarm the entire world. Under normal circumstances, the American people could expect a rational president to walk away from any situation that needlessly invited the specter of nuclear war. That President Trump so easily invokes his powers amid critical international tensions should give us serious pause.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

The Senior Advisor of the Foreign Policy Planning Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation denied that there ever was a so-called “Russia-Shia axis” like Alt-Media claimed for years and reminded the prestigious audience at Russia’s top think tank that her country militarily cooperates with both the Syrian armed opposition and even the Islamic Republic’s hated foes in “Israel” as part of its regional “balancing” act.

One of the most enduring narratives pushed forth by the Alt-Media Community is that Russia is “allied” with Iran in spite of all the evidence suggesting that it’s actually much more closely aligned with “Israel” in an intimate strategic partnership that can best be described as “Putinyahu’s Rusrael“. Up until this point, there was no direct contradiction of Alt-Media’s flawed interpretation of events from any Russian official, but that just changed after Maria Khodynskaya-Golenischeva’s latest article for her country’s top think tank, the Valdai Club. She’s not just one of the countless commentators sounding off about this issue, but is an actual diplomat who works as the Senior Advisor of the Foreign Policy Planning Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Speaking from a position of undisputed authority, she clarified the following about her country’s ties with “Israel” and Iran in her article titled “How Bloc-Free Mentality Helps Russia Be a Welcome Foreign Actor in the Middle East“:

“Incidentally, the emphasis of some colleagues (primarily from the West) on some “other side of the medal” as regards the Russia-Iran cooperation on Syria (in the bilateral format and the Astana venue) makes no sense. They are trying to present this cooperation as some Russia-Shia axis that is alienating the Arab world from Moscow, primarily the countries of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf and the Sunni opposition in Syria.

However, this view is contrary to hard facts. Russia has become the only country involved in the Syrian file to preserve contacts with all players in Syria without exception: the Syrian Government, political and armed opposition’s organizations (except those classified as terrorist) and the states involved in the Syrian settlement. There are examples of joint action by Russia and the armed Sunni opposition “on the ground”, for instance, the participation of the Shabab Al Sunnah in the operation to free the valley of the Yarmouk River from ISIS, in which the Russian Aerospace Forces were involved.

The same is true of Russia-Israel interaction, which has not been marred by Moscow-Tehran cooperation. In the framework of Syrian settlement, Russia and Israel not only discussed “deconflicting” initiatives but also cooperated “on the ground”. Importantly, it was Russia that ensured the withdrawal of the pro-Iran forces from the Golan Heights and the Russian military police ensures security in this area, thereby creating the conditions for the mission of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).”

In a nutshell, she vehemently denied that there was ever any intention for Moscow to construct a so-called “Russia-Shia axis” and reminded her prestigious audience that her country militarily cooperates with both the Syrian armed opposition and even the Islamic Republic’s hated foes in “Israel” as part of its regional “balancing” act. Importantly, she confidently asserted that the aforementioned narrative that she just debunked comes “primarily from the West”, which is true since many in the Alt-Media Community are “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) who mostly reside in that part of the world. Nevertheless, her comment strongly implies that this interpretation of events is therefore disreputable and might have the ulterior motive of discrediting Russia’s “balancing” act with all the other Mideast players at odds with the Islamic Republic, even though that likely wasn’t the intention of the Alt-Media outlets that propagated it in the first place. In any case, her words are the most authoritative confirmation yet that Russia is not, nor ever was or will be, in an “alliance” with Iran.

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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.

Featured image is from Alaff

Michel Chossudovsky discusses the recent US/Iran clash in the Persian Gulf;

Iran’s capability as a military power;

the breakup of the Gulf Cooperation Council;

the Al-Udeid military base in Qatar the largest US base in the Middle East, and Qatar an ally of Iran;

the flop of the proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance, also known as the Arab NATO;

the July 2016 failed coup d’etat against Turkish President Erdogan;

the US/Israel/Turkey “triple alliance” now a Turkey/Iran/Russia “triple entente”;

Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense shield constitutes its de facto exit from NATO;

the geopolitical realignment of the Middle East and its repercussions on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Listen to the interview below. Transcript follows.

***

This is Guns and Butter.

What I think is important is that, de facto, Turkey is no longer part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  You may have noticed that the reaction from Washington has been dead silence and the media as well.  The repercussions on the military-industrial complex are dramatic, and whatever happens, Turkey de facto is out of NATO. 

And with Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO, inevitably it will have repercussions, and other member states might choose to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

I’m Bonnie Faulkner.  Today on Guns and Butter, Michel Chossudovsky. Today’s show:  US Foreign Policy in Shambles – NATO and the Middle East.  Michel Chossudovsky is an economist and the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Québec. He is the author of eleven books, including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, War and Globalization:  The Truth Behind September Eleventh, America’s War on Terrorismand The Globalization of War, America’s Long War Against Humanity.  Today we discuss the recent clash with Iran in the Persian Gulf, Iran as a military power, the breakup of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the flop of the proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance, also known as the Arab NATO, the coup d’état again Turkish President Erdogan, and the geopolitical realignment of the Middle East and its repercussions on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Michel Chossudovsky, welcome.

Michel Chossudovsky:  Good morning.  Delighted to be on the program.

Bonnie Faulkner:  In June, Iran shot down an unmanned US drone that Iran claimed was in its air space.  This was followed by threats from President Trump.  Two days later, Trump announced that US jets were headed towards targets in Iran, but that he called off the strike 10 minutes before engagement. What do you make of this bizarre statement?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Well, that statement is full of contradictions and, in fact, the media coverage of that event seems to have excluded one very important element, namely that the Al Udeid air force base in Qatar from which these air raids would have been launched, and which also constitutes the forward headquarters of US Central Command, happens to be in a country which is the closest ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely Qatar.  Qatar and Iran share the largest maritime natural gas base in the world.  From an economic and energy point of view it’s absolutely strategic. They are allies.

But bear in mind, US Central Command headquarters confirmed the deployment of US Air Force F22 stealth fighters, following Trump’s statement, out of Qatar.  They also made a statement to the effect that this was to defend American forces and interests in the region.

Now, how is it that US foreign policy architects didn’t take the trouble to verify that this particular military base, which is technically the property of Qatar, which is an emirate, and which is most probably one of the largest air force operations on the planet—I’m quoting The Washington Times.

Now, US Central Command’s forward Middle East headquarters is located in enemy territory.  Now, either people are absolutely stupid in the State Department or the Pentagon or they simply know well in advance that they can’t do this.  That location is not appropriate because it’s a country which is swarming with Iranian business people, security personnel, the Russians and the Chinese are there.  Qatar is no longer under the helm of Saudi Arabia.  It has declared its alliance with Iran.  And then, ironically, the Atlantic Council, which is a think tank closely tied both to the Pentagon and NATO, has confirmed that Qatar is now firmly allied with both Iran and Turkey.  You can’t really go around that.  So what is it?  Sloppy military planning, sloppy US foreign policy, sloppy intelligence?

I personally believe that there was never a plan to launch a war against Iran from that forward US Central Command headquarters in enemy territory.  It’s an impossibility.  But there are other elements beside that.  There’s the whole structure of US military alliances which is in such a mess that a conventional theater war against Iran is virtually impossible.

Bonnie Faulkner:  In your most recent article, A Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility; Crisis Within the US Command Structure, you explore two crucial areas that make a US attack on Iran not a winning strategy, i.e., Iran’s military power and the evolving structure of military alliances.  First of all, how do you assess Iran as a military power?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Iran has advanced capabilities and it also has very large ground forces.  It’s a country of 90 million people.  We’re not dealing with an Iraq 2003 situation where the country had already been destroyed. We’re dealing with a country which has advanced capabilities, in many regards comparable to those of Turkey, and which has some very powerful allies.  Iran is allied with Russia; we know that.  Now, I don’t think that Russia will intervene, but the S-400 which has recently been delivered to Turkey is now slated to be delivered to Iran.  This is also something which military analysts and the Western media failed to address.

If you go back to 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld formulated a blitzkrieg directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran—well, there was a plan back in 2003 in the wake of the Iraq war and going on to 2005, and they had what they called a plan of encirclement of Iran. Now, when they say encirclement of Iran, that means that neighboring countries are proxies of the United States. They will take orders, they’re linked to NATO and so on.

But even then, the national security advice was to postpone that war.  The conditions for waging the war in 2003-2005 were there and they favored the United States.  But even then they hesitated precisely because Iran had missile capabilities, extensive ground forces, and despite the encirclement they postponed that military operation.  There are various scenarios which were formulated.

But today, let’s look at the geography or the geopolitics of that region.  Turkey has a border with Iran and Turkey is the heavyweight in NATO.  Turkey now has excellent relations with neighbouring Iran, it’s not a formal military alliance but they are on very good terms.  And Turkey now has signified to the United States, you won’t be able to wage a war against Iran from Turkish territory, either in terms of ground forces or air force, etc.

But if you look at the map, there’s not a single country there on which the United States can rely to help them, including Iraq.  The Iraqi government has said no, we will not allow for the movement of US forces in Iraq towards the Iranian border.

Now, the other pivot there is Pakistan.  As we recall some several years back Pakistan was the staunch ally of the United States. It’s no longer the staunch ally of the United States; it’s the staunch ally of China.  The United States will not be able to rely on Pakistan in a war directed against Iran.

They’ve lost Pakistan.  Pakistan is no longer a military ally.

Then you have several of the former Soviet republics, which had partnership agreements with NATO, good bilateral relations with the United States.  I’m thinking of Azerbaijan.  Well, just last December, Iran and Azerbaijan signed military cooperation agreements, and that means that the United States cannot rely on Azerbaijan.  Similarly, it can’t rely on Turkmenistan.  It’s impossible to wage a war out of Afghanistan because the Taliban are occupying a large part of the national territory.  So a ground war is an impossibility and a traditional air war, I think, is also an impossibility because there are questions of air space.  And we know that the United States relies heavily on its allies to do the dirty work.

Then, of course, there’s Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC, is split down the middle with Qatar, Oman and Kuwait in favor of normalizing relations with Iran, and in the case of Qatar it goes beyond that.  But can the United States rely on Kuwait and Oman?  In no way.

Oman has very good relations with Iran on the one hand, and it also controls the entry to the Strait of Hormuz from the Gulf of Oman into the Persian Gulf. If you look at the geography, well, of course, Pakistan controls part of the Arabian Sea, and if you look at naval access to US military facilities in the Persian Gulf it’s not an easy task; you still have to go in and out, and you’re going in and out either through Iranian territorial waters or through those of Oman.

[Gulf Cooperation Council]

And now with the split down the middle of that Gulf Cooperation Council, you have several of those countries, emirates, which are strategically favoring Iran instead of the United States.  And there’s a whole geopolitical dimension to that, because for instance the United States has military bases in Kuwait, it has military bases in Bahrain and then, of course, as I mentioned earlier it has military bases in Qatar, which is aligned with the Iran.  So it’s very difficult for them to wage a naval operation when the Gulf Cooperation Council, which of course is a US project initially, is in crisis.

Another element is that just about a couple of months back, the United States had sponsored what was called the Arab NATO, it was a middle East strategic alliance and it was supposed to be inaugurated in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  It really never got off the ground because this was a project to integrate the Gulf Cooperation Council with two other countries, which were Jordan and Egypt.  Now, Egypt decided to drop out and, in fact, they boycotted this meeting, which was held in Riyadh and Trump was there.  That was his second visit to Saudi Arabia.  Earlier he had gone in 2017.  And in 2017 they actually launched the Arab NATO and what it actually resulted in was the rupture of the Gulf Cooperation Council and now this Arab NATO virtually is defunct; it’s not working.  There’s no body of countries, maybe with the exception of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, that whole region now is shifting.  At least either it’s becoming neutral and normalizing its relations with Iran or it’s in the case of Qatar, it’s an actual ally of Iran.

So it’s a big mess.  The structure of alliances is disrupted, and then the question is, how do you wage a war if you don’t have allies?

Bonnie Faulkner:  With regard to the evolving structure of military alliances, in May of 2017 the Gulf Cooperation Council—that is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman—split apart.  What happened?

Michel Chossudovsky:  This is a very complex issue.  There was a meeting which took place in Riyadh when Trump first came to Riyadh.  I think it was on the 21^st of May.  On the 21^st of May 2017  a US Islamic Summit took place. Again, the media never really looks at the chronology of these important events and inter-relationships.  But what happened on the 21^st of May 2017 with the approval of US officials was the endorsement of a proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance, which was composed of Egypt, Jordan, plus the six nations of the GCC, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman.

So that all in all that Arab NATO was supposed to be an alliance of eight countries, which would then have the mandate, and that mandate was explicit.  It was essentially to confront Iran or to confront Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Now, what happened is that two days later, on May 23, 2017 Saudi Arabia ordered a blockade and embargo of Qatar, following alleged statements that the emir of Qatar was supporting Iran, and I think that statement is correct.  Qatar was aligning itself with Iran and essentially what what happend at the meeting on May 21^st— Saudi Arabia and the US decided to exclude Qatar from the Arab NATO.

I think that was the scenario.  We go ahead with Arab NATO ceremoniously adopted the project on the 21^st of May knowing that one of the member states of the GCC, namely Qatar was sleeping with the enemy, and then two days later embargo.  It was an act of war.  It was an embargo cutting off of borders, cutting of naval and sea routes and essentially isolating Qatar.

But what happened was not what they wanted to happen.  What they wanted was to go from GCC with six member states to GCC with five member states and what happened is that this triggered a crisis within the GCC, with Kuwait and Oman siding with Qatar so that the GCC was split down the middle.  And as a consequence, the Arab NATO, which was conceived on the 21^st of May with eight members, went down to five and then subsequently what happened is that Egypt withdrew and essentially you’ve only got about four countries now, which are part of the core of that Arab NATO, which are essentially Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan. There are four countries which are firmly behind it.  Again, that’s a flop; in other words, the United States, the Trump administration, has virtually lost its GCC alliance in the Middle East.  And not only that; it has its Central Command headquarter forward base in enemy territory.  I give them a C-minus as far as foreign policy is concerned.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Since Qatar and Iran have joint ownership of the world’s largest maritime gas fields, they needed to be in alliance with one another, it seems to me.  What do you think was behind Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar?  Did Saudi Arabia want the Maritime gas fields or was it simply that Saudi Arabia insisted on the isolation of Iran?

Michel Chossudovsky:  I think the main objective was to exclude Qatar from Arab NATO and create conditions, perhaps divisions within Qatar. I think the first short-run objective was that.  They considered that one of the members of the GCC was sleeping with the enemy and they also indicated very firmly, you can come back into the GCC and so on and resolve relations, but then you have to really give up your relationship with Iran, which they’ll never do.

Because first of all that partnership in the North gas fields, it’s joint ownership, north and south gas fields. It has a territorial division, with regard to Maritime rights, but this is a joint venture.  It’s ownership is common to the two countries and that’s very important.  So for them to abandon that, particularly after the embargo, is very unlikely right now.

I’ve been to Qatar several times since the May 17^th occurrence and I can say, first of all, public opinion is very anti-Saudi, even though they have proximity in cultural terms and they have Qataris living in Saudi Arabia.  But the way this was handled was so brutal it’s unlikely that Qatar will ever go back into an alliance with Saudi Arabia.

So it’s Saudi Arabia which is being isolated; it’s not Qatar and it’s certainly not Iran.  Iran is on friendly terms with several of America’s staunch allies.  It has gained Qatar.  It has also gained Oman and Kuwait, not to say that these are countries which are allied strategically with Iran but they entertain good relations.  And then if you look at it more broadly, Iran has good relations with Azerbaijan, it has good relations with Turkey, it has good relations with Iraq and, of course, it has excellent relations with Pakistan.  And that’s important because of the issue of Balochistan, where there’s a separatist movement.  The Balochs are both in Iran and in Pakistan.  Also, there’s been a shift and it’s very much due to the fact that the two governments are now collaborating.

So there we are.  And Egypt, of course, which is a powerful country in the Middle East, has signified that it will not join an alliance which is directed against Iran.  Not to say that the two countries have good relations, but they have normal relations, Iran and Egypt. But Egypt is not going to join a US project directed against Iran.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Since the Al Udeid base near Doha (image below), Qatar is America’s largest military base in the Middle East, why would the US or President Trump support a land, air and sea blockade of Qatar?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Well, de facto they’re supporting the land, air and sea blockade because they’re supporting Saudi Arabia, but there’s still trade relations and there’s a military cooperation agreement.  In fact, the US attitude is rather weird, because they have signed a new military cooperation agreement with Qatar and they are acting as if nothing has happened. They have signed with Qatar a bilateral agreement, but they have not raised the fact that Qatar is sleeping with the enemy or has relations.  They haven’t imposed any kind of conditions on Qatar with regard to their relations with Iran.  And Trump met the emir of Qatar at the United Nations General Assembly two years ago in October 2017.

You see it’s a very contradictory type of relationship.  They don’t want to say, we’re moving out of Qatar and putting our central command headquarters somewhere else; they’re not intimating that they’re doing that.  Some of the command structures have been moved, inevitably, and again, central command operates out of Florida, but the forward base in the Middle East is crucial.

The thing is, I think that Washington does not want to take on decisions of a controversial nature which would more or less reveal that Qatar is playing a double role.  It’s hosting a US military facility and at the same time it has very good relations with the enemy.  So that’s the situation.

And mind you that kind of attitude is unfolding with regard to Turkey’s recent acquisition of the S-400 air defense system from Russia, which de facto means that Russia—we’ve known this for years, but Russia and Turkey are now military allies because the air defense system requires military cooperation at a high level.  You’re not just selling equipment; you are cooperating in terms of training, you are consulting one another, there’s a whole geopolitics behind it and what I think is important there is that de facto as of January 12^th, Turkey is no longer part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Now, you may have noticed that the reaction from Washington has been dead silence and the media as well. They say, “Well, there are sanctions if you do it and we will exclude you from the F-35 jet fighter program, which is a NATO program.”  The repercussions on the military-industrial complex are dramatic, because we’re seeing now the competition between Russia and the United States with regard to the sale of weapons, so it’s billion and billions of dollars of revenue which are at stake.

But at the moment, I don’t think the United States is saying, “Turkey, get the hell out of NATO.”  They’re not going to say that, but what is possible is that Turkey will say, “We are withdrawing from NATO,” and whatever happens, Turkey de facto is out of NATO.  Now, if let’s say more from a narrative point of view and public relations we still want Turkey to stay in NATO, not to disrupt, but eventually that’s going to come up.  And with Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO inevitably it will have repercussions and other member states might choose to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  It’s what we call NATO exit, not to be confused with Brexit.

Bonnie Faulkner:  You write that the US, Israel, Turkey triple alliance is now a new triple entente between Turkey, Iran and Russia.  This sounds like a very major shift in geopolitical alliances, which you’ve just been starting to describe.  What were the major forces driving this shift?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Back in the ‘90s there was an alliance between Israel and Turkey.  It was a bilateral alliance, and it was a very close alliance between Turkey and Israel. Now, without going into the details, that alliance collapsed, and it also collapsed in relation to the actions of Israel against the Palestinian solidarity movement, and remember the Mavi Marmara boat, which was attacked by IDF forces.  But it would appear that that alliance is dead, the bilateral relationship between Israel and Turkey.

And the bilateral relationship between the United States and Turkey is still there, but it’s also in a crisis situation, and the tripartite alliance Israel/Turkey/US or US/Israel/Turkey was really based on two separate bilateral agreements.  But it’s certainly relevant now that that alliance between Turkey and Israel was very crucial inasmuch as it was also directed against Syria. It was directed against Syria and it was directed against Iran, and there was exchange of intelligence, so on and so forth.  So there we have another element.

Let’s say we’re talking about a war on Iran, of course, Israel is obviously a major partner of the United States and NATO in that project.  But there’s another element in US-Israeli relations.  In effect Israel also has an unspoken and unofficial alliance with the Russian Federation, and we’ve seen this evolving, where Netanyahu has a personal relationship with Putin.  I’m not passing any judgments; this is simply very factual.  We have to understand they have a close personal relationship.  We must also understand that many of the senior officers of the armed forces are from the former Soviet Union; they have families in the Russian Federation.  So that there’s a tacit bilateral relationship between Israel and Russia which has developed over a number of years, which means that if there’s any kind of military involvement of Israel directed against Iran, which is an ally of Russia, there may be consultations to that effect.  There may be consultations at that very high level of the military and intelligence establishment of those two countries.  And now, just a few weeks back, the national security advisors of the US, Israel and Russia met in Jerusalem.  Despite all the conflict which exists between US and Russia, the National Security Advisors had friendly conversations.  But I think what was more important were the friendly conversations between Israel and Russia.

So again, alliances historically are built between sovereign countries, but there is what we would describe as cross-cutting coalitions.  Cross-cutting coalitions means that you are allied with countries which are allied with your enemies.  So Russia has a cross-cutting coalition with Israel and Israel has an alliance with the United States and with NATO.  In other words, the Russian foreign policy has been extremely astute in building these alliances, and so has China for that matter.

Bonnie Faulkner:  You have written that Israel and Turkey were close partners with the US in planned aerial attacks on Iran since 2005.  If Turkey is now de facto exiting NATO and this alliance between Turkey and Israel is defunct then it seems that these 2005 plans to attack Iran are also defunct.

Michel Chossudovsky:  They are absolutely defunct; yes, they are.  Turkey is not going to participate in any kind of aerial attacks on Iran because it has a military cooperation agreement with Iran. It’s as simple as that.  Well, I’m not sure at what level.  And then I personally don’t think that Israel is the staunch partner that it was back in 2005.  I’m saying staunch partner of the United States.  I recall during the Bush administration Dick Chaney intimated, “Well, we’ll let Israel do it for us,” so that they were inciting Israel to actually bomb Iran, with of course a selected target, and then it would be presented as an initiative of Israel, with Washington saying, “Well, you know, they did it for us, but we didn’t really ask them to do it.”  I recall the statements of Dick Chaney at the time.  But I don’t think that despite the anti-Iran rhetoric in Israel or by Israeli leaders including Netanyahu, I don’t think that Israel under any circumstances would take the first step in an action against Iran.

And as far as a broader operation involving allies, I don’t think that that will occur.  There is an alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which was really built by the United States, and the United States thinks that they can have Israel and Saudi Arabia attack Iran on their behalf.  I don’t think either as a result of the unspoken alliance between Israel and the Russia Federation, that if there were a war on Iran, that Iran would attack Israel.  They will attack US facilities in the Persian Gulf, that is clear—which is just across the Persian Gulf, it’s a very short distance.  Unless, of course, Israel is directly involved in aerial bombings, which I think will not happen.

To get back to the Pentagon agenda, right now, as I mentioned earlier, it’s very unlikely that an all-out war can be called for, sort of a blitzkrieg similar to that of Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam.  That is out of the question.  But what is more likely is a continuation of extreme sanctions as well as other actions and the possibility of what the Pentagon calls a bloody-nose operation, which means they will go in and bomb certain targets in Iran, which may be the nuclear facilities.  That is certainly on the drawing board of the Pentagon right now, but even that, I doubt that they would .  . .  well, there are always mistakes and there are people like Pompeo and Bolton who don’t understand or have a limited understanding of military issues. I don’t think that that would take place because Iran would immediately start bombing the facilities of the United States in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf.  It’s practically next door and, well of course, that would lead to escalation inevitably.

I think what we have to understand now is that mistakes often are the determinants of history.  We can’t exclude the fact that Pompeo or Bolton or Trump might say, “Well, let’s go with it and bomb them” or select a particular target.  That’s always a possibility, because they have the decision-making powers and they don’t necessarily understand the consequences, or they don’t care.  But if they submit it to the US military hierarchy and even to intelligence personnel, I think the consensus would be that that’s a suicide operation, because you won’t win that type of war.  We’ve seen how the US has failed in Northern Syria, for instance.  It’s failed in Yemen.

I think one avenue that the US is contemplating right now is more of a sort of support channeled to terrorist organizations including the MEK, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran [Mojahedin-e Khalq], which is a terrorist entity.  That I think is something which they’re contemplating.

Bonnie Faulkner:  What about the reported July 2016 attempted coup d’état against Turkish President Erdogan? There were also widespread reports that it was the Russian Federation that tipped off Erdogan in time for him to flee his vacation residence.  Assuming that this coup was real and that the US was indeed behind it, wouldn’t this event be enough to turn Erdogan against the US and toward Russia?  And why would the US have wanted to get rid of Erdogan?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Well, I think certainly that Turkish coup d’état attempt in July 2016 pointed to a major turning point.  It led to a realignment of alliances almost immediately.  We recall that prior to that coup there was a very strained relationship between Turkey and Russia, and the fact that Turkey was facilitating the entry of war ships into the Black Sea.  And in the wake of that coup Erdogan, first of all, I think did in fact decide to curtail Turkey’s relations with the United States. There’s no doubt about that.  It’s been done rather gradually, but without getting into the details of what happened, I certainly think, yes, that was a watershed.  And President Erdogan did intimate that the United States was complicit in the coup. He did make that statement.  That was related to this personality Fethullah Gülen, who was allegedly behind the failed coup.  But quite as you suggest, I think that this was the beginning of—well, we’re talking about a period of approximately three years; that was on the 15^th of July, so that’s this week.  So in a matter of three years the structure of alliances has evolved.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Exactly, and it’s interesting that if in fact it was Russia that tipped off Erdogan about the coup .  .  .  Turkey had already shot down a Russian jet over Syria, so if Putin was behind tipping off Erdogan, that was a pretty smart move on his part, don’t you think?

Michel Chossudovsky:  I think that Putin is a very astute diplomat with a background in intelligence.  He has managed to establish good personal relations with a number of leaders including Erdogan.  I don’t see Turkey, even if there’s some kind of coup by the United States, I don’t see that necessarily leading to a shift in geopolitical alliances.  I mean, Turkey has been an ally of the United States from the beginning of the Cold War, but this, again, 2016 marks I think the beginning of a new structure of alliances.

And note there’s a lot more to that.  Just recently, President Erdogan was in consultation with leaders of former Soviet republics.  Of course, there’s an agenda there in Central Asia and then also now Turkey is a dialogue partner of the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.  Now the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is essentially dominated by two major countries, China and Russia, and then you have the former Soviet republics. But now, there are a number of countries which are either partners or observers, and it’s really evolving towards a shift in alliances.  They don’t declare themselves as a military alliance, but de facto they are.  The SCO has members from different countries and then there are military agreements, but they’re not officially part of the SCO.

Now, Pakistan is a full member of the SCO.  India is also a full member, which means that if there are conflicts between India and Pakistan, they have to be monitored under the auspices of the SCO; that’s one of their rules.  So that again, both China and Russia now have an inroad into South Asia.  Well, as it stands the Modi government in India is building or renewing its alliance with the United States, but that alliance with the United States is very fragile, because if there’s a change of government in India it may in fact take on a different course.  And they are building a military alliance with the United States while at the same time being a full member of the SCO.

So it’s much, much broader. The structure of alliances is collapsing.  What is unfolding is new avenues of trade investment, of course China’s Belt and Road and different alignments of many countries which are moving away from the West and establishing or inserting themselves into this Eurasian project.  I think that again if Turkey withdraws from NATO further changes will occur within the European landscape with countries possibly withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Bonnie Faulkner:  In your article, As Russian Missiles Arrive In Turkey, Erdogan Crosses a Rubicon, you write that, “Turkey’s de facto exit from NATO points to an historical shift in the structure of military alliances, which could potentially contribute to weakening US hegemony in the Middle East as well as creating conditions which could lead to a break-up of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.” How important to the survival of NATO is Turkey?

Michel Chossudovsky:  Well, It’s very important because Turkey is, after the United States, the NATO heavyweight.  Its conventional forces are significant even when compared to countries like Germany and France and Britain.  They have the largest conventional forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  If NATO is to be involved in a US-led war in the Middle East, the only NATO member state which has a foot in the Middle East is Turkey.  And consequently, I’m saying again, it is very difficult for the United States to build a cohesive alliance directed against Iran without Turkey within the NATO structure.

If we compare NATO’s posture with regard to Russia in Eastern Europe, it’s much more cohesive and the discourse is more cohesive, but that could crack as well.  Within NATO there is a sort of a consensus but it’s a propaganda initiative, in fact, because we are persistently told that Russia is going to invade the European Union.  People are led to believe that they have to defend the European Union against Russian aggression.  But that discourse is far more cohesive within the European landscape than it is within the Middle East landscape.  The US is relying on its partners in the European Union, particularly Germany and France, and Britain as well, but Britain is in turmoil at present.  As far as building a set of alliances with regard to the Middle East, they are in a bind.  And they are in a bind because Turkey is sleeping with the enemy, and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are also sleeping with the enemy, and Pakistan is sleeping with the enemy.  So there we are.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Did we ever have any understanding of why the United States wanted to depose Erdogan?  I never understood that.

Michel Chossudovsky:  Let me go back a little bit.  This goes back quite a number of years.  The United States had envisaged a redefinition of the borders of the Middle East.  It was called the New Middle East.  And they had established a map, which essentially provided the structure of what the Middle East should look like.  This map I think was first published .  . .  well, it was more than ten years ago; it was in 2006.  It was a map by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, but it was published in the Armed Forces Journal, it was presented in the National War Academy, it was used for teaching purposes.  And apparently what happened is that this was also used in NATO workshops of, we’re talking about military doctrine, because this map essentially carves Turkey into half. It has Turkey and then it has a free Kurdistan and the free Kurdistan is made up of Kurds from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. So they’ve created a new country.

The US project was ultimately to Balkanize the Middle East into smaller countries, a bit what they did in the Balkans, so that you had an Arab Shia state, the Sunni state, the free Kurdistan, the Islamic Sacred State of Saudi Arabia and so on.  That map is well known in military circles and it’s been analyzed.

But essentially Turkey’s resentment in relation to the United States is that essentially they want to carve up Turkey.  And Erdogan’s project is the Greater Ottoman; it’s an extension of Turkish influence beyond Turkish borders and it certainly would not accept any carving up of the national territory of Turkey.  In fact, if you look at that map—that was the US war academy map—they cut it in half.

So that’s the background.  They were privy to the fact that there were documents which pointed to America’s intent to ultimately carve up Turkey, in the same way as they carved Yugoslavia.  I understood that at one point that that map was brought to the consideration of members or the staff of NATO, and the Turkish delegation to that venue walked out when they saw the map.  They were absolutely, they were very offended.

Bonnie Faulkner:  Michel Chossudovsky, thank you so much.

Michel Chossudovsky:  Thank you.  Delighted.  Thank you very much.

I’ve been speaking with Michel Chossudovsky.  Today’s show has been:  US Foreign Policy in Shambles – NATO and the Middle East.  Michel Chossudovsky is the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Québec.  The Global Research website, globalresearch.ca, publishes news articles, commentary, background research and analysis.  Michel Chossudovsky is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September Eleventh, America’s War on Terrorism,The Globalization of War, and America’s Long War Against Humanity.  Visit globalresearch.ca.

Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko and Tony Rango.  Visit us at gunsandbutter.org to listen to past programs, comment on shows, or join our email list to receive our newsletter that includes recent shows and updates.  Email us at [email protected].  Follow us on Twitter at gandbradio.

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This interview first appeared on Guns and Butter.

The recently passed G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan witnessed the return to ‘happy talk’ by Trump, promising the US and China would again get together and continue negotiating on trade. The Osaka G20 sounds almost a repeat of the December 2018 G20 in Buenos Aires. The outcome post-Buenos Aires, however, was a blow up of US-China negotiations this past May 2019. Following Osaka this past June, once again Trump promises a return to negotiations and a deal. Will the ‘post-Osaka’ events be a repeat of post-Buenos Aires? Both negotiating teams reportedly will meet again. But it appears China won’t be playing the same game. Read my analysis of events and why there’ll be no agreement in 2019, and only possibly in 2020.

G20 Buenos Aires Meeting and After

Immediately after the November 2018 elections, Trump renewed efforts to meet with Xi. They did so at the end of 2018 at the G20 in Buenos Aires. Lots of fanfare and typical Trump hyberbole followed: President Xi was such a good buddy. A great deal was in the works and would soon be announced. In the interim, Trump suspended raising tariffs to 25% on existing $200 billion of China imports as negotiations resumed February 2019. Lots of happy talk about all the progress being made at the G20, as the US stock markets recovered nicely in the first quarter of 2019.

But negotiations broke down once again, a second time, in May 2019 (as they had a year previous in May 2018). The official US line fed to the media was that the Chinese had reneged at the last minute, and added new demands and proposals—when in fact it was the US that introduced last minute demands it knew the Chinese could not accept, in the week before the China delegation was to come to Washington to finalize the deal.

This time the Lighthizer-Navarro-Bolton team not only demanded stronger limits on tech transfer from US corporations in China. Now the demand was China would have to sever all its companies’ relations with US tech companies in the US —and not just Huawei. A new US offensive was launched to intimidate US researchers doing joint tech research work with Chinese counterparts in US universities to end their joint cooperation; US tech companies in China were quietly told to start planning to move their supply chains out of China in the medium to long run; and the Chinese were told the US would not stop its proceedings against Huawei; moreover, it would escalate its pressure on US allies to sever 5G investment plans with Huawei as well. And that was not all. As the China delegation made final plans to come to Washington, the US team signaled publicly that the US would retain tariffs even if there were a deal. The excuse was the US needed to retain tariffs as a threat if China didn’t fully implement its concessions to the US. And then there was the especially insulting demand by the US: China would have to share even its independent technology development in 5G, cyber, and AI with the US as part of a deal.

The China delegation came over anyway, but obviously no deal was concluded. Perhaps it was to verify whether Trump really agreed with these onerous terms thrown up at the last minute by the Lighthizer-Bolton neocons. They left empty-handed. Apparently it was true.

How Trump and the US Now Negotiates

The Trump approach was predictable. This is how he did business before becoming President. And it is how he now runs the US government: Make public declarations about what a great person his negotiating partner is. Make public statements how a trade deal is imminent. Then at the last minute throw up unacceptable demands, threats, and intimidating statements. Allow negotiations to break off. When the other side does so, blame them for failing to make a deal. Then wait and see if the other side makes concessions and signals it wants to return to the bargaining table. When they do, privately or publicly, return to negotiations with more demands for concessions. If necessary, play this same game over again.

China and Xi were burned once by these maneuvers back in May 2018. Now they met again at the recent G20 in Japan and the negotiations will once again resume. Trump adviser Larry Kudlow has noted ‘phone calls’ are occurring back and forth between the US and China negotiating teams. But there’s no indication of any meetings in the works between Trump and Xi. Nor will there likely be soon. It is not likely the Chinese will be burned again. In fact, they have publicly declared no deal unless Trump at minimum withdraws his May 2019 trade team threat to retain tariffs whether a deal is reached or not. That’s likely a ‘non-starter’ until Trump takes it off the table. Positions may be hardening, not softening.

In the interim, as during the days following Buenos Aires, following the most recent Osaka G20, Trump is again repeating platitudes and praise for Xi. He’s publicly announced that China has made great concessions to buy record levels of US farm goods. But China had conceded that and put it on the bargaining table almost a year ago! It had promised to buy $1 trillion more in US goods over the next five years. So Trump’s just repeating what has already been agreed to some time ago. Nevertheless, for Trump ‘spin is in’ once again post-Osaka.

That should hold US business and farm criticisms at bay for several more months—along with the $20 billion more in farm subsidies announced by Trump—likely paid for by cuts to US food stamps, housing subsidies, education funding, etc. Should another, third round of farm subsidies follow in 2020 if no trade deal is concluded, total direct Trump farm subsidies will exceed $50 billion.

What’s Next: More Déjà vu? Or a Deal?

It should be clear that as of July 2019 there’s no imminent China-US trade deal. Trump is just buying time. No additional tariffs—i.e. $325 billion on remaining China imports—will likely be imposed in the interim. A hiatus has occurred at least for the remainder of 2019. US business pressure and growing criticism of Trump’s trade policy, and growing farm sector discontent, will prevent Trump from raising more tariffs—at least for now.

But US pressure to drive China tech companies out of the US economy and, if possible, from the economies of US allies in Europe and elsewhere, will no doubt continue. So too will continue US pressure to isolate China company and University researchers in the US and force them to leave. And longer term, the US will continue to press US corporations to relocate their supply chains from China to elsewhere in Asia (Vietnam? South Korea?) or even Mexico.

Trade Deal in 2019?

When will a China-US trade deal then be concluded? Not likely this year. Trump probably now wants to wait until closer to the 2020 election. And the neocons still have his ear and are still driving US trade policy (indeed, US foreign policy on a number of fronts as well). And they don’t want a deal…ever! Unless of course China agrees to capitulate on the central issue of nextgeneration technology development.

For the remainder of 2019, US policy will be to squeeze China tech corporations, to make operations so uncomfortable for them they will have to leave the US, as well as US allied economies. Trump will continue to collect tariffs from China imports, which he sees as a plus, while increasing his public threats that China not to allow its currency, the Yuan-Reminbi, to devalue which would negate the hikes in US tariffs. Meanwhile, domestically Trump policy ‘spin’ will try to publicly make it appear (to Trump’s farm base and US business in general) that the US and China are working in good faith toward an agreement.

Longer term, into 2020, if the US neocons retain control of negotiations and Trump’s ear, they will continue to insist the US retain tariffs, insist on China capitulating on the tech issue, and continue to go after China tech companies in the US and worldwide. That means there will be no agreement even in 2020.

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The above text  is an excerpt of a longer article recently published by in the World Financial Review. (For the full article, go to my website here.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was anointed by Israel to serve its interests.

Installed by a rigged election with no legitimacy, his term expired in 2009 but it didn’t matter. 

Israeli hardliners kept him in power where he remains as long as staying submissive to their will, meaningless rhetoric not an issue.

For over 14 years, he served as Jewish state enforcer in the Occupied Territories, betraying the Palestinian people. More convenient stooge than statesman, he’s Israel’s puppet.

He long ago abandoned Palestine’s liberating struggle, collaborating with the enemy for benefits afforded him and his family.

Betrayal pays well. Middle East expert As’ad AbuKhalil earlier estimated his super-wealth, saying he amassed around $1 million monthly, largely from stolen Palestinian money and other embezzled funds, adding:

His wealth is stashed abroad in Jordanian and other accounts — “not under any national or international scrutiny.”

Unnamed PA sources earlier said he has extensive property holdings. His sons Tarek and Yasser also profited hugely from PA projects.

A former Abbas aide called him the “sultan of Ramallah,” describing him as thin-skinned and vengeful, tolerating no opposition.

He’s in power unchallenged because Israel and the US wants him heading the PA, largely serving their interests by enforcing harshness on the Palestinian people.

Since Hamas was elected Palestine’s legitimate ruling authority in January 2006, Abbas collaborated with Israel against its leadership, part of the Jewish state’s divide and conquer strategy.

In 1993, he was part of the Palestinian team in Oslo, negotiating the Versailles accord, his signature on the capitulation.

The late Edward Said minced no words calling it unilateral surrender, Palestinians getting nothing in return but hollow Israeli promises, abandoned before the ink was dry.

Throughout Abbas’ tenure as puppet president, Israel expanded settlements on stolen Palestinian land unobstructed by him or his cronies, handsomely bribed to capitulate to their interests.

Collaborating with the enemy is treason, how Abbas operated since Oslo and throughout his time as PA head.

He hasn’t gone along with what he knows about Trump’s no-peace/peace plan “deal of the century” for good reason.

A third intifada might erupt if he capitulated to what no responsible leadership should touch, possibly making him a marked man by Palestinians for elimination, maybe killed for betrayal.

Time and again in response to unacceptable Israeli actions against long-suffering Palestinians, Abbas threatened to suspend cooperation with the Jewish state, never following through with commitment, his rhetoric amounting to hollow deception.

His latest threat came in response to Israel’s unlawful demolition of 70 Wadi al-Hummus homes in Sur Baher township, a Palestinian neighborhood on the southeastern outskirts of East Jerusalem.

Israel claimed they were too close to its separation wall, what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled illegal in 2004 — a land theft scheme unrelated to security issues.

Israel wants the entire city Judaized for exclusive Jewish development and use, Palestinians ethnically cleansed from land they legally own.

Most Sur Baher Palestinian structures destroyed were in West Bank Areas A and B, under Palestinian jurisdiction, according to Oslo.

It didn’t matter and never does. Nothing stands in the way of Israeli pursuit of its agenda at the expense of fundamental Palestinian rights and the rule of law.

Abbas’ latest “suspension” threat takes effect on July 26, saying

“(w)e will not succumb to the dictates and the imposing of a fait accompli on the ground with brute force, specifically in Jerusalem. All that the (Israeli) occupation state is doing is illegal,” adding:

“Our hands have been and are still extended to a just, comprehensive and lasting peace. But this does not mean that we accept the status quo or surrender to the measures of the occupation.”

“We will not surrender and we will not coexist with the occupation, nor will we accept the ‘deal of the century.’ ”

“Palestine and Jerusalem are not for sale or bargain. They are not a real estate deal in a real estate company…no matter how much time it takes, the repugnant occupation is going to be defeated and our future state will be independent.”

In 2017, the PA suspended diplomatic relations with the US over Trump’s one-sided support for Israel, including his no-peace “deal of the century” peace plan — a symbolic gesture, achieving nothing positive for the Palestinian people.

Abbas and his cronies capitulated to occupation harshness for over 25 years ago, permitting hundreds of thousands of settlers to control Palestinian land illegally — Israel ignoring Fourth Geneva’s Article 49, the PA leadership doing nothing to contest its unlawful actions.

The Fourth Geneva provision prohibits “(i)ndividuals or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not…regardless of their motive.”

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

It’s what Israel has done since 1967 — unobstructed by the world community and UN authorities — nor by PA leadership since Oslo (1993) and follow-up agreements.

Ignoring his longstanding collaboration with Israel against Hamas, undermining Palestinian unity against repressive occupation, land theft, and other Jewish state high crimes against long-suffering Palestinians, including three Israeli wars of aggression against Gaza since December 2008, Abbas falsely said:

“My hand is extended (to Hamas) for reconciliation, and it is time to get more serious.”

Political analyst Dawoud Yousef downplayed Abbas’ threatened suspension of ties to Israel, saying:

“(T)he PA is completely powerless to make these kind of dictates. They exist because the occupation allows it,” adding:

“From the Oslo Accords onwards, the PA has been designed and structured to be dependent on cooperation with Israel.”

It’s a powerless, Israeli created body to serve its interests. Earlier PA threats to cut cooperation with Israel were “never complete and only meant the ending of high level communications, not day to day interactions between security forces,” Yousef explained, adding:

“(T)hese threats demonstrate to an acute degree the complete emptiness of the PA’s diplomatic strategy within the current Post-Oslo paradigm.”

“The asymmetry of power wasn’t offset by the PA’s establishment. It was officially entrenched. (Its threats are) as if the prisoner says that he no longer recognizes his cell.”

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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.

Yesterday, July 25, Cuba demanded that the U.S. government cease its manipulation of alleged health problems reported by its diplomatic staff in Havana, as a pretext to impose aggressive measures to harm our country, economy, and people.

In statements to the press, Johana Tablada, the Foreign Ministry’s director for the United States, described a new study from the University of Pennsylvania, published in the American Medical Association Journal, which compared images of the brains of U.S. diplomatic personnel who reported health problems during their stays on the island, with those of a control group, and concluded that differences between the two exist.

Tablada recalled that in March of 2018, in the same journal, an article was published that described the clinical condition of the diplomats, yet, on this occasion, following the publication of the new article, the corporate media has immediately responded with full coverage.

“Two years later, after much speculation and little information or cooperation, not a single reason has appeared to justify the closing of consular services, the expulsion of Cuban diplomats in Washington, deceptive travel warnings, and all the unjust measures adopted by the U.S. using the pretext that its functionaries may face some kind of danger in Cuba.”

She noted that these measures have had a significant human cost to our population, now obliged to travel to third countries to seek U.S. visas to visit relatives, or participate in professional events, with no guarantee that they will actually be granted – despite the fact that specialized agencies in the U.S. and Cuba, such as the FBI and the Directorate of Criminal and Criminal Investigation, agree that there is no evidence of any kind of attack on diplomats in Havana.

Tablada denounced U.S. National Security advisor John Bolton and the State Department, which in their public documents have maintained the irresponsible use of the term “attacks”, which deliberately “implies malicious intentions and has never been substantiated.”

She stressed that Cuba is a safe country for diplomats from the U.S. or any other country, and for the millions of travelers from the entire world who visit Cuba every year, and reiterated the Cuban government’s desire to develop a respectful dialogue and cooperate on this and other issues for the benefit of both peoples.

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Featured image is from Juvenal Balán

The Western Mainstream Media is going into overdrive spreading the rumor that China is supposedly planning to set up naval and air bases in southern Cambodia, but the fact of the matter is that China might only have signed logistical agreements for using those facilities and that the entire dispute therefore boils down to an argument over semantics.

Provocative Claims Of A Chinese-Cambodian Military Conspiracy

All of Southeast Asia is abuzz with the Wall Street Journal’s recent report supposedly confirming last year’s rumor that China is planning to set up naval and air bases in southern Cambodia, which has provoked a global controversy about the expanding military capabilities of the People’s Republic. The Western Mainstream Media outlet alleges that Beijing already clinched a deal to use the Ream naval base, which is also interestingly the same facility that Cambodia recently declined to receive American funds for repairing in what was most likely a response to the US’ backing of a failed Color Revolution attempt against long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen nearly two years ago. In addition, the Wall Street Journal added that a nearby airport  (which will be the country’s largest upon completion) being constructed by a state-run Chinese company might be used by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), which would expand Beijing’s military reach as far as Singapore and the strategic Strait of Malacca through which a significant share of its trade traverses.

Sensitive Semantics

Cambodia denied that anything of the sort is in the cards, reiterating that the hosting of foreign military forces would violate its constitution and even bringing foreign journalists to the Ream naval base so that they can see with their own eyes that it isn’t controlled by China. The West isn’t buying it, though, since commentators have pointed to a particular part of China’s newly released military white paper to justify their suspicions that there’s more going on behind the scenes than it seems. The policy-defining passage in question reads as follows: “To address deficiencies in overseas operations and support, it builds far seas forces, develops overseas logistical facilities, and enhances capabilities in accomplishing diversified military tasks.” According to the Western and Indian interpretations (which are almost always more or less the same when it comes to the so-called “China threat”), this means that China can be expected to commence a massive worldwide naval expansion under the cover of so-called “overseas logistical facilities” like its first-ever base in Djibouti is officially called.

Therein could lie the core of the problem, however, and it’s that the Mainstream Media might have overreached in equating China’s plans to construct more “overseas logistical facilities” with its supposed intend to build more “military bases” such as the ones that they believe will eventually be opened in Cambodia. It should be said at this critical juncture of the analysis that the US’ 2016 “Logistics Exchange Memorandum Of Agreement” (LEMOA) enables the American Armed Forces to use certain Indian military facilities on a case-by-case “logistical” basis, just as the possible one that India might soon sign with Russia could do as well, though the Mainstream Media (both Western and Indian) regularly refutes the characterization of LEMOA as enabling the establishment of US military bases in India. It doesn’t matter that the deal’s provisions essentially amount to the same thing, albeit only in certain locations and on a temporary “logistical” pretext, since the issue is so polarizing even in modern-day pro-American India that neither side wants to recognize it as such.

Making Sense Of The Aformentioned Insight

The same sensitive state of military-strategic affairs might actually in play with Chinese-Cambodian relations as well, since any prospective logistics deal between the two country wouldn’t technically amount to the opening of Chinese military bases per se (which would be in violation of the Cambodian Constitution) even if it would still give the Chinese Armed Forces de-facto access to the reported naval and air facilities on a similar case-by-case “logistical” basis. There’s nothing unusual about any military clinching such agreements in the first place, but hypocritically employing double standards to describe China’s speculative deal as opening “military bases” in Cambodia while refusing to do the same when it comes to the US’ own in India reveals a clear political agenda behind these reports, one that deserves to be elaborated on more thoroughly in order to better understand the strategic drivers behind this latest infowar salvo and the ultimate outcome that this perception management operation aims to achieve.

The Infowar Impetus To “Containing” China

The US is presently in the process of assembling a broad coalition of countries to “contain” China under the euphemistic umbrella of the “Indo-Pacific“, whose main component is the “Quad” of itself, Japan, India, and Australia. Hyping up the threat perception of China and misportraying its possible logistics deal with Cambodia as an aggressive move instead of the defensive one that it would be in practice is designed to add an urgent impetus to its plans to form the aforesaid coalition. The innuendo is that the next Chinese logistical facilities might eventually open up in Pakistan and the South Pacific, thereby supposedly impacting India and Australia’s security respectively and therefore giving them a reason to preempt this scenario by more closely integrating their military capabilities with the US and Japan in order to achieve the highest degree of multilateral interoperability with one another. On top of that, the Wall Street Journal’s claim that the PLAAF could hit targets as far away as Singapore from its “base” in Cambodia is intended to bring that country and Indonesia into the nascent coalition, too.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s unclear at this moment whether or not any logistics agreement was or ever will be signed between China and Cambodia, but what’s self-evident is that such a scenario is already being weaponized by the West through infowar tactics in order to spread the theory of the so-called “China threat” and consequently accelerate the creation of a multinational coalition to “contain” it. Although China’s speculative logistics agreement with Cambodia would probably be functionally identical to the one that the US already has with India, the key difference would be that Beijing’s use of this arrangement would be for strictly defensive purposes since it would be economically suicidal for it to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Malacca and South China Sea whereas Washington’s employment of the same would be for aggressive purposes intended to embolden the rogue state of India‘s regional aggression. As such, the Mainstream Media’s “argument over semantics” with Cambodia reveals that they’ve discredited themselves for self-serving political reasons, which isn’t anything new in principle.

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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.

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government, 1768.

Brief: The use of propaganda and censorship is more frequently associated with totalitarian, corrupt and/or despotic regimes, not modern democracies in the West. Yet the history of how western governments and their ever vigilant overlords in the media, financial and business spheres have controlled the political narrative of the time via these means is a long, storied and ruinous one, going back well before 1914. Along with serving the contemporaneous political objectives of its perpetrators as contrived, such activities often continue to inform our understanding, and cement our interpretation, of history. If as the saying goes, “history repeats itself”, we need look no further as to the main reason why. In this wide ranging ‘safari’ into the disinformation, myth-making, fake news wilderness—The Big Shill—Greg Maybury concludes that “It’s the narrative, stupid!” 

Controlling the Proles

The following yarn may be apocryphal, but either way the ‘moral of the fable’ should serve our narrative well. The story goes like this: sometime during the height of the Cold War a group of American journalists were hosting a visit to the U.S. of some of their Soviet counterparts. After allowing their visitors to soak up the media zeitgeist stateside, most of the Americans expected their guests to express unbridled envy at the professional liberties they enjoyed in the Land of the Free Press.

One of the Russian scribes was indeed compelled to express his unabashed ‘admiration’ to his hosts…in particular, for the “far superior quality” of American“propaganda“. Now it’s fair to say his hosts were taken aback by what was at best a backhanded compliment. After some collegial ‘piss-taking’ about the stereotypes associated with Western “press freedom” versus those of the controlled media in the Soviet system, one of the Americans called on their Russian colleague to explain what he meant. In fractured English, he replied with the following:

‘It’s very simple. In Soviet Union, we don’t believe our propaganda. In America, you actually believe yours!’

As amusing as this anecdote is, the reality of the Russian journo’s jibe doesn’t simply remain true now; that ‘belief’ has become even more delusional, farcical, and above all, dangerous. One suspects that Russian journos today would think much the same. Andin few cases has the “delusional”, “farcical”, and “dangerous” nature of this belief been more evident than with the West’s continued provocations of Russia, with “Skripalgate” in Old Blighty (see here, and here), and “Russia-Gate” stateside (see here, and here) being prime, though far from the only, exemplars we might point to.

Of course just recently we were all subjected to the ludicrous dog n’ pony show that was the much touted London “media freedom” conference, organised under the auspices of the so-called Media Freedom Coalition (MFC), a UK/Canadian ‘initiative’. As the name suggested, this was the establishment’s lip-service effort to be seen to be supporting or ‘defending’ media freedom, and initiating strategies and frameworks for the ‘protection’ of journalists. For my part I can’t recall another recent event that so perfectly embraced the Orwellian playbook, absent any hint of irony or embarrassment from the parties involved.

To illustrate, after noting that ‘the world is becoming a more hostile place’for journalists, the MFC website then righteously intones: …‘[they face dangers beyond warzones and extremism, including increasing intolerance to independent reporting, populism, rampant corruption, crime, and the breakdown of law and order….’. The cynic might be tempted to add: ‘And that’s just in our Western democracies!’

And who can forget the fatuous “integrity initiative” that preceded it, whose lofty ambitions aimed to ‘defend democracy against disinformation’? This is elite code for limiting free speech, already happening at a rate of knots, with the powers that be ‘setting up new perimeters’ online and offline. The prevailing efforts by a range of people to make it a crime to criticise Israel or boycott the country is arguably the most insidious, egregious example. As well, the attempts by the MSM to designate genuine, independent analysis by alternative media as “fake news” is another one.

Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today—afforded increasingly by ‘computational propaganda’ via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths—it’s become one of the most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution. (See also here, and here.)

Notably, the MFC conference came and went after organisers saw fit to exclude legitimate Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik, an ideological ‘fashion statement’ thoroughly at odds with the purported premise upon which it was instigated. Moreover, there was little mention of the ‘elephant in the room’ Julian Assange—the person who embodies foremost the disconnect between the practice and the preaching of Western media freedom, to say little of underscoring the irony, self-serving opportunism, and double standards that frequently attend any mainstream debate about what it actually means.

Put bluntly, “media freedom” in the West is increasingly ‘more honoured in the breach than in the observance’, with the London confab all about keeping up appearances to the contrary, an event we might say was conceived of by soulless, demented, establishment shills, ‘…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. The surreal spectacle though must have induced cognitive dissonance amongst pundits, and many head-shaking moments for Assange supporters and genuine truth-seekers alike.

As for Wikileaks and Assange himself, it’s worth noting the attitude of the national security state toward him. After accusing Assange of being a “narcissist”, “fraud”, and “a coward”, and labelling WikiLeaks a“hostile intelligence service”, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared he [Assange] was ‘eager to do the bidding of Russia and other American adversaries.’ Either way, his comments can be taken as more or less representative of Beltway opinion. Along with noting that official Washington’s hatred of Assange ‘borders on rabid’, Ted Carpenter offered the following:

‘[Assange] symbolizes a crucial fight over freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to expose government misconduct without fear of prosecution. Unfortunately, a disturbing number of “establishment” journalists in the United States seem willing—indeed, eager—to throw him to the government wolves.’

Lapdogs for the Government

Here was of course another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State’s most dangerous, reviled, and divisive figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America’s most senior diplomat no less. Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, “Who can believe Mike Pompeo?”

And here’s someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much derided scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days. We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of honesty admitting—whilst laughing his ample ass off it should be noted—that under his watch as CIA Director, ‘…We lied, we cheated, we stole…it was like, we had entire training courses.’ It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn’t speak with a forked tongue.

At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist ‘end-timer’ passed all the Company’s “training courses” with flying colours. According to Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from citing Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ‘no compunction…about pointing people toward emails stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks.’

And this is of course the CIA we’re talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in two words: Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the CIA’s most enduring, insidious, and successful psy-ops gambit, will know what we’re talking about. (See here, here, here, and here.) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship.

After opining that the MSM is ‘totally infiltrated’ by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower William Binney recently added, ‘When it comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other statements about what’s going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.’ Even the redoubtable William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director back in the day was reported to have said something along the following lines: ‘We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.’

In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand, along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern meaning of the practice, my compatriot John Pilgerrecalled a time when he met Leni Riefenstahl back in 70s and asked her about her films that ‘glorified the Nazis’. Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will ‘cast Adolf Hitler’s spell’. She told Pilger the “messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above”, but on the “submissive void” of the German public.

All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone’s totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might’ve at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here, and here.) “Triumph” apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film—as casually revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes—it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist of the modern era.

In a recent piece unambiguously titled “Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems”, my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also had a few things to say about propaganda, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about “controlling the narrative”. In this of course she is correct, though I’d suggest the greater “root” problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn’t or won’t affect us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense. Yet as she cogently observes,

‘I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don’t have the time or energy to write…about every single narrative control tool that the US-centralized empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn fast, because they’re just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.’

The Discreet Use of Censorship and Uniformed Men

‘It is hardly surprising that those who hold power should seek to control the words and language people use’ said Canadian author John Ralston Saul in his 1993 book Voltaire’s Bastards–the Dictatorship of Reason in the West. Fittingly,in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ‘Determining how individuals communicate is’…anobjective which represents for the power elites ‘the best chance’[they] have to control what people think. In essence, this translates as: The more control ‘we’ have over what the proles think, the more ‘we’ can reduce the inherent risk for elites in democracy.

‘Clumsy men’, Saul went on to say,‘try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt the same thing through police-enforced censorship.

The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.’ In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ‘those who take power will always try to change the established language’, presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.

For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, ‘democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open exchange of ideas.’ Yet for the author of the recently published RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media, ‘No such infrastructure exists.’ The mainstream media he says, is ‘owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates’ that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates: 

‘The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.’

Of course the word “inability” suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian news and information environment. They don’t of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be “unwilling”, or even “refusal”. The MSM all but epitomise the “plutocratic self-regard” that is characteristic of “oligopoly capitalism”. Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting as its Praetorian bodyguard, protecting their secrets, crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth), most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to “self-regard”, and could care less about “histories, perspectives and vocabularies” that run counter to their own interests.

It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who pioneered the study of nationalism, corporatism, and more so for our purposes herein, the management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links. For Carey, the following conclusion was inescapable: ‘It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.’ This former farmer from Western Australia became one of the world’s acknowledged experts on propaganda.

Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep grazier. By most accounts, he was a first-class judge of the animal from which he made his early living, and one wonders if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area of research! In any event, Carey eventually sold the family farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition.

From the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University of New South Wales, and his research was lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger described him as “a second Orwell” in his prophesies, which in anyone’s lingo is a big call.

Carey unfortunately died in 1988, interestingly the year that his more famous contemporaries Edward Herman and Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media was published, the authors notably dedicating their book to him. Though much of his work remained unpublished at the time of his death, a book of Carey’s essays—Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty—was published posthumously in 1997. It remains a seminal work. In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey’s work.

For Carey’s part, the three “most significant developments” in the political economy of the twentieth century were:

1. a) the growth of democracy;
2. b) the growth of corporate power; and
3. c) the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against

Carey’s main focus was on the following:

1. a) advertising and publicity devoted to the creation of artificial wants;
2. b) the public relations and propaganda industry whose principal goal is the diversion to meaningless pursuits and control of the public mind; and
3. c) the degree to which academia and the professions are under assault from private power determined to narrow the spectrum of thinkable (sic) thought.

For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is ‘distinctive of totalitarian regimes’. Yet as he stresses:the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).’ “Conventional wisdom” becomes conventional ignorance, and “common sense”, not so much.

For Sharon Beder, the purpose of this propaganda barrage has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and ‘forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now largely confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.’

In the increasingly dysfunctional political economy we inhabit then, whether it’s widgets or wars or anything in between, few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and its similarly ‘evil twin’ censorship,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities that seek out their expertise.

Making the World Safe for Plutocracy

It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well. This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then president Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory largely achieved on the back of the promise he’d “keep us out of the War.” Americans were very much in what was one of their most isolationist phases, and so Wilson’s promise resonated with them.

But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities. This “appeal” also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking, and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting from the business of war.

For a president who “kept us out of the war”, this wasn’t going to be an easy ‘pitch’. In order to sell the war the president established the Committee on Public Information (aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it from the general public. Enter Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who’s generally considered to be the father of modern public relations.

In his film Rule from the Shadows: The Psychology of Power, Aaron Hawkins says Bernays was influenced by people such as Gustave le Bon, Walter Lippman, and Wilfred Trotter, as much, if not more so, than his famous uncle. Either way, Bernays ‘combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science’, which hethen ‘branded’ “public relations”.

For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their involvement in the war was justified—indeed necessary—and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan, “making the world safe for democracy”. Thus was born arguably the first great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous.The following sums up Bernays’s unabashed mindset:

‘The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.’

The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the ‘American way of life’, however that might’ve been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, itwas an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head. ‘[S]aving the world for democracy’ (or some variation) has since become America’s positioning statement, ‘patriotic’ rallying cry, and the “Get out of Jail Free” card for its war and white collar criminal clique.

At all events though it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays’s part; by appealing to the basic fears and desires of people he could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one.

That the U.S. is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its “foreign entanglements” is testament to both its utility and durability. The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony, resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing dissent and opposition.

It is instructive to note that the template for ‘manufacturing consent’ for war had already been forged by the British. For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans. To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later and the bog standard narratives of thousands of history textbooks written since that time, it was not the much touted German aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak.

And neither did the Europeans ‘sleepwalk’ into this conflagration. The stewards of the British Empire were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which Ol’ Sol never set.

The “Great War” is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its power to distort reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways. In reality, the only thing “great” about World War One was firstly the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned into believing this war was necessary, and secondly, the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for posterity via propaganda and censorship. “Great” maybe, but not in a good way!

In their seminal tomes—World War One Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War and its follow-up Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-And-A-Half Years—Macgregor and Docherty provide a masterclass for us all of the power of propaganda in the service of firstly inciting, then deliberately sustaining a major war. The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from the war was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on now well over one hundred years later.

Such was the enduring power of the propaganda that today most people would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and the school textbooks:

1. a) It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that let to the outbreak of war;
2. b) The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable;
3. c) In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off;
4. d) key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change;
5. e) very powerful forces (incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling populace in   America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary;
6. f) those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops,    treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, the dissemination of propaganda, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will shock.

But peace was not on the stewards’ agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so costly and embarrassing some key players in the British government were willing to talk about peace and discuss what that might mean. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be ditched. The unelected European leaders had one common bond. They would fight Germany until she was crushed. 

Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised the change of government without a single vote being cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the decision-makers in British politics. Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.

Propaganda Always Wins

But just as the pioneering adherents back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all encompassing the practice of propaganda would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial security, our physical environment, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.

We now live in the Age of the Big Shill—cocooned in a submissive void no less—an era where nothing can be taken on face value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where ‘open-book’ history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable, upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual—albeit dubious—freedoms.

More broadly, it’s the “Roger Ailes” of this world—acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters—who createtheintellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring…these systems require only ‘the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.’They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised, interconnected political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they ‘will always try to change the established language.’

And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with? We saw this all just after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and to all intents given a blank cheque to so do. That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.

In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception, hence the multi-billion foundation—and global reach and impact—of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs. At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.

As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the “submissive void” included the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? “Everyone,” she said.

By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: ‘Propaganda always wins…if you allow it’.

Greg Maybury is  freelance writer based in Perth, Ausltralia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military and geopolitical affairs, and both US domestic and foreign policy issues.

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The UK’s newly installed prime minister, Boris Johnson, has spared no time in appointing a set of government ministers that better reflect his new agenda – most importantly with regards to a no-holds barred approach to take Britain out of the European Union.

But while much has been written of Johnson’s Middle East connections – from his Turkish ancestry to his bungling of the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – his new team present a whole new set of baggage with regards to the region.

Middle East Eye takes a look at some of the highlights:

Priti Patel – home secretary

A longtime figurehead for the hard right of the Conservative Party – she has regularly called for the return of the death penalty – Patel was embroiled in scandal in 2017 after she went on an unauthorised trip to the occupied Golan Heights and met with numerous Israeli officials.

She held up to a dozen meetings with top Israeli officials during the August trip – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – which she later claimed had been a “private holiday”.

The scandal, branded a “serious breach of the ministerial code” by an opposition MP, led to her resignation from her role as international development secretary.

As a major backer of the Leave campaign during the UK’s 2016 EU referendum, she repeated the oft-criticised mantra that Turkey would soon be joining the EU, with the resultant migration fears that it entailed.

Sajid Javid – chancellor

The most powerful politician of Muslim background in the UK once told a meeting of the Conservative Friends of Israel that if he had to live anywhere in the Middle East it would be Israel.

“I am a proud, British-born Muslim, and I love my country more than any other place on earth,” he told the Conservative Friends of Israel annual lunch in 2012.

But when it came to the Middle East, “there is only one place I could possibly go”, he explained.

“The only nation in the Middle East that shares the same democratic values as Britain. And the only nation in the Middle East where my family would feel the warm embrace of freedom and liberty.”

He has also taken a heavy hand against Israel’s enemies. In February 2019, he added the political wing of Hezbollah to the UK’s terror list, fully proscribing the entire organisation along with its already outlawed military wing.

Despite this, he also gave a speech in 2016 espousing the possibilities for new trade deals opened up by the 2015 nuclear Iran deal.

“It’s home to a potential market of almost 80 million people – and it’s home to an almost unlimited range of opportunities for British businesses,” he said, adding that regardless how the then-future referendum on EU membership went, “our future lies beyond the usual suspects and our traditional Anglophone allies”.

Perhaps Javid’s most controversial policy decision as home secretary was his decision to prevent British Islamic State group member Shamima Begum from returning to the UK by attempting to strip her of her citizenship.

The death of Begum’s baby in al-Hol refugee camp in Syria following his decision saw Javid branded a “moral coward”.

Gavin Williamson – education secretary

Williamson, who was sacked only in May after “compelling evidence” came to light that he leaked details of a National Security Council meeting to the press, has been one of the most overtly hawkish ministers in recent history.

In 2018 he described the UK as having become “too timid” following its wars in the Middle East and praised “properly considered” military intervention.

“I think our confidence was knocked by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan… actually we became too timid in terms of saying, ‘Do we get involved?’” he told a conference hosted by the Conservative Home website and defence contractor Raytheon.

“Where Britain’s strength has always been as a nation is to have the confidence and the belief to say we’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do, it’s in our national interest to do.”

In December 2017, he signed a $6bn deal to sell 24 Typhoon jets to Qatar, and lauded the “Qatari military’s mission to tackle the challenges we both share in the Middle East, supporting stability in the region and delivering security at home”.

He was also part of a lobbying effort to secure a loophole with the German government to allow the UK government to continue selling planes for use in Yemen.

Dominic Raab – foreign secretary

Although largely seen now as one of the hardest of the hard right in the Conservative Party, Raab began his career working as an international lawyer and even spent a stint at the human rights organisation Liberty.

Also unlike most on the hard right, he has worked closely with Palestinian groups, even spending a summer in 1998 working at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, working with a Palestinian peace talks negotiator.

Nevertheless, he has largely been supportive of Israel, writing articles condemning UN recognition of a Palestinian state, despite criticising Benjamin Netanyahu’s “right-wing, Likud-led” administration.

In a 2010 blog post he also attempted to reason why Israeli forces attacked the Mavi Marmara ship attempting to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, an incident in which 10 pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

With regards to Saudi Arabia, Raab urged the UK not to allow the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October to undermine the UK’s relationship with Riyadh.

Although he said the killing was a “terrible case” and that the initial explanations given by the Saudis were “not credible”, he said that ultimately the relationship needed preservation.

“We are not throwing our hands in the air and terminating the relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just because of the huge number of British jobs that depend on it but also because if you exert influence over your partners you need to be able to talk to them,” he told the BBC.

Ben Wallace – defence secretary

One of the few high profile pro-Remain ministers in the new government, Wallace has conceded himself that he has been “accused by some of being too pro-Iran”.

Wallace chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Iran and has been one of the most frequent parliamentarians to visit Iran.

In 2011, at the height of US sanctions on Iran, he warned during a meeting of the group that sanctions “do not work” and said that “Iran should be one of our natural partners in the region and that we should be seeking to ensure that Iran becomes a firm friend.”

During a 2014 debate in the House of Commons, he sought to explain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Iran has had nuclear ambitions, whether civil or military, for decades. They have been part of its psyche,” he said.

“It lives in a rough neighbourhood; it has rivalries that we can, perhaps, only understand as having similar aspects to those in the cold war and with the Soviet Union; and it is surrounded by ethnically and religiously different economic and military rivals. That has often driven some of its insecurities.”

Unlike his colleague Sajid Javid, he was also cool on the proposal of fully proscribing Hezbollah, saying in 2018, while secretary of state for the Home Department, that the “military and political activities of Hezbollah are distinct”.

Theresa Villiers – environment secretary

Apart from being a vice-chair of Conservative Friends of Israel, Villiers has also been a vocal supporter of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), an Albania-based Iranian opposition group which has been accused of being a “cult” by many critics.

She spoke at an event hosted by the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), a known MEK front group, in August and praised the organisation, saying she hoped its leader Maryam Rajavi would be able to one day “put into effect her 10-point plan”.

“I am so grateful to be able to address this gathering for the second year in the row to support the cause for a free and democratic future for Iran,” she told the gathering.

“They are prepared to stand up for their rights and equality and dignity, even if this could lead to harassment and risk of reprisal from a brutal regime.”

She is also set to attend a rally in London on 27 July by the MEK alongside a number of other British MPs.

Michael Gove – chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster

Despite the archaic title of his new role in the Johnson cabinet, Gove still maintains a high profile in the Conservative Party and his self-description as a “neo-conservative” heavily informs his views on the Middle East.

In December 2008 he described the invasion of Iraq as a “proper British foreign policy success” and shouted “disgrace” at British MPs whose votes defeated government plans to bomb Syria in 2013 in the wake of the chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta. He has also described himself as a “proud Zionist” and described Islamism as a “totalitarian ideology”.

In 2015 he did, however, take the unusual step of scrapping a £5.9m deal to provide development programmes in the Saudi prison system after concerns were raised about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

Like many of his associates in the Leave campaign for the EU referendum, he also warned about the prospect of Turkey joining the union, describing it as a “security risk” in 2016. He later claimed his campaign had been “wrong” to stoke such fears.

He has also criticised Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing him of putting democracy “into reverse” and said the EU should be “protesting in the clearest and loudest possible manner at this erosion of fundamental democratic freedoms”.

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All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly announcing he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it “off the face of the earth” in one week. But he’d rather not, so he doesn’t have to kill 10 million people.

Apart from the fact that not even a nuclear strike would subdue the legendary fighting spirit of Afghan Pashtuns, the same warped logic – ordering a nuclear first strike as one orders a cheeseburger – could apply to Iran instead of Afghanistan.

Trump once again flip-flopped by declaring that the prospect of a potential war in the Persian Gulf “could go either way, and I’m OK either way it goes,” much to the delight of Beltway-related psychopaths who peddle the notion that Iran is begging to be bombed.

No wonder the whole Global South – not to mention the Russia-China strategic partnership – simply cannot trust anything coming from Trump’s mouth or tweets, a non-stop firefight deployed as intimidation tactics.

At least Trump’s impotence facing such a determined adversary as Iran is now clear: “It’s getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran.” What remains are empty clichés, such as Iran “behaving very badly” and “the number one state of terror in the world” – the marching order mantra emanating from Tel Aviv.

Even the – illegal – all-out economic war and total blockade against Tehran seems not to be enough. Trump has announced extra sanctions on China because Beijing is “accepting crude oil” from Iran. Chinese companies will simply ignore them.

Okay With ‘OK Either Way’

“OK either way” is exactly the kind of response expected by the leadership in Tehran. Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran confirmed to me that Tehran did not offer Trump a “renegotiation” of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, in exchange for the end of sanctions: “It’s not a renegotiation. Iran offered to move forward ratification of additional protocols if Congress removes all sanctions. That would be a big win for Iran. But the US will never accept it.”

Marandi also confirmed “there is nothing big going on” between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and tentative Trump administration negotiator Sen. Rand Paul: “Bolton and Pompeo remain in charge.”

The crucial fact is that Tehran rejects a new negotiation with the White House “under any circumstances,” as expressed by Hossein Dehghan, the top military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Dehghan once again made it very clear that in case of any sort of military adventure, every single base of the U.S. Empire of Bases across Southwest Asia will be targeted.

This neatly ties in with Iran’s by now consolidated new rules of engagement, duly detailed by correspondent Elijah Magnier. We are well into “an-eye-for-an-eye” territory.

And that brings us to the alarming expansion of the sanctions dementia, represented by two Iranian ships loaded with corn stranded off the coast of southern Brazil because energy giant Petrobras, afraid of U.S. sanctions, refuses to refuel them.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a fervent Trump groupie, has turned the country into a tropical U.S. neo-colony in less than seven months. On U.S. sanctions, Bolsonaro said, “We are aligned to their policies. So we do what we have to.” Tehran for its part has threatened to cut its imports of corn, soybeans and meat from Brazil – $2 billion worth of trade a year – unless the refueling is allowed.

This is an extremely serious development. Food is not supposed to be — illegally — sanctioned by the Trump administration. Iran now has to use mostly barter to obtain food — as Tehran cannot remit through the CHIPS-SWIFT banking clearinghouse. If food supplies are also blocked that means that sooner rather than later the Strait of Hormuz may be blocked as well.

Beltway sources confirmed that the highest level of the U.S. government gave the order for Brasilia to stop this food shipment.

Tehran knows it well – as this is part of the “maximum pressure” campaign, whose goal is ultimately to starve the Iranian population to death in a harrowing game of chicken.

Chokepoint: The Strait of Hormuz. (Flickr)

How this may end is described by an ominous quote I already used in some of my previous columns, from a Goldman Sachs derivatives specialist: “If the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the price of oil will rise to a thousand dollars a barrel representing over 45 percent of global GDP, crashing the $2.5 quadrillion derivatives market and creating a world depression of unprecedented proportions.”

At least the Pentagon seems to understand that a war on Iran will collapse the world economy.

And Now for Something Completely Different

But then, last but not least, there’s the tanker war.

Dutch analyst Maarten van Mourik has noted significant discrepancies involving the UK piracy episode in Gibraltar – the origin of the tanker war. The Grace 1 tanker “was pirated by the Royal Marines in international waters. Gibraltar Straits is an international passage, like the Strait of Hormuz. There is only 3 nautical miles of territorial water around Gibraltar, and even that is disputed.”

Mourik adds,

“The size of the Grace 1 ship is 300,000 MT of crude oil, it has a maximum draught of about 22.2 meters and the latest draught via AIS indicated that she was at 22.1 meters, or fully laden. Now, the port of Banyas in Syria, which is where the offshore oil port is, has a maximum draft of 15 meters. So, in no way could the Grace 1 go there, without first having to offload elsewhere. Probably a very large quantity to get within max draught limitations.”

That ties in with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif refusing on the record to say where Grace 1 was actually heading to, while not confirming the destination was Syria.

Zarif (r.) negotiating nuclear deal with then US Secretary of State John Kerry in July, 2015. (Wikimedia Common)

The tit-for-tat Iranian response, with the seizure of the Stena Impero navigating under the British flag, is now evolving into Britain calling for a “European-led maritime protection mission” in the Persian Gulf, purportedly to protect ships from Iranian “state piracy.”

Observers may be excused for mistaking it for a Monty Python sketch. Here we have the Ministry of Silly Seizures, which is exiting the EU, begging the EU to embark on a “mission” that is not the same mission of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign. And on top of it the mission should not undermine Britain’s commitment to keep the JCPOA in place.

As European nations never recede on a chance to flaunt their dwindling “power” across the Global South, Britain, Germany and France now seem bent on their “mission” to “observe maritime security in the Gulf,” in the words of French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. At least this won’t be a deployment of joint naval forces – as London insisted. Brussels diplomats confirmed the initial muscular request came from London, but then it was diluted: the EU, NATO and the U.S. should not be involved – at least not directly.

Now compare this with the phone call last week between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and French President Emmanuel Macron, with Tehran expressing the determination to “keep all doors open” for the JCPOA. Well, certainly not open to the Monty Python sketch.

That was duly confirmed by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said Iran will “not allow disturbance in shipping in this sensitive area,” while Iranian vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri rejected the notion of a “joint European task force” protecting international shipping: “These kinds of coalitions and the presence of foreigners in the region by itself creates insecurity.”

Iran has always been perfectly capable, historically, of protecting that Pentagonese Holy Grail – “freedom of navigation” – in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran certainly doesn’t need former colonial powers to enforce it. It’s so easy to lose the plot; the current, alarming escalation is only taking place because of the “art of the deal” obsession on imposing an illegal, total economic war on Iran.

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

This article was originally published in 2003.

U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected governments—guilty of introducing redistributive economic programs or otherwise pursuing independent courses that do not properly fit into the U.S.-sponsored global free market system—have found themselves targeted by the U.S. national security state. Thus democratic governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Syria, Uruguay, and numerous other nations were overthrown by their respective military forces, funded and advised by the United States. The newly installed military rulers then rolled back the egalitarian reforms and opened their countries all the wider to foreign corporate investors.

The U.S. national security state also has participated in destabilizing covert actions, proxy mercenary wars, or direct military attacks against revolutionary or nationalist governments in Afghanistan (in the 1980s), Angola, Cambodia, Cuba, East Timor, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Fiji Islands, Grenada, Haiti, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Iran, Jamaica, Lebanon, Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Syria, South Yemen, Venezuela (under Hugo Chavez), Western Sahara, and Iraq (under the CIA-sponsored autocratic Saddam Hussein, after he emerged as an economic nationalist and tried to cut a better deal on oil prices).

The propaganda method used to discredit many of these governments is not particularly original, indeed by now it is quite transparently predictable. Their leaders are denounced as bombastic, hostile, and psychologically flawed. They are labeled power hungry demagogues, mercurial strongmen, and the worst sort of dictators likened to Hitler himself. The countries in question are designated as “terrorist” or “rogue” states, guilty of being “anti-American” and “anti-West.” Some choice few are even condemned as members of an “evil axis.” When targeting a country and demonizing its leadership, U.S. leaders are assisted by ideologically attuned publicists, pundits, academics, and former government officials. Together they create a climate of opinion that enables Washington to do whatever is necessary to inflict serious damage upon the designated nation’s infrastructure and population, all in the name of human rights, anti-terrorism, and national security.

There is no better example of this than the tireless demonization of democratically-elected President Slobodan Milosevic and the U.S.-supported wars against Yugoslavia. Louis Sell, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, has authored a book (Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Duke University Press, 2002) that is a hit piece on Milosevic, loaded with all the usual prefabricated images and policy presumptions of the U.S. national security state. Sell’s Milosevic is a caricature, a cunning power seeker and maddened fool, who turns on trusted comrades and plays upon divisions within the party.

This Milosevic is both an “orthodox socialist” and an “opportunistic Serbian nationalist,” a demagogic power-hungry “second Tito” who simultaneously wants dictatorial power over all of Yugoslavia while eagerly pursuing polices that “destroy the state that Tito created.” The author does not demonstrate by reference to specific policies and programs that Milosevic is responsible for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, he just tells us so again and again. One would think that the Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Macedonian, and Kosovo Albanian secessionists and U.S./NATO interventionists might have had something to do with it.

In my opinion, Milosevic’s real sin was that he resisted the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and opposed a U.S. imposed hegemony. He also attempted to spare Yugoslavia the worst of the merciless privatizations and rollbacks that have afflicted other former communist countries. Yugoslavia was the only nation in Europe that did not apply for entry into the European Union or NATO or OSCE.

For some left intellectuals, the former Yugoslavia did not qualify as a socialist state because it had allowed too much penetration by private corporations and the IMF. But U.S. policymakers are notorious for not seeing the world the way purist left intellectuals do. For them Yugoslavia was socialist enough with its developed human services sector and an economy that was over 75 percent publicly owned. Sell makes it clear that Yugoslavia’s public ownership and Milosevic’s defense of that economy were a central consideration in Washington’s war against Yugoslavia. Milosevic, Sell complains, had a “commitment to orthodox socialism.” He “portrayed public ownership of the means of production and a continued emphasis on [state] commodity production as the best guarantees for prosperity.” He had to go.

To make his case against Milosevic, Sell repeatedly falls back on the usual ad hominem labeling. Thus we read that in his childhood Milosevic was “something of a prig” and of course “by nature a loner,” a weird kind of kid because he was “uninterested in sports or other physical activities,” and he “spurned childhood pranks in favor of his books.” The author quotes an anonymous former classmate who reports that Slobodan’s mother “dressed him funny and kept him soft.” Worse still, Slobodan would never join in when other boys stole from orchards—no doubt a sure sign of childhood pathology.

Sell further describes Milosevic as “moody,” “reclusive,” and given to “mulish fatalism.” But Sell’s own data—when he pauses in his negative labeling and gets down to specifics—contradicts the maladjusted “moody loner” stereotype. He acknowledges that young Slobodan worked well with other youth when it came to political activities. Far from being unable to form close relations, Slobodan met a girl, his future wife, and they enjoyed an enduring lifelong attachment. In his early career when heading the Beogradska Banka, Milosevic was reportedly “communicative, caring about people at the bank, and popular with his staff.” Other friends describe him as getting on well with people, “communal and relaxed,” a faithful husband to his wife, and a proud and devoted father to his children. And Sell allows that Milosevic was at times “confident,” “outgoing,” and “charismatic.” But the negative stereotype is so firmly established by repetitious pronouncement (and by years of propagation by Western media and officialdom) that Sell can simply slide over contradictory evidence—even when such evidence is provided by himself.

Sell refers to anonymous “U.S. psychiatrists, who have studied Milosevic closely.” By “closely” he must mean from afar, since no U.S. psychiatrist has ever treated or even interviewed Milosevic. These uncited and unnamed psychiatrists supposedly diagnosed the Yugoslav leader as a “malignant narcissistic” personality. Sell tells us that such malignant narcissism fills Milosevic with self-deception and leaves him with a “chore personality” that is a “sham.” “People with Milosevic’s type of personality frequently either cannot or will not recognize the reality of facts that diverge from their own perception of the way the world is or should be.” How does Dr. Sigmund Sell know all this? He seems to find proof in the fact that Milosevic dared to have charted a course that differed from the one emanating from Washington. Surely only personal pathology can explain such “anti-West” obstinacy. Furthermore, we are told that Milosevic suffered from a “blind spot” in that he was never comfortable with the notion of private property. If this isn’t evidence of malignant narcissism, what is? Sell never considers the possibility that he himself, and the global interventionists who think like him, cannot or will not “recognize the reality of facts that diverge from their own perception of the way the world is or should be.”

Milosevic, we are repeatedly told, fell under the growing influence of his wife, Mirjana Markovic, “the real power behind the throne.” Sell actually calls her “Lady Macbeth” on one occasion. He portrays Markovic as a complete wacko, given to uncontrollable anger; her eyes “vibrated like a scared animal”; “she suffers from severe schizophrenia” with “a tenuous grasp on reality,” and is a hopeless “hypochondriac.” In addition, she has a “mousy” appearance and a “dreamy” and “traumatized” personality. And like her husband, with whom she shares a “very abnormal relationship,” she has “an autistic relation with the world.” Worse still, she holds “hardline marxist views.” We are left to wonder how the autistic dysfunctional Markovic was able to work as a popular university professor, organize and lead a new political party, and play an active role in the popular resistance against Western interventionism.

In this book, whenever Milosevic or others in his camp are quoted as saying something, they “snarl,” “gush,” “hiss,” and “crow.” In contrast, political players who win Sell’s approval, “observe,” “state,” “note,” and “conclude.” When one of Milosevic’s superiors voices his discomfort about “noisy Kosovo Serbs” (as Sell calls them) who were demonstrating against the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of Kosovo Albanian secessionists, Milosevic “hisses,” “Why are you so afraid of the street and the people?” Some of us might think this is a pretty good question to hiss at a government leader, but Sell treats it as proof of Milosevic’s demagoguery.

Whenever Milosevic did anything that aided the common citizenry, as when he taxed the interest earned on foreign currency accounts—a policy that was unpopular with Serbian elites but appreciated by the poorer strata—he is dismissed as manipulatively currying popular favor. Thus we must accept Sell’s word that Milosevic never wanted the power to prevent hunger but only hungered for power. The author operates from a nonfalsefiable paradigm. If the targeted leader is unresponsive to the people, this is proof of his dictatorial proclivity. If he is responsive to them, this demonstrates his demagogic opportunism.

In keeping with U.S. officialdom’s view of the world, Sell labels “Milosevic and his minions” as “hardliners,” “conservatives,” and “ideologues”; they are “anti-West,” and bound up in “socialist dogma.” In contrast, Croatian, Bosnian, and Kosovo Albanian secessionists who worked hard to dismember Yugoslavia and deliver their respective republics to the tender mercies of neoliberal rollback are identified as “economic reformers,” “the liberal leadership,” and “pro-West” (read, pro-transnational corporate capitalist). Sell treats “Western-style democracy” and “a modern market economy” as necessary correlates. He has nothing to say about the dismal plight of the Eastern European countries that abandoned their deficient but endurable planned economies for the merciless exactions of laissez-faire capitalism.

Sell’s sensitivity to demagoguery does not extend to Franco Tudjman, the crypto-fascist anti-Semite Croat who had nice things to say about Hitler, and who imposed his harsh autocratic rule on the newly independent Croatia. Tudjman dismissed the Holocaust as an exaggeration, and openly hailed the Croatian Ustashe Nazi collaborators of World War II. He even employed a few aging Ustashe leaders in his government. Sell says not a word about all this, and treats Tudjman as just a good old Croatian nationalist. Likewise, he has not a critical word about the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic. He comments laconically that Izetbegovic “was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1946 for belonging to a group called the Young Muslims.” One is left with the impression that the Yugoslav communist government had suppressed a devout Muslim. What Sell leaves unmentioned is that the Young Muslims actively recruited Muslim units for the Nazi SS during World War II; these units perpetrated horrid atrocities against the resistance movement and the Jewish population in Yugoslavia. Izetbegovic got off rather lightly with a three-year sentence.

Little is made in this book of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Serbs by U.S.-supported leaders like Tudjman and Izetbegovic during and after the U.S.-sponsored wars. Conversely, no mention is made of the ethnic tolerance and diversity that existed in President Milosevic’s Yugoslavia. By 1999, all that was left of Yugoslavia was Montenegro and Serbia. Readers are never told that this rump nation was the only remaining multi-ethnic society among the various former Yugoslav republics, the only place where Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Gorani, Jews, Egyptians, Hungarians, Roma, and numerous other ethnic groups could live together with some measure of security and tolerance.

The relentless demonization of Milosevic spills over onto the Serbian people in general. In Sell’s book, the Serbs are aggrandizing nationalists. Kosovo Serbs demonstrating against mistreatment by Albanian nationalists are described as having their “bloodlust up.” And Serb workers demonstrating to defend their rights and hard won gains are dismissed by Sell as “the lowest instruments of the mob.” The Serbs who had lived in Krajina and other parts of Croatia for centuries are dismissed as colonial occupiers. In contrast, the Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian Muslim nationalist secessionists, and Kosovo Albanian irredentists are simply seeking “independence,” “self-determination,” and “cultural distinctiveness and sovereignty.” In this book, the Albanian KLA gunmen are not big-time drug dealers, terrorists, and ethnic cleansers, but guerrilla fighters and patriots.

Military actions allegedly taken by the Serbs, described in the vaguest terms, are repeatedly labeled “brutal,” while assaults and atrocities delivered upon the Serbs by other national groups are more usually accepted as retaliatory and defensive, or are dismissed by Sell as “untrue,” “highly exaggerated,” and “hyperventilated.” Milosevic, Sell says, disseminated “vicious propaganda” against the Croats, but he does not give us any specifics. Sell does provide one or two instances of how Serb villages were pillaged and their inhabitants raped and murdered by Albanian secessionists. From this he grudgingly allows that “some of the Serb charges . . . had a core of truth.” But he makes nothing more of it.

The well-timed, well-engineered story about a Serbian massacre of unarmed Albanians in the village of Racak, hyped by U.S. diplomat and veteran disinformationist William Walker, is wholeheartedly embraced by Sell, who ignores all the contrary evidence. An Associated Press TV crew had actually filmed the battle that took place in Racak the previous day in which Serbian police killed a number of KLA fighters. A French journalist who went through Racak later that day found evidence of a battle but no evidence of a massacre of unarmed civilians, nor did Walker’s own Kosovo Verification Mission monitors. All the forensic reports reveal that almost all of the forty-four persons killed had previously been using fire arms, and all had perished in combat. Sell simply ignores this evidence.

The media-hyped story of how the Serbs allegedly killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica is uncritically accepted by Sell, even though the most thorough investigations have uncovered not more than 2,000 bodies of undetermined nationality. The earlier massacres carried out by Muslims, their razing of some fifty Serbian villages around Srebrenica, as reported by two British correspondents and others, are ignored. The complete failure of Western forensic teams to locate the 250,000 or 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 bodies (the numbers kept changing) of Albanians supposedly murdered by the Serbs in Kosovo also goes unnoticed.

Sell’s rendition of what happened at Rambouillet leaves much to be desired. Under Rambouillet, Kosovo would have been turned into a NATO colony. Milosevic might have reluctantly agreed to that, so desperate was he to avoid a full-scale NATO onslaught on the rest of Yugoslavia. To be certain that war could not be avoided, however, the U.S. delegation added a remarkable stipulation, demanding that NATO forces and personnel were to have unrestrained access to all of Yugoslavia, unfettered use of its airports, rails, ports, telecommunication services, and airwaves, all free of cost and immune from any jurisdiction by Yugoslav authorities. NATO would also have the option to modify for its own use all of Yugoslavia’s infrastructure including roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems. In effect, not just Kosovo but all of Yugoslavia was to be subjected to an extraterritoriality tantamount to outright colonial occupation.

Sell does not mention these particulars. Instead he assures us that the request for NATO’s unimpeded access to Yugoslavia was just a pro forma protocol inserted “largely for legal reasons.” A similar though less sweeping agreement was part of the Dayton package, he says. Indeed, and the Dayton agreement reduced Bosnia to a Western colony. But if there was nothing wrong with the Rambouillet ultimatum, why then did Milosevic reject it? Sell ascribes Milosevic’s resistance to his perverse “bunker mentality” and his need to defy the world.

There is not a descriptive word in this book of the 78 days of around-the-clock massive NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, no mention of how it caused the loss of thousands of lives, injured and maimed thousands more, contaminated much of the land and water with depleted uranium, and destroyed much of the country’s public sector industries and infrastructure-while leaving all the private Western corporate structures perfectly intact.

The sources that Sell relies on share U.S. officialdom’s view of the Balkans struggle. Observers who offer a more independently critical perspective, such as Sean Gervassi, Diana Johnstone, Gregory Elich, Nicholas Stavrous, Michel Collon, Raju Thomas, and Michel Chossudovsky are left untouched and uncited. Important Western sources I reference in my book on Yugoslavia offer evidence, testimony, and documentation that do not fit Sell’s conclusions, including sources from within the European Union, the European Community’s Commission on Women’s Rights, the OSCE and its Kosovo Verification Mission, the UN War Crimes Commission, and various other UN commissions, various State Department reports, the German Foreign Office and German Defense Ministry reports, and the International Red Cross. Sell does not touch these sources.

Also ignored by him are the testimonies and statements of members of the U.S. Congress who visited the Balkans, a former State Department official under the Bush administration, a former deputy commander of the U.S. European command, several UN and NATO generals and international negotiators, Spanish air force pilots, forensic teams from various countries, and UN monitors who offer revelations that contradict the picture drawn by Sell and other apologists of U.S. officialdom.

In sum, Sell’s book is packed with discombobulated insider details, unsupported charges, unexamined presumptions, and ideologically loaded labeling. As mainstream disinformation goes, it is a job well done.

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Michael Parenti’s recent books are To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (Verso), and The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (City Lights). His latest work, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. © Copyright M Parenti 2003  For fair use only/ pour usage équitable seulement.

Featured image is from One Voyce of the World

Life has been difficult as a stateless person in Jerusalem for Mustafa Kharouf. He had the unfortunate case of being born to Jerusalem parents while they were in Algiers. His parents brought him back to Jerusalem but the Israelis for obvious racist reasons have refused to grant him residency in the only city he has lived in all his life. Ironically Jews around the world have a legal right not only to residency but also to citizenship in Israel simply because of what the government considers is their birthright because they belong to the Jewish faith.

Passing on permanent residency is a natural in any city in the world. But for Israel demographics trump personal right. Ever since the 2003 temporary law that allows Israel to deny family reunification to Jerusalemites married to Palestinians from the rest of the occupied territories, the lives of people like Mustafa has been hell. Even after he married and had a daughter, the Israelis have refused to grant him residency in Jerusalem where he has worked as a photographer for the Turkish Anadolu news agency. The fact that his parents, siblings and his wife all have legal permanent residency didn’t help him as Israeli officials insisted on deporting him.

Six months ago Israel arrested Mustafa in order to deport him, but since he is stateless it was hard to get a court agreement to deport him. Israeli authorities came up with various reasons to deport him including a secret security file claiming he is a security threat. As always Palestinians demand to see what is in the so-called secret file and they ask the simple question, why not try him for a crime if he is so dangerous? Is the fact that he works for a Turkish news agency a reason to accuse him of being a “security threat”, or is it that he constantly films Israeli extremists violations in Al Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem at large the real reason?

Efforts by the HaMoked human rights organisation and lawyer Adi Lustigman came to an end last week when the Israeli high court refused to listen to his case, thus paving the way for deportation. The Israeli authorities have been told that if Jordan doesn’t accept him, he should be free to continue his life with his family in Jerusalem. Adi Lustigman described the deportation attempt against a person who has lived all his life in Jerusalem as being “illegal and immoral”.

The deportation process began 9pm Sunday night. Mustafa was taken from the special pre-deportation facility at Ramleh prison to the King Hussein Bridge. For over three hours Israeli officials tried to convince their Jordanian counterparts to take him since he has a temporary Jordanian passport although he is not a citizen of Jordan, but Jordanians refused. Colonel Rafat Matarneh told me that no one will enter Jordan without proper documents.

That should have ended what the Israeli officials bent on deporting him already knew from the courts and from previous Jordanian positions. After being rebuffed at the King Hussein Bridge, Israeli forces took Mustafa for a four-hour journey to the Wadi Araba Crossing. He arrived at the wee hours and was literally dumped at the Jordanian crossing that only opens at 8am.

Jordanians at the Wadi Araba, just like the officials at King Hussein Bridge, went through the legal proceedings again and sent him back since his documents were not valid for entering Jordan.

Israel is obliged now according to the legal proceedings to let him go, but instead Mustafa has been rearrested. It is not clear what new crime or accusation will now be used to keep him away from his family, his wife and his two-year-old child.

Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East. This might be the case for Jews (especially those of the European origin). But for Palestinians and others, it is difficult after following the case and suffering of Mustafa Kharouf to really think that Israel is a democracy for all those under its control.

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Last Tuesday (July 16), the New York Times devoted most of the front page of its science section to Bill Broad’s latest attack on those who challenge the dogma that wireless radiation is absolutely safe.

“The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t” is the catchy headline of the Web version of his article. It is followed by “How one scientist and his inaccurate chart led to unwarranted fears of wireless technology.”

Broad focuses on two letters[1] written about 20 years ago by Bill Curry, a consulting physicist, who openly disapproved of putting Wi-Fi in classrooms. Here’s the nub of Broad’s argument:

“Over the years, Dr. Curry’s warning spread far, resonating with educators, consumers and entire cities as the frequencies of cellphones, cell towers and wireless local networks rose. To no small degree, the blossoming anxiety over the professed health risks of 5G technology can be traced to a single scientist and a single chart.” [emphasis added]

Curry’s chart above —which shows the proportion of electromagnetic radiation absorbed by brain tissue (“grey matter”) as a function of frequency— is prominently displayed in Broad’s article on the Times website, though not in the print edition, where the headline was “Don’t Fear the Frequency.”

Broad then springs a gotcha: “Except that Dr. Curry and his graph got it wrong.” In fact, it’s Broad who gets it wrong. Curry’s graph is correct.

“I think Curry’s graph is right, though the issue is more complicated than can be shown in one diagram,” said Frank Barnes, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Colorado in Boulder and a long-time member of the National Academy of Engineering. “It’s not very far from what Camelia Gabriel has shown,” he added, referring to the former researcher at King’s College, London, whose measurements of the electrical properties of biological tissues are considered the gold standard in the field. Barnes said that he had never seen Curry’s graph before.

Indeed, the graph has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal and has rarely surfaced anywhere. Broad offers three examples of where it has appeared: Two are in testimony by David Carpenter, a public health physician, filed in 2011 and 2012 by the same law firm. The third is in a briefing package in which one of Curry’s letters is reprinted among dozens of items on cell towers. His letter runs five pages out of more than two hundred in the collection.

When asked about the graph, Carpenter had no recollection of it, or of Curry. Indeed, no one interviewed for this story had ever seen Curry’s graph until Broad resurrected it for the Times. Only one had heard of Curry.

Does this sound like a graph that launched a thousand protests and caused “blossoming anxiety”?

Fast and Loose with the Facts

Broad does not play fair with two central issues.

First, he conflates the frequencies used in 5G wireless communications. For the foreseeable future, 5G networks will mostly use the 1-6 GHz band, frequencies similar to those used in 4G and previous generations of cell phones. Higher frequencies (above 24 GHz), called millimeter (mm) waves, will only come into play much later. There is a crucial biophysical difference between the two bands: radiation at the lower frequencies penetrates into the body, while the radiation at the higher frequencies is mostly absorbed by the skin.[2] Broad mixes up the two.

Broad quotes Christopher Collins, an NYU professor of radiology, as saying, “It doesn’t penetrate” beyond the skin. I asked Collins by e-mail what the “It” referred to. This is part of his reply: “When I read the article my first concern was that my saying ‘It doesn’t penetrate’ might be misunderstood without more context on the frequency.” Collins explained that he was talking about mm waves —not the lower 5G frequencies. Those, he agreed, do penetrate into the brain.

Collins, whose research deals with the electrical properties of biological tissues, is well acquainted with Gabriel’s work. He too said that he had never seen Curry’s graph before the Times brought it to his attention.

Broad’s second trick is to use sleight of hand to make it seem as if Curry is ignoring the shielding provided by outer layers of tissue. He suggests that Curry’s graph is of radiation in the brain when a phone is held next to the head, with skin and skull in between. Not so. Curry’s graph describes the dissipation of microwave energy in the brain, not the path the radiation took to get there. It is clearly labeled as “Microwave Absorption in Brain Tissue.” There’s nothing more.

Broad’s legend to the Curry graph is also blatantly deceptive.

“A 2000 graph by physicist Bill P. Curry purported to show that tissue damage increases with the rising frequency of radio waves. But it failed to account for the shielding effect of human skin.”

Once again, not so. The graph says nothing about radiation damage in the brain, though, of course, that is an obvious concern. The graph is simply a set of biophysical data points taken from a report by Gabriel for the U.S. Air Force in 1996.

The reference to “shielding effect of human skin” is out of context. Here again, Broad is mixing up the frequencies. Curry was only concerned with the lower microwave band (2.5 GHz) not what happens with mm waves. Remember, he mapped out the graph back in 2000, when 3G had only just been introduced and many were still using 2G. In this part of the spectrum, radiation does indeed reach well into the brain.

A comment posted on the Times website by “Bruce” in San Jose illustrates the confusion over skin penetration engendered by Broad’s story. It’s in response to other readers who were pointing out that RF radiation may be linked to cancer in a number of different internal organs —implying that cell phone radiation does pass through the skin. Bruce replied:

“Wow. None of that jives [sic] with the very most basic thing pointed out in this article, that skin does not allow the propagation [of] EM waves at these frequencies through it. Now, if you were talking skin cancer or some such, that would be more believable.”

David Carpenter in the Crosshairs

Curry is not Broad’s real target. Rather, it is David Carpenter who years ago cited the graph in two obscure documents. He is the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the School of Public Health in Albany, NY. Carpenter is the most respected and best credentialed advocate for a precautionary approach to all types of non-ionizing radiation —from power lines to cell phones— in the United States. He is one of the very few who speaks for public health on 5G and other types of wireless radiation. In the early 1990s, Carpenter was on the short list to be the director of the NIEHS and the NTP.

Broad would like readers to believe that Carpenter is little more than a tool of Russian disinformation. This was also spelled out in Broad’s first attack on Carpenter just a few months ago. In that story, headlined “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You To Think Otherwise,” Broad portrayed Carpenter —“a prominent 5G critic”— as a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. He went on to chastise him for issuing scary alarms, insinuating that he has been scientifically discredited.

Junk Journalism, Not Junk Science

Many questions remain unanswered: How did a star science reporter misrepresent so many facts to spin such a misleading story? Who on the Times science desk fact-checked it? (Was it fact-checked?) Who brought the obscure Curry graph to Broad’s attention?

The telecom industry, not surprisingly, welcomed his article. The next day, the Wireless SmartBrief celebrated with: “Experts: 5G Health Scare Based on Bad Science.”

As it happens, just two days shy of 20 years ago, on July 24, 1999, Broad set out to discredit research on health risks in another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The target was power-line EMFs, which, at the time, were a widespread concern, much like 5G is today. In an article that appeared on the front page of the Times that morning, Broad described a case of misconduct at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that would help ruin the career of a promising scientist, Robert Liburdy, for what was at worst a lapse of judgment. The headline on Broad’s 1999 story was “Data Tying Cancer to Electric Power Found To Be False.” This was an outright fabrication: the work which Liburdy was accused of mishandling had no obvious connection to cancer. (More on the Liburdy affair here.)

Last fall, Broad tried to cast doubt on the National Toxicology Program’s $30 million RF-animal study. This is what he and a Times headline writer came up with for the story: “Study of Cellphone Risks Finds ‘Some Evidence’ of Link to Cancer, at Least in Male Rats.” That’s not only flippant, but wrong. The NTP study showed “clear evidence” of cancer. (See “Defending the Indefensible.”)

In all his recent articles, Broad spins concern over cell phone radiation as based on junk science. The result is junk journalism.

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Notes

[1] The first letter is dated February 24, 2000, the second September 29, 2000.

[2] The issue of what mm waves may do when absorbed by the skin is not addressed in this article. A number of those interviewed remarked that possible side effects should not be dismissed out of hand.

In my town in the United States — as is not especially unusual — we have big memorials in prominent public places marking some of the most catastrophically immoral actions of the past. Unfortunately, all five of these major monuments celebrate and glorify these past horrors, rather than reminding us not to repeat them. The University of Virginia is building a memorial to the enslaved people who built the University of Virginia. So, we will have five celebrations of evil, and one cautionary remembrance thereof.

Two of the five monuments celebrate the genocide of the westward expansion across the continent. Two celebrate the losing and pro-slavery side of the U.S. Civil War. One honors the troops who participated in one of the most devastating, destructive, and murderous assaults on a small part of the earth that humanity has yet produced. In the United States people call it “the Vietnam war.”

In Vietnam it’s called the American war. But not just in Vietnam. This was a war that hit hard in Laos and Cambodia and Indonesia. For a well-researched and powerfully presented overview, check out the new book, The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory, Edited by Mark Pavlick and Caroline Luft, with contributions from Richard Falk, Fred Branfman, Channapha Khamvongsa, Elaine Russell, Tuan Nguyen, Ben Kiernan, Taylor Owen, Gareth Porter, Clinton Fernandes, Nick Turse, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, and Ngo Vinh Long.

The United States dropped 6,727,084 tons of bombs on 60 to 70 million people in southeast Asia, more than triple what it had dropped in Asia and Europe combined in World War II. Simultaneously, it launched an equally massive attack with ground artillery. It also sprayed from the air tens of millions of liters of Agent Orange, not to mention napalm, with devastating results. The effects remain today. Tens of millions of bombs remain unexploded, and increasingly dangerous, today. A 2008 study by Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimated 3.8 million violent war deaths, combat and civilian, north and south, during the years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, not counting hundreds of thousands killed in each of these places: Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia. Some 19 million were wounded or made homeless in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Many millions more were forced to live dangerous and impoverished lives, with impacts lasting to this day.

The U.S. soldiers who did 1.6% of the dying, but whose suffering dominates U.S. movies about the war, really did suffer as much and as horribly as depicted. Thousands of veterans have since committed suicide. But imagine what that means for the true extent of the suffering created, even just for humans, ignoring all the other species impacted. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. lists 58,000 names on 150 meters of wall. That’s 387 names per meter. To similarly list 4 million names would require 10,336 meters, or the distance from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and back again, and back to the Capitol once more, and then as far back as all the museums but stopping short of the Washington Monument. Luckily, only some lives matter.

In Laos, about a third of the country’s land remains ruined by the heavy presence of unexploded bombs, which continue to kill large numbers of people. These include some 80 million cluster bomblets and thousands of large bombs, rockets, mortars, shells, and land mines. From 1964 to 1973, the United States conducted one bombing mission against poor, unarmed, farming families every eight minutes, twenty-four/seven — with a goal of wiping out any food that could feed any troops (or anybody else). The United States pretended it was delivering humanitarian aid.

Other times, it was just a matter of littering. Bombers flying from Thailand to Vietnam would sometimes be unable to bomb Vietnam due to weather conditions, and so would simply drop their bombs on Laos rather than perform a more difficult landing with a full load back in Thailand. Yet other times it was a need to put good deadly equipment to use. When President Lyndon Johnson announced an end to bombing in North Vietnam in 1968, planes bombed Laos instead. “We couldn’t just let the planes rust,” explained one official. The poor today in Laos cannot find access to good healthcare when injured by old bombs, and must survive disabled in an economy few will invest in due to all the bombs. The desperate must take on the risky task of selling the metal from bombs they successfully defuse.

Cambodia was treated roughly as Laos was, with similar and predictable results. President Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger who told Alexander Haig to create “a massive bombing campaign . . . anything that flies on anything that moves.” The hard-core right-wing Khmer Rouge grew from 10,000 in 1970 to 200,000 troops in 1973 via recruitment focused on the casualties and destruction of U.S. bombing. By 1975 they’d defeated the pro-U.S. government.

The war on the ground in Vietnam was equally horrific. Massacres of civilians, the use of farmers for target practice, free-fire zones in which any Vietnamese person was deemed “the enemy” — these were not unusual techniques. Elimination of population was a primary goal. This — and not kindness — drove the greater acceptance of refugees than has been practiced during more recent wars. Robert Komer urged the United States to “step up refugee programs deliberately aimed at depriving the VC of a recruiting base.”

The U.S. government understood from the start that the elite military faction it wanted to impose on Vietnam had no significant popular support. It also feared the “demonstration effect” of a leftist government opposing U.S. domination and achieving social and economic progress. Bombs could help with that. In the words of the U.S. military historians who wrote The Pentagon Papers, “essentially, we are fighting the Vietnamese birth rate.” But, of course, this fighting was counter-productive and simply generated more “communists,” requiring further increases in violence to combat them.

How do you get people who think of themselves as good and decent to shell out their money and their support and their boys to slaughter poor farmers and their babies and their elderly relatives? Well, what do we have professors for, if we can’t accomplish such feats? The line developed in the U.S. military-intellectual complex was that the United States was not murdering farmers but, rather, urbanizing and modernizing countries by driving peasants into urban areas through the benevolent use of bombs. As many as 60 percent of the people in the central provinces of Vietnam were reduced to eating bark and roots. Children and the elderly were the first to starve. Those who were driven into U.S. prisons and tortured and experimented on were, in the end, mere Asians, so that the excuses didn’t really have to be all that persuasive.

Millions in the United States opposed the war and worked to stop it. I’m not aware of any monuments to them. They won a close vote in the U.S. Congress on August 15, 1973, to end the bombing of Cambodia. They forced an end to the whole horrible enterprise. They forced a progressive agenda of domestic policies through the Nixon White House. They compelled Congress to hold Nixon accountable in a manner that seems thoroughly foreign to the U.S. Congress today. As peace activists in recent years have marked the 50th anniversary of each particular effort for peace, one question has offered itself to the U.S. society as a whole: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

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I can only imagine that the media people who are saying this is the most right wing cabinet since the 1980’s were not sentient in the 80’s. Thatcher never had a Home Secretary remotely as illiberal as Pritti Patel, never had a Foreign Secretary remotely as xenophobic as Dominic Raab, never even had a Chancellor as anti-State intervention as Sajid Javid (though came closer there) and never had a Defence Secretary as bellicose as Ben Wallace.

Even Thatcher’s final and most right wing Cabinet contained figures like Ken Clarke, Chris Patten, John Major, Virginia Bottomley, Douglas Hurd and William Waldegrave. All Tories with whom I have fundamental disagreements, but every single one of them is far, far to the left of virtually all of Johnson’s appalling cronies.

Thatcher deliberately and cruelly wrecked the social democratic society in which I grew up, with the aim of destroying any ability for working people to be protected against the whims of the wealthy. But Thatcher never introduced privatisation into the NHS or state schools – that was her acolyte Blair. She maintained free university education in England and Wales. That was destroyed by Blair too. We should be more rigorous than to accept Thatcher as the definitive most right wing government possible. It is not only lazy, it obscures the fact we now have the most right wing British government since 1832.

Pritti Patel is a Home Secretary who admires the approach to law and order of Benjamin Netanyahu and voted against a measure to prevent pregnant asylum seekers being slammed into immigration detention pending hearing. Savid Javid is a Chancellor who materially caused the problems of British Steel by, as Business Secretary, vetoing in Brussels tariffs against dumped Chinese steel. Dominic Raab is a foreign secretary who negotiated a deal with the EU then resigned because it was so bad.

This is the biggest political shock to hit the UK in my lifetime and it is potentially worse than Thatcher. Here in Scotland, we need to move immediately for Independence. The time for talking really is behind us.

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Brussels is once again bracing itself for a new round of U.S. tariff threats. And Britain is in the trade war firing line.

Just under a year after U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker struck a transatlantic trade armistice, there’s little left of the “new phase” of relations the two men announced in the White House Rose Garden on July 25 last year.

Trade talks have not yet started. And as EU trade chief Cecilia Malmström has warned – the U.S. is likely to soon impose retaliatory tariffs on up to $25 billion of European products, as part of a dispute over airline subsidies.

Washington has also launched a trade investigation into France’s digital services tax and angered over fines of American tech giants for their privacy misdemeanours.

None of this has been helped by crushing U.S. sanctions against Iran and the inevitable unending pressure on Europe to sever business contact with Tehran. This all adds to further strain on a relationship that is quickly heading southwards.

Seven Commission officials and EU diplomats have already voiced serious fears of an escalation. They fear Trump will carry out a long-standing threat to impose painful auto tariffs as early as this November. The EU has said it is ready to retaliate with its own tariffs targeting €20 billion of U.S. exports. From there, the escalation could easily end up getting worse.

The outlook is grim, according to Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics:

“Trump firmly believes — and has convinced many Americans — that the U.S. has been taken advantage of all these years, and that Europe should make unilateral concessions,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to slash the U.S.’s $169 billion trade-in-goods deficit with the EU. Needless to say that Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign will have a lot to do with his chest-thumping rhetoric that risks trashing tenuous relationships even further.  “Trump really believes that confrontation with foreign countries gets him votes” – Hufbauer said.

Britain is in the middle of this inflating trade war between the US and EU and even if Boris Johnson’s new government carries out its threat of crashing out without a deal – Britain has no deal with America that would ease trade relationships. You can’t simply do a tariff-free deal on cars or anything for that matter as a one-off.

The US, backed by Congress, is pushing the EU on agricultural goods, as it is pushing Britain on its UK/US trade deal – many products of which, are banned in the EU for all manner of health-related protections. But political pressure is mounting on Trump to get agricultural products sold in the biggest trading bloc in the world – Europe – and they are not playing ball.

So watch this space. If in November the car tariff war gets underway, there will be a tit-for-tat battle until someone in the US or EU blinks.

Britain has voted itself off the big-boys table and has little political, economic or diplomatic say in the trade war standoff negotiations until the end of October. Even then, Britain’s application to the WTO as a single trading nation outside of the EU was rejected last autumn.  As Britain runs a surplus with the USA, the UK will likely have to give away all manner of legislated protections to sign a trade deal with America that has been calculated by government to add only o.2% to Britain’s GDP.

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US President Donald Trump threatened to “kill 10 million” Afghans in “a week” so as to win a quick victory in America’s longest war, at a joint White House press conference Monday with Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister.

The US Commander-in-Chief cavalierly boasted that he could wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the Earth” if he wanted. But he said that he prefers to “extricate” the US from the eighteen-year-long Afghan War and expects Pakistan to facilitate this by helping secure a “settlement” with the Taliban.

“We’re like policemen,” Trump claimed. “We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win it in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”

To underscore that his remarks were meant as a threat, Trump added,

“I have a plan to win that war in a very short period of time” and repeated the figure of 10 million dead. He then turned toward Khan and declared, “You understand that better than anybody.”

Pakistan’s prime minister voiced no objection to Trump’s threat to unleash genocidal violence against Pakistan’s northern neighbor. Instead Khan slavishly hailed the US president as the head of the “most powerful country in the world.” Later, he issued an obsequious tweet thanking Trump “for his warm & gracious hospitality” and “his wonderful way of putting our entire delegation at ease.”

The US puppet regime in Kabul was forced to call for a “clarification” of Trump’s remarks, while feebly protesting that “foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate in the absence of the Afghan leadership.” In contrast, people across Afghanistan reacted with horror and outrage, sentiments shared by tens of millions around the world.

The US media downplayed Trump’s bloodcurdling remarks. The New York Times buried mention of them at the end of an article titled, “Trump Tries Cooling Tensions With Pakistan to Speed Afghan Peace Talks.”

Trump’s Monday remarks are only his latest threat to annihilate a foreign country and reveal that the US president—who has ordered a $1 trillion “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal and the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia—is actively considering unleashing nuclear violence to forestall the collapse of US global hegemony.

In August 2017, Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea, an impoverished nation of 25 million people. In July 2018, he directed a similar threat again Iran, tweeting that it would “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED”, if it “EVER” dared to “THREATEN” Washington “AGAIN.”

Trump’s crude threats—which recall nothing so much as the menacing rants of Adolf Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War—are viewed as impolitic by much of the Washington elite. But the military-security apparatus and the US political establishment, Democratic and Republican alike, are unanimous in their support for using violence, aggression and war to offset US imperialism’s economic decline.

The Afghan War is only one of an endless series of wars that the US has waged across the Middle East, in Central Asia, and the Balkans since 1991. Moreover, the drive for US global hegemony has now metastasized into strategic offensives, including threatening military deployments, trade wars and economic sanctions, against nuclear-armed Russia and China.

Whilst Afghanistan no doubt was at the center of the discussions that Khan, Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the head of the country’s notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, held with Trump and senior officials in his administration, the US war drive against Iran—Pakistan’s western neighbor—was no doubt also a factor in the decision to invite Pakistan’s prime minister to Washington for the first time in five years.

Last month, US warplanes were just ten minutes away from unleashing bombs on Iran, when Trump called them back for fear that US forces were not sufficiently ready for a military conflict with Iran that would rapidly engulf the entire Middle East and potentially draw in other great powers.

Bowing to the US sanctions against Iran, which are themselves tantamount to war, Pakistan has once again put on ice plans for a pipeline to import Iranian natural gas. But the Pentagon and CIA will also be pressing Pakistan, which enjoys close ties to the virulently anti-Iranian Saudi monarchy, to use its territory as a staging ground for intrigues, if not military operations, against Iran.

US imperialism’s Afghan War debacle

Trump’s claim that the US has not really waged war in Afghanistan is absurd. Over the course of the past 18 years, the US and its NATO allies have deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, tanks and warplanes, unleashed horrific violence and committed countless atrocities. This includes, under the Trump administration, the dropping on Afghanistan in 2017 of the most powerful conventional or nonnuclear bomb ever deployed.

The war, according to conservative estimates, has resulted in 175,000 deaths. If indirect deaths are included, the figure is probably closer to one million. Millions more have been driven from their homes. To this toll, the deaths of nearly 2,300 US military personnel and 1,100 other foreign troops need to be added.

Yet today the Taliban controls large swathes of the country, more than at any time since the US invasion in the fall of 2001.

If the Taliban, despite their reactionary Islamist ideology, have been able to sustain their insurgency in the face of US firepower, it is because the war is widely recognized to be a neocolonial invasion, aimed at transforming Afghanistan into a US-NATO dependency and outpost in Central Asia; and the Kabul government to be a quisling regime, thoroughly corrupt and comprised of war profiteers, tribal leaders, and other sections of the traditional Afghan elite.

The Afghan debacle—Washington’s failure to subjugate Afghanistan after 18 years of war and the expenditure of more than a trillion dollars—has produced major divisions within the US political and military-strategic establishments.

Trump is seeking to prod the Taliban into a political settlement that will allow the Pentagon to redeploy its resources to pursue aggression elsewhere, whether against Iran, Venezuela, or American imperialism’s more substantial rivals.

However, much of America’s ruling elite, especially in the military-security apparatus, argues that any settlement must ensure a continued military presence in Afghanistan. This is, first and foremost, because of its strategic significance: Afghanistan lies at the heart of energy-rich Central Asia, borders both Iran and China and is proximate to Russia.

The unraveling of US-Pakistan relations

Washington has long been demanding that Pakistan “do more” to place military and political pressure on the Taliban, so as to secure a settlement of the war on terms favorable to Washington.

Pakistan’s military-security apparatus played a key role in the CIA’s sponsoring of the Mujahideen guerilla insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as part of the US drive against the Soviet Union, and subsequently it supported the rise to power of its Taliban offshoot.

After Washington abandoned its own attempts to reach a deal with the Taliban regime and seized on the 9/11 events to establish a US foothold in Central Asia, Pakistan provided Washington with pivotal logistical support and subsequently waged a brutal counterinsurgency war against Taliban-aligned forces in its own Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

But the Pakistani military, drawing on the CIA playbook, was loathe to cut off all ties to the Taliban, so as to ensure that Islamabad had a say in any political settlement to end the war.

Washington’s downgrading of its relations with Islamabad, and its promotion of India as its principal South Asian ally, with the aim of transforming it into a US frontline state against China, caused Islamabad to become even more anxious about securing its interests in Afghanistan, and to expand its longstanding military-security partnership with Beijing. This latter development—which is exemplified by the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor—has enormously aggravated tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

Over the past decade, and particularly since 2011, there has been an unravelling of US-Pakistani ties.

Khan, like his predecessor Nawaz Sharif, had long been pressing for an invitation to Washington, in an attempt to reset relations with the US. For both economic and geopolitical reasons, Islamabad is desperately hoping that it can find a way, as it did in the past, of balancing between China and the US.

Last month, the US-dominated IMF agreed to provide Pakistan with emergency loans. Islamabad has also been rattled by the support Washington has extended to the “surgical” military strikes New Delhi mounted in September 2016 and February of this year, bringing South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers to the brink of war.

Whether Khan’s US trip will in fact arrest the deterioration in US-Pakistani ties remains to be seen.

Trump resisted Khan’s entreaties for the immediate restoration of Afghan War Coalition payments and other aid, arrogantly declaring that relations between the two countries are better than “when we were paying that money.” He then suggested if Islamabad bows to Washington’s diktats that could change, adding, “But all of that can come back, depending on what we work out.”

Trump did please Khan by saying that he “would love to be” a “mediator” or the “arbitrator” of the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir. For decades, Pakistan has sought to involve outside powers, especially Washington, in resolving its differences with New Delhi.

Trump’s remarks, which included the claim that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked for the US to help broker a solution to the Kashmir dispute, immediately set off a political firestorm in India, with New Delhi angrily denying that Modi had ever made such a suggestion.

India’s ruling elite is also perturbed that thus far it has been excluded from any role in the negotiations with the Taliban and discussions about a so-called political settlement of the Afghan war. But like Khan, Modi was entirely silent about Trump’s threats to annihilate ten million Afghans, presumably through the use of nuclear weapons.

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Featured image: President Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks with reporters during their bilateral meeting Monday, July 22, 2019, in the Oval Office. (Photo: Shealah Craighead, White House Flickr)

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the Iran seizure of the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero “unacceptable” and insisted that it is “essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”

But the British denied Iran that same freedom of navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4.

The rationale for detaining the Iranian vessel and its crew was that it was delivering oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions. This was never questioned by Western news media. But a closer look reveals that the UK had no legal right to enforce those sanctions against that ship, and that it was a blatant violation of the clearly defined global rules that govern the passage of merchant ships through international straits.

The evidence also reveals that Bolton was actively involved in targeting the Grace 1 from the time it began its journey in May as part of the broader Trump administration campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran.

Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The EU Council regulation in question specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel “under the jurisdiction of a member state.”

The UK government planned to claim that the Iranian ship was under British “jurisdiction” when it was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to justify its seizure as legally consistent with the EU regulation. A maritime news outlet has reported that on July 3, the day before the seizure of the ship, the Gibraltar government, which has no control over its internal security or foreign affairs, issued a regulation to provide what it would claim as a legal pretext for the operation. The regulation gave the “chief minister” of the British the power to detain any ship if there were “reasonable grounds” to “suspect” that it had been or even that it was even “likely” to be in breach of EU regulations.

The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered “British Gibraltar Territorial Waters.” Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized.

There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship’s location: it is virtually impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of the middle of the Strait.

But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace 1 was in the shipping lane heading east toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this live view of typical ship traffic through the strait. So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters at any time before it was boarded.

But even if the ship had done so, that would not have given the UK  “jurisdiction” over the Grace 1 and allowed it to legally seize the ship. Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue—the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union, establish a “regime of transit passage” for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions.

These articles allow coastal states to adopt regulations relating to safety of navigation, pollution control, prevention of fishing, and “loading or unloading any commodity in contravention of customs, fiscal, immigration  or sanitary laws and regulations” of bordering states—but for no other reason. The British seizure and detention of the Grace 1 was clearly not related to any of these concerns and thus a violation of the treaty.

The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK’s actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration to tighten pressure on Iran’s economy by reducing Iran’s ability to export goods.

The statement by Gibraltar’s chief minister said the decision to seize the ship was taken after the receipt of “information” that provided “reasonable grounds” for suspicion that it was carrying oil destined for Syria’s Banyas refinery. That suggested the intelligence had come from a government that neither he nor the British wished to reveal.

BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Beale reported: “[I]t appears the intelligence came from the United States.” Acting Spanish Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell commented on July 4 that the British seizure had followed “a demand from the United States to the UK.” On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge reported,

“[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel.”

Detailed evidence of Bolton’s deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1.

Panama was the flag state for many of the Iranian-owned vessels carrying various items exported by Iran. But when the Trump administration reinstated economic sanctions against Iran in October 2018, it included prohibitions on industry services such as insurance and reinsurance. This decision was accompanied by political pressure on Panama to withdraw Panamanian flag status from 59 Iranian vessels, many of which were owned by Iranian state-affiliated companies. Without such flag status, the Iranian-owned vessels could not get insurance for shipments by freighter.

That move was aimed at discouraging ports, canal operators, and private firms from allowing Iranian tankers to use their facilities. The State Department’s Brian Hook, who is in charge of the sanctions, warned those entities last November that the Trump administration believed they would be responsible for the costs of an accident involving a self-insured Iranian tanker.

But the Grace 1 was special case, because it still had Panamanian flag status when it began its long journey around the Southern tip of Africa on the way to the Mediterranean. That trip began in late May, according to Automatic Identification System data cited by Riviera Maritime Media. It was no coincidence that the Panamanian Maritime Authority delisted the Grace 1 on May 29—just as the ship was beginning its journey. That decision came immediately after Panama’s National Security Council issued an alert claiming that the Iranian-owned tanker “may be participating in terrorism financing in supporting the destabilization activities of some regimes led by terrorist groups.”

The Panamanian body did not cite any evidence that the Grace 1 had ever been linked to terrorism.

The role of Panama’s National Security Council signaled Bolton’s hand, since he would have been the point of contact with that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy.

Now that Iran has detained a British ship in order to force the UK to release the Grace 1, the British Foreign Ministry will claim that its seizure of the Iranian ship was entirely legitimate. The actual facts, however, give the lie to that claim.

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Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. 

Featured image: The Stena Impero British tanker (Source: Screenshot from Youtube via Citizen Truth)

First published in November 2017. Can we trust Robert Mueller with Trump-Russia probe?

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Talking heads act like Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is fair, impartial and unbiased.

But the facts are a wee bit different …

Failure to Aggressively Prosecute the BCCI Scandal

The BBC noted:

[Mueller] is also known for leading the probe into the 1991 collapse of the Luxembourg-registered Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Williams Safire wrote in the New York Times:

The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system.

For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the most evil of purposes — while lawmen and regulators slept.

Now the fight among investigators is coming out into the open. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who gave impetus to long-contained probes, told a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John Kerry that he is getting no cooperation from the Thornburgh Justice Department.

Justice’s Criminal Division chief, Robert Mueller, tells me he will have a hatchet-burying session with the independent-minded D.A. next week, and vehemently denies having told British intelligence to stop cooperating with the Manhattan grand jury.

Mueller’s handling of the BCCI scandal as the point man for the Justice Department was widely criticized.  As noted by a Senate report written by Senators Kerry and Brown: 

Over the past two years, the Justice Department’s handling of BCCI has been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reflecting similar criticism on the part of several Congressmen, including the chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Kerry; the chief Customs undercover officer who handled the BCCI drug-money laundering sting, Robert Mazur; his superior at Customs, Commissioner William von Raab; New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; former Senate investigator Jack Blum, and, within the Justice Department itself, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Dexter Lehtinen.

Typical editorials criticized Justice’s prosecution of BCCI as “sluggish,” “conspicuously slow,” “inattentive,” and “lethargic.” Several editorials noted that there had been “poor cooperation” by Justice with other agencies. One stated that “the Justice Department seems to have been holding up information that should have been passed on” to regulators and others. Another that “the Justice Department’s secretive conduct in dealing with BCCI requires a better explanation than any so far offered.

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Under Assistant Attorney General Mueller, the Department assigned nearly three dozen attorneys to the case. During 1992, the Department brought several indictments, which remained narrower, less detailed and, at times, seemingly in response to the efforts of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of New York, the Federal Reserve, or both

***

Suddenly, on August 22, Dennis Saylor, chief assistant to Assistant Attorney General Mueller, called Lehtinen and, according to the US Attorney, “indicated to me that I was directed not to return the indictment.”

The Senate Report also noted:

While the Justice Department’s handling of BCCI has received substantial criticism, the office of Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney of New York, has generally received credit for breaking open the BCCI investigation.

***

In going after BCCI, Morgenthau’s office quickly found that in addition to fighting off the bank, it would receive resistance from almost every other institution or entity connected to BCCI, including at various times, BCCI’s multitude of prominent and politically well-connected lawyers, BCCI’s accountants, BCCI’s shareholders, the Bank of England, the British Serious Fraud Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Squashing Warning Signs that May Have Stopped 9/11

Larry Klayman writes:

Robert Mueller first hit my radar … just months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

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I came to meet and later represent FBI Special Agents Robert Wright and John Vincent, of the agency’s Chicago Counter-Terrorism Field Office. During our meeting, both Special Agents Wright and Vincent revealed to me that they had been conducting a counterterrorism investigation of Saudi money laundering into and in the United States, and they both believed that a massive terrorist attack was imminent.

In the course of this investigation, both special agents had asked a fellow FBI agent who was undercover, one of Muslim descent, to be wired to turn up further evidence of this terrorist operation. The Muslim agent refused, indignantly telling both Wright and Vincent that Muslims don’t spy and rat on other Muslims. In shock, my soon-to-be clients reported this to their supervisors at the FBI, but no action was taken. To make matters worse, Wright’s and Vincent’s FBI supervisors quashed their investigation. They both believed that the order to kill the investigation came from the highest reaches of the FBI, and, upset it not outraged by this cover-up, Wright then decided to write a book detailing this breach of FBI honor.

The only way I could explain this cover-up was that then-FBI Director Robert Muellerwas sensitive to the ties between the family of President George W. Bush and the Saudi royal family.

***

Director Mueller, along with his “yes men” supervisors at the agency, not only quashed my clients’ investigation and ignored the disloyalty of the Muslim undercover agent, but then missed the warning signs leading up to September 11 – the biggest intelligence failure in American history, even surpassing Pearl Harbor.

But shamelessly, despite this historic intelligence failure and the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that ensued, Mueller later led an effort to drum both Special Agents Wright and Vincent out of the FBI, in part by attempting to remove their security clearances, as a “reward” for their candor.

FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley points out:

The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in.

But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.

Mueller was one of the people who dropped the ball and let 9/11 happen.

Allowing Escape of Saudi Persons Connected to Bin Laden

Right after 9/11, American airspace was closed down. Yet Mueller was one of the people who allowed relatives of Bin Laden and other persons of interest fly back to Saudi Arabia.

Entrapping Innocent People for P.R. Purposes

After dropping the ball, Mueller then went on to entrap innocent people for P.R. purposes.

And Rowley notes:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time.  FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

9/11 Cover Up

Rowley says:

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11.

In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style “minders” to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn’t say anything the FBI didn’t like. The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

Mueller’s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location. See this and this.

Harper’s notes:

Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me recently that Robert Mueller, then the FBI director (and now the special counsel investigating connections between Russia and the Trump campaign) made “the strongest objections” to Jacobson and his colleagues visiting San Diego.

Graham and his team defied Mueller’s efforts, and Jacobson flew west. There he discovered that his hunch was correct. The FBI files in California were replete with extraordinary and damning details …

***

Nevertheless, Mueller adamantly refused their demands to interview him, even when backed by a congressional subpoena, and removed Shaikh to an undisclosed location ‘for his own safety.’

Graham also wrote that the FBI also “insisted that we could not, even in the most sanitized manner, tell the American people that an FBI informant had a relationship with two of the hijackers.”

And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out:

Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

Iraq War

Rowley notes:

When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

Torture

Rowley also points out:

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

Anthrax Frame-Up

Mueller also presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI’s investigation was “flawed and inaccurate”. The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an “independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case.”

The head of the FBI’s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation”, that there were “politically motivated communication embargoes from FBI Headquarters”.

The FBI’s anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins. On July 6, 2006, he filed a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

(j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ andFBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.

In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this).

Unsure If Government Can Assassinate U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

Rather than saying “of course not!”, Mueller said that he wasn’t sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

***

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

Crippled Investigations of Financial Fraud … Helping to Allow the Great Recession

In a 2013 piece entitled “Mueller: I Crippled FBI Effort v. White-Collar Crime“, the country’s top white collar crime expert, William Black – who put over 1,000 top S&L executives in jail for fraud, and is a  professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri – wrote:

The FBI never developed “an intelligence operation” “to analyze threats” of even epidemic fraud.

***

White-collar crime investigations and prosecutions are massive money makers that reduce the deficit, but Mueller, Holder, and Obama refuse to make these points and refuse to prosecute the elite bank fraudsters. On substantive and political grounds their actions are either inexplicable or all too explicable and support my readers’ belief that the FBI leadership no longer wants to investigate and prosecute the elite bank frauds.

This is important because:

• Fraud CAUSED the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis

• Numerous Nobel prize winning economists say that we need to prosecute fraud, or else the economy will never truly stabilize

• After the Great Depression, the government cracked down on Wall Street fraud.  But Mueller and other Bush and Obama administration officials let it slide

(There are a lot of people more responsible for the Great Recession – and for lack of reform afterwards – than Mueller.   For example, Mueller’s boss (the FBI is a part of the Department of Justice) made it more or less official policy not to prosecute financial fraud.   But this is another example of Mueller dropping the ball.

Spying on Americans

Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history.

As we noted in 2013:

NBC News reports:

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We have put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.

Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.

On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN’s Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone fcompanies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored:

NSA whistleblowers say that this means that the NSA collects “word for word” all of our communications.

Colleen Rowley writes:

Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

Covering Up for Turkish Terrorists

Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups, who the ACLU described as “The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America”, and who famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”, says that Mueller covered up a Turkish terror network.

Gagging Whistleblowers

Edmonds also said that Mueller gagged her and other whistleblowers.

Conclusion

Rather than being “above the fray”,  Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.

As Coleen Rowley puts it:

Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

And:

It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.

Simon Tisdall at The Guardian explains the difference between Socialist Spain and the disorganized Conservatives in control of UK on foreign policy.

US national security adviser John Bolton tried to hoodwink both of them about the Grace I, a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker carrying Iranian petroleum through the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain monitored the tanker but declined to intervene because it remained in international waters. The EU position has been that unless ships headed for Syria came within 12 nautical miles of the European coast, they were helpless to take action because you can’t interfere with shipping through international waters.

Britain, in contrast, used its naval position in Gibraltar to seize the tanker in international waters on the grounds that it was headed to Syria, against which the European Union had declared an oil embargo.

There were three problems with the British reasoning, presumably that of Jeremy Hunt, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and trailing candidate for prime minister. (Maybe also painfully inexperienced defense minister Penny Mordaunt, appointed in May):

First, the EU ban on oil sales to Syria concerned only EU member states.

Second, the Grace I was in international waters and seizing it is a form of piracy.

Third, there is no proof it was headed for Syria (which would not have been illegal in international law in any case).

Not only did Spain’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, not fall for Bolton’s over-excited talking points, but he was withering about the British seizure of the tanker, since Spain does not recognize British claims on Gibraltar in the first place and wants decolonization.

That is, as Tisdall deliciously makes clear, Spain is siding with Iran against Britain on this issue.

Bolton and his fellow hawk secretary of state Mike Pompeo have been upset that the rest of the world did not line up with the US when it breached the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and slapped severe sanctions back on Iran (despite Iran’s faithful adherence to the terms of the deal). Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany (informally for the EU) were also signatories and stuck with the deal. France and Germany are even trying to find financial instruments to allow EU trade with Iran despite US opposition.

For Bolton to trick Hunt into seizing the Grace 1 shifts Britain toward the US side of the ledger and sets up a London-Tehran confrontation. Iran has already taken a couple of British tankers in the Gulf into custody to “inspect” them or on charges of smuggling. The UK is probably not willing to take military action in return, especially if Boris Johnson becomes PM tomorrow [update: he just, on Tuesday]. He has told Trump to his face that Britain won’t support military action against Iran.

But Bolton has tricked London into an adversarial posture toward Iran, with ratcheting tensions. And that is a big win for Iran War hawks around Trump. Trump allegedly believes (according to Jonathan Swan at Axios) that it doesn’t matter if he keeps these rabid dogs around him, because he decides if there is war. But Trump is a fool and does not realize that the hawks can put him in a headlock from which he can only escape by looking manly and taking military action. Trump should ask Jeremy Hunt about that.

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US President Donald Trump has vetoed congressional efforts to block $8bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that his administration had authorised without the approval of lawmakers.

Wednesday’s vetoes come after both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed resolutions to halt the arms deals.

The State Department bypassed Congress to push the sales through by declaring an emergency, citing growing tensions with Iran.

The Senate will vote within the next few days on whether to override Trump’s veto, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

McConnell said the vote would be held before 2 August, when lawmakers leave Washington for a five-week-long recess.

However, the three resolutions of disapproval are not expected to garner the two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate needed to override the veto.

Only a handful of Trump’s fellow Republicans, who hold 53 seats in the Senate, backed the resolutions when they passed last month.

‘Reliable partner’

Trump said blocking the deals would damage “the credibility of the United States as a reliable partner”.

“This resolution would weaken America’s global competitiveness and damage the important relationships we share with our allies and partners,” the White House said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, was quick to denounce the veto late on Wednesday, calling on lawmakers to act against it.

“These arms deals with Saudi Arabia do not serve US interests,” Dingell wrote on Twitter.

“There is already a terrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and we cannot be complicit in worsening the crisis. The Trump Administration can no longer overstep its authority. Congress must override the veto.”

US laws give Congress the power to halt major arms sales to foreign countries.

The decision to sidestep the legislature caused an outcry on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers, including some of the president’s allies, denounced the questionable use of an emergency declaration.

Relationship with Riyadh

The sales were forced through during a time of growing scepticism in Congress towards the US alliance with Saudi Arabia after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the mounting civilian death toll from the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Coupled with anger at Riyadh, legislators were furious over the administration’s failure to follow the normal process for arms sales. Both chambers of Congress held hearings to question administration officials about the emergency declaration.

Earlier this month, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch Texas conservative who is close to Trump, decried the State Department’s decision to bypass Congress, urging the administration to “follow the damn law and respect it”.

“I have to say I agree with the concerns that have been expressed in this hearing on both sides of the aisle,” Cruz said at a hearing in the Senate.

Congress has been pushing to hold Riyadh accountable for the death of Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi government agents at the country’s consulate in Istanbul last October.

Trump ignored a deadline mandated by the Global Magnitsky Act, a US human rights law, to report to Congress on whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the murder.

Earlier this year, Trump also vetoed a congressional resolution to halt Washington’s support for the war in Yemen.

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Iran has meticulously selected its political steps and military targets in recent months, both in the Gulf and the international arena. Its partial and gradual withdrawal – tactical yet lawful -from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the nuclear deal, is following a determined path. Its clear objective is to corner the US President and his European allies, and indeed Iran seems aiming for a final withdrawal from the JCPOA. Also, despite the effect the US sanctions are having on the Iranian economy – and despite Iran’s determination to reject US hegemony – Iranian officials have publicly put on hold a Russian offer to support its oil sales.

In Iran, sources confirm that

“China rejected the US sanctions and Russia offered to sell one million barrels daily for Iran, and to replace the European financial system with another if needed. But why would Iran make it easy on those who signed the deal (Europe)? If the European countries are divided and not in a position to honour the deal why did they sign it in the first place? Iran will pull out gradually, as stated in the nuclear agreement, up to a complete withdrawal. Iran is experiencing a recession (Trump is expected to be re-elected, which will prolong it), but is not in poverty, and is far from being on its knees economically and politically”.

Despite the harsh US sanctions, Iran is sending unusual and paradoxical signs, playing down the effect of the economic crisis and showing how less than relevant the Trump administration’s measures are: it has frozen the Russian offer designed to ease its financial burden by selling one million barrels of oil daily, and by stepping in to replace the European financial system. The only plausible interpretation is that Iran is determined to pull out of the nuclear deal if possible without invoking worldwide sanctions. In parallel, its military steps continue at a calculated pace.

IRGC Navy speed boats circling the British-flag tanker Stena Impero to slow it down before boarding it by Special Forces.

None of the several military objectives that have been hit in recent months was a casual or impulsive response, starting from the al-Fujeira sabotage, followed by the drone attacks on Aramco pumping stations, and ending with the damage to a Japanese tanker. The first action was not officially claimed by Iran. The second was claimed by the Houthis in Yemen. The third was against a Japanese tanker and the attacker is still at large, officially unknown.

However, Iran came out in public to announce its downing of the US surveillance drone and its capture of a British tanker in the Gulf of Oman. The ship was forced to sail into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Every single reaction by Iran’s opponents was envisaged and calculated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the preparation of these attacks was perfectly planned and equally well executed. However, this doesn’t mean Iran did not take into consideration a possible war scenario where missiles could potentially fly in all directions. Iran is harassing, engaging, and even playing with Trump and Netanyahu’s threats of war, walking on the edge of the abyss.

Most Iranian leaders are repeating the clear message: no one will export oil if we can’t. It is also telling neighbouring countries that any attempt to export their oil by bypassing the Straits of Hormuz will be thwarted, hence the attacks on al-Fujeirah (the Emirates) and Aramco (Saudi Arabia). Both were potential substitutes, ways to export Middle Eastern oil without going through the Iranian controlled straits.

Iran chose to down an unmanned drone, where it could have downed a US spy aircraft with 38 officers onboard. The same US President- who was embarrassed by the lack of reaction to the downing of the drone – had to thank Iran for not shooting down the spy plane with the US personnel on board. That was a masterly planned decision: cool thinking by the IRGC leadership in the face of tough alternatives.

Trump could justify his failure to react by the lack of human victims; he was certainly aware that any military friction could blow up his chances of re-election: a factor very carefully calculated by Iran. Limited war is not an option available to Trump.

Moreover, after the UK Royal Marines landed by helicopter on the Iranian super tanker “Grace 1” to capture it – despite the fact that neither Iran nor Syria are part of the EU, and thus they are not legitimate targets for the sanctions to be applied and validated in this case – Iran first gave a chance to the French envoy Emmanuel Bonne to find an exit to the crisis. When the UK decided to keep “Grace 1” for another month, hours later Iranian IRGC special Forces captured – using the “cut and paste” style of boarding-the British tanker “Stena Impero”, a UK ship, just at the moment when that government was at its weakest, and the UK Prime Minister was bailing out. Again, very thoughtfully planned, and a well-calculated risk.

The US pushed the UK to move against Iran but stood idly by, watching the humiliation of the former “British Empire” which indirectly dominated Iran during the Shah era and before the Imam Khomeini came to power in 1979.

Iran took the UK tanker from the Gulf of Oman and offered a mediocre pretext, equal to the British one when capturing “Grace 1” in Gibraltar. Iran is telling the British that no war confrontation took place and no human losses are registered so far even if the Middle East is in the middle of a war-like situation with the US economic war on Iran.

So far, not one victim has been recorded, notwithstanding the massive and important events that involved several sabotage operations, the downing of one of the most sophisticated and expensive US drones, the capture of two tankers, and a warning to a US spy plane which escaped Iranian missiles by a hair’s breadth.

Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei ordered the IRGC to continue developing its missile programme and injected billions of dollars into it. The leader criticised both President Hassan Rouhani and the Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif for leading the country to a deal with the US and the EU when both are partners to each other and cannot be trusted. Therefore, the only exit seems the direction Iran is taking, particularly since Europe remains divided. The UK is heading towards selecting a Trump-like leader, Boris Johnson, the US President’s favourite candidate. The UK is in a critical situation where the “no-deal British exit” (hard Brexit) from the European community will weaken the country and isolate it- and certainly Trump will not bother to rescue it.

Iran is exposing its policy now: an eye for an eye. It is as prepared for war as much as US; prepared for the “absolute worst” as Trump has said. The US is building up its military capability by re-opening its air base in Saudi Arabia (Prince Sultan desert base) – the same base that the US used for its war against Saddam Hussein in 1990. Iran is active with its allies, Palestinian groups, the Lebanese Hezbollah, various Iraqi groups and Yemeni allies to provide these with enough missiles to sustain a long war if need be, yet without obviously provoking it.

Iran will continue its war in the shadows, and will continue harassing the western countries, disregarding the Arab states so that its war is not turned in a sectarian direction. Middle Eastern peoples are watching the dangerous bickering and can see Iran’s finger is on the trigger. It is gripping it firmly, without no hesitation to fire when appropriate, and regardless of who is the opponent or opponents.

The US most likely will have to wait and think carefully about its next move, particularly the building up of a maritime security coalition to patrol the Gulf and protect ships during the six hours needed for the transit of the Straits of Hormuz. The more western military presence there is in the vicinity of Iran, the richer the bank of objectives and targets offered to the IRGC, and the easier it becomes for Tehran to select its choice of target – in case of war – without launching long-range missiles against US bases established in the Middle East or any other long-distance target.

Washington won’t go to war if the outcome is not clear at least for itself. And, with Iran, no outcome can be predicted with certainty. Iran is aware of this US weakness, and is playing with it. It is showing that the West, for all its bulky muscles, is fragile and even vulnerable.

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The first-ever long-range joint air patrol between the Russian and Chinese Air Forces got off to a scandalous start after South Korea reportedly fired hundreds of warning shots to ward off what it says was Moscow’s violation of its sovereign airspace near the disputed Liancourt Rocks that it administers, which in turn prompted Tokyo to scold Seoul for responding since it said that only Japanese forces have the right to do so over the territory that their government also claims, thus worsening the already-tense relations between these two American military allies.

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The first-ever long-range joint air patrol between the Russian and Chinese Air Forces was supposed to be a moment of celebration for both multipolar Great Powers, but it got off to a scandalous start after South Korea reportedly fired hundreds of warning shots to ward off what it says was Moscow’s violation of its sovereign airspace near the disputed Liancourt Rocks that it administers. Russia refuted the accusations and retorted that no such violation occurred, but slammed South Korea’s escort of its aircraft over neutral waters as amounting to “aerial hooliganism“. Japan, however, jumped into the unexpected diplomatic fray by scolding South Korea for responding to what it claims was a violation of its own airspace seeing as how Tokyo also lays claim to the area, which suddenly worsened these two American allies’ already-tense relations that have been damaged by the island nation’s recent decision to restrict the export of special chemicals to the peninsular country.

The South Korean-Japanese trade dispute was caused by Tokyo’s concerns that some of its partners’ companies are illegally transferring these chemicals to North Korea to aid in its chemical weapons program due to their dual use in that industry as well as the semi-conductor one that they’re officially supposed to be used for. Seoul, however, was skeptical from the get-go since it seemed to its policymakers that Tokyo is doing this in response to their court’s decision that their former colonizer pay reparations for its abuse of forced laborers during World War II, with it being thought that Japan is politicizing this trade dispute in order to compel South Korea into concessions on this super-emotive issue under pain of having its economy contract due to its inability to import the chemicals that are indispensable for use in an industry that accounts for roughly a quarter of its exports on the scale that’s needed to maintain growth.

This weaponization of economic instruments for political ends greatly complicates the US’ efforts to forge a trilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia between itself and its two military allies, and Japan’s latest scolding of South Korea surely doesn’t help at all in this respect. In fact, these two events are leading to a possibly irreconcilable rift between both of them, one that the US might not be able to repair. The Pentagon’s recently released “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” says that “The U.S.-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific”, clearly indicating an overall strategic preference for Japan, which might have been emboldened by this to initiate its trade war with South Korea due to the expectation that the US wouldn’t dare chastise it out of fear of losing the reliability of its top partner for “containing” China. That calculation might of course change, but for now, the US is staying silent and letting its partners work it out themselves.

Such an approach suggests that the US also doesn’t want to risk offending South Korea, whose cooperation on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament is especially important for advancing American grand strategy too. Because of the different roles that both countries play in promoting American interests in Northeast Asia, Washington is hard-pressed to choose between them in picking a so-called “favorite” to throw its weight behind. The US must also tread carefully because it doesn’t want for these two latest events in South Korean-Japanese relations to result in Seoul swiftly pivoting towards Beijing in response, which is a distinct possibility that shouldn’t ever be precluded despite the seemingly low odds of it happening at this moment. Even so, the risk is nevertheless ever-present that this could occur just as unexpectedly as Japan’s export restrictions that suddenly worsened the regional situation.

Returning back to the matter at hand, Japan’s rebuke of South Korea’s self-professed right in firing warning shots to ward off the Russian warplanes that it said violated its airspace brought the Liancourt Rocks into their ever-widening disagreements as of late, meaning that it can now be included in the “full package” of this month’s issues alongside the lingering legacy of World War II, Japan’s claims that some South Korean companies are violating UN sanctions by illegally exporting dual-use chemicals to North Korea, and Tokyo’s trade restrictions on Seoul. The indisputable outcome is that two of America’s most important allies are now locked in a seemingly intractable and very complex dispute over history, international law, trade, and now geopolitics, with each of these issues being ultra-sensitive for their people and therefore reducing the chances that they can reach a “compromise” on ending one of the worst-ever rifts between the US’ top Asian partners.

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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.

Featured image is from Money and Markets

The widespread opioid epidemic is perhaps the most serious public health crisis in the US.

It’s fueled by Big Pharma greed and indifference to the health and welfare of ordinary people — facilitated by ruling authorities in Washington, doing little to contain it beyond rhetorical posturing.

The Mayo Clinic explained opioid prescription drugs as follows, saying they’re “a broad group of pain-relieving drugs that work by interacting with opioid receptors in your cells.”

“Opioids can be made from the poppy plant — for example, morphine (Kadian, Ms Contin, others) — or synthesized in a laboratory — for example, fentanyl (Actiq, Duragesic, others).”

“When opioid medications travel through your blood and attach to opioid receptors in your brain cells, the cells release signals that muffle your perception of pain and boost your feelings of pleasure.”

What relieves pain can be addictive and hugely dangerous. High doses slow “breathing and heart rate, which can lead to death.”

Opioid addiction is the leading drug overdose issue in the US, responsible for over 50,000 deaths in the country annually.

According to new information published by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), drug producers and distributors sold about 76 billion opioid pain pills between 2006 and 2012 alone, likely much more than earlier in years after this timeframe to the present day.

Millions of Americans use legal and illicit opioids. When used by pregnant women, infants can be drug-dependent at birth.

Trump earlier declared a public health emergency, yet did nothing to address it, no plan or federal funding to combat the crisis, no efforts to control the proliferation of these drugs.

Like his predecessors for the last half century, Trump prioritizes war on drugs strategy, the long ago failed approach to dealing with the crisis. Addiction to legal and illicit drugs is a health issue, not a crime.

Director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program Peter Maybarduk said the following in response to Trump’s hollow announcement:

“Declarations and tweets will do little to curb the deadly opioid push into our communities spurred by Big Pharma.”

Drug companies “hooked millions of Americans on opioids through illegal marketing, greed and undermining safety standards.”

“Big Pharma created this epidemic. Ending its corruption is a necessary part of the solution.”

Trump instead is beholden to corporate interests, doing nothing to curb their destructive practices.

His shameful war on drugs and “Just say no” agenda assures a greater opioid crisis, not the other way around.

A Washington Post report on the growing epidemic quoted Big Pharma emails “show(ing) indifference to” what’s going on, taking scores of US lives daily.

A WaPo quoted email from Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals national account manager Victor Borelli to drug distributor KeySource Medical’s sales vice president Steve Cockrane said check your inventories.

“If you are low, order more. If you are okey, order a little more, Capesce?”

He earlier used the phrase “ship, ship, ship” to describe his job, said WaPo, adding:

“Those email excerpts are quoted in a 144-page plaintiffs’ filing along with thousands of pages of documents unsealed by a judge’s order Friday in a landmark case in Cleveland against many of the largest companies in the drug industry.”

“Nearly 2,000 cities, counties and towns are alleging that the companies knowingly flooded their communities with opioids, fueling an epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 since 1996.”

The figure is likely way understated as the cause of many US deaths go unreported or are misreported.

The Controlled Substances Act requires drug companies to report to the DEA unusually large and frequent orders — and refrain from shipping what may be diverted to the black market.

Plaintiffs in litigation against drug companies and distributors claim firms “ignored red flags and failed at every level.”

WaPo was part of a lawsuit for release of previously sealed DEA documents on opioid sales and distribution.

Drug companies and the DEA unsuccessfully tried to block the release, ordered at the district and appeals court levels, the latter OKing certain redactions, information sought now made public.

WaPo:

“(F)or the first time, provides specific information about how and in what quantity the drugs flowed around the country, from manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies.”

“The case also brings to light internal documents and deliberations by the companies as they sought to promote their products” indifferent to public health and welfare.

Companies named in what amounts to a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) “civil racketeering enterprise” suit include Mallinckrodt, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Purdue Pharma.

Plaintiffs claim opioid producers and distributors failed to “design serious suspicious order monitoring systems that would identify suspicious orders to the DEA,” adding:

“Their failure to identify suspicious orders was their business model: they turned a blind eye and called themselves mere ‘deliverymen’ with no responsibility for what they delivered or to whom.”

“They made no effort actually to identify suspicious orders, failed to flag orders that, under any reasonable algorithm, represented between one-quarter and 90 percent of their business, and kept the flow of drugs coming into Summit and Cuyahoga Counties” — similar practices going on nationwide.

By deposition, an unnamed Mallinckrodt employee called the company the “kingpin within the (opioid) drug cartel.”

In 2011, the DEA said the company “sold excessive amounts of the most highly abused forms of oxycodone, 30 mg and 15 mg tablets, placing them into a stream of commerce that would result in diversion,” adding:

“(E)ven though Mallinckrodt knew of the pattern of excessive sales of its oxycodone feeding massive diversion, it continued to incentivize and supply these suspicious sales,” — never notifying the DEA of suspicious orders.

McKesson is the largest US opioid distributor. According to the ongoing lawsuit, the company “has a long history of absolute deference to retail national account customers when it comes to (opioid) threshold increases,” often increasing amounts shipped to pharmacies like Walgreens, Walmart, and other large chains.

“In August 2014, (the) DOJ noted that McKesson appeared to be willing to approve threshold increases for opioids for the flimsiest of reasons.”

For shipments to Summit and Cuyahoga counties, the company failed to report a single suspicious order from May 2008 to July 2013, according to the lawsuit, adding:

In 2017, the company “failed to design and implement an effective system to detect and report ‘suspicious orders’ ” — after fined earlier for this practice.

“(B)efore the ink of the settlement agreement was even dry,” the company continued “business as usual” by maintaining an unrestricted flow of these drugs.

Its former regulatory affairs director was recently indicted for illegally distributing opioids.

According to the DEA in 2012,

“(n)otwithstanding the ample guidance available, Walgreens has failed to maintain an adequate suspicious order reporting system and as a result, has ignored readily identifiable orders and ordering patterns that, based on the information available throughout the Walgreens Corporation, should have been obvious signs of diversion.”

What’s clear from information released, opioid producers and distributors continue trafficking in these dangerous drugs freely even after fined for abusive practices.

Judicial action won’t stop them. Nor will Congress or the White House.

America’s political process is money controlled, aspirants and officeholders bought like toothpaste, beholden to their large donors.

Corporate giants run things. Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual wins every time.

Trump is like the vast majority of others in Washington, serving corporate interests, doing nothing to curb their destructive practices.

The drug industry fueled opioid crisis keeps worsening because of a bonanza of profits it generates.

Addiction and an overdosing epidemic killing tens of thousands in the US annually is considered a cost of doing business — paid by victims, not opioid traffickers.

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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.

Readers aware that I, and Dmitry Orlov, have been chronicling America’s rapid decline ask me, “where did it all begin?”  To  answer that question would require a massive history such as Jacques Bazun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. All I can do for you is to show you recent evidence from our time.

Let’s begin an occasional series on the subject with asset forfeiture.  Asset forfeiture was one of those tactics that Sir Thomas More warned against in the play, “A Man for All Seasons.” Cutting down a protective feature of law in order to better chase after devils exposes the innocent to injustice along with the guilty.  The devil was the Mafia.  Asset forfeiture originated as a way to prevent gangsters from using their ill-gotten gains to hire better lawyers to defend them than the US Justice Department could hire to prosecute them.  In effect, gangsters were denied the use of their money in their defense. This was the beginning of an unconstitutional assault on private property and due process, but the judiciary, desiring that the Mafia be imprisoned, ignored their constitutional responsibility. The judges joined in the chase after devils.

A next step was to go further in the “war on drugs” and confiscate the property of those suspected of drug crimes.  The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984 declared forfeitable all real property, including any right, title or interest in anything associated in any way with the commission of a drug crime. 

As I have stressed and as legal scholars formerly stressed, the law unfolds to the limit of its logic.  Innocent people have had their cars confiscated because they picked up a hitch-hiker who was in possession of drugs discovered in a police stop.  Federal agents have confiscated real estate on the grounds of which they conducted a “drug sting.”  As one of the participants in the sting committed a crime, the property chosen for the sting can be confiscated on the grounds that the property  “facilitated a drug crime.”  Multimillionaire Donald Scott was shot dead by police in his home on his 200-acre estate in Malibu, California, because of a conspiracy to seize Mr. Scott’s home on the theory that there was “probable cause” to think that the heir to a vast European chemical and cosmetic fortune was growing marijuana somewhere on his estate (The Tyranny of Good Intentions, pp. 117-120).

Asset forfeiture soon jumped beyond drug crimes to all crimes.  A family lost their motel because a prostitute rented a room in which she conducted her business.  The motel had unknowingly “faciliated a crime.”  Asset forfeiture permits a person’s property to be confiscated even though the owner was not a participant in the crime and had no knowledge of the crime.

There have been vast numbers of innocent American tax-paying victims of police stealing their property under asset forfeiture law. Over the years I have reported cases, and Lawrence Stratton and I addressed police theft from the innocent public in The Tyranny of Good Intentions published in 2000 and a new edition in 2008.  The injustice done to so many Americans is one cost of asset forfeiture laws.  The criminalization of police departments is another cost.

Local TV stations in Tennessee, for example, have reported many instances of police from different local jurisdictions fighting over seizure rights on different stretches of Interstate 40.  The police stop cars with out-of-state tags, search the cars and passengers, and if they find cash in the amount of $100 or greater the police confiscate it on the grounds that the amount indicates the selling of drugs or the intended purchase of drugs. On other pretexts the police seize the cars leaving the family on foot in a strange land.

In The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Larry Stratton and I tell the story of Selena Washington who was stopped on I-95 in Florida on her way to purchase construction materials to repair her hurricane-damaged home. She doubted the building materials company would accept a large check from a black woman and had with her the insurance settlement of $19,000 in cash.  Police had set up roadblocks in order to rob people and confiscated her money without even taking her name. With the aid of an attorney and proof of insurance settlement, she was able to recover $15,000 or 79% of her money.  To get her money back, she had to agree that the police could keep $4,000.  I don’t know what the attorney’s fees were. Most likely, the bandit police prevented the full restoration of her home, just as when the police steal a person’s car they prevent the person from going to work and earning a living. Is the person still responsible for car payments when their car is stolen by police?

Clearly, neither the police nor the local governments that allegedly oversee the police are concerned  about the career-destroying impositions, along with the deaths, that they impose on the people who pay their salaries. Why do the idiot “law and order conservatives” romanticize the police?  How utterly stupid can a person be?

The Orlando Sentinel investigated police stops in Volusia County, Florida, and concluded that the police had used pretexts to confiscate tens of thousands of dollars from motorists.  Only four of the motorists managed to get all of their money back.

Despite massive police abuse, or is it merely enforcement, of forfeiture laws, the practice continues to expand.  The public acceptance of police as criminal organizations has resulted in new schemes for stealing people’s property.  Police stop motorists and on any number of pretexts impound their car. Impound and storage fees rapidly mount, making it impossible for anyone other than a well-to-do person to recover their car.  The cars are then sold to a contractor. The August 2019 issue of Car and Driver describes how this works in Chicago.  It is a tale of banditry.  And it goes on right in front of our eyes, and nothing is done about it.

When the police who are paid by the public to “serve and protect” instead rob and murder without accountibility, not even insouciant Americans can deny the devastating evidence of American legal, political and societal collapse.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Government that actually serves the interests of the people who are governed has two essential characteristics: first, it must be transparent in terms of how it debates and develops policies and second, it has to be accountable when it fails in its mandate and ceases to be responsive to the needs of the electorate. Over the past twenty years one might reasonably argue that Washington has become less a “of the people, by the people and for the people” and increasingly a model of how special interests can use money to corrupt government. The recent story about how serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided any serious punishment by virtue of his wealth and his political connections, including to both ex-president Bill Clinton and to current chief executive Donald Trump, demonstrates how even the most despicable criminals can avoid being brought to justice.

This erosion of what one might describe as republican virtue has been exacerbated by a simultaneous weakening of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was intended to serve as a guarantee of individual liberties while also serving as a bulwark against government overreach. In recent cases in the United States, a young man had his admission to Harvard revoked over comments posted online when he was fifteen that were considered racist, while a young woman was stripped of a beauty contest title because she refused to don a hijab at a college event and then wrote online about her experience. In both cases, freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment was ruled to be inadmissible by the relevant authorities.

Be that as it may, governmental lack of transparency and accountability is a more serious matter when the government itself becomes a serial manipulator of the truth as it seeks to protect itself from criticism. Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is seeking legislation that will expand government ability to declare it a crime to reveal the identities of undercover intelligence agents will inevitably lead to major abuse when some clever bureaucrat realizes that the new rule can also be used to hide people and cover up malfeasance.

A law to protect intelligence officers already exists. It was passed in 1982 and is referred to as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (I.I.P.A.). It criminalizes the naming of any C.I.A. officer under cover who has served overseas in the past five years. The new legislation would make the ban on exposure perpetual and would also include Agency sources or agents whose work is classified as well as actual C.I.A. staff employees who exclusively or predominantly work in the United States rather than overseas.

The revised legislation is attached to defense and intelligence bills currently being considered by Congress. If it is passed into law, its expanded range of criminal penalties could be employed to silence whistle blowers inside the Agency who become aware of illegal activity and it might also be directed against journalists that the whistleblowers might contact to tell their story.

The Agency has justified the legislation by claiming in a document obtained by The New York Times that “hundreds of covert officers [serving in the United States] have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization… C.I.A. officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to carry out C.I.A.’s mission regardless of where they are based. Protecting officers’ identities from foreign adversaries is critical.”

Some Congressmen are disturbed by the perpetual nature of the identification ban while also believing that the proposed legislation is too broad in general. Senator Ron Wyden expressed had reservations over how the C.I.A. provision would apply indefinitely.

“I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.

Agency insiders have suggested that the new law is in part a response to increasing leaks of classified information by government employees. It is also a warning shot fired at journalists in the wake of the impending prosecution of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the seldom used Espionage Act of 1918. Covert identities legislation is less broad that the Espionage Act, which is precisely why it is attractive. It permits prosecution and punishment solely because someone either has revealed a “covert” name or is suspected of having done so.

But up until now, government prosecutors have only used the 1982 identities law twice. The first time was a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and the second time was the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to providing a reporter with the name of an under-cover case officer who participated in the agency’s illegal overseas interrogations. Kiriakou has always claimed that he had not in fact named anyone, in spite of his plea, which was agreed to as a plea bargain. The covert officer in question had already been identified in the media.

John Kiriakou also observes how the I.I.P.A. has been inevitably applied selectively. He describes how “These two minor prosecutions aside, very few revelations of C.I.A. identities have ever led to court cases. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously leaked Valerie Plame’s name to two syndicated columnists. He was never charged with a crime. Former C.I.A. Director David Petraeus leaked the names of 10 covert C.I.A. operatives to his adulterous girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to impress her, and was never charged. Former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the covert SEAL Team member who killed Osama bin Laden. He apologized and was not prosecuted.”

Kiriakou also explains how the “…implementation of this law is a joke. The C.I.A. doesn’t care when an operative’s identity is revealed — unless they don’t like the politics of the person making the revelation. If they cared, half of the C.I.A. leadership would be in prison. What they do care about, though, is protecting those employees who commit crimes at the behest of the White House or the C.I.A. leadership.” He goes on to describe how some of those involved in the Agency torture program were placed under cover precisely for that reason, to protect them from prosecution for war crimes.

Even team player Joe Biden, when a Senator, voted against the I.I.P.A., explaining in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that,

“The language (the I.I.P.A.) employs is so broadly drawn that it would subject to prosecution not only the malicious publicizing of agents’ names, but also the efforts of legitimate journalists to expose any corruption, malfeasance, or ineptitude occurring in American intelligence agencies.”

And that was with the much weaker 1982 version of the bill.

The new legislation is an intelligence agency dream, a get out of jail card that has no expiry date. And if one wants to know how dangerous it is, consider for a moment that if it turns out that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was indeed a C.I.A. covert source, which is quite possible, he would be covered and would be able to walk away free on procedural grounds.

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Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review.

His 7-hour Wednesday Q & A spectacle was much ado about nothing. 

Undemocratic Dems wanting grist for their rage to impeach Trump got nothing to make their case.

The charade was an embarrassment to the maestro of malign intent, unable to recall key material in his own report, coming across as forgetful, confused, shaky, and more senile than special.

He was appointed despite clear conflicts of interest that should have automatically disqualified him but didn’t – dark forces involved wanting him used as an anti-Trump/anti-Russia fifth column.

His congressional testimony should have, but surely won’t, end the most shameful political chapter in US history since the McCarthy era communist witch hunts, finding nary a one.

McCarthyism became synonymous with baseless slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, and political lynchings.

He paled in comparison with today’s extremist cast of hundreds infesting Washington, amounting to a collective lynch mob, supported by press agent media, having long ago abandoned what journalism the way it should be is all about.

Modern-day Russophobia is far more threatening to world peace, as well as to free and open US-led Western societies than events during the Cold War era.

Mueller’s near-two year Russiagate probe was a colossal hoax, what never should have been initiated in the first place.

It was and remains all about delegitimizing Trump for the wrong reasons, ignoring the right ones.

It’s also about malign Russia bashing because of its sovereign independence, opposition to Washington’s imperial agenda, its aim for multi-world polarity, and status as the world’s dominant military power, its super-weapons exceeding the Pentagon’s best, developed at a small fraction of the cost.

Endless months of House, Senate, and Mueller probes found no evidence of Trump team/Russia collusion, no obstruction of justice.

An earlier article explained the following:

Sacked Peter Strzok led Mueller’s witch hunt Russiagate investigation for the FBI. Text messages between him and former senior agency lawyer Lisa Page showed anti-Trump bias for the wrong reasons.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the Hill, Fox News, and other media, Page admitted in earlier closed-door House Judiciary and Oversight Committees testimony that no evidence suggested Trump team/Russia collusion before Mueller’s appointment as special counsel — showing he never should have been appointed.

On May 18, 2017, the day after Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, Strzok text-messaged Page saying:

“(Y)ou and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”

In his January 2017 Department of Justice (DOJ) report, Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz called FBI and DOJ actions dysfunctional and unaccountable.

He said the Russiagate probe “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.”

At the time, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said

“(t)he IG report has destroyed the credibility of the Department of Justice and the FBI.”

Exposure of their malfeasance should have ended Russiagate probes straightaway but they continued — the fallout virtually sure to go on as long as Trump remains president, and I stress:

His highest of high crimes of war, against humanity, more wars by other means, other serious wrongdoing, dereliction of duty, dismissiveness toward ordinary people everywhere, and possible march to a potentially catastrophic war on Iran if launched are ignored or glossed over.

Mueller’s nationally televised Wednesday spectacle before House Judiciary and Intelligence committees exposed him as absented-minded shaky bubbler, unable to remember key parts of his report, along with time and again saying:

“I can’t answer that question…I’m not going to get into that…“That’s outside my purview.”

He barely stopped short of claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. His spectacle also suggested he didn’t read and understand material in the report bearing his name.

Judicial Watch slammed his Wednesday spectacle, saying the following:

“The corruptly formed and constitutionally abusive Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence to support the big lie of Trump-Russia collusion.”

“Nonetheless, Mr. Muller attempted today to smear President Trump with obstruction of justice innuendo despite concluding that no such charges could be credibly sustained.”

“Frankly, Mueller never had a valid basis upon which to investigate President Trump for obstruction of justice.”

“Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, the Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, nor the Deep State ever had a good-faith basis to pursue President Trump on Russia collusion.”

“Russia collusion wasn’t just a hoax, it is a criminal abuse of President Trump, which is why Judicial Watch has fought and will continue to fight for Russiagate and Mueller special counsel abuse documents in federal court.”

Yesterday’s day-long unspectacular spectacle laid an egg, discrediting Mueller and his witch hunt more than already.

It proved once again that the probe never should have been initiated, revealing him as a doddering bumbler bordering on senility.

It’s more evidence of a nation off the rails, threatening everyone everywhere, its ruling authorities serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people, ill-served and exploited.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The newly released documentary directed by Yana Yerlashova together with independent Dutch investigator Max van der Werff proves beyond a doubt that Ukraine and its Western partners did all that they could to cover up the true cause of MH17’s tragic downing half a decade ago, introducing new evidence and testimonies that cast serious doubt on the “official” narrative of what really took place on that dreadful day. 

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The entire world is already aware of the two competing theories about MH17’s downing half a decade ago, with the West insisting that a supposedly Russian-supplied BUK surface-to-air missile accidentally destroyed the passenger aircraft while Moscow has always maintained its innocence and claimed that it’s being framed as part of a politically motivated cover-up. Most people have already made up their minds about what they think really happened on that dreadful day, but those who doubt that an actual conspiracy took place might finally reconsider their views after the newly released documentary by Yana Yerlashova together with Dutch investigator Max van der Werff.

The “official” narrative blames Russia for this tragedy, but it’s since been revealed through the new evidence and testimonies that active efforts involving a broad array of countries were undertaken from the get-go to paint Moscow as the culprit despite there being no facts whatsoever to back up that provocative claim.

“MH17 – Call For Justice” sheds light on the dark truth of what happened immediately after the plane’s downing, with journalist John Helmer’s summary of the 28-minute-long documentary pointing out the key takeaways for those who don’t have the time to watch it in full. The video powerfully includes a brief interview with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir, who had earlier spoken out about the cover-up and reaffirms that Russia was blamed for what happened even before any information was conclusively known about the incident.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad also revealed that the West tried to prevent his country’s meaningful involvement in the investigation, which is extremely scandalous, to say the least. The Malaysians weren’t going to be deterred in their quest for justice, however, as the documentary includes a testimony from Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, disclosing that he secretly took a small team to Donetsk to gather evidence from the site after Poroshenko’s officials originally blocked them from doing so.

Malaysia’s possession of the black boxes ensured that the country would know the truth about what really occurred, which explains why Colonel Sakri also said that both the FBI and the Ukrainian government desperately tried to convince him to hand this evidence over to them immediately afterwards. He rightly refused, and that’s why his government never jumped on the bandwagon of blaming Russia since they were aware that there’s no conclusive evidence proving its complicity in this affair. This carries immense normative weight that has unfairly been ignored by the Mainstream Media when discussing this case, though it’s understandable why they wouldn’t want to draw attention to it since that “inconvenient fact” dismantles their anti-Russian infowar. It also would make more people across the world question why they weren’t made aware of any of this in the first place, which in today’s populist-driven environment could produce more anti-elite outrage than ever before.

Few independent investigators have done as much to reveal the truth about MH17 as Yana Yerlashova and Max Van den Werff,  who have done the entire world an enormous service with their latest documentary which has proven once that the Mainstream Media narrative was nothing but a politically motivated lie to blame Moscow while deflecting attention from Kiev and its probable culpability in causing this tragedy.

Those who already knew this won’t be surprised, but there are nevertheless many more who had no idea about this side of the story, which is why this documentary is a much-watch and should be shared with as many people as possible, especially on social media so that others can become aware of the evidence and testimonies that his work includes in order to finally make up their minds about what really happened.

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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.