Global Research

For the past several years, the controversy over radioactive fallout from the world’s first atomic bomb explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945—code-named Trinity—has intensified. Evidence collected by the New Mexico health department but ignored for some 70 years shows an unusually high rate of infant mortality in New Mexico counties downwind from the explosion and raises a serious question whether or not the first victims of the first atomic explosion might have been American children. Even though the first scientifically credible warnings about the hazards of radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion had been made by 1940, historical records indicate a fallout team was not established until less than a month before the Trinity test, a hasty effort motivated primarily by concern over legal liability.

In October 1947, a local health care provider raised an alarm about infant deaths downwind of the Trinity test, bringing it to the attention of radiation safety experts working for the US nuclear weapons program. Their response misrepresented New Mexico’s then-unpublished data on health effects. Federal and New Mexico data indicate that between 1940 and 1960, infant death rates in the area downwind of the test site steadily declined—except for 1945, when the rate sharply increased, especially in the three months following the Trinity blast. The 21 kiloton explosion occurred on a tower 100 feet from the ground and has been likened to a “dirty bomb” that cast large amounts of heavily contaminated soil and debris—containing 80 percent of the bomb’s plutonium—over thousands of square-miles. (See Figure 1.)

After a nearly half a century of denial, the US Department of Energy concluded in 2006, “the Trinity test also posed the most significant hazard of the entire Manhattan Project.”[1] Four years later the US Centers for Disease Control gave weight to this assessment by concluding:

“New Mexico residents were neither warned before the 1945 Trinity blast, informed of health hazards afterward, nor evacuated before, during, or after the test. Exposure rates in public areas from the world’s first nuclear explosion were measured at levels 10,000- times higher than currently allowed.”[2]

Figure 1.

Estimated exposure rate in milliroentgens per hour (mR h^-1) 12 hours after detonation; GZ = ground zero of Trinity. Source: Centers for Disease Control (2010).

Meanwhile the National Cancer Institute is conducting a study to model the dispersion and dose reconstruction for people who may have been exposed to fallout from the Trinity explosion. Regardless of the outcome of this study, it is clear the public was put in harm’s way because of US government negligence in conducting and its participation in a coverup of the results of an exceedingly dangerous experiment.

Infant mortality concerns raised about Trinity. In October 1947, the first concerns over a rise in infant mortality along the fallout path of the Trinity explosion were raised in a letter to Stafford Warren, a medical radiologist and radiation safety chief of the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test in particular. “As I recall, in August 1945, the month after the first bomb was tested in New Mexico, there were about 35 infant deaths here…” Kathryn S. Behnke, a health care provider from Roswell, New Mexico, wrote. “I understand the rate at Alamogordo, nearer the site of the test, was even higher than Roswell.”[3]

On December 4, 1947, Warren’s medical assistant, Fred A. Bryan, replied to Ms. Behnke, writing that “we can find no pertinent data concerning infant deaths; in fact there is no report as to the number of or specific cause or dates and, as far as Alamogordo is concerned.”[4]  Bryan also wrote that he “wanted to assure you that the safety and health of the people at large is not in any way endangered.”[5]

Bryan failed to mention that he did not bother to examine New Mexico’s vital statistics. About a month after Bryan’s reassured Behnke of no evidence of harm, a state health official sent the actual unpublished data on infant deaths collected by the state to Los Alamos. [6]  Soon thereafter, in a letter dated, January 22, 1948 to Bryan, Wright Langham, biomedical group leader at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), forwarded hand-written sheets from the state of “the records of infant births and deaths during 1945-1947.” Langham added: “I am sure what I am sending you will not be of much help.” The New Mexico Health Department data indicated that the infant death rate increased by 38 percent in 1945 compared to 1946 and was 57 percent higher than in 1947.[7]

Finding the facts. More than 70 years later, we examined the vital statistics collected by the US government and the state of New Mexico in the 1940s to determine if area health patterns changed after the first atomic explosion. The data eventually provided to Los Alamos and Bryan in January 1948 indicated a sharp rise in infant deaths following the Trinity explosion. Later, between 1940 and 1960, infant mortality in New Mexico showed steady and deep annual declines—except for 1945, when it shot up.[8] The infant mortality rate in New Mexico in 1945 was 100.8 per 1,000 live births; the rate for 1944 was 89.1, and for 1946 it was 78.2.[9] (See Figure 2.) The unpublished data sent to Los Alamos indicated an infant death rate nearly 34 percent higher in 1945 than subsequently made public.

Figure 2

Month-by-month data for the years 1943 to 1948 revealed the highest infant mortality rates in late summer, following the Trinity blast, with a significant peak in September 1945. Infant mortality for the months August, September, and October after the explosion indicated that New Mexican infants had a 56 percent increased risk of dying, with less than a 0.0001 percent chance that this was due to natural fluctuation.[10]

In 1945, infant death rates increased on average by 21 percent (with a statistical error range of plus or minus six percent that applies to all the rates listed in this paragraph) in counties where fallout was measured by Manhattan Project personnel. Rates in these counties dropped by an average of 31 percent in 1946. The infant death rate in Roswell, where Ms. Behnke first alerted Warren of the problem, climbed by 52 percent in 1945, after falling by 27 percent between 1943 and 1944. The rate then dropped in Roswell by 56 percent in 1946.  Rates in the downwind counties where fallout was measured dropped by an average of 31 percent (plus or minus eight percent) percent in 1946

We found no extraordinary metrological conditions, such as heat or heavy rains and floods, that may have competed with radioactive fallout as a factor in the increase in newborn deaths after Trinity. According to the CDC in 2010, risks to newborns were especially heightened as “residents reported that fallout ‘snowed down’ for days after the blast, most had dairy cows and most collected rain water off their roofs for drinking.”[11]

The Trinity Test was conducted on July 16, 1945. The rate of infant mortality began rising in July. The month of August showed an infant mortality rate of 152.3 per 1,000 live births. In September, the rate was 187.8, and in October 123.1. Infant mortality change rates for August, September, and October show a dramatic increase in 1945 when compared to the same three months for the years 1943, 1944, 1946, 1947 and 1948 (see figure 3)

Figure 3

Ionizing radiation is especially damaging to dividing cells, so the developing infant, both before and after birth, is susceptible to radiation damage, as Alice Stewart, an epidemiologist who first demonstrated the link between X-rays of pregnant women and disease in their children,[12] first warned in 1956.[13]This damage may be seen years later with the development of leukemia and other cancers in children exposed in utero to ionizing radiation, as Stewart and others confirmed in subsequent studies.[14] By 1958, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation  recognized that, in the short term, radiation damage can be reflected in fetal and infant deaths.[15]

Fallout protection was not a priority for the Trinity explosion. The Trinity test was top secret to all but a few scientists and military officials. No warnings were issued to citizens about off- site fallout dangers, although off-site measurements done with a paucity of instruments and people indicated that radiation spread well beyond the test site boundaries.  [16]

The Trinity bomb was detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower. With an estimated explosive yield of 21,000 tons of TNT, the fireball vaporized the tower and shot hundreds of tons of irradiated soil to a height of 50,000 to 70,000 feet, spreading radioactive fallout over a very large area. Fallout measurements taken shortly after the explosion were very limited and primitive instruments were used; the data suggest no measurements regarding inhalation or ingestion of radionuclides were taken.

Joseph Shonka, a principal researcher for the study of the Trinity shot for the Centers for Disease Control, recently concluded that the Trinity fallout “was similar to what might occur with a dirty bomb. A fraction of the plutonium [~20%] was used in the explosion [and] … the fireball contacted the soil. Because of the low altitude, fallout exhibited a ‘skip distance’ with little fallout near the test site. Although there were plans for evacuation, radio communication was lost as the survey teams traveled out to follow the overhead plume. Thus, the command center was unsure of whether that the criteria had been met … and failed to order the evacuation.”[17]

Scientists had stressed the importance of protection from radioactive fallout following a nuclear weapon explosion, five years before the Trinity test. “Owing to the spread of radioactive substances with the wind, the bomb could probably not be used without killing large numbers of civilians, and this may make it unsuitable as a weapon for use by this country,” warned Manhattan Project physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in their important memorandum of March 1940, which accelerated production of the first atomic weapons. “[I]t would be very important to have an organization which determines the exact extent of the danger area, by means of ionization measurements, so that people can be warned from entering it.”[18]

As preparations were being made to test the first nuclear weapon, warnings by Frisch and Peierls about fallout hazards were lost on the leadership of the Manhattan Project. Were it not for two physicists at Los Alamos who warned in a June 1945 memorandum that “radiation effects might cause considerable damage in addition to the blast damage ordinarily considered,”[19] little would have been done. Later Joseph O. Hirschfelder, one of the concerned scientists, recalled that “very few people believed us when we predicted radioactive fallout from the atom bomb. On the other hand, they did not ignore this possibility.”[20]

On first being warned by Los Alamos scientists, Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project director, dismissed concerns about fallout as being alarmist. But Warren convinced Groves of the potential risk of legal liabilities, and Groves grudgingly agreed to assemble a team at the last minute to track fallout from the test.[21]

A lot was at stake. First, there was the enormous expense involved; the Trinity device cost approximately 15 percent of what the United States spent on all conventional bombs and other explosives during World War II.[22] Then again, there was great pressure to test the Trinity device before July 17, 1945, when the three heads of government of the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain were to meet in Potsdam, a German suburb of Berlin, to address the end-stage of World War II and post-war policies. Compared to the political imperative of Potsdam, the hazards of radioactive fallout took a back seat.

But five days after the explosion, Warren reported to Groves that “a very serious hazard” existed over a 2,700 square mile area downwind from the test that had received high radiation doses.[23] Tissue-destructive effects from fallout were observed in livestock in areas that were incorrectly assumed to be uninhabited by people.[24] After realizing the magnitude of the problem, Warren advised Groves that the fallout danger zone, originally set at a 15-mile radius, was too small by at least an order of magnitude and that “there is still a tremendous quantity of radioactive dust floating in the air.”[25]

After more than 70 years, radiation exposures from inhalation and ingestion of water and food contaminated by Trinity test fallout were never assessed,[26] and it may prove to be difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct doses from internal exposures, given the deaths of residents living in the vicinities from the passage of time and the major changes in lifestyles and dietary habits that have occurred since 1945. Fallout maps of the Trinity test have been made, but they contain strong elements of speculation because of the paucity of radiological monitoring at the time.

The National Cancer Institute is near completion of a fallout dispersion study of the Trinity explosion. Regardless of the outcome of this study, it is clear the public was endangered because of US government negligence in conducting a highly dangerous experiment, as was the case for the downwinders living near the Nevada Test Site, where above-ground nuclear tests were conducted. Because of passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990, 22,220 “downwinders” exposed to fallout from open air nuclear weapons tests near the Nevada Test Site received an official apology from the US Government for sending them in harm’s way through deception. Through 2015, they had also received nearly $2 billion in financial compensation.[27]

But the people downwind of the 1945 explosion in New Mexico have been denied official recognition, even though the Trinity shot was considered one of the dirtiest of American nuclear tests, with a significant absence of safeguards to protect people from dense radioactive fallout. Safety took a back seat to making sure the first atomic bombs would meet their enormously destructive potential. Alvin Weinberg, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory during and after the Manhattan Project captured the prevalent mindset in his memoir by saying that “all else, including safety, was secondary.”[28]

Several years ago, residents of central and southern New Mexico organized to fight for compensation. Known as the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, they have made a compelling case that cancers and other diseases are due to the Trinity blast and subsequent radioactive fallout from open air atomic bomb tests in Nevada.

Indeed, coming to terms with the legacy of the Trinity explosion through radiation dose reconstruction is further complicated by the fallout that drifted from the Nevada tests into New Mexico. As indicated by the Centers for Disease Control in 2005, northern and central New Mexico were among the areas where significant amounts of fallout were deposited from the Nevada open air atomic tests.[29] Even so, the strong correlation of increased infant deaths in the months following the Trinity explosion cannot be ignored.

We should remember that compensation for people near the Nevada test site was not exclusively based on abstract modeling of radiation doses. Rather, downwinders were also compensated because the burden of proof fell unfairly on them. They were victims not just of willful negligence, but also the government’s purposeful deception and suppression of evidence about the high-hazard activity that the US nuclear weapons program constituted. The current body of historical evidence of harm, negligence, and deception—especially the evidence of increased infant death following the first nuclear explosion—should be more than enough for long overdue justice for the people in New Mexico who were downwind of Trinity.

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Kathleen M. Tucker (1944-2019) was president of the Health and Energy Institute, where she organized national and international conferences about radiation and the law.

Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Alvarez served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999.

Notes

[1] Terrence R. Fehner & F. G. Gosling U.S. Department of Energy, Office of History, Battlefield of the Cold War, Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing 1951-1963, DOE/MA-0003,p 25

[2] Final Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document and Retrieval and Assessment Project, Prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 2010, pp. ES-34-35. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/LAHDRA/Content/pubs/Final%20LAHDRA%20Report%202010.pd

[3] Kathhryn S. Behnke, Chiropractor, Letter to: Dr. Stafford L. Warren, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, October 20, 1947.

[4] Fred A. Bryan, Letter to Katheryn S. Behnke, December 4, 1947.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Letter from Marion Hotopp, M. D., Dept. of Public Health, dated Dec. 19, 1947.

[7] Letter from Wright H. Langham,

[8] New Mexico Summary of Vital Statistics, 1945 vol. 26, #31, July 16, 1947 & Vital Statistics-Special Reports, Federal Security Agency

[9] Ibid

[10] Communication with David Richard, Professor and radiation epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, November 27, 2017.

[11] op cit ref 3.

[12] See https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/04/world/alice-stewart-95-linked-x-rays-to-diseases.html

[13] Stewart, Alice, Webb, J., Giles, D. & Hewitt, D., Malignant Disease in Childhood and Diagnostic Irradiation In Utero;  Preliminary  Communication, Lancet 2, 1956, p. 447

[14] Stewart, Alice, Webb, J., & Hewitt D., A  Survey of Childhood Malignancies, BRITISH MEDICL JOURNAL 1, 1958, 1495-1508; MacMahon, Brian, Prenatal X-Ray Exposure and Childhood Cancer, J. NATIONAL CANCER INST., 28 (5) May, 1962, p. 1173; Diamond, Earl, Schmerler, Helen, & Lilienfeld, Abraham, The Relationship of Intra-Uterine Radiation to Subsequent Mortality and Development of Leukemia in Children, AMER. J.  HYGIENE, 97 (5) May, 1973, 283; Sternglass, Ernest, Cancer:  Relation of Prenatal Radiation to the Development of the Disease in Childhood, SCIENCE Vol. 140, 1963

[15] UNSCEAR 2001 Report, Hereditary Effects of Radiation, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR 2001 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annex http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2001/2001Annex_pages%208-160.pdf

[16] Op Cit ref 3.

[17] Personal communication with Joseph Shomka June 2019.

[18] Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, Memorandum on the Properties of a Radioactive “Super-bomb,” March,1940.

[19] Hirschfelder and J. Magee to K. Bainbridge, “Danger from Active Material Falling from Cloud Desirability of Bonding Soil Near Zero with Concrete and Oil,” June 16, 1945, NTA.

[20] Joseph O. Hirschfelder, The Scientific and Technological Miracle at Los Alamos, Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943-1945, Boston: D. Reidel. Publishing Company, 1980, p.67.

[21] Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Day the Sun Rose Twice, University of New Mexico Press, (1984), pp-71-72

[22] Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of Nuclear Weapons since 1940, Steven I. Schwartz Ed., The costs of the Manhattan Project, Brookings Institution Press, 1998. https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/

[23] Memorandum, To: Major Gen. Groves From: Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of Medical Section
Manhattan District, Subject: Report on Test II at Trinity, 16 July 1945, U.S. National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, TS Manhattan Project Files, folder 4, “Trinity Test.”

[24] U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Final Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) Project, November 2010, p.22-3. https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/multiplefiles2/ChemRisk%20et%20al%202010%20Final%20LAHDRA%20Report.pdf

[25] Memorandum, To: Major Gen. Groves From: Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of Medical Section
Manhattan District, Subject: Report on Test II at Trinity, 16 July 1945, U.S. National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, TS Manhattan Project Files, folder 4, “Trinity Test.”

[26] Op Cit ref 3, p.22-3. https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/multiplefiles2/ChemRisk%20et%20al%202010%20Final%20LAHDRA%20Report.pdf

[27] Congressional Research Service, The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA): Compensation Related to Exposure to Radiation from Atomic Weapons Testing and Uranium Mining, June 11, 2019. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43956.pdf

[28] Alvin M/ Weinberg, The first Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer, The American Institute of Physics, New York (1994). P.188

[29] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/feasibilitystudy/Technical_Vol_1_Chapter_3.pdf

Following the Russia-Africa Economic Conference in Moscow last month and the Russia-Africa Parliamentary Conference on July 3rd, the first ever Russia-Africa political summit is scheduled for Sochi on October 24th. The summit will henceforth be planned as an annual event. About 3,000 delegates attended the economic conference, including a thousand African delegates. The volume of Russian trade with Africa is projected to double in the next 3-4 years. Currently, Russia’s largest trading-partners on the African continent are Egypt, South Africa, Zambia, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria and Kenya. The Russian Expo Center is cooperating on a number of African projects with Afreximbank, for example the construction and modernization of industrial infrastructure in Zambia and Angola, and mining projects in both Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone.

Furthermore, in May the governments of Russia and Egypt signed an agreement for a planned Russian industrial zone in Port Said. The Russian government has earmarked $190 million for investment in the project, with a further $7 billion coming from the private sector. Russian companies setting up shop in the planned industrial zone will receive preferential tariffs for energy, and a preferential tax regime. The project is scheduled to be completed by 2026. In May last year, the Russian and Ethiopian governments announced plans to build nuclear power facilities in Ethiopia, and an agreement has been reached with the Eritrean government to build a Russian military logistics-port (not planned as an actual naval base).

Under what global security-conditions is this kind of medium-term economic and infrastructural planning possible?

Under the conditions of the new multi-polarity, there is a new “scramble for Africa” with Russia, China, Brazil, India and the EU all showing heightened levels of economic interest. The Russian industrial sector suffers from shortages of manganese, chrome, mercury, bauxite and chromium, so access to Africa’s minerals holds immense strategic value.

During Soviet times, a number of African nations benefitted from large-scale Soviet economic aid, and given the USSR’s supporting role in the anti-colonial movements of a number of nations in both North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, we should not entirely discount the value of this anti-colonial ideological legacy in Russia’s present-day economic competition with India, China, Brazil and the EU on the African continent.

Although most Russian diplomats discussing the Russian government’s multi-levelled negotiations with their African counterparts have focused largely on trade and other economic issues, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did mention that, during his meeting with Cote D’Ivoire’s Foreign Minister Marcel Amon-Tanoh on July 17th, cooperation on defence, security and counter-terrorism had been discussed. Last year, Lavrov embarked on a week-long tour of African nations, during which he discussed trade and counter-terrorism in tandem.

This is not only prudent but a necessary compliment to any discussion of economic integration. Any coldly pragmatic analysis of the history of American militarism in the post-war period would come to the conclusion that the central purpose of American military intervention has most usually been to destroy the infrastructure of rival economic systems. Von Clausewitz was not entirely right – rather than observing that war was the continuation of politics by other means, he should have said that war was the continuation of economics by other means.

For example:

During the Korean war, in 20 out of North Korea’s 23 largest cities, more than half of all the housing-stock was destroyed by American aerial bombardment.

During the Vietnam war, 13% of Vietnam’s entire surface-area was poisoned by Napalm and Agent Orange. The legacy of this today not only renders tens of millions of hectares of Vietnamese land uncultivatable, but also means that between 2 and 3 million Vietnamese people today have birth-defects which make them incapable of working.

A large component of the US government’s Operation Mongoose was geared toward economic sabotage against Cuba.

During the 1999 NATO air-campaign against Yugoslavia, 400 state-owned factories were bombed, only a handful of which were in any way related to military production. Also, the use of depleted uranium munitions was devised to have a long-term impact on environmental health, and we can only surmise logically that this was decided upon because of the long-term economic burden which it would entail.

It seems obvious that the primary target of American aerial bombardment in the 2011 air-campaign against Libya was the country’s infrastructure, electrical and water-supply systems.

It seems equally obvious that the destruction of as much housing and infrastructure as possible has been the principal mission assigned to American proxies in Syria and Donbass.

Quite recently, the US has attacked both Venezuela’s electrical grid and its water-supply.

The historical pattern is clear. The principal function of the projection of US military power abroad during the entire post-war period has not been to kill people, but to destroy infrastructure and economic capacity. Given the Chinese industrial and infrastructural investments lost in Lybia, valuable lessons have been learned.

So taking the planned Russian industrial zone in Port Said as an example, the question arises, what does this intergovernmental agreement imply about developments in the global security-environment which the Russian and Egyptian governments envisage in the near future?

Well, the Port Said plan implies that both governments envisage the decline of American military potency in the region, and thus a degraded American capacity for economic vandalism. That is to say, it implies that we already live in a new global security-environment. This point is partially connected with the new American switch of naval concentration to the Pacific in an effort to counter Chinese economic power. Although this pivot to Asia was first announced by the Obama administration, only under Trump has it been coupled with a new tendency toward isolationism in other geo-strategic zones. Realistically, when we consider the way that the Chinese got their fingers burnt in Libya, we would have to counter-factually speculate that neither the Russian nor the Egyptian governments would consider the Port Said industrial zone plan viable if Hillary Clinton had been elected US president. It would simply have been far too risky an investment.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

“He has been glorified as a hero and obeyed as a ruler, but fundamentally he is always the same. His most fantastic triumphs have taken place in our own time, among people who set great store by the idea of humanity. He is not yet extinct, nor will he ever be until we have the strength to see him clearly, whatever disguise he assumes and whatever his halo of glory. The survivor is mankind’s worst evil, its curse and perhaps its doom. Is it possible to escape him, even now at this last moment?” Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power

“[White] America’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don’t know what morals are. They don’t try and eliminate an evil because it’s evil, or because it’s illegal, or because it’s immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you’re wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he’d straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him…And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built—is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.” — Malcolm X, Oxford Union Debate, 1964

Canetti (image right) argues in his book that the most dangerous individual holding power is someone who views him/herself as a Survivor, or someone who can survive at the expense of others. Canetti notes that the Survivor, with access to nuclear weapons, can obliterate a hefty chunk of mankind. The President of the United States, as Commander in Chief, has the option to use those weapons presumably only under the most dire of circumstances. President Donald Trump’s proximity to the nuclear weapons trigger has been noted with trepidation by non-military observers from the beginning of his presidency and that matter is always lurking in the background, particularly as the US modernizes its Nuclear Triad. But the checks and balances in the use of the Nuclear Triad can’t be discounted as it is likely that military commanders would refuse to carry out Trump’s orders to use nukes even in spite of revised doctrine appearing to make it easier to do so.

The bigger problem, according to Canetti, is this:

“Today, the survivor is himself afraid. He has always been afraid, but with his vast new potentialities his fear has grown too, until it is almost unendurable…The most unquestioned and therefore the most dangerous thing he does is to give commands.”

Trump’s world is a paranoid one. His apologists and supporters are loons. How else to describe those that refuse to condemn, even approve, racist presidential behavior. Trump and his disciples act as if they have survived some horrific mentally debilitating event; or indeed, expect one in the form of a color shift in America’s complexion. 

They fear the majority of the popular American electorate, they fear immigrants, they fear people of color, they fear LGBT’s, they fear government funded social programs, they fear the questioning of their beliefs, and they fear non-Christians—and that’s just for starters.

Didn’t evolution weed these viruses out decades ago?

Trump and his disciples view themselves as a persecuted minority and that’s dangerous because they really believe they are. The statistics, the demographics, show that Whites make up the largest chunk of the American population with Hispanics second at 18.3 percent and Blacks at 13.4 percent. Trump’s people are horrified at the prospect that America will turn a light tinge of brown, which it inevitably will, by the 2050s and beyond.

Making Amends with Corporation and the Financial Sector

Trump is Canetti’s Survivor, a hustler. He managed to gaming the legal and financial system to stay afloat, always getting rescued/supported by “his kind” for boneheaded business decisions and now for slashing US federal spending and regulations that protect the American public turning the US federal government into a bigger playground for corporations, businesses and interest groups  (something corporations welcome with glee).

The Washington Post reported in 2016 that Trump declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy six times; four in the 1990s and two in the 2000s. In 2004, Trump’s Hotel and Casinos Resorts was $1.8 billion in debt and couldn’t meet its obligations.

So why do the corporate powerhouses of America stick with Trump even though he is a real estate swindler, racist and psychopath?

That’s simple, he is a repaying the corporate/financial world back for robbing them of billions years ago by giving them trillions now. He, and his Republican/Democrat apologists in the US Congress, slashed corporate/business tax rates, and they are now pillaging federal programs like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program(SNAP) for budget cuts or elimination, ostensibly to save American taxpayers some money. Trump wants to drop 3.1 million people from SNAP.

It is the same story at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to the publication Mother Jones, 

“On Wednesday [July 18], the United States Environmental Protection Agency doubled down on one of the most controversial environmental deregulation moves of the Trump presidency…the EPA reaffirmed its 2017 decision to reject a proposal from the agency’s own scientists to ban an insecticide called chlorpyrifos that farmers use on a wide variety of crops, including corn, soybeans, fruit and nut trees, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, broccoli, and cauliflower.”

And why would Trump be interested in chlorpyrifos that has been shown to be detrimental to children’s brain development? “Dow AgroSciences’ parent company, Dow Chemical, has also been buttering up Trump. The company contributed $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee…the administration has approved the Dow-Dupont merger, and named several former Dow execs to high posts within the US Department of Agriculture,” Mother Jones reported.

Just so.

Trump’s Supporters: Theory of Evolution Apologizes Profusely

Trump lands uppercuts and left hooks to the American body politic and culture by ignorant Tweets that stoke racial tensions and non-partisanship.

Just how does a racist grifter, who tells four democratic congresswomen—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, Ilhan Omar, D-MN, Ayanna Pressley, D-MA,  and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, to go back to their “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” manage to win the support of millions of Americans and bump up Trump’s poll numbers? Or why did 187 US House members vote not to condemn Trump’s beliefs?

According to Pew Research, polling results for the 2016 election indicate that “Among the much larger group of white voters who had not completed college (44% of all voters), Trump won by more than two-to-one (64% to 28%)…Trump had an advantage among 50-to 64-year-old voters (51% to 45%) and those 65 and older (53% to 44%).”

And it is not just those who have not completed college or even attended college who are party of Trump’s looney bin. Wealthy “smart” Republicans are part of the evolutionary mishap, as well.  Republican CEO’s side with Trump because he is helping them increase profit margins, shareholder dividends, and stock buybacks. What’s all the fuss about a President of the United States who is both a racist and pro-business? It is, after all, just another write-off for the books.

According to a paper titled The Politics of CEO’s,

“We use Federal Election Commission (FEC) records to put together a comprehensive database of the political contributions made by over 3,500 individuals who served as CEOs of S&P 1500 companies during the period 2000-2017.We find that these political contributions display substantial partisan preferences in support of Republican candidates.To highlight the significance of CEO’s partisan preferences for some corporate decisions, we show that public companies led by Republican CEOs tend to be less transparent to investors with respect to their political spending.”

Senate and House Republicans, morally bankrupt to the core, are marching to the beat of a racist drummer.

Democrats: Remember Your Ugly History

The Democrats don’t get a pass on racial issues. There’s a lot for them to answer for as well.

Writing in The Hill, Burgess Owens notes that,

“As a party with a history of pro-slavery, pro-secession, pro-segregation and pro-socialism, the Democratic Party has also been the party that has politically controlled urban black America for over 60 years. Predominantly black communities in many cities today are mired in poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness. The Democratic Party has never apologized for its past, nor has it attempted to atone for its present failures.

Instead, it has skillfully used the art of bait-and-switch. Millions of Americans are convinced that somehow in the 1960s there was a wholesale transition of the Democratic Party’s two-centuries-old hatred of black people to the policies of the anti-slavery, anti-secession, anti-segregation and pro-God Republican Party. Only in a vacuum void of common sense, critical-thinking skills and true American history could such logic survive.”

Trump Channels Republican Lee Atwater

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater, known for his brutal, but successful, campaigning for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, commented on flipping the Southern United States from racist Dixiecrats (Democrats) to, well, racist Republicans. Gone were the days of vulgar racist comments by Whites, and in came the days of using coded terms for racist policies.

In an interview with Atwater for a book on Southern party politics in 1981, while employed by the Reagan Administration,  Atwater was asked this:

“But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the [George] Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?”

Atwater responded:

“Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying…By 1968 you can’t say…that hurts you. Backfires.  You say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than… So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone.”

And the beat goes on 38 years later.

Not All Whites

Many Whites have stood on the ramparts with people of color and other minorities to fight for equal rights and liberties. White judges and politicians have rendered decisions or passed legislation to turn the tide against racism in the USA. I’m not guilty of my Whiteness as I argued in (Dissident Voice, 2015).

I know of no one, young or old, that likes to be pigeon-holed no matter their color, immigrant status, or their ethnic background. No one wins this type of blame game except the racists in Trump’s camp who fan the flames of fear or those who mock the individuality of each human being.

So why are there racists out there in the open, in the White House, Congress, corporations and the voting public? What can be done about it?

I posed that question in 2015.  I mean, should I attribute the sins of the world to Whiteness? Or should I conclude that the Species itself and the dominant economic and ruling methodology of Capitalism combine to make the “demon” that Ta-Nehisi Coates refers to and the “system” that Malcolm X wants us all to change: That American system, born largely of the British, Roman and Greek Systems, that relies on absurd contradictions and irony. A system that makes those from NWA and Straight Out of Compton, with all the female bashing lyrics, now part of the One Percent elite of corporate America; or the principals of the George W. Bush Administration clearly guilty of war crimes still cashing in on public office; or the poor and largely Black people that can’t make $500 bail and waste away in jail; or the White miners in West Virginia killed because the mining company ignored safety rules and is found not guilty of negligence on a legal technicality; or the citizens of Detroit City denied, by a lone judge, the right to clean drinking water.

And what should I make of an American society that does not care about corporate surveillance (for profit) and government monitoring of all forms of communication (to maintain security and stability for the corporations to make profits)? Where were the White Rockers, Black Rappers, and Country Music stars when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged on or the beach head for the corporate and government’s invasion of privacy was the home?

They, all of them, were co-opted by a political, economic and cultural system we deny every day but in which we also live, procreate, operate and profit. With all of our complaints, we don’t have a functional alternative to offer. The ballot-box provides no remedy. Presidential and Congressional elections are polluted by money and interests, foreign and domestic, over which voters have no control. Politicians are bought and sold like horses prior to a race.

I don’t think I’m White.  I think I am a human being.  I don’t know what it is like to be rich and in the top 20 percent of money makers in the USA.  I know that I’m color-labeled as White and class-labeled as Middle by the identity and false consciousness hunters that roam the American landscape.

I know I agree with Dave Chappelle, famed comedian with $10 million in the bank, who is labeled as Black and Wealthy. But I’m not a smart guy and I think that he is a human being and really funny guy with great observations of the human condition. I think that way of George Carlin, Chris Rock and the late Robin Williams. According to Chappelle “I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is: To what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?”

I don’t want to participate in the self-image, the evolutionary mishap, that is President Donald Trump, his apologists and his supporters. I also don’t want to deal with duplicitous Democrats who always seem ready to enable Trump’s foolishness.

It seems to me there is no vocal, turbulent opposition to the madness that permeates the United States of America these days. Who inspires any longer? Who can compromise?

Who will fight?

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John Stanton can be reached at [email protected]. His last book was Trump & Friends

The British authorities cannot get rid of imperial ambitions and appear to be yearningly recalling the times of the British Empire under Queen Victoria. At least, this is what the Chagos Archipelago situation testifies to.

Just a reminder: on May 22 this year, the UN General Assembly by a majority vote adopted a resolution to terminate British control over the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian ocean and to transfer it to the rightful owner – Mauritius. 116 countries, including Russia, favored the document, with only six (including Britain and the United States) votes against and 56 abstentions. In compliance with the act, the United Kingdom is obliged to stop controlling the Chagos Archipelago within six months. See this.

But it will unlikely happen that soon, as confirmed by the reaction of British Ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce, who pushed back against the UN General Assembly resolution. Following the meeting, she told reporters about being disappointed by the voting results. “This is a bilateral matter; submitting it to the General Assembly creates a sad precedent,” the diplomat stated. The British Foreign Office was fully supportive of Pierce’s stance, saying that London does not recognize Mauritius’ claim to sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago and expresses regret over this issue being discussed within the UN.

One could not expect a different reaction from official London – the United Kingdom’s present-day foreign policy is all about trying to prove that it still has certain influence and weight in the international arena. And the situation involving the Chagos Archipelago is the very case, as London believes, to prove its relevance globally.

Here it is appropriate to apply to the history of the issue. In 1965, Britain illegally separated the Chagos Archipelago from the rest of Mauritius, being a British colony back in those days. Mauritius itself gained independence three years later, but Chagos remained part of the British territory. In 1966, the United States rented Diego Garcia, the largest island of the archipelago, to build a military base there. At the same time, all the 1.5 thousand archipelago dwellers were deported. For many years, the former Chagos inhabitants have been crying for the right to return. However, in 2016, the British Foreign Office extended the lease treaty with the United States until 2036 and said the expelled islanders would not get the right to return home.

The sufferings of the expelled indigenous people of Chagos – the Îlois – seemed to have no end in sight. However, on February 25, 2019, the International Court of Justice in the Hague delivered a verdict that the UK should turn over control of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. Notably, “as soon as possible.” The resolution was nearly unanimous: 13 judges favoring the decision were opposed by a single representative of the USA. After that, it seemed that the decade-long territorial dispute should have been finally resolved. But it was not to be. Britain replied that it would study the decree carefully, which actually means “the islands were and will remain ours”. And finally, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution of May 22 this year on the transfer of Chagos to Mauritius and the repatriation of indigenous people to the archipelago. And once again, London reacted adversely to the UN document.

Britain’s response to the Hague court decisions and the UN General Assembly resolution is indicative in several respects. First, it has once again demonstrated the arbitrariness of interpretations made by the West, including Britain, of international organizations’ laws and decisions, among others the UN. Secondly, it serves as another reminder that the sad practice of forced displacement of peoples and ethnic groups (which the West has got used to grievously accuse Russia of, demanding repentance) has been common practice for the twentieth century.

It is reasonable to ask why London is so persistent in the issue of transferring Chagos to Mauritius and bringing the indigenous people back to the archipelago? The answer is out in the open, as they put it. First, the maritime zone around Chagos, declared exceptional by London and accounting for over 500 thousand square kilometers, which is twice the size of the UK itself, is of acute economic importance. Secondly, the Diego Garcia island hosts one of the United States’ largest and most secret overseas military bases. Britain, incidentally, shares some of the archipelago military facilities with the US.

Considering the strategic importance of these islands, allowing Britain and the United States control almost the entire Indian ocean, it becomes clear why disputes around the Chagos archipelago reach the highest international level every once in a while and have not been resolved as yet.

Apparently, despite decisions by the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the UN General Assembly resolution, that have nevertheless become a sensitive political and diplomatic defeat for London and Washington, Chagos will remain British in the foreseeable future. At least as long as the British crown needs the archipelago “for safety reasons”, as London states. Translated from the diplomatic language this means “until the Americans decide that they no longer need the Diego Garcia military base.” And this, almost certainly, is never going to happen.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sergey Sayenko is an international observer.

On Wednesday, the US House of “Representatives” passed a resolution that violates both the Constitution and natural law. 

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BREAKING: 398 House members just voted for H.Res.246 in a powerful statement opposing the global BDS campaign and its deliberate discrimination of Israel. This overwhelming vote is representative of the breadth, depth and diversity of bipartisan support for Israel in Congress. pic.twitter.com/B4j6kNYKaF

— AIPAC (@AIPAC) July 23, 2019

The AIPAC servitors in Congress believe the ability to confront Israel’s apartheid must be criminalized, even at the expense of the Constitution they supposedly swore an oath to uphold (and this has been a joke for some time). 

More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.

Three members of Congress are fighting back to defend the First Amendment. https://t.co/55UtkoaWBF

— ACLU (@ACLU) July 23, 2019

But never mind the Constitution, which is close to being a dead letter. As a free human, you have a natural right to oppose and refuse to do business with any individual or entity you so please, and also encourage others to do likewise, so long as that opposition is not violent or coercive.

Congress does not believe this natural right is legal, at least not when it comes to Israel. According to our “representatives,” criticism of the Zionist state—described without exception as “racist tropes”—is ipso facto antisemitic and therefore must not only be vigorously condemned, but also criminalized. 

The criminalization of the BDS movement is but the latest effort by Israel and its unregistered pressure groups in America to destroy any political activism related to the plight of the Palestinians. It is a bold effort to preserve the apartheid system in Israel, a system that will eventually ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from an artificial state set aside for the Jews by Britain and France a century ago.

Attacking the BDS movement, however, is not the only aspect of an ongoing effort to expel all non-Jews from Israel (or at best render them second- or third-class citizens) and also destroy nations that support them, most notably Iran, Syria, and Lebanon (the latter invaded by Israel on numerous occasions, in the former violent intervention ongoing). 

It can be said without a doubt the forever wars that have plagued America for over a decade and a half are waged to benefit Israel. This cannot be disputed. It is common knowledge or should be, that Saddam Hussein did not threaten the United States in any way. He supported the Palestinians, not only rhetorically but also financially, and therefore Iraq had to be invaded first by Bush the Elder, who along with the United Nations imposed deadly sanctions (500,000 dead children), and then by Bush the Lesser and his neocon-infested administration.

9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan were designed to get the war on terror rolling and portray Muslims as the enemy of the United States, therefore providing a pretext to attack Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya. So long as there is resistance to the racist policies of Israel and its violent subjugation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs, there will be a war on terror. 

In recent years, the focus of this never-ending and highly profitable (for the military-industrial complex) series of invasions directly or by proxy has shifted to the US proper where the enemy is the American people, beginning with “white supremacists” who we are told are the vanguard of an expanding wave of global antisemitism. In fact, this supposed antisemitism is an attack on nationalists fed up with the state and its parasitism. 

“As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of #Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing #Antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the world.” -Steven Spielberg

Via @CUFI pic.twitter.com/8SBCfSmzWP

— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) July 14, 2019

It’s not likely Iran will be invaded before the election unless Iran does something to goad the US and its European partners to attack. Suffering from the delusional sickness of hubris and exceptionalism (and in Israel’s case, outright racism), Iran’s enemies are incapable of understanding that any attack on Iran will result in massive carnage and death, especially in Israel and US bases ringing Iran as well. The neocons and Israel-firsters infesting the Trump administration sincerely believe they can get away with bombing Iran with little to no consequence, once again proclaiming a cakewalk. 

Iran, unlike Iraq, has not suffered a near-complete breakdown under punitive and medieval sanctions, although if the sanctions continue and worsen they may eventually end up as broken and desperate as Iraq prior to Bush the Lesser’s invasion. Iran’s leaders will not allow this to happen. 

Moreover, Iran is now showing resolve and is refusing the play the game on terms imposed by a gaggle of globalists and Israel-first neocons. For every move by the US, there is a counter move by Iran. It is now entirely obvious Trump is completely frustrated with Iran and its stubborn unwillingness to bend to the neoliberal and Zionist effort to destroy and balkanize the country. Iran will fight back.

And that fight may be taken to America, not simply US troops stationed on Iran’s periphery. If this happens, of course, outrage and anger will rally the American people to support a final war. Americans are little different than Germans under the Nazis, fooled into war by rhetoric and false flag operations. Propaganda is far more effective now, more so than it was 80 years ago. 

I am not hopeful the virus of Zionism infecting the US government will be eliminated before the final war unfolds—a nuclear annihilation of all life on planet earth. 

The tentacles of the menace are buried deep and hooked into the centers of power and control. If the war on BDS demonstrates anything, it is that our “representatives” and the pro-Zionist marionette in the White House will react strenuously to any threat to the Zionist state, no matter how minor. 

A law passed in Florida and celebrated in Jerusalem makes it a crime to criticize Israel, denoting such as antisemitism. It also defines BDS in the most serious manner, akin to the manufactured threat of the Islamic State:

Under the bill, the BDS movement is defined as a terrorist group no different than the KKK or ISIS, which has prompted some to question if criticism of the Jewish state could be mischaracterized as being anti-Semitic criticism of the Jewish people.

According to one Democrat who voted for the bill, its passage is a “mitzvah,” that is to say a Hebrew moral deed as a commandment of faith. 

If this insanity continues, blogs like this one will no longer be allowed on the internet. All criticism of Israel and Zionism will be illegal, criminally punished as it now is in France and much of Europe, and the Constitution and the First Amendment will be once and for all a dead letter. 

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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.

“The (soft coup) effort (June 2018) to topple the democratically-elected government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was originally led by students trained by US-funded “democracy promotion” programs (USAID). US-funded nongovernmental organizations, the Sandinista Renovation Movement political party, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and, as time passed, Salvadoran gang members and international drug cartels.” — Chuck Kaufman, National Co-Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice

“Nicaragua is perhaps among the clearest cases of rampant US imperialism producing sustained anti-imperialist movements, in a pattern that has repeated itself since even before the US mercenary William Walker invaded that country to set up a slave state and declare himself president in 1856. The United States’ financial and industrial interests, backed by US military forces, have sought to maintain control over key Nicaraguan resources, infrastructure and a potential interoceanic canal route1 ever since.” — S. Brian Willson and Nils McCune

“In 2018, US President Donald Trump declared Nicaragua to be an “extraordinary threat” to national security, and US National Security Advisor John Bolton described Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as a “Troika of Tyranny” that would soon fall with support from the Trump Administration, at the same time as he lauded the election of “like minded leaders,” Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Ivan Duque in Colombia.” – S. Brian Willson and Nils McCune

“The geopolitical hegemony of the United Fruit Company was reinforced by the US Marines, which were deployed in Central America and the Caribbean to defend the interests of the corporation dozens of times between 1901 and 1934.” – S.Brian Willson and Nils McCune

“The US government has applied economic, financial and commercial sanctions against Nicaragua through the infamous NICA Act, with the intention (just as in past experiences in Chile, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua) to “make the economy scream,” as Henry Kissinger put it.” — Gabriela Luna

“Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, has blatantly said that the objective of the US is to destabilize and change government in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, countries considered by Donald Trump to be an “axis of evil” in the hemisphere.” — Gabriela Luna

“(Nicaraguan) elites have always misjudged the working class’ ability to differentiate between the insufficiencies of the Sandinista political and social project, on one hand, and the grand lies used by US imperialism…” — Gabriela Luna

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The geographical position, extraction of natural resources, exploitation of cheap labor and possibility of building an inter-oceanic canal have been the axes of imperialist interest in Central America.

This has bathed the region’s history in blood and resistance, which is why the desperate migrant caravan from the northern triangle of the isthmus is in fact the offspring of U.S. imperialism.

In Nicaragua, the electoral defeat of the Sandinista Front in 1990 brought about the dismantling of the social achievements of the people’s revolution and produced profound transformations in the nation’s economic, political and social structure, as a result of the application of several neoliberal packages that implied the privatization of major sectors of the economy and a broad reduction in public spending.

This caused a drastic decrease in the quality of life and a 46-point reduction in the Human Development Index, as well as job insecurity, unemployment, peasant exodus, outsourcing and informalization of the economy and a dramatic increase in poverty, social inequality and violence.

The outlook up to 2007 was devastating because the destruction caused by the wars of liberation was compounded by this social catastrophe. Since 2007, hope and life have been redefined with the return of the Sandinista Front to government.

The absolute number of undernourished people in the country has been reduced by half, access to free education and health care has been guaranteed to rural communities, maternal mortality has been reduced by 60% and infant mortality by 52%, while access to electricity has been increased from 54% to 96% of the population.

Nicaragua is the safest country in Central America and is in sixth place globally for women’s participation in public and civic spaces. Life in the countryside has recovered dignity, thanks to a policy that prioritizes and values the family economy, making it possible to reduce food imports and become 100% self-sufficient in beans, corn, eggs, milk, fruits, onions, peppers, tomatoes and beef.

These social advances have not been free of contradictions—such as alliances with the private sector and the Catholic Church that lasted until April 2018, when these traditional opponents of the Sandinista struggle began a violent coup attempt.

Above all, the new Sandinista model can be fairly accused of not finding a radical path towards the construction of an alternative model to capitalism and not forming new human beings and a new society capable of overcoming the systemic crisis of capital.

The coup attempt took place in an international context where right-wing extremism and fascism have been consolidated in Latin America. In Brazil, former president Lula was imprisoned to prevent him from running for president, while fascist president Jair Bolsonaro has met openly with the CIA.

Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, has blatantly said that the objective of the US is to destabilize and change government in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, countries considered by Donald Trump to be an “axis of evil” in the hemisphere.

The attempted coup was intended to eradicate not only the Sandinista Front from political power in Nicaragua but also to tear Sandinismo from the heart and historical memory of the people. The practices of desecrating and burning historical sites of the Sandinista Front, of stripping, beating, torturing, kidnapping and publicly murdering Sandinistas, or publicly burning people, is not new in the history of Nicaragua or Central America. These practices stem from the Spanish conquest that publicly tortured indigenous rebels.

They were then applied by U.S. soldiers in military interventions, by the Somoza dictatorship, and were part of the US’ counter-insurgency handbook, applied during more than 30 years in Guatemala and El Salvador to stop the advances of peoples’ revolutions in these countries.

The CIA’s Contra armies applied these practices in peasant communities during the 1980s. The objective of these practices has always been to create terror in the population and to incapacitate resistance.

In 2018, rank-and-file Sandinistas were morally impacted by the images of terrorist violence, such as when Francisco Arauz Pineda, a hero of the guerrilla struggle and son of legendary peasant leader Amada Pineda Montenegro, one of the “Women of Cua” gang-raped by Somoza’s National Guard, was publicly burned with a Sandinista flag on his body on June 16th, 2018.

Nicaraguans panicked and sobbed in their homes. In the street no one looked one another in the eyes, and confusion reigned. The objective of psychological warfare is for panic to triumph.

The opposition’s death roadblocks were mostly manned by socially-excluded poor people who were paid to create chaos and pain. They were politically supported by young upper middle-class university students, who, from the comfort of their homes in gated communities, misunderstood the reality of the roadblocks, and who consumed the mainstream media’s version of the crisis.

These media outlets are dominated nationally by the oligarchy. US-owned social media companies provided platforms for a strategy that activated hundreds of young people previously trained by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to create a dominant narrative. The coup’s media blitzkrieg used the advertising pages of Facebook to spread lies, foment hatred and encourage violence—accusing the Sandinistas of the violence against Sandinistas.

Everything that smelled of Sandinista thinking was demonized, in an attempt to alter the “common sense” of the Nicaraguan people, especially the youth.

The first sector to break the psychological and horror siege was the moral reserve of the Sandinista Front: its historic rank-and-file membership. Elders began to reorganize, to communicate, to clarify what was happening, to create study circles explaining Gene Sharp’s script for regime change in the heat of the moment. Sandinista elders came to teach, and to channel their organizational and moral strength. In the face of systematic violence against Sandinista families, the only option was local organizing for the protection of families, neighborhoods, towns and cities. Barricades were formed in the neighborhoods and public institutions to prevent arson attacks and assassinations.

These defense barricades, set up over weeks in the cities, towns and neighborhoods of Nicaragua, were made up of members of the Sandinista Front from various generations. They included great-grandparents who had participated in the formation of the FSLN and fought against Somoza, grandparents who fought against the counterrevolution in the 1980s, fathers and mothers who fought in the 1990s “from below” in the defense of the revolution’s social achievements, as well as many anonymous heroes.

This conglomerate had a bit of everything: young people, old people, street vendors, market vendors, the unemployed, retired people, public workers, housewives, ex-military workers, but with one common denominator: theses barricades were made up of Nicaragua’s workers. In practice, everyone learned from everyone, and natural leaders emerged from the heart of the neighborhoods who often were not part of any of the official structures of the Sandinista Front.

The lack of sleep, the danger, the constant tension, the sharing of coffee and cigarettes, created the precipitous conditions for intergenerational dialogue. This was political education in practice: young people learned what it means to be a Sandinista, the principles and values of the 1970s Sandinistas, and the historical burden behind their actions.

These young people respected and valued the bravery and knowledge of the old guard, while elders respected the strengths of the young people and their understanding of the impact of social media.

Since the highways were shut down by rightwing roadblocks, Sandinistas across the country organized themselves to distribute locally sourced food. The elites in Nicaragua have long believed that the people are ignorant, or “naive” as the oligarchy’s newspaper, La Prensa, puts it.

The elites have always misjudged the working class’ ability to differentiate between the insufficiencies of the Sandinista political and social project, on one hand, and the grand lies used by US imperialism in Nicaragua, on the other hand. They assumed that if denied their ability to live normally and safely, Nicaraguans would demand a new government.

The plan backfired, and the Sandinista Front mobilized more people in the street from April to September of 2018 than in any other period in its history.

During this period, Nicaraguans saw themselves in a new light and were forced to reckon with the strengths and weaknesses of the political process, of living in a capitalist country with a socialist government, under the shadow of the United States.

Above all, those three months of resistance clearly demonstrated the immense courage of the people of Nicaragua, especially those without land, without a car, the workers from the inner-city neighborhoods. History again demonstrated the Nicaraguan people’s capacity for resistance and survival, dignity and strength.

It was the people’s wisdom that defeated the coup. …

This marvelous little book was put together in the months after Nicaraguan reality exploded on April 18th, 2018. Its authors and editors are mostly international solidarity activists, journalists and researchers who live in Nicaragua and were witnesses to the violent attempt to force out the democratically elected Nicaraguan government. The organization of the book is meant to allow English-speaking readers, educators, journalists and truth-seekers to independently study the events of 2018 from a number of different angles—human rights, media, economy, religion and geopolitics.

This means that while Live from Nicaragua is best read as an organic whole, each individual chapter can stand alone and be used for educational purposes.

While the number of human victims of the ongoing regime change attempt in Nicaragua is many fewer than the Contra War, in a sense the Big Lie is even larger than during the 1980s.

Many people in the United States and Europe have believed most of the propaganda put out by the coup attempt’s media machine.

This has made it more difficult than ever to show solidarity with Nicaraguans—not the wealthy, self-exiled Nicaraguans who have been interviewed on CNN and BBC, but ordinary, vulnerable Nicaraguans who want to live and work in peace.

The solidarity workers of the 1980s were critically important in resisting Reagan’s war against the Sandinista Revolution.

In Trump’s war against Latin American progressive movements and governments, who will be the resistance?

Live from Nicaragua is the kind of accessible, rigorously researched, politically relevant, and timely reader that is needed in order to understand the kind of “fourth generation” conflicts that have been imported from Eastern Europe and the Middle East regions to Latin America in the last few years.

As Western powers increasingly apply the regime change script, it is up to people across the globe to rebuild solidarity movements and learn the truth about how imperialist strategies attempt to destroy social fabrics and weaponize confusion.

The US government has applied economic, financial and commercial sanctions against Nicaragua through the infamous NICA Act, with the intention (just as in past experiences in Chile, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua) to “make the economy scream,” as Henry Kissinger put it.

Meanwhile, USAID has promised millions more dollars for Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition to wage irregular conflict against the constitutional order. While the struggle for Nicaraguan independence and sovereignty is far from over, the fact that the Nicaraguan people resisted the colossus in 2018 should be a source of strength and hope for people across the planet. If Nicaragua can, you can too.

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Gabriela Luna is a Nicaraguan researcher with the Institute of Research and Training for Territorial Development.

Featured image is from the author

The US is involved in regime change worldwide – from Venezuela in South America, to Ukraine in Eastern Europe, to Syria in the Middle East, to Afghanistan in Central Asia.

But these headline-grabbing wars, coups, color revolutions, and interventions are far from the full extend of US interference.

The US is also engaged in regime change efforts all along China’s peripheries. This includes across Southeast Asia and in particular, the nation of Thailand.

Hard Times for US Proxies  

Recent elections held earlier this year validated public support for a 2014 coup ousting US-backed proxy Thaksin Shinwatra, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra, and their Pheu Thai political party (PTP).

The military-linked Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) won the popular vote and built a coalition with a majority in parliament. PPRP’s head, Prayuth Chan-O-Cha easily won a parliamentary vote for Thailand’s next prime minister.

Part of Shinawatra’s strategy during the last election was dividing his political party into multiple parties so that if one or two were disbanded, there would still be several others left to run for seats in parliament.

One of these parties is Future Forward (FFP) led by billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. His party’s founding members include leaders and activists drawn from US and European-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Since wading into politics, Thanathorn himself has received an inordinate amount of support from not only the Western media as seen during events organized by The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) but also from Western embassies based in Bangkok.

FFP faired poorly in the elections coming in distant third with several million fewer votes than PPRP. Despite coming in third, and despite Thanathorn claiming he was not Shinawatra’s proxy – Thaksin Shinawatra’s PTP nominated him as their candidate for prime minister, but fell far short of winning.

Panhandling Overseas for Support 

Thanathorn now has criminal cases mounting against him owed to serial violations of election laws as well as charges related to sedition. Perhaps in hopes of being overseas if a guilty verdict is reached and escaping jail – Thanathorn now finds himself “touring” the US and Europe asking – and receiving – support in Washington, Brussels, and London.

During an arranged interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Thanathorn bemoaned Thailand’s history of frequent military coups and the lack of “democracy.”  He claimed the impetus of setting up FFP was to “end the culture of coup d’etat in Thailand.”

Absent from either Mitchell’s questioning or Thanathorn’s rehearsed answers was any mention of what preceded the most recent coup in 2014.

No mention was made of the ousted government being openly and illegally run by Thaksin Shinawatra despite living in Dubai, UAE as a fugitive. No mention was made of the ousted government’s robbery of nearly one million rice farmers and the crippling of Thailand’s rice industry. And no mention was made of the protests the ousted government used deadly violence in an attempt to quell.

The military’s intervention was welcomed by Thais, a fact vindicated by recent elections which saw the military-linked PPRP win the popular vote. The Western media – however – has gone through great lengths to portray it as a power grab rather than the restoration of strability it actually was.

The Roving Hypocrite 

Despite Thanathorn’s overseas tour showcasing his fight for “democracy” and “human rights” in Thailand, he is directly linked to and admittedly a supporter of Thaksin Shinawatra, his Pheu Thai Party, and his violent street front known as the “red shirts.”

Shinawatra has the worst human rights record in Thai history having mass murdered over 2,000 people in just 90 days in 2003 during a supposed “war on drugs.” He also killed another 85 in a single day during the 2004 Tak Bai protests. Violence carried out by his red shirt street front has led to the deaths of over 100 people including police and soldiers between 2009-2014.

As to why none of this is mentioned in the Western media – one only has to look at Thaksin Shinawatra’s track record of serving US interests – ranging from sending Thai troops to the US war in Iraq to hosting CIA torture sites, to privatizing Thailand’s petrochemical industry.

The same interests Shinawatra served are interests Thanathorn is also eager to serve.

A staple of Western war propaganda is what Prof. John McMurtry calls “Reverse Projection”. The U.S. Empire, for example, projects its own crimes against prey nations.

So, it projects the lie that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is a “brutal dictator” when it is Washington itself that is the declining imperial dictator that regularly imposes its will on prey countries.

According to imperial narratives, the “brutal dictator” tortures and “kills his own people” when he is not “gassing his own people”.

It isn’t surprising that Empire should use these lines, since Empire tortures people in black sites throughout the world[1], it coerces other nations to torture rendered victims at Washington’s behest, and Washington’s terror proxies torture hapless citizens at will.

But statistics do not tell the whole story. Dr Zaher Hajjo, Director of Forensics, in Damascus Syria, told investigative reporter Vanessa Beeley that “(t)he bodies I have to inspect tell their own stories of torture, dismemberment, rape and abuse.”  He added that it is a very painful part of his work, but “it brings relief to relatives waiting a very long time for information (about their) loved ones.” Additionally:

“Terrorists or so-called ‘rebels’ murder civilians twice effectively. After people are executed, bodies are hidden, buried or burned & mutilated & IDs stolen or destroyed. This is deliberate to add to suffering of relatives, makes ID almost impossible.”[2]

Clearly Secretary Pompeo’s feigned humanitarian concerns about Idlib’s infrastructure and civilians, as expressed in a July 24, 2019 tweet, fits nicely, not only into the category of “Reverse Projection” , but also the “Humanitarian Intervention” myth and serves as cover for the al Qaeda and affiliated proxies that the West supports in Syria and beyond.

We condemn continued airstrikes by #Russia & Assad in #Idlib. These strikes destroy infrastructure & kill civilians. There is no military solution in #Syria. We call for an immediate ceasefire & a return to the political process. End this humanitarian disaster.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) July 23, 2019

Idlib is “al Qaeda Central”. It is where Western-supported terrorists torture and murder civilians. Special US envoy Brett McGurk even admitted, in July, 2017, that,

“Idlib province is the largest al-Qaeda safe-have(n) since 9/11, tied to directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, this is a huge problem.”[3]

Washington is protecting its terror proxies in Idlib, as it has done throughout the entire war on Syria. Words from Western politicians are empty shells, meaningless.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net.

Notes

[1] Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees.” The Guardian, 02 June, 2008. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/02/terrorism.terrorism) Accessed 24 July, 2019.

[2] Vanessa Beeley,“SYRIA: Bodies don’t lie.” 23 June, 2019. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/syria-bodies-lie-28589617?utm_medium=post_notification_email&utm_source=post_link&utm_campaign=patron_engagement) Accessed 24 July, 2019.

[3] “The Truth About Idlib in the US State Department’s Own Words. ‘The Largest Al Qaeda Safe Haven Since 9/11.’ Zero Hedge, 2 September 2018. Global Research, September 03, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-truth-about-idlib-in-the-state-departments-own-words-the-largest-al-qaeda-safe-haven-since-911/5652789) Accessed 24 July, 2019.

Featured image: Vanessa Beeley, Discovery of mass graves in Raqqa – murdered by US-sponsored proxy forces SDF and ISIS.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

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As hundreds of thousands of Aleppo residents returning to their homes since the Syrian Arab Army and its allies cleaned it from US-sponsored terror, the infrastructure must be rehabilitated and whatever needs to be rebuilt must be completed at the earliest, Aleppo has managed to complete 1216 projects in this sector.

These projects to rehabilitate and rebuild the infrastructure of Aleppo include and not limited to the drinking water network, sewage system, buildings for public schools, clinics and health centers, and bakeries, the irrigation system, and road light poles which use alternative energy.

Meanwhile, over 3.3 million cubic meters of rubble and 5700 destroyed vehicles have been moved out of the neighborhoods. 47 roundabout, road crossing, and tunnel have been lightened, beautification of the roads and installing 4402 poles for lights in Aleppo city and its countryside.

The bridges of Al-Shaar and Al-Haj have also been rehabilitated, and over 1 million square meters of roads have been paved with asphalt.

248 projects of paving roads and rehabilitating buildings and industrial zones, traffic control systems in Aleppo were completed so far.

This helped more than 15000 industrial and handicraft facility to resume work after years of closure due to the years the area was under terrorist control and the destruction the terrorists left behind them. The government-support of the industrial sector in Aleppo saw the restoration of 7 public industrial facilities. 565 facilities are now in production in Sheikh Najjar Industrial Zone. 112 projects were executed in this zone alone which included rehabilitating and maintenance for the water, electric power, sewage, and roads infrastructure.

A government report by the special ministerial committee assigned to rebuild Aleppo’s infrastructure stated the above and added that it has established a special center to cater for the families of the martyrs killed and those wounded by the terrorist attacks and to deliver special services to help them in their needs.

The committee established a center for local development assigned responsible for arranging finance for small projects in Aleppo’s countryside in coordination with the Syrian Development Trust.

76 public and private bakeries were completed and are in the production phase already, and 48 petrol/gas stations in the province. 130 schools were rehabilitated and reopened in the neighborhoods previously infested by terror inside the city and 340 schools were reopened in the countryside.

The work is continuing, as per the ministerial committee’s report, to complete a 400 KVA electric power supply cable in addition to the 240 KVA which was put in service already.

936 electric power residential and industrial conversion stations were rehabilitated since the city is cleaned from the terrorists.

Rebuilding Aleppo Bazaar

This extraordinary work also covered the agricultural sector with rehabilitating 31 agricultural and support centers in the countryside to provide services for the farmers and reconstruct the saplings, distributing winter and summer vegetable seeds to the farmers.

The ministerial committee had allotted 5 billion Syrian Liras for Aleppo city council to set the feasibility studies and execute a number of projects and plans and an additional 1 billion Syrian Liras for the infrastructure projects in the Old Town to sort out and remove the rubble from the old Souqs and the dismantle the cracked walls and rebuild what’s needed to be rebuilt, and also to pave the road from Bab Al-Hadid to Al-Khandaq Avenue.

Syrians are determined to rebuild their country and to defy the draconian sanctions imposed on their country and on them by the evil hypocrite humanitarian criers Western countries.

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All images in this article are from Syria News

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns the Lebanese government’s new work permit laws which discriminate against Syrian and Palestinian refugees working in the country. CJPME urges the Lebanese government to put an end to its xenophobic discourse and drop the idea of insisting that Palestinian and Syrian refugees obtain work permits.

CJPME notes that over the past several years, the Lebanese government has increased its calls for Syrian refugees to return to Syria, whilst engaging in practices that discriminate against the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon. Last week, the Lebanese Ministry of Labour took a further step to entrench this discrimination by passing a new law cracking down on “foreign” workers without permits. CJPME recognizes that the new work permit laws target not only Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, but also Palestinian refugees who have resided in Lebanon for decades yet have always been denied legal status. The new laws require Palestinian refugees to obtain work contracts that force their employers to pay a 23 percent social security tax on their behalf. Palestinians in Lebanon consider this proposal a dishonest government “shakedown,” as Palestinian refugees are barred from healthcare, sick leave, and other social security benefits.

Since the new work permit laws were enacted, thousands of Palestinian workers have engaged in a general strike, hosting mass sit-ins and sealing the entry points to Palestinian refugee camps. The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has called on the Lebanese government to repeal the new work permit laws, asserting that “being able to work in dignity…is a fundamental human right.” CJPME President Thomas Woodley responded,

“Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been living in limbo for decades, blocked by Israel from returning to their homeland in Palestine, and prevented from making a life for themselves in Lebanese society. This disgraceful and racist law targets some of the most marginalized populations in the country, many of whom will be struggling to survive without access to work.”

Currently, there are nearly 475,000 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in Lebanon. These refugees are descendants of thousands of Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their homeland by Jewish militias in 1948. Palestinian refugees find themselves in a legal grey zone in Lebanon, where they are prevented from gaining citizenship from Lebanon, but denied the right to return to their homes by Israel, in violation of UN Resolution 194. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, over a million Syrian refugees have settled in Lebanon. Prevented or afraid to return to Syria, they too live in legal limbo in Lebanon.

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In the weeks preceding the February 2014 ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, American politicians were prominent in Kiev inciting the marchers so as to destabilize government institutions. From early December 2013 Victoria Nuland, a high-ranking official in the US Department of State, made repeated trips to the Ukrainian capital while among other things she assisted in organizing protests.

What especially disturbed Washington, and to a lesser extent Brussels, is that Yanukovych had rejected overtures from the West, and was instead seeking closer ties with Moscow. Yanukovych shifted away from Ukrainian alignment towards the European Union, and also likely accession to NATO, both outcomes which successive US governments had desired.

Meanwhile, the protests against Yanukovych were steadily building in Kiev, spurred on by Western assurances.

Significant numbers of the demonstrators, such as those in Kiev’s Maidan Square, consisted of heavily armed paramilitaries belonging to the fascist parties of Right Sector, Svoboda, Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists and Patriot of Ukraine.

The latter organization, Patriot of Ukraine, was commanded at the time by white supremacist Andriy Biletsky. In November 2014, Biletsky was sworn in as a Ukrainian member of parliament (MP), a position he continues holding while leading his new far-right party National Corps.

As December 2013 commenced, large numbers of Svoboda militants marching in Kiev were bolstered by 500 Right Sector members. Right Sector was then led by the neo-Nazi Dmytro Yarosh, also elected in late 2014 as a Ukrainian MP.

Yarosh specialized in the formulation of firebombs which were hurled at specific targets, while his militias patrolled the streets in organized groups of 10 each. Yarosh later served as an adviser to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and like so many of Kiev’s far-right figureheads he considers Russia the country’s principal foe.

Among the marchers was Volodymyr Parasyuk, another man with a history of far-right activism and future MP who performed an important role in the marches; while more Ukrainians with dubious backgrounds like Boryslav Bereza and Semen Semenchenko, also soon-to-be MPs, participated in the “Euromaidan protests”.

Some Right Sector members wore military attire and helmets of the Waffen SS Galicia Division, which fought alongside the Nazis in eastern and central Europe between 1943 and 1945; the Right Sector in addition carries insignia based on the ancient swastika symbol. The thousands of fascist demonstrators were supported by mobs of like-minded soccer hooligans, all of whom created an atmosphere of terror in the Ukrainian capital.

Joining them were further activists of questionable repute, trained from 2004 as part of US Aid programs relating to the so-called Orange Revolution. The combined extremist groups laid siege to administration buildings in Kiev before spreading their wrath to the entire government quarters. Monuments were razed to the ground erected decades before for communists and workers. Journalists were attacked and their cameras dismantled. These gangs then stormed the offices of the Communist Party of Ukraine, raising neo-Nazi flags over the buildings.

Little of this was reaching the sensitive ears of first world audiences, however, who were hoodwinked by media disinformation regarding a “popular uprising” occurring in the country.

Amid the protesters was as briefly mentioned Nuland, a US Assistant Secretary of State. In almost surreal scenes, Nuland was photographed distributing sandwiches, tea and cake to the dissenters, with Geoffrey Pyatt beside her, Washington’s then Ambassador to the Ukraine. America’s embassy in Kiev, that is Pyatt’s headquarters, was also doing its bit to undermine Yanukovych by training experts in information warfare and the smearing of state establishments, tactics used elsewhere in Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Quite tellingly, Nuland was accompanied by Catherine Ashton, a senior EU foreign affairs representative; Baroness Ashton is a long-time British Labour Party politician with links to Tony Blair. The EU was undertaking its customary role here as second-in-command to US government designs. Nuland and Ashton met more than once with the far-right leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok, who was a key player in the supposed pro-democracy marches.

After visiting the protesters, Baroness Ashton was heartened to see the “determination of Ukrainians demonstrating for the European perspective of their country”.

In following years, Nuland would herself meet on different occasions with Andriy Parubiy, a well known fascist and Ukrainian MP, who since April 2016 has held the position of chairman of Kiev’s parliament. Parubiy was another central figure in the demonstrations taking place against Yanukovych, and he was known as the “Kommandant”.

Nuland saw president Yanukovych too, where she informed him that police actions against the protesters were “absolutely impermissible in a European state, in a democratic state”. Nuland continued the high-minded imperial attitude by saying that Yanukovych must embark upon “immediate security steps and getting back into a conversation with Europe and with the International Monetary Fund”.

The experienced Brazilian historian, Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, outlined that Nuland “was received by President Yanukovych and she actually issued orders as if Ukraine was a colony of the United States, telling him to fold immediately to overcome the crisis”.

A great game was being played out here, obscured from the public. What really concerned Western elites and their business communities was not the usual nonsense of introducing freedom and democracy, but to expand their power over strategically vital areas flowing in natural resources. In doing so, it would also be to the detriment of Moscow’s clout in the region.

Yet by November 2013, Yanukovych was drawing nearer to the Russian neighbour; an unacceptable outcome, which explains the enormous rise in interference at this time in Kiev directed by American and EU politicians.

It did not matter if this meant working alongside neo-Nazis, and paving the way for them to gain positions of power; or increasing the chance of nuclear war between America and Russia, all of which turned out to be the case.

Nuland, a former US ambassador to NATO, visited Kiev for six days in early December 2013, where she consistently meddled in Ukrainian state affairs. Nuland returned to Kiev in February 2014 whereby, again acting on orders from the US government and Department of State, she went about choosing the Ukraine’s impending new president.

American senators Christopher Murphy and John McCain were likewise present in Kiev prior to Christmas 2013, as they remained in contact with the Department of State. Both men had a crucial part in subverting Yanukovych and they mingled with far-right groups, shouting to them that “America will stand with Ukraine”.

Arizona Senator McCain convened talks with Tyahnybok and Parubiy, while he can be seen in various photographs with them. In June 2015, McCain saw other far-right individuals such as the Dnipro Battalion commander Yuriy Bereza and Semenchenko, Ukrainian MPs since late 2014.

McCain, who died last August aged 81, was convincingly described by Brazilian writer Moniz Bandeira as “a notorious warmonger and lobbyist” who “always defended the interests of ‘the international arms dealers, oil sheikhs’” and so on. McCain had long provided his services to the military-industrial complex, and to US oil manufacturers, receiving $700,000 in donations from them between the years 1989 to 2006.

McCain’s influence in the Ukraine dated to Soviet times, as part of his leading role in the International Republican Institute (IRI). He continued to have major interests in Kiev, hence his presence there, as too did the Obama administration.

The Ukraine crisis was engineered by long-held geostrategic plans of US governments, their military arm NATO and the EU. Indeed, a remarkable 22 of the EU’s 29 members belong to the Pentagon-led NATO organization. Washington and Brussels wished to extend full control over the Ukraine’s deep natural resources. Thereafter, they planned to absorb the Crimea into the West.

According to a 2013 estimate by the US Energy Information Administration, the Ukraine holds 128 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, making it home to one of the largest reserves of such non-renewable materials in Europe. The Ukraine’s shale gas fields, for example in the Donets Basin, are also embedded with large quantities of oil.

US organizations were compiling these reports with intention to siphon off the Ukraine’s earthly riches for corporate benefit – one of the real reasons why Nuland, Ashton, McCain and the likes were ensconced in Kiev.

George Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire and strong critic of Vladimir Putin, has for many years been funnelling tens of millions of dollars into the Ukraine through his International Renaissance Foundation (IRF); and via separate Soros-run NGOs titled “Open Society foundations”. Soros is said to have had extensive business dealings with McCain, describing the latter upon his death last year as “a brave warrior for human rights”; while Soros has in the past committed millions towards the election campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among many other adventures.

From May 2012, big Western fossil fuel companies like Royal Dutch Shell were making moves to harness the Ukraine’s resources. Despite the objections of residents, in January 2013 Shell signed an agreement with Ukrainian corporation, Nadra Yuzivska, to exploit a territory the approximate size of 8,000 square kilometres between the east Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk – which contains over 1.5 trillion cubic metres of shale gas. In September 2013, Shell reached further agreements to extract shale gas reserves from areas around Donetsk.

The same company, Nadra Yuzivska, signed a $10 billion deal with US energy corporation Chevron in November 2013, for the further development of oil and gas production over a period of 50 years. Chevron was one of the multinationals that donated sums of money to McCain. There were schemes to hammer out separate contracts with ExxonMobil and Shell, which proposed to finance $735 million in shale gas manufacturing along south-west Crimea.

Moscow’s takeover of the Crimea in March 2014, a riposte to Yanukovych’s demise the previous month, was consequently a sharp blow to Western geopolitical hopes.

The Obama administration aspired to construct a NATO base in the Crimea; that may have had serious implications for Russia, relating to access of her warm water port at the Crimean city of Sevastopol on the Black Sea, where Moscow’s major fleet has been stationed since 1783.

There are narrow straits through the Black Sea, that eventually ensure safe passage for the Russian naval fleet into the Mediterranean Sea, and thereafter towards the Atlantic or Indian Ocean. These routes have in recent years allowed Putin to provide critical support for his Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad – which further bolsters the Kremlin’s power and represents another setback to US influence.

The vociferous political and media reaction to Russia’s incorporation of the Crimea five years ago, had little to do with concerns for Crimeans or international law, and plenty to do with loss of a strategic centre of massive significance.

Yanukovych’s decision to shun Western integration was actually based on understandable economic reasoning. On 17 December 2013, less than a month after severing negotiations with the EU, Yanukovych travelled to Moscow where Putin offered him a securities investment worth $15 billion; including the introduction of favourable gas prices reducing the previous cost by about 33%, permitting Kiev to save $3.5 billion per year. This agreement would enable the Ukraine to return to a level of economic growth.

The deal aligning Yanukovych to Moscow was much more financially advantageous to Kiev, by comparison to those expounded by the EU and IMF. The EU terms put forth in November 2013 – an institution reeling from economic crises in Greece, Portugal and Spain – were not sufficient to pull the Ukraine out of a mire in which its reserves were almost exhausted. The EU was also foisting upon Yanukovych a strict debt repayment program, that he would unlikely be able to meet, but which he was called on to accept.

In December 2013 the IMF dispatched to Yanukovych, with particularly harsh contingencies attached, a $15 billion bailout plan which included a 50% reduction in energy subsidies, social programs and pensions, the privatization of state-controlled enterprises, the prompt dismissal of state employees, etc.

It is therefore not surprising that Yanukovych was seeking closer relations with Russia. His overthrow was led by an array of far-right factions, once more belonging to neo-Nazi organizations like Svoboda, Right Sector and Patriot of Ukraine, strengthened by yet more extremists linked to the upcoming Azov Battalion. On the night of 21 February 2014, these groups raided the Ukrainian parliament building, Verkhovna Rada, demanding an immediate end to Yanukovych’s four year reign.

With Yanukovych possessing prior knowledge of the putsch and in fear of his life, he had fled Kiev hours earlier. Yanukovych claimed his vehicle had been shot at as he departed and that, “What we witness now resembles Nazi occupation”. The Nazi collaborator and terrorist Stepan Bandera was subsequently hailed a national hero, and is admired by a collection of MPs, from Parubiy and Biletsky to Yarosh. Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, was reassured by developments and wrote that Yanukovych’s exit was “A day for the history books”.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Within the vast bureaucratic sprawl of the Pentagon there is a group in charge of monitoring the general state of the military-industrial complex and its continued ability to fulfill the requirements of the national defense strategy. Office for acquisition and sustainment and office for industrial policy spends some $100,000 a year producing an Annual Report to Congress. It is available to the general public. It is even available to the general public in Russia, and Russian experts had a really good time poring over it.

In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending. Let’s see what the US military-industrial complex looks like through a Russian lens.

It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.

What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors—Transdigm, for example—managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.)

It would be one thing if each defense contractor simply took its cut off the top, but instead there is an entire food chain of defense contractors, all of which are legally required, no less, to maximize profits for their shareholders. More than 28,000 companies are involved, but the actual first-tier defense contractors with which the Pentagon places 2/3 of all defense contracts are just the Big Six: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynmics, BAE Systems and Boeing. All the other companies are organized into a pyramid of subcontractors with five levels of hierarchy, and at each level they do their best to milk the tier above them.

The insistence on market-based methods and the requirement of maximizing profitability turns out to be incompatible with defense spending on a very basic level: defense spending is intermittent and cyclical, with long fallow intervals between major orders. This has forced even the Big Six to make cuts to their defense-directed departments in favor of expanding civilian production. Also, in spite of the huge size of the US defense budget, it is of finite size (there being just one planet to blow up), as is the global weapons market. Since, in a market economy, every company faces the choice of grow or get bought out, this has precipitated scores of mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a highly consolidated marketplace with a few major players in each space.

As a result, in most spaces, of which the report’s authors discuss 17, including the Navy, land forces, air force, electronics, nuclear weapons, space technology and so on, at least a third of the time the Pentagon has a choice of exactly one contractor for any given contract, causing quality and timeliness to suffer and driving up prices.

In a number of cases, in spite of its industrial and financial might, the Pentagon has encountered insoluble problems. Specifically, it turns out that the US has only one shipyard left that is capable of building nuclear aircraft carriers (at all, that is; the USS Gerald Ford is not exactly a success). That is Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport, Virginia. In theory, it could work on three ships in parallel, but two of the slips are permanently occupied by existing aircraft carriers that require maintenance. This is not a unique case: the number of shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines, destroyers and other types of vessels is also exactly one. Thus, in case of a protracted conflict with a serious adversary in which a significant portion of the US Navy has been sunk, ships will be impossible to replace within any reasonable amount of time.

The situation is somewhat better with regard to aircraft manufacturing. The plants that exist can produce 40 planes a month and could produce 130 a month if pressed. On the other hand, the situation with tanks and artillery is absolutely dismal. According to this report, the US has completely lost the competency for building the new generation of tanks. It is no longer even a question of missing plant and equipment; in the US, a second generation of engineers who have never designed a tank is currently going into retirement. Their replacements have no one to learn from and only know about modern tanks from movies and video games. As far as artillery, there is just one remaining production line in the US that can produce barrels larger than 40mm; it is fully booked up and would be unable to ramp up production in case of war. The contractor is unwilling to expand production without the Pentagon guaranteeing at least 45% utilization, since that would be unprofitable.

The situation is similar for the entire list of areas; it is better for dual-use technologies that can be sourced from civilian companies and significantly worse for highly specialized ones. Unit cost for every type of military equipment goes up year after year while the volumes being acquired continuously trend lower—sometimes all the way to zero. Over the past 15 years the US hasn’t acquired a single new tank. They keep modernizing the old ones, but at a rate that’s no higher than 100 a year.

Because of all these tendencies and trends, the defense industry continues to lose not only qualified personnel but also the very ability to perform the work. INDPOL experts estimate that the deficit in machine tools has reached 27%. Over the past quarter-century the US has stopped manufacturing a wide variety of manufacturing equipment. Only half of these tools can be imported from allies or friendly nations; for the rest, there is just one source: China. They analyzed the supply chains for 600 of the most important types of weapons and found that a third of them have breaks in them while another third have completely broken down. In the Pentagon’s five-tier subcontractor pyramid, component manufacturers are almost always relegated to the bottommost tier, and the notices they issue when they terminate production or shut down completely tend to drown in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic swamp.

The end result of all this is that theoretically the Pentagon is still capable of doing small production runs of weapons to compensate for ongoing losses in localized, low-intensity conflicts during a general time of peace, but even today this is at the extreme end of its capabilities. In case of a serious conflict with any well-armed nation, all it will be able to rely on is the existing stockpile of ordnance and spare parts, which will be quickly depleted.

A similar situation prevails in the area of rare earth elements and other materials for producing electronics. At the moment, the accumulated stockpile of these supplies needed for producing missiles and space technology—most importantly, satellites—is sufficient for five years at the current rate of use.

The report specifically calls out the dire situation in the area of strategic nuclear weapons. Almost all the technology for communications, targeting, trajectory calculations and arming of the ICBM warheads was developed in the 1960s and 70s. To this day, data is loaded from 5-inch floppy diskettes, which were last mass-produced 15 years ago. There are no replacements for them and the people who designed them are busy pushing up daisies. The choice is between buying tiny production runs of all the consumables at an extravagant expense and developing from scratch the entire land-based strategic triad component at the cost of three annual Pentagon budgets.

There are lots of specific problems in each area described in the report, but the main one is loss of competence among technical and engineering staff caused by a low level of orders for replacements or for new product development. The situation is such that promising new theoretical developments coming out of research centers such as DARPA cannot be realized given the present set of technical competencies. For a number of key specializations there are fewer than three dozen trained, experienced specialists.

This situation is expected to continue to deteriorate, with the number of personnel employed in the defense sector declining 11-16% over the next decade, mainly due to a shortage of young candidates qualified to replace those who are retiring. A specific example: development work on the F-35 is nearing completion and there won’t be a need to develop a new jet fighter until 2035-2040; in the meantime, the personnel who were involved in its development will be idled and their level of competence will deteriorate.

Although at the moment the US still leads the world in defense spending ($610 billion of $1.7 trillion in 2017, which is roughly 36% of all the military spending on the planet) the US economy is no longer able to support the entire technology pyramid even in a time of relative peace and prosperity. On paper the US still looks like a leader in military technology, but the foundations of its military supremacy have eroded. Results of this are plainly visible:

• The US threatened North Korea with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US threatened Iran with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US lost the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, and once the longest military conflict in US history is finally over the political situation there will return to status quo ante with the Taliban in charge and Islamic terrorist training camps back in operation.
• US proxies (Saudi Arabia, mostly) fighting in Yemen have produced a humanitarian disaster but have been unable to prevail militarily.
• US actions in Syria have led to a consolidation of power and territory by the Syrian government and newly dominant regional position for Russia, Iran and Turkey.
• The second-largest NATO power Turkey has purchased Russian S-400 air defense systems. The US alternative is the Patriot system, which is twice as expensive and doesn’t really work.

All of this points to the fact that the US is no longer much a military power at all. This is good news for at least the following four reasons.

First, the US is by far the most belligerent country on Earth, having invaded scores of nations and continuing to occupy many of them. The fact that it can’t fight any more means that opportunities for peace are bound to increase.

Second, once the news sinks in that the Pentagon is nothing more than a flush toilet for public funds its funding will be cut off and the population of the US might see the money that is currently fattening up war profiteers being spent on some roads and bridges, although it’s looking far more likely that it will all go into paying interest expense on federal debt (while supplies last).

Third, US politicians will lose the ability to keep the populace in a state of permanent anxiety about “national security.” In fact, the US has “natural security”—two oceans—and doesn’t need much national defense at all (provided it keeps to itself and doesn’t try to make trouble for others). The Canadians aren’t going to invade, and while the southern border does need some guarding, that can be taken care of at the state/county level by some good ol’ boys using weapons and ammo they already happen to have on hand. Once this $1.7 trillion “national defense” monkey is off their backs, ordinary American citizens will be able to work less, play more and feel less aggressive, anxious, depressed and paranoid.

Last but not least, it will be wonderful to see the war profiteers reduced to scraping under sofa cushions for loose change. All that the US military has been able to produce for a long time now is misery, the technical term for which is “humanitarian disaster.” Look at the aftermath of US military involvement in Serbia/Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, and what do you see? You see misery—both for the locals and for US citizens who lost their family members, had their limbs blown off, or are now suffering from PTSD or brain injury. It would be only fair if that misery were to circle back to those who had profited from it.

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Even the most distracted, fragmented tribe of the peasantry eventually notices that they’re not in the top 1%, or the top 0.1%.

Let’s posit that America will confront a Great Crisis in the next decade. This is the presumption of The Fourth Turning, a 4-generational cycle of 80 years that correlates rather neatly with the Great Crises of the past: 1781 (Revolutionary War, constitutional crisis); 1861 (Civil War) and 1941 (World War II, global war).

What will be the next Great Crisis? Some anticipate another great-power war, others foresee another civil war, still others reckon a military coup is likely, and some view a collapse of the economy and U.S. dollar as inevitable.

While anything’s possible, I propose a novel crisis unlike any in the past, a Moral Crisis in which the people challenge the power of the nation’s corrupt Ruling Elites: not just elected officials, but the technocrats of the Deep State, the vested interests pillaging the nation, the New Overlords of Big Tech, the financier New Nobility, the Corporate Media and the self-serving state/corporate technocrat Nomenklatura who do the dirty work of the Ruling Elites.

Divide-and-Conquer has been the absurdly easy strategy of the Ruling Elites to fragment and disempower the citizenry. It’s child’s play for the Ruling Elites to ceaselessly promote a baker’s dozen of divisive issues via the corporate media, and then watch the resulting conflicts split the citizenry into fragmented camps which subdivide further with every new toxic injection.

The one issue that could unite the fragmented citizenry is moral revulsion: As the Epstein case promises to reveal, there is literally no limit on the excesses and exploitations of the privileged few in America, no limit on what our Ruling Elites can do with absolute impunity.

The Nobility of the feudal era had some reciprocal obligation to its serfs; our New Nobility has no obligation to anyone but themselves. It is painfully obvious that there are two sets of laws in America: bankers can rip off billions and never serve time, and members of the Protected Class who sexually exploit children get a wrist-slap, if that.

Here’s the sad reality: everybody in the Ruling Elites looked the other way: all the self-described “patriots” in the Intelligence services, all the technocrats in the Departments of Justice, State, etc., the Pentagon, and on and on. Everybody with any power knows the whole class of Ruling Elites is completely corrupt, by definition: to secure power in the U.S., you have to sell your soul to the Devil, one way or the other.

Like all Ruling Elites, America’s Elites are absolutely confident in their power:this is hubris taken to new heights.

That the citizenry could finally have enough of their corrupt, self-serving Overlords does not seem in the realm of possibility to the Protected Few.There’s always a way to lawyer-up and plea-bargain for a wrist-slap, a way to bend another “patriot” (barf), a way to offer a bribe cloaked as a plum position in a philanthro-capitalist NGO (non-governmental organization), and so on.

The possibility that moral outrage could spark a revolt seems improbable in such a distracted culture, but consider the chart below: even the most distracted, fragmented tribe of the peasantry eventually notices that they’re not in the top 1%, or the top 0.1%, and that the Ruling Elites have overseen an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few at the expense of the many:

Our Ruling Elites have no idea how many of us already want to see them all in prison jumpsuits, and they also have no idea how fast the moral revulsion with their corrupt “leadership” might spread. Scanning the distracted, consumerist rabble from the great heights of their wealth and power, they reckon the capacity for moral outrage is limited, leaving them safe from any domestic crusade.

They also trust that the citizenry can be further fragmented, further distracted, and so they will continue to be invulnerable. Or worst case scenario, a few especially venal villains will need to be sacrificed, and then all will return to the bliss of Neofeudal exploitation.

But they may have misread the American citizenry, just as they’ve misread history.

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The greatest fear of those holding the most power and wealth is that they will lose their exalted position in the world. They will resist any changes to the grossly unequal and unjust class structure that causes grievous damage to so many people; and to the planet itself. Even the threat of real change must be crushed. This, in a nutshell, underpins the astonishing and relentless campaign to stop Jeremy Corbyn, a moderate leftist, from ever becoming Prime Minister.

On July 10, BBC broadcast an episode of Panorama that purported to be an impartial investigation into the loaded question, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’. It quickly became clear that the programme makers were not interested in a serious appraisal of the evidence and that the question was merely rhetorical. The thrust of the programme was that Labour is anti-semitic. The Labour Party response was scathing:

‘The Panorama programme was not a fair or balanced investigation. It was a seriously inaccurate, politically one-sided polemic, which breached basic journalistic standards, invented quotes and edited emails to change their meaning. It was an overtly biased intervention by the BBC in party political controversy.

‘An honest investigation into antisemitism in Labour and wider society is in the public interest. The Panorama team instead pre-determined an answer to the question posed by the programme’s title.’

The programme was presented by BBC journalist John Ware who had previously made clear his antagonism towards Corbyn’s politics. As journalist Jonathan Cook wrote:

‘that Panorama made no attempt at even-handedness or fairness in its programme on Labour should have come as no surprise. The man in charge of the investigation was John Ware, a former Sun journalist. He cannot be considered dispassionate either about Corbyn or the prospects of Labour defeating the Conservative Party at a general election, which may be just around the corner.’

Cook continued:

‘Two years ago, Ware wrote a lengthy article for a right-wing magazine warning of the danger of Corbyn reaching power. He was a politician, wrote Ware, “whose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about”.

‘Shortly after Corbyn’s leadership election victory in 2015, Ware headed a Panorama documentary that sought to malign the new leader. Ware is also a strident supporter of Israel and of its state ideology, Zionism. In a 2005 edition of Panorama he suggested that Muslims in Britain who spoke out about Israel’s crimes against Palestinians were “extremists”.

‘In an article in the Jewish Chronicle last year Ware concluded that anti-Zionism had “morphed into antisemitism – itself a Corbyn legacy”.’

The Panorama programme was immediately followed by BBC News at Ten which gave it extensive coverage, pumping up the propaganda value of the fake ‘investigation’. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg intoned gravely:

‘Many party members have left, and if Labour can’t get a grip of racism in its own ranks, what might they lose next?’

Consider her choice of words: ‘Many party members have left’ and ‘Labour can’t get a grip of racism in its own ranks’. The public is supposed to swallow the BBC’s implication of endemic Labour anti-semitism as impartial, objective reporting.

Kuenssberg continued:

‘This is a problem that has dogged the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, not for a few weeks, not just for a few months, but for several years now.’

Many commentators, including Media Lens, have long argued that the issue of anti-semitism has been exploited to inflict as much damage on Corbyn as possible. But that rational perspective is systematically excluded from BBC News ‘journalism’. Instead, as ever, the BBC political editor continued to hammer home the requisite propaganda bullet points:

‘Corbyn has been unable, it seems, to crack down on it [anti-semitism] in the way he has promised to do, again and again.’

In the BBC version of ‘neutral’ news reporting, there is no hint that Corbyn’s opponents – not least the corporate media, including the BBC – wish to destroy him and what he stands for. But then, from the very beginning, the BBC has been on the side of the establishment and the government of the day. As BBC founder John Reith confided in his diary during the 1926 General Strike:

‘They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’

(‘The Reith Diaries’, edited by Charles Stewart, Collins, 1975; entry for 11 May, 1926)

The experienced journalist Peter Oborne said via Twitter:

‘I proposed to the BBC a documentary on Tory Islamophobia three years ago. Zero interest.’

It is possible that in over-reaching themselves, and presenting such a skewed perspective, Panorama and the BBC had inadvertently highlighted the manufactured nature of the ‘anti-semitism crisis’. As Asa Winstanley observed:

‘all the program proved was just how dishonest the British establishment and the Israel lobby have been in manufacturing this “Labour anti-Semitism crisis” for the past four years.’

In a piece for The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah gave crucial background context, observing that the Israel lobby is working hard to split the left:

‘Influential Israel lobby groups are offering “rules” for how Jewish communal organizations can divide the left and break up emerging intersectional coalitions.

‘They also advocate for “delegitimizing” Jews deemed too supportive of Palestinian rights.

‘Israel and its lobby see the strengthening solidarity between Palestinians and other oppressed groups, especially Black people in the United States, as a major threat and they are determined to fight back.

‘Indeed, last year, Al Jazeera’s leaked undercover documentary The Lobby–USA revealed how the Israeli government and its lobby worked to disrupt the Black Lives Matter movement in retaliation for Black solidarity with Palestine.’

A central strategy of this pro-Israel campaign is to repeatedly state a false equivalence between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. Abunimah explained:

‘Zionism, Israel’s state ideology, is racist because it grants superior rights to Jews enshrined in dozens of Israeli laws and holds that Palestinians expelled and exiled from their homeland should not be allowed to return to it solely and exclusively because they are not Jews.

‘Anti-Zionism, therefore, is not prejudice against Jews as Israel and its lobby groups claim.

‘Anti-Zionism, based in universal human rights principles, is anti-racism.’

A new report by Israel’s Reut Institute and the US-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs warned ominously that ‘”Corbynization” is spreading through segments of the political left’ and that ‘UK-based anti-Israel groups have been inspiring liberal and progressive elite circles worldwide.’

This, says Abunimah, ‘underlines why Israel and its lobby view discrediting and removing Corbyn as a paramount priority.’

An ‘Unconstitutional Animas’ Against A Corbyn Government

Two weeks before the Panorama programme, The Times published a leak revealing that Corbyn is alleged by senior UK civil servants to be ‘too frail’ to become Prime Minister. He was not up to the job, ‘physically or mentally’. One anonymous figure at the Civil Service reportedly said:

‘When does someone say [he] is too ill to carry on as leader of the Labour Party, let alone prime minister? There must be senior people in the party who know that he is not functioning on all cylinders.’

Corbyn promptly rebutted the ‘scurrilous’ story, dismissing it as ‘a farrago of nonsense’ and insisting he was a ‘very fit, very healthy, very active person’. Corbyn’s call for an independent investigation into the Civil Service leak to the press was predictably rejected by the government.

David Miller, Professor of Political Sociology at Bristol University, and a researcher in propaganda, noted that the Civil Service clearly has:

‘an unconstitutional animus against a potential Corbyn government and has been briefing against it one way or another through various agencies for some time now.’

As an example, Miller pointed to the Integrity Initiative, set up by the government-funded Institute for Statecraft whose stated mission is to:

‘counter Russian disinformation and malign influence by harnessing existing expertise and establishing a network of experts, opinion formers and policy makers to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it.’

In an article for the Morning Star, Labour MP Chris Williamson, pointed out that this supposed charitable body had ‘strayed into smearing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party’. Its official Twitter account had promoted tweets and articles attacking Corbyn, the Labour Party and their officials. One tweet quoted a newspaper article calling Corbyn a ‘useful idiot’. The article then continued:

‘His open visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.’

Williamson warned:

‘the chilling manipulations of the Institute for Statecraft are straight out of the cold war playbook.’

Through a series of parliamentary questions, Williamson discovered that the Foreign Office has given more than £2.2 million to the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative. As David Miller says, ‘the use of taxpayers’ money to interfere in domestic politics [is] an affront to democracy’. A report by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – an independent network of academics that includes Miller – found that Facebook and Nato had provided funding too.

Establishment opposition to Corbyn also comes from UK military forces. In 2015, the Sunday Times published comments by a senior serving British Army general that Corbyn would face a mutiny as Prime Minister if he ever tried to cancel the Trident nuclear weapons system, withdraw from Nato or reduce the armed forces:

‘The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.’

‘Failing The Test Of Leadership’ = Failing To Protect Power

The fear of a ‘maverick’ ending up as leader of the country extends to the ‘liberal’ end of the permissible ‘spectrum’ of viewpoints. In our previous media alert, we highlighted the fakery behind accusations of anti-semitism levelled at Labour MP Chris Williamson, mentioned above. On July 8, a letter signed by more than one hundred prominent members of the Jewish community, including Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, was published by the Guardian. The letter stated:

‘Chris Williamson did not say that the party had been “too apologetic about antisemitism”, as has been widely misreported. He correctly stated that the Labour party has done more than any other party to combat the scourge of antisemitism and that, therefore, its stance should be less apologetic. Such attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aim to undermine not only the Labour party’s leadership but also all pro-Palestinian members.’

It continued:

‘The mass media have ignored the huge support for Chris both within and beyond the Labour party. Support that includes many Jews. The party needs people like him, with the energy and determination to fight for social justice. As anti-racist Jews, we regard Chris as our ally: he stands as we do with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. It should also be noted that he has a longer record of campaigning against racism and fascism than most of his detractors.’

However, the letter was swiftly taken down following a complaint later the same day by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD). The placeholder Guardian page initially said the letter had been removed, ‘pending investigation’. By the following day, the letter had been permanently deleted with this text given as the explanation:

‘A letter was removed from this page on 9 July 2019 due to errors in the list of signatories provided. We were contacted by an organisation which had not agreed to sign the letter; the organisers of the letter also acknowledge that there were other inaccuracies in the list of signatories.’

The ‘explanation’ lacked detail, would have nonplussed many readers, and notably made no mention of the complaint from BoD. In a piece for The Canary, John McEvoy said that the complaint from BoD had:

‘rightly highlighted that one of the signatories – “Michael Morgan” – had made past racist and abhorrent remarks.’

One of the letter’s co-authors, who wished to remain anonymous, told McEvoy that they regretted a lack of oversight over the signatories:

‘We were clear that the letter was supposed to be signed by only Jewish people. It was made public a couple of days ago, and received 292 signatures shortly after.

‘We tried to confirm which of the signatories were Jewish by contacting them. If we received no response, we took them off the list.

‘Michael Morgan replied and told us he was not Jewish, so we took him off the list. His name ended up back on it after transferring the document through different file formats, mistakenly using older files.

‘The inclusion of Michael Morgan was an accident and an oversight. His views do not reflect ours.’

But, while there were issues with a few of the signatories, it was clear that the contents of the letter were entirely justified and appropriate. As the co-author of the letter told The Canary:

‘I think the letter itself is important, and also whether the Board of Deputies think the likes of Chomsky etc. are the “right kind of Jews” is neither here nor there.

‘Of course these Jews are not prominent in the Board of Deputies’ circles, but this is the issue: The Board of Deputies seem to want to define what “prominent Jew” means. And a lot of people who are Jewish and, like me, on the left, find that difficult to accept. Why is our Jewish identity being erased, and why do they get to define who is a Jew?’

That the Guardian refused to reinstate the letter is deplorable; a symptom of the paper’s appalling role in fuelling the fake anti-semitism ‘crisis’. As journalist John Pilger noted via Twitter:

‘The Guardian has yet to apologise for two major fabrications: that Julian #Assange conspired with Moscow to escape Britain; and that he met Trump crony Paul Manafort plus Russians. The paper’s descent quickens with this censorship’

Last month, journalist Matt Kennard revealed the Guardian‘s collusion with UK security services in media censorship. Deputy editor Paul Johnson had been personally thanked by the Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice (or D-Notice) committee for ‘re-establishing links’ with the paper in the wake of its publication of material from CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Johnson was one of three Guardian staffers who took part in the subsequent destruction of computer hard drives containing Snowden files in the Guardian‘s basement, overseen by two security officials from GCHQ. He then joined the D-Notice committee in 2014. The committee, run by the Ministry of Defence, issues ‘advisory warnings’ that are essentially attempts to gag the media from publishing information that might harm state interests.

D-Notice meeting minutes reveal that Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance reported that the committee’s relationship with the Guardian has ‘continued to strengthen’ and that there were ‘regular dialogues’ with its journalists. Kennard suggested that the Guardian was rewarded for its acquiescence with security interests by being granted an unprecedented exclusive interview with a serving head of MI5 in 2016.

Yet another clear indication of the paper’s plummeting descent was the Guardian‘s publication of a full-page advertisement on July 17 from more than sixty Labour peers lambasting Corbyn:

‘You have failed to defend our party’s anti-racist values. You have therefore failed the test of leadership.’

The party was ‘no longer a safe place for all members and supporters’, claimed the peers, ‘whatever their ethnicity or faith.’ The signatories, comprising around one-third of the party’s members in the House of Lords, included former Cabinet members Peter Mandelson, Peter Hain and John Reid from the discredited, blood-soaked years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The advert was headed:

‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective or race, creed, gender identity, or sexual orientation (*except, it seems, Jews). This is your legacy, Mr Corbyn.’

In publishing the advert, the Guardian was once again complicit in promoting a false, elite-friendly narrative about an institutionally anti-semitic Labour Party under Corbyn. The advert itself generated considerable media coverage, just as the peers no doubt intended, with around thirty articles in the press. ‘Jews feel unsafe in “toxic” Labour, say 67 of party’s own peers’, blasted the Daily Mail. The Evening Standard carried the headline: ‘Corbyn “must show his shame on anti-Semitism”: Labour ex-minister Lord Robertson joins peers’ attack on leader’. The Express said: ‘Labour civil WAR: Corbyn accused of “failing leadership” by peers over anti-Semitism’. The overall message was clear: Labour is anti-semitic under Corbyn, and he is not fit to become Prime Minister.

Shredding any semblance of ‘impartiality’, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, tweeted:

‘What has it come to in the Labour Party when the only way Labour peers feel they can communicate with their leader @jeremycorbyn is to pay to take out an advert in @guardian! No major party has ever been this dysfunctional’

Jonathan Cook responded appropriately:

‘What has it come to in the Labour party when its most establishment figures decide to destroy their party from within by fuelling the corporate media smears against a leader twice elected by members! No major party has ever been this leftwing before. (Fixed that for you Pesto!)’

Thinking along similar lines to Peston, Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murty observed via Twitter:

‘The Labour Party is now unable to find anyone prepared to come on #c4news tonight to answer questions about antisemitism and the ad taken out by over 60 Labour Peers today telling Jeremy Corbyn he had failed to defend the party’s values.’

As so often happens when a corporate journalist ventures forth into the world of social media, rebuttals flew in. Twitter user Jon Harding replied:

‘Members support Corbyn because he supports our values – community, equality, responsibility, solidarity and fairness

‘The media attack us everyday, calling us anti-Semitic. But Corbyn remains steadfast, and support for Corbyn is solid, because we can see through the smears’

Another Twitter user replied to Guru-Murty:

‘Perhaps you should do a segment on how left wing Corbyn supporting Jews are being at best ignored, at worst, harassed, doxed & vilified by people who don’t agree with them, and how many are afraid to voice their opinions because of it!’

As far as we could tell, the Channel 4 News man had nothing to say in response.

An article on the Skwawkbox website quoted Labour activists on Twitter saying that ‘the list of signatories reads like a “Who’s Who” of Blairite leftovers’. The article also noted that of the 64 Lords who signed the advert:

‘at least twenty-four are corporate lobbyists or on boards of hedge funds, banks, “global security consultancies” and, particularly, private health firms. Others have family links to similar enterprises.’

In other words, these are the primary interests which are being protected in attacking Corbyn.

More Guardian Censorship

On the same day (July 17) that the Lords advert was published, a remarkable email from Guardiancartoonist Steve Bell was circulated on social media. Bell had sent it to a Guardian editor, possibly Katharine Viner herself. It is worth quoting in full:

Dear [Redacted]

After our bizarre telephone conversation yesterday, I feared you might not publish today’s strip, but still cannot understand why the attached should be more liable to legal challenge from Tom Watson than either of the previous two strips that you have already published. You said the ‘lawyers were concerned’, but what about? It’s not antisemitic nor is it libellous, even though it includes a caricature of Binyamin Netanyahu. If Watson chose to object it would make him look far sillier than he does in the cartoon.

I suspect that the real problem is that it contravenes some mysterious editorial line that has been drawn around the subject of antisemitism and the infernal subject of ‘antisemitic tropes’. In some ways this is even more troubling for me than specious charges of antisemitism. Does the Guardian no longer tolerate content that counters its editorial line?

Why in today’s paper has the Guardian published a highly partisan and personally insulting (to the leader of the Labour Party) advert on page 20 that uses the Labour Party logo, but is clearly not a Labour Party approved advert? I would have thought that there would be far more reason to expect a legal challenge on that than on my cartoon. Or is it that you don’t want to offend poor Tom but are quite happy to offend poor Jeremy?

Why on earth did the Guardian publish, then unpublish, a letter in support of Chris Williamson, signed by 100 people identifying themselves as Jewish, including Noam Chomsky? Were they the wrong kind of Jews? The paper’s contortions on this subject do not do it any credit. If there is a reasoned position on this contentious issue, then I would dearly like to see it laid out clearly so we can all see where we stand. Or are there some subjects that we just can’t touch?

Best wishes

Steve Bell

In his previous two strips on July 15 and July 16 of his long-running cartoon series, ‘If…’, Bell had depicted Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as the ‘Antisemite Finder General’, harking back to the Witchfinder General of the 17th century English Civil War. As Bell said in his email, these two earlier strips were obviously considered fit for publication. In the censored strip for July 17, deemed unacceptable by the Guardian, but then published exclusively by Socialist Worker, Watson’s horse sniffs out an ‘antisemitic trope’. Watson encounters Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu along with caricatures clearly meant as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

As James Wright observed in a Canary piece about the Guardian‘s censorship, Bell appeared to be ridiculing a fundamental contradiction of the pro-Israel establishment. It is anti-semitic to suppose that a Jewish person must be a supporter of Israel. And yet, Netanyahu regularly claims that Israel speaks for all Jewish people. Thus, for example:

‘On this day, on behalf of the Jewish people, I say to those who have sought and still seek to destroy us: You have failed and you will fail.’

Moreover, Netanyahu’s embrace of far-right nationalist leaders around the world (not least Trump), actually makes Jews ‘more vulnerable to anti-Semitism and hate crimes in their own countries’, warned racism researcher Rachel Shenhav-Goldberg. And author Zeev Sternhell noted in a piece for Foreign Policy that Israel under Netanyahu:

‘sees itself as an integral part of this anti-liberal bloc led by nativist xenophobes who traffic in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski.’

Boris Johnson, of course, has a long record of sexist, homophobic and racist remarks. He has referred to black people as ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ and likened Muslim women to letterboxes. As for Trump, he told US Jews that Netanyahu is ‘your Prime Minister’, thus conflating Jews with Israelis. It is worth adding that Trump recently told four Congresswomen of colour – Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashia Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley – to ‘go back’ and ‘help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came’. This is racism. Three of the politicians were born in the United States. The fourth, Omar, moved to the US with her family when she was ten years old after fleeing war in Somalia. Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, the two contenders to become Tory leader and thus the next Prime Minister, both refused to call Trump’s remarks racist, in stark contrast to Jeremy Corbyn.

On the same day that the Guardian censored the Bell cartoon strip, it provided Labour MP Margaret Hodge with a platform to once again abuse Jeremy Corbyn as ‘a racist and an antisemite’. The Guardian‘s editorial bias could hardly be more glaring.

Our searches of the ProQuest media database showed that not a single UK newspaper reported the Guardian‘s censorship of Steve Bell. Nobody should be surprised. After all, silence about uncomfortable topics is one of the operating principles of the corporate media.

We asked John Pilger to comment on Bell’s email. He told us:

‘Steve Bell’s reasoned protest to a gatekeeper on the Guardian, a newspaper often given credibility by his brilliance, is a warning. I wanted to write that it was a warning to journalists — but there are few who are not now cowed into silence or collaborators. They are not journalists any more, but functionaries, even awarded prizes for holding the line. Steve Bell’s memo is a warning to the wider society. His wonderfully anarchic satire is needed more than ever in this corporate, conformist world with its ever present intimidation.

‘The Guardian advertisement he refers to in effect demands the outlawing of dissent; in the United States, the firing of political cartoonists who cross the line is now routine. The accusation of anti-Semitism thrown at principled opponents of the longest, most brutal military occupation in modern times and the racism of the Israeli state, now enshrined in Israeli law, ought to be beyond contempt. Yet the Guardian’s “contortions”, as Steve Bell calls them, effectively peddle the lie that criticism of Israel and its Zionist ideology is anti-Semitic.This is no different from the lies the Guardian has told about Julian Assange. So beware. Not only is the campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn well advanced, so, too, is the consignment of real journalism, and truth, to a permanent underground.’

(Email to Media Lens, July 19, 2019)

The root cause of this campaign to destroy Corbyn is to block any hope of systemic change for the benefit of the general population. Such a prospect is deemed unacceptable to established power. For the sake of society, and the larger battle to prevent climate breakdown, we urgently need to take back power from those who have stolen it.

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“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” ― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Enough already.

Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting.

Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just.

We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long.

We are approaching a reckoning.

This is the point, as the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world.

We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, and in Mao’s China: the rise of strongmen and demagogues, the ascendency of profit-driven politics over deep-seated principles, the warring nationalism that seeks to divide and conquer, the callous disregard for basic human rights and dignity, and the silence of people who should know better.

Yet no matter how many times the world has been down this road before, we can’t seem to avoid repeating the deadly mistakes of the past. This is not just playing out on a national and international scale. It is wreaking havoc at the most immediate level, as well, creating rifts and polarities within families and friends, neighborhoods and communities that keep the populace warring among themselves and incapable of presenting a united front in the face of the government’s goose-stepping despotism.

We are definitely in desperate need of a populace that can stand united against the government’s authoritarian tendencies.

Surely we can manage to find some common ground in the midst of the destructive, disrupting, diverting, discordant babble being beamed down at us by the powers-that-be? After all, there are certain self-evident truths—about the source of our freedoms, about the purpose of government, about how we expect to be treated by those we appoint to serve us in government offices, about what to do when the government abuses our rights and our trust, etc.—that we should be able to agree on, no matter how we might differ politically.

Disagree all you want about healthcare, abortion and immigration—hot-button issues that are guaranteed to stir up the masses, secure campaign contributions and turn political discourse into a circus free-for-all—but never forget that our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain principles that should be non-negotiable.

For instance, for the first time in the nation’s history, it is expected that the federal deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year, not to mention the national debt which is approaching $23 trillion. There’s also $21 trillion in government spending that cannot be accounted for or explained. For those in need of a quick reminder: “A budget deficit is the difference between what the federal government spends and what it takes in. The national debt is the result of the federal government borrowing money to cover years and years of budget deficits.” Right now, the U.S. government is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.

Yet no matter how we might differ about how the government allocates its spending, surely we can agree that the government’s irresponsible spending, which has saddled us with insurmountable debt, is pushing the country to the edge of financial and physical ruin.

That’s just one example of many that shows the extent to which the agents of the American police state are shredding the constitutional fabric of the nation, eclipsing the rights of the American people, and perverting basic standards of decency.

Let me give you a few more.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. The U.S. military empire’s determination to police the rest of the world has resulted in more than 1.3 million U.S. troops being stationed at roughly 1000 military bases in over 150 countries around the world. That doesn’t include the number of private contractors pulling in hefty salaries at taxpayer expense. In Afghanistan, for example, private contractors outnumber U.S. troops three to one.

No matter how we might differ about the role of the U.S. military in foreign affairs, surely we can agree that America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which they might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump. These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

Yet no matter how we might differ about how success or failure of past or present presidential administrations, surely we can agree that the president should not be empowered to act as an imperial dictator with permanent powers.

Increasingly, at home, we’re facing an unbelievable show of force by government agents. For example, with alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug and promise to do better. Just recently, in fact, the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals cleared a cop who aimed for a family’s dog (who showed no signs of aggression), missed, and instead shot a 10-year-old lying on the ground. Indeed, there are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order. Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

No matter how we might differ about where to draw that blue line of allegiance to the police state, surely we can agree that police shouldn’t go around terrorizing and shooting innocent, unarmed children and adults or be absolved of wrongdoing for doing so.

Nor can we turn a blind eye to the transformation of America’s penal system from one aimed at protecting society from dangerous criminals to a profit-driven system that dehumanizes and strips prisoners of every vestige of their humanity. For example, in Illinois, as part of a “training exercise” for incoming cadets, prison guards armed with batons and shields rounded up 200 handcuffed female inmates, marched them to the gymnasium, then forced them to strip naked (including removing their tampons and pads), “bend over and spread open their vaginal and anal cavities,” while male prison guards promenaded past or stood staring. The 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the entire dehumanizing, demoralizing mass body cavity strip search—orchestrated not for security purposes but as an exercise in humiliation—was legal. Be warned, however: this treatment will not be limited to those behind bars. In our present carceral state, there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite. In a carceral state, there are only two kinds of people: the prisoners and the prison guards.

No matter how we might differ about where to draw the line when it comes to prisoners’ rights, surely we can agree that no one—woman, man or child—should be subjected to such degrading treatment in the name of law and order.

In Washington, DC, in contravention of longstanding laws that restrict the government’s ability to deploy the military on American soil, the Pentagon has embarked on a secret mission of “undetermined duration” that involves flying Black Hawk helicopters over the nation’s capital, backed by active-duty and reserve soldiers. In addition to the increasing militarization of the police—a de facto standing army—this military exercise further acclimates the nation to the sight and sounds of military personnel on American soil and the imposition of martial law.

No matter how we might differ about the deference due to those in uniform, whether military or law enforcement, surely we can agree that America’s Founders had good reason to warn against the menace of a national police force—a.k.a. a standing army—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution.

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and carried out by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions. For example, in Pennsylvania, a school district is threatening to place children in foster care if parents don’t pay their overdue school lunch bills. In Florida, a resident was fined $100,000 for a dirty swimming pool and overgrown grass at a house she no longer owned. In Kentucky, government bureaucrats sent a cease-and-desist letter to a church ministry, warning that the group is breaking the law by handing out free used eyeglasses to the homeless. These petty tyrannies inflicted on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace are what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

No matter how we might differ about the extent to which the government has the final say in how it flexes it power and exerts its authority, surely we can agree that the tyranny of the Nanny State—disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and inflicted on all those who do not belong to the elite ruling class that gets to call the shots— should not be allowed to pave over the Constitution.

At its core, this is not a debate about politics, or constitutionalism, or even tyranny disguised as law-and-order. This is a condemnation of the monsters with human faces that have infiltrated our government.

For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.

Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

No matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

So how do you fight back?

How do you fight injustice? How do you push back against tyranny? How do you vanquish evil?

You don’t fight it by hiding your head in the sand.

We have ignored the warning signs all around us for too long.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has ripped the Constitution to shreds and left us powerless in the face of its power grabs, greed and brutality.

What we are grappling with today is a government that is cutting great roads through the very foundations of freedom in order to get after its modern devils. Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow.

Therein lies the problem.

The consequences of this failure to do our due diligence in asking the right questions, demanding satisfactory answers, and holding our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law has pushed us to the brink of a nearly intolerable state of affairs.

Intolerable, at least, to those who remember what it was like to live in a place where freedom, due process and representative government actually meant something. Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we now find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives.

The hour grows late in terms of restoring the balance of power and reclaiming our freedoms, but it may not be too late. The time to act is now, using all methods of nonviolent resistance available to us.

“Don’t sit around waiting for the two corrupted established parties to restore the Constitution or the Republic,” Naomi Wolf once warned. Waiting and watching will get us nowhere fast.

If you’re watching, you’re not doing.

Easily mesmerized by the government’s political theater—the endless congressional hearings and investigations that go nowhere, the president’s reality show antics, the warring factions, the electoral drama—we have become a society of watchers rather than activists who are distracted by even the clumsiest government attempts at sleight-of-hand.

It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.

Wake up and take a good, hard look around you. Start by recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices. Stop being distracted by the political theater staged by the Deep State: they want you watching the show while they manipulate things behind the scenes. Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.

As British statesman Edmund Burke warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”

This article was originally published by The Rutherford Institute

The press conference that was held before the summit of the Pakistani and American leaders covered a lot of ground and lasted quite a while, but here are the most important takeaways for those who didn’t have time to watch it all or read the entire transcript:

* Trump revealed that Modi supposedly requested his diplomatic intervention in mediating the Kashmir Conflict with Pakistan, something that New Delhi has since denied after it’s become a raging domestic political scandal at home.

* Trump’s quip that “Pakistan never lies” takes on a newfound significance when contrasted with India’s denial of Modi’s reported Kashmir request, which from the American leader’s perspective is nothing but a lie from India and speaks to the serious distrust in US-Indian ties and especially Trump’s relationship with Modi.

* Pakistani-American relations have notably improved since Prime Minister Khan entered office last August, and Trump doesn’t blame his predecessors for supposedly not doing all they previously could in bringing peace to Afghanistan because “they were dealing with the wrong President”.

* Pakistan is now helping to “extricate” the US from Afghanistan and “saving millions of lives” after Trump said that the other option that he had at his disposal was to “kill 10 million people” in order to end the war, hinting that he could have done so by dropping countless other “Mother Of All Bombs” all over the country.

* Trump ambitiously wants to increase Pakistani-American trade by 10-20x its current level after heaping nothing but praise on its people and economic potential, strongly suggesting that Pakistan could replace India as the US’ preferred economic partner in South Asia if New Delhi continues to play “hard ball” on trade.

* Trump announced that he’d “love to go to Pakistan at the right time”, which could even be as early as the end of this year if he travels to India in November or December like is reportedly being explored and then pays a visit to its neighbor, especially if there’s a big breakthrough in the Afghan peace process around that time.

—————

The astounding success of the Khan-Trump Summit proved without a doubt that Pakistan is the global pivot state that’s mastered the policy of “multi-alignment” between the New Cold War‘s most relevant Great Powers, which enables it to flexibly adapt to this century’s rapidly changing circumstances in pursuit of its interests.

This article was originally published by Eurasia Future

The Pentagon and its sub-office in Brussels, HQ NATO, in its new billion dollar building, are intent on maintaining military pressure around the globe. The US itself is much more widely spread, having bases tentacled from continent to continent, with the Pentagon admitting to 514 but omitting mention of many countries, including Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia.

Independent researchers came up with the more realistic total of 883 bases, and examination of the current US defence budget shows that the Pentagon’s spending priorities are far from modest in regard to spreading its wings, hulls and boots-on-the-ground to maintain military domination by what Trump calls “the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth.” To this end its vast military spending programme includes:

• increasing the strength of the Army, Navy, and Air Force by almost 26,000;
• building another ten combat ships for $18.4 billion;
• increasing production of the most expensive aircraft in world history, the F-35, costing over eleven billion; and
• upgrading and expanding the triad of nuclear weapons deliverable from air, land and sea.

The US military budget for 2020 is officially $750 billion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total US-NATO military expenditure in 2018 was “$963 billion, which represents 53 per cent of world spending.” In striking (no humour intended) contrast, Russia’s entire defence budget was $61.4 billion, its annual outlay having “decreased by 3.5 per cent,” which even the most brainwashed western war-drummer would have to agree does not reflect the policy of a nation preparing to invade anybody.

Yet the US-NATO alliance is increasing the number and scope of military manoeuvres along Russia’s borders, and announced that “in 2019, a total of 102 NATO exercises are planned; 39 of them are open to partner participation.” The exercises include 25 land, 27 air and 12 maritime-centred groups of manoeuvres.

“Partner participation” is a disguised way of saying that non-NATO countries around Russia’s borders have been encouraged to join in all the expensive military jamborees aimed at convincing their citizens they should follow “the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth” in its never-ending conquests.

HQ NATO announced that from 8-22 June military forces of 18 nations took part in the BALTOPS naval manoeuvres which involved “maritime, air and ground forces with about 50 ships and submarines and 40 aircraft” in and around the Baltic. The NATO spokesperson said, presumably with a straight face and no hint of the wry amusement felt by independent observers, that “BALTOPS is now in its 47th year and is not directed against anyone.” Sure. And the Easter Bunny just landed on Mars.

In the most recent example of US-NATO confrontation, according to US European Command, “the US Air Force deployed F-35 Lightning and F-15E Strike Eagles to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, as part of Operation Rapid Forge under the Department of Defense’s Dynamic Force Employment Concept. Rapid Forge will involve forward deployments to bases in the territory of NATO allies in order to enhance readiness… and are conducted in coordination with US allies and partners in Europe. Rapid Forge aircraft are forward deploying to the territory of NATO allies… The goal of the operation is to increase the readiness and responsiveness of US forces in Europe…”

Then on July 16 Stars and Stripes (a remarkably objective commentator, incidentally) reported that the Rapid Forge strike aircraft had been sent to Poland, Lithuania and Estonia “in a test of the service’s ability to quickly deploy air power overseas” These aircraft were specifically deployed to operate as closely as possible to Russian airspace.

The manoeuvres are part of ongoing refinement of the Pentagon’s new Dynamic Force Employment strategy “which is focused on using more unpredictable deployments to demonstrate military agility to possible adversaries.” This concept involves “a shift away from traditional six-month naval deployments to a flexible system that can involve shorter but more frequent stints at sea. And in March, the Army dispatched 1,500 soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Germany and onward to Poland in one of the service’s largest snap mobilizations to Europe in years.”

It was intriguing that the surge in US-NATO military deployment confrontation occurred at the same time it was revealed that the US has been storing nuclear weapons all over Europe for years. Most analysts knew this, although nothing had been admitted, but, as noted in the brilliant BBC TV satire Yes, Minister by the lead character: “First rule in politics: never believe anything until it’s officially denied.”

As the Washington Post reported, “A recently released — and subsequently deleted — document published by a NATO-affiliated body has sparked headlines in Europe with an apparent confirmation of a long-held open secret: some 150 US nuclear weapons are being stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.” The moment a “NATO official” announced that “we do not comment on the details of NATO’s nuclear posture… this is not an official NATO document,” it was obvious that the deleted details given in the document must be accurate. And now many questions must be answered. For example : under whose guard are these weapons held? Are officials, politicians and military personnel of host countries permitted access to US nuclear storage facilities? What are the nuclear readiness states, and are the host nations informed of these? And it would be very interesting to know if US practice deployments involve nuclear bombs and missiles.

One of the most important aspects of the nuclear bases saga is the likely connection between these US weapons and this year’s US-NATO military manoeuvres. The ‘Rapid Forge’ deployments to Russia’s borders involve F-35A and F15E strike aircraft, and Lockheed Martin tells us that “once air dominance is established, the F-35 converts to beast mode, carrying up to 22,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons.” Similarly, the F-15E is now capable of delivering B61-12 nuclear bombs.

As reported by the Belgian daily De Morgen (in English in the Brussels Times on 16 July), the document stated that “In the context of NATO, the United States [has deployed] around 150 nuclear weapons in Europe, in particular B61 free-bombs, which can be [delivered] by both US and Allied planes.” But we can be certain that the citizens of the countries concerned, or of any of the other NATO nations, will never be told on what terms the United States is storing nuclear weapons in their countries and what international developments might govern their use.

Presumably it is the President of the United States who will give approval for release of the nuclear bombs being stored in six of the US bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy (2), the Netherlands and Turkey — but is he going to seek agreement from the governments of these countries to use these weapons? It is far from certain that there would be concurrence on the part of Turkey, for example, whose relations with Trump Washington are extremely precarious.

What would happen if President Erdoğan objected to an obviously indicated US intention to convert the USAF’s F-35s to “beast mode”, loading B61 nuclear bombs at Incirlik airbase?

Nobody knows.

And nobody know if all these US-NATO martial fandangos in the skies around Russia’s borders involve test deployment of strike aircraft in “beast mode”, as nuclear attack preparedness is so aptly described by Lockheed Martin, that prominent member of Washington’s Military-Industrial Complex.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland seem to be delighted that US-NATO is continuing to confront Russia by flying nuclear strike aircraft in their airspace. But have they really thought all this through?

Boris Johnson succeeded Theresa May as new Tory prime minister – chosen by Britain’s power elite, ordinary Brits having no say over their new leader.

UK democracy in action resembles America’s — pure fantasy, not the real thing.

Johnson is a caricature of what a political leader is supposed to be, a self-promoting serial liar, an embarrassment to previous offices held.

In public statements, he bashed Russia like his predecessors, abandoning reason, logic, facts, and common sense.

Johnson and Theresa May, along with other UK and US Russophobes, concocted the Skripal poisoning incident the Kremlin had nothing to do with.

Instead of responsibly seeking improved relations with Moscow, they used the incident to heighten tensions more than already.

Johnson is Britain’s Nikki Haley with gender difference. He earlier compared Putin to Hitler.

Haley has US 2024 presidential ambitions. The possibility should terrify everyone — a neocon extremist, geopolitical know-nothing Hillary clone without her years of political experience on the world stage.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone earlier called Johnson “the most hardline right-wing ideologue since Thatcher…a fairly lazy tosser who just wants to be there.”

He’s supremely unqualified for the post he now holds. It’s his to compound the mess he inherited.

Russian Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachev slammed him, saying:

“British politics is in for gales and earthquakes, I dare suggest. And the British-Russian relations are in for the same old cemetery despair they have been plunged into by Johnson and the like. It’s going to be no fun.”

His hardline extremism and eccentricities “manifested itself in full when he was foreign secretary and is unlikely to fade away now.”

Kosachev’s State Duma counterpart Leonid Slutsky was just as disappointed about Johnson’s ascension to power, saying:

“As for relations with Russia, one can hardly expect drastic changes for the better.”

He was foreign secretary “during the unprecedented anti-Russian campaign over the so-called poisoning” of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, falsely blamed on Moscow.

“(H)e did his utmost to promote that political theater and reduce Russian-British relations to zero.”

According to journalist Dave Hill, he’s “a unique figure in British politics, an unprecedented blend of comedian, conman, faux subversive showman, and populist media confection.”

Biographer Sonia Purnell described his public persona as “brand Boris,” adding he’s “a manic self-promoter (with) a good deal of bravado…the most unconventional…politician of the post-Blair era.”

Former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg once said he’s “like Donald Trump with a thesaurus.” Their demagogic self-promotion, bombast, bravado and arrogance are similar.

Johnson is like DJT with a British accent and smoother presentation. Former MP/imperial critic George Galloway said “(y)ou’d have to…be British and…mad (to believe he’s) the answer to Britain’s now rather critical problems,” adding:

“He’s the perfect encapsulation of all of the vices…of the upper-class English elite” — indifferent to the rights and welfare of ordinary Brits

“Like his hero Winston Churchill, he believes history will treat him kindly because HE intends to write it.”

He and Trump are warlords, hostile to peace, equity and justice — essential qualities for public office in the West, social democrats shunned.

He drips racism and misogyny, calling Blacks “piccaninnies (with) watermelon smiles” and Muslim women “letter boxes.”

According to a non-random sample of 70,000 London Guardian readers, “(w)omen are more likely than men to view Boris Johnson as dishonest, xenophobic and politically calculating…97% of women and 96% of men (consider him) “repellently dishonest.”

At an early July Tory leadership gathering, he was questioned about his “arguably racist” remarks in newspaper columns he wrote.

Columnist Patrick Cockburn suggested his ascension to prime minister amounted to “a soft coup.”

He was chosen by 160,000 Tory members, a minute fraction of the UK electorate. Following his selection, the London Guardian said “the clown is crowned as the country burns in hell.”

“Elected by a staggering 0.2% of the nation, (it’s far from) the will of the people.” And by the way, the acronym for his “Deliver, Unite, Defeat” campaign slogan is DUD.

In a pitch to become prime minister, he made a “do of die” pledge to leave the EU by October 31.

Preferring to avoid a no-deal Brexit, he said “(i)t would be absolutely bizarre to signal at this stage that the UK government was willing once again to run-up the white flag and delay yet again.”

Much can happen between now and then. Like Trump and other Western politicians, Johnson time and again says one thing and goes another way.

He slammed Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling him and likeminded followers part of a “Marxist cabal…a real threat to our fundamental values and our way of life,” adding:

As prime minister, he’ll “protect this country from the red-toothed, red-clawed socialism.” Like most Western politicians, he supports privilege over beneficial social change.

In declaring his candidacy earlier, he vowed to cut taxes for wealthy Brits and corporations — at a time surveys show most Brits oppose years of force-fed austerity, wanting higher taxes, extra revenue used for improved social services.

On Wednesday, Johnson begins his tenure as prime minister. The good news is Theresa May is gone. The bad news is he’ll likely continue the worst of her policies and add his own.

Besides favoring tax cuts for the rich and business, he wants Brits paying more for healthcare, along with calling for putting 20,000 more cops on the beat to fight “crime” and being tough on aliens from the wrong countries.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted the following after Johnson’s selection as prime minister, saying:

“The May govt’s seizure of Iranian oil at behest of US is piracy, pure & simple.

I congratulate my former counterpart, @BorisJohnson on becoming UK PM.

Iran does not seek confrontation. But we have 1500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline.These are our waters & we will protect them.”

Johnson is no friend of Iran, earlier urging ways to restrain what he called its “disruptive behavior (sic).”

In a leadership debate earlier this month, he said “I am not going to pretend that the mullahs of Tehran are easy people to deal with (sic) or that they are anything other than a disruptive, dangerous, difficult regime (sic). They certainly are (sic),” adding:

“But…if you asked me whether I think we should now, were I to be prime minister now, would I be supporting military action against Iran? Then the answer is no.”

No can become yes on numerous issues when US hardliners come calling.

Johnson no doubt will keep the US/UK special relationship intact, especially on geopolitical issues.

Judge them by their actions. Both countries are hostile toward Iran. That’s not likely to change with him at No. 10.

How will he get along with Trump personally? He’s on the record as London mayor, saying the following in response to private citizen Trump’s remark in 2015 about “no-go” zones in the city where police won’t go because of Muslim extremists, saying:

Trump demonstrated “a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.”

He was the first senior UK politician to state this view. Trump is easily irritated when criticized.

If he’s made aware of Johnson’s remark or remembers it when made, it may not make for an easy relationship.

*

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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.

Does Bachelet’s report represent the last of many attempts of international “coup d’état” in Venezuela? 

Let’s not make a mistake. The report delivered on July 4 was and it’s thought to give full justification to the strategy of a two-party régime change like in the United States in Venezuela. It must be very convenient for the Democratic Party, the supposedly “progressive” wing of the North American political system that the report uses the speech of “human rights” and comes from an international institution, necessary condition to give its support to the politics of Trump.

Contrary to the previous international reasons, this is the first one to come from an official international organization, and not just any organization, but the UN. On July 6^th, only two days after the publication of the report, Iván Duke, President of Colombia, took it as green light to continue the politics of Trump:

“I hope that now with this result of Michelle Bachelet’s report, the Court (International Penal Court – IPC) can quickly, not just open the investigation, but acquire overwhelming evidence so that a trial is moved earlier and a dictator receives what he deserves for oppressing the Venezuelan people”.

The battle grows up again! Latin America has been the stage of a large variety of strategies for régime change, including the parliamentary coups in Paraguay and Brazil, against Lugo and Dilma, as well as the law suit against Lula and his imprisonment under false accusations. The Cuban Revolution, resilient as always has been the target of régime change since 1959 mostly on the base of accusations of human rights violations, generously financed through “promotion-of-democracy programs.”

Venezuela has been recently the target of three open coup d’état attempts, several sabotages to the electric network – a continuous economic and political war aimed at facilitating the coup d’états, accompanied by a propagandistic bombing on behalf of the international media corporations against President Maduro. Like sharks sensing blood in the water, Duke jumped immediately on this personal objective.

Does Bachelet’s report represent the last of many attempts of international “coup d’état” in Venezuela? Was this the first salvo of a new attempt, with the pretext of defending “human rights”? I believe so.

However, and luckily for Venezuela and the international left-wing, it’s possible we never know with certainty. The Bolivarian Revolution also saw the threat the same day that Bachelet made public her report. The reaction was swift and radical, a characteristic of Maduro’s government since the first of the recent coup d’état attempts, on January 23^rd, 2019. Once again, the answer is an international politics of peace and negotiation combined with a vigorous defense of the Venezuelan sovereignty. Venezuela speaks clear, not feeling for a second intimidated by the aura of the “United Nations”.

The Bolivarian Revolution didn’t see any green light, but the characteristic red color of Chavismo. On July 4^th, the same day the infamous report was published, Maduro’s government refuted it in 70 points. On July 11^th, the president also wrote a formal letter to Bachelet detailing the false accusations and deliberate omissions, asking her respectfully to rectify the report based on the facts.

This letter was accompanied by other declarations and reactions of Venezuelan personalities, and simultaneously the government summoned the people to express their opinions on July 13^th.

People didn’t need summoning. Ironically, the most important secondary effect in the current war directed by the United States against Venezuela has been, and still is, the peak of political awareness that Chavismo represents. It’s in fact this ideology, this political movement that the United States is trying to destroy. With this goal in mind, the U.S. is bent on getting the domestic oil, but also the elimination of the beacon that represents the Bolivarian Revolution Bolivarian, together with Cuba, in the international sphere, as examples of an alternative social system and type of government that withstands the United States.

On July 13, Venezuelans went out on the streets, not only in Caracas but in many domestic states. There aren’t official figures regarding the participation, but videos and pictures reveal that dozens of thousands of people attended, despite the heavy rains.

Judging by the improvised signs, and contrary to what most academics from the dominant trend think, many UN “human rights” officials, and practically all the media, the Venezuelan people has a very clear vision of the controversial matter of the human rights.

How can that be? Because popular classes, formerly “invisible”, are at present impregnated of their own experience and collective memory, passed from generation to generation; they are deeply aware of the true meaning of human rights and they make it visible for the world to see – or ignore it deliberately.

In their declaration during the rally of July 13^th in Caracas, Diosdado Cabello declared that Bachelet:

“She governed eight years in Chile with the Constitution of a genocide, of a true dictator”, in reference to the inherited Magna Carta of the civic-military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. What did she do in those eight years? She did absolutely nothing to change the Constitution. She used that Constitution to repress the Mapuche people, to persecute students in that country. Yes, that same lady who came here to speak about human rights in Venezuela.”

And what finally happened with this “coup d’état” attempt based on “human rights”? Was it interrupted even before it begun? It seems likely, for the time being.

Popular classes and their dedicated leaders are not in no way constrained by the concept of human rights based on the North American unique king of thinking. The perspective and ideology are decisive. In fact, it’s a matter of life or death. Once corrupted by the dominant conception of human rights, in a crucial moment, either deliberately or by the force of circumstances and the career objectives, it explodes.

See the Bachelet: In the moment the United States need the most to resuscitate its failed politics, she jumps to the throat. The other lesson that needs to be learnt of this “Third Way” of academic and politicians is that, sooner or later, we see that the “alternative” is not an alternative to the status quo, but a cruel and cynic alternative to the left-wing.

But the Venezuelan people has the last word.

This was originally published on CubaSi

The resignation of the NATO-occupied Serbian Autonomous Province of Kosovo & Metohija’s so-called “Prime Minister” in reaction to his unexpected summoning by an international court as a suspect in an ongoing war crimes investigation opens up the possibility of infusing the “New Balkans” vision of regional geopolitical re-engineering with a fresh impetus if it results in restarting the talks on a “territorial swap” between Belgrade and Pristina.

The Balkans were jolted by last week’s surprise resignation of the NATO-occupied Serbian Autonomous Province of Kosovo & Metohija’s so-called “Prime Minister” in reaction to his unexpected summoning by an international court as a suspect in an ongoing war crimes investigation. This wasn’t the first time that he’s been called before such a body, but he was acquitted last time around in 2008 and had the decision upheld in 2012 after it was earlier ruled invalid on the grounds that some witnesses were intimidated. What makes this latest round different, however, is that it removes the most stubborn opponent of the proposed “territorial swap” between Belgrade and Pristina and could very easily result in restarting the talks on this process.

An expert at Germany’s DW News already predicted as much in her piece titled “Opinion: A political bombshell in Kosovo”, and she might not be too far off the mark, either. Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev revealed in a series of three prank phone calls over the past year that were just made public earlier this month that both he and German Chancellor Merkel are stridently opposed to the efforts of Kosovo’s so-called “President” Thaci and his Serbian counterpart to change the Balkan borders, adding that it’s his personal belief that Russia is behind this effort in order to set a new international standard that could be applied towards its reunification with Crimea and its Turkish ally’s designs over the solely Ankara-recognized “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”.

Russia and the US, despite being rivals of one another in the New Cold War, are on the same page when it comes to the “territorial swap” proposal, committing to support whatever outcome the two negotiating actors ultimately agree upon. Curiously, any “success” in this respect would perfectly align with the future regional vision laid out by former British diplomat Timothy Less, who advocates the “re-Balkanization” of the Balkans along ethnic lines. Even more interestingly, the influential Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) think tank published three policy proposals late last year that collectively build up to tacitly supporting this plan, rebranded in the authors’ euphemistic political parlance as a so-called “package solution” for the Balkans.

For all intents and purposes, what Less and RIAC are both proposing amounts to the Balkan version of the US’ “New Middle East” strategy of geopolitically re-engineering that nearby strategic region, hence why their shared goals could be aptly described as wanting to build the “New Balkans”. It was in pursuit of this that Russia recognized the Republic of Macedonia as the so-called “Republic of North Macedonia” despite previously pledging not to do so because of serious concerns that this renaming was against the Balkan country’s own constitution. Nevertheless, no tangible progress can be made on geopolitically re-engineering the Balkans until/unless Serbia “recognizes” Kosovo as “independent”, which is where last week’s development comes in.

Haradinaj was staunchly against Thaci and Vucic’s “territorial swap” proposal and was therefore responsible for freezing the “New Balkans” process, but he’s just been removed from the political picture (at least temporarily) and a new opportunity has suddenly emerged to restart the stalled process that both Russia and the US seemingly support. Seeing as how he was the greatest obstacle to these Great Powers’ plans, it’s not inconceivable that a “backroom deal” might have been reached between the two whereby the US would pressure the “Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office” to summon Haradinaj (which would prompt his resignation) in exchange for Russia actively “encouraging” Serbia to restart talks with Kosovo.

Vucic is suspicious for the time being, but not in the way that one might initially think. He’s concerned that Haradinaj’s resignation is just a political ploy to garner more support before the upcoming early “elections” in Kosovo, which could “go toward further delay of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina” if he emerges victorious from this gambit. Therefore, it’s not that Serbia doesn’t want to restart the “territorial swap” talks, but just that it might wait until after Kosovo’s “elections” to do so, after which the process would probably proceed at full-speed in the event that Haradinaj loses or drops out of the race if the US ensures that the war crimes case against him becomes serious enough that it appears to be a fait accompli that he’ll finally be jailed.

Putting all the pieces together, it certainly seems like the timing of Haradinaj’s summoning before the international court is meant to reinvigorate the stalled “territorial swap” talks between Serbia and Kosovo, but only if he ends up losing (or pulling out of) the upcoming early “elections”. Considering the profound geostrategic ramifications at stake if Belgrade and Pristina eventually reach a territorial deal with one another that results in Serbia’s “recognition” of Kosovo’s “independence” and the subsequent sparking of the next stage of the “New Balkans” plan, it can’t be ruled out that Russia and the US temporarily put their greater differences aside in the spirit of a “New Detente” to cooperate in increasing the chances that this happens.

She works hard for her money, as the song relates. She’s the cleaning lady, the one who gets on her knees and scrubs your toilet of all the things that none of us would ever wish to look at, let alone touch. She mops and dusts and vacuums your house for  $50 to $70 bucks, then hurries off to her next job, if she’s so lucky. Does this 5 days a week, pulling in anywhere from $ 500-$ 600 a week, minus her supplies and gas, and sweat and  aches.  Then she has to factor in the nanny who watches her boy so she can work at all. That’s another $ 150 to $200 off the top. Even still, her 2 year college degree could never get her that much in some white collar job- not with today’s economy. So, she’s the “cleaning lady”, trading in respectability for some green.

She’s got a husband and a baby boy.  The husband works too; the baby laughs and cries a lot. Sometimes her husband cries about not having health insurance.  He’s a craftsman, skilled enough to pull in the same as his wife; not skilled enough to get his boss to pay for health insurance for the crew. Not too many craftsman jobs out there now, so his bargaining power is reduced to a whimper. Like most Florida businesses, it’s a non- union shop, so the benefits are one week a year paid vacation, and a few sick days and holidays, and that’s it.

The cleaning lady joins her husband in having no health insurance.  Simply cannot afford $400 a month for less than decent coverage.. the deductible alone could choke a horse! They did get some for the baby, thank goodness.  She, however, was not so lucky.  Had a stomach attack a few months back.  Between the emergency room, the tests and the specialist, cost her $2000 bucks, money she did not have. She pays it off, the bill, a little each month, and curses a system that does not look out for the little people, the people like her who clean our toilets.

The other day, one of her clients told her some startling information. She could not believe it, until she saw it right there in a business magazine. It said that, on average,  top executives in U.S. corporations earn well over 500 times more than their lowest paid full-time employee! 500 times! She could not comprehend how someone could make that much money, and not care that she and her husband could not afford health coverage.  She wondered if  rich people could even  go to church and  worship a  Jesus who spoke of sharing one’s wealth, not hoarding it.  “Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven!” She knew that under Trump’s predecessor, nothing was done to achieve Medicare for all of us. Of course she knows that Trump and his gang of donors will never allow such a thing to occur. Why even vote, she ponders?

Each day  millions of Americans have to make choices. Should they risk financial ruin or possible bankruptcy to go and receive medical treatment? Or should they ” gut it out” and hope it is not as serious as it most times is? Other Americans,  the ones who can afford it, are now paying upwards ( and climbing as I write) of $ 6000, $7000, as much as $ 12,000 per year for MEDIOCRE ( by 1970’s standards) health coverage. That money could be better spent on a down payment for a first home, or a second car to get the working wife off of that “too long bus ride” each morning. It could buy that computer the children now must share at the library for important schoolwork. Goodness sakes, it could actually pay for one year’s tuition and board at a state college!

The cleaning lady is not alone, sadly. As we regress to a society of more and more part time working stiffs, with NO unions to support them, films like Nick Cassevette’s 2002 John Q ( based on a true story ) resound so frighteningly well. In the film the Denzel Washington character holds hostages in the hospital his son is a patient in to force them to perform a lifesaving heart transplant operation on the boy… because his insurance would NOT cover it. Former presidential candidate Rep. Michelle Bachman from Minn. once actually boasted that Americans could circumvent health coverage- doctors in the ‘ good old days’ would take gifts and things like live chickens for payment from patients. Imagine that!! Just imagine how a public servant could actually offer such **** !

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

“We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. But I don’t want to kill 10 million people. Afghanistan could be wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t want to go that route.”

Even considering the rolling annals of demented Trumpism, bolstered every single day by a torrent of outrageous tweets and quotes, what you’ve just read is simply astonishing. Here we have the President of the United States asserting that,

1) The US is not fighting a war in Afghanistan;

2) If the US wanted a war, the President would win it in a week;

3) He would kill 10 million people – although he doesn’t want it;

4) “Afghanistan” as a whole, for no meaningful reason, could be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Trump said all of the above while sitting alongside Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan – who, in a deft move, is trying to appease the White House even as he carefully positions Pakistan as a solid node of Eurasia integration alongside Russia, China and Iran.

When Trump says the US is not fighting a war in Afghanistan, he’s on to something, although it’s doubtful that Team Trump have told the boss that the real game in town, from the beginning, is the CIA heroin rat line.

It’s also doubtful Trump would ask for input from his hated predecessor Barack Obama. Obama may not have killed 10 million people, but the forces under his command did kill scores of Afghans, including countless civilians. And still Obama did not “win” – much less “in a week.”

Barack Obama did entertain the notion of “winning” the war in Afghanistan. After deliberating in solitary confinement for 11 hours, as legend goes, he “methodically” settled for a two-step surge, 21,000 troops plus 30,000. Obama believed the war on Afghanistan was a noble crusade and during his presidential campaign in 2008 always defined it as “the right war.”

Obama defended his surge on humanitarian imperialist grounds: “For the Afghan people, the return of Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people, especially women and girls.” The New York Times and the Washington Post applauded.

But, Kabul, we have a problem. Afghanistan, bombed and invaded under the Cheney regime, was never a “right” or “just” war. There was never any established Taliban connection to 9/11. Plotting and financing for 9/11 involved Saudis and cells in Germany, Pakistan and the UAE. Mullah Omar never dispatched any “terra-rists” on one-way tickets to America.

Nevertheless, the Taliban leadership in Kandahar did agree to a deal – brokered by Moscow – to surrender Osama bin Laden, who, without even the hint of an investigation, was proclaimed the evil 9/11 culprit only a few hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers. The Cheney regime rejected the Taliban offer, as well as a subsequent one, to hand over Osama to a Muslim nation for trial. The Cheney regime only wanted an extradition to the US.

The SCO steps in

With puppet Hamid Karzai barely reigning in Kabul, and the neocons already focused on their real target, Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan was handed over to NATO. This had already been decided even before 9/11, at the G8 in Genoa in July, when it became clear Washington had a plan to strike Afghanistan by October. The Cheney regime badly needed a beachhead in the intersection of Central Asia and South Asia not only to monitor Russia and China but also to coordinate a drive to take over Central Asia’s massive gas wealth.

Notoriously fickle history in the Hindu Kush ruled otherwise. Incrementally, the Taliban started to get their mojo back throughout the 2010s, to the point that now they control as much as half of the country.

Even that fountain of vanity General David Petraeus – who had crafted the (failed) Iraq surge – always knew the Afghan war was un-winnable. Disgraced General Stanley McChrystal at least was more surgical: “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number, and to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat.”

Still, certified fun and games were assured by stuff such as Lockheed Martin’s high mobility artillery rocket system laying waste to Pashtun villages and devastating wedding ceremonies. Pentagon propaganda about “low collateral damage” never disguised the absence of real, actionable intel on the ground.

Seymour Hersh argued that Obama’s version of the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 was an elaborate work of fiction – subsequently duly enshrined by Hollywood. One year later, Obama’s surge still had 88,000 soldiers in Afghanistan plus nearly 118,000 contractors. The surge then died a slow, ignominious death.

Anyone remotely familiar with the fractious geopolitics at the intersection of Central and South Asia knows that, for the US military-industrial-security complex, to withdraw from Afghanistan is anathema. Trump may be emitting some noise – but that’s just noise. Bagram air base is an invaluable asset in the Empire of Bases to monitor the evolving Russia-China strategic partnership.

The only feasible solution for Afghanistan is a pan-Eurasia mechanism being advanced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with Russia and China at the helm, India and Pakistan as full members and Iran and Afghanistan as observers. Afghanistan will then be fully integrated as a node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as well as the Indian mini-Silk Road through Afghanistan towards Central Asia starting from the Iranian port of Chabahar.

This is what all major Eurasia players want. This is how you “win” a war. And this is how you don’t need to kill 10 million people.

This article was originally published by the Asian Times

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is deeply concerned by Israel’s demolition of Palestinian housing units in East Jerusalem. Yesterday, Israeli Occupation Forces entered the Palestinian East Jerusalem village of Sur Bahir in the middle of the night, forcibly displacing Palestinian families to demolish nearly a hundred of their homes. CJPME calls on the Canadian government to break its silence on Israeli human rights violations and condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians in East Jerusalem.

With the backing of the Israeli Supreme Court, Israel justified yesterday’s home demolitions by arguing that the Sur Bahir homes were built too close to Israel’s “Separation” Wall, built over the past 15 years by Israel in the Palestinian territories. Nevertheless, CJPME points out that a 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling condemned Israel’s Apartheid Wall as a violation of international law, calling on Israel to immediately dismantle the Wall and compensate affected Palestinians. Israel’s actions not only contravene this ruling but may also constitute ethnic cleansing. In all cases, by forcibly transferring civilians from their homes under a situation of Israeli military occupation, Israel is committing a crime against humanity.

Yesterday, the United Nations issued a statement condemning the Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, asserting that Israel’s actions are “not compatible with international humanitarian law.” Likewise, Canadian allies such as France and European Union have already issued strong statements against yesterday’s demolitions. CJPME President Thomas Woodley responded, “The international community must stop allowing Israel to carry out these crimes with impunity. Canada must take concrete action to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses.”

In 1948, at least 700,000 Palestinians became refugees and hundreds of thousands more were displaced from their homes and livelihoods by Jewish militias. Since then, Israel has been illegally colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem, further dispossessing Palestinians of their homes and land. The international community has repeatedly condemned Israel for its grave violations of Palestinian human rights, yet the Trudeau government almost never raises concerns about Israel’s crimes.

Almost 100 years on since the formation of the Northern Irish state, it is still the Irish question that is bedeviling politics in the United Kingdom. Brexit is not about Europe. It is about the Tories and increasingly about Ireland. First the Tories. Ironically the term for members of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it its full name, derives from an Irish word for robber and brigand.   History has a wicked sense of humour. The daggers plunged into the backs of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May that ended their prime ministerships all had Tory fingerprints. But relations with the European Union was the motive. It’s no joke, now time to send in the clown. Boris Johnson is a student of history and the new resident of No.10 Downing Street has one trick to pull off; get a Halloween Brexit. Failure to deliver will condemn the Tories to electoral oblivion. The nightmare on Downing Street.

But it is Northern Ireland where fantasy and reality meet, where history collides with the present.

There are those on the Tory benches in the House of Commons who keep on insisting that modern technology means there is no need for a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, in actual fact, post-Brexit, the border between the European Union and Britain. They have no name for the company that can do this because there is none. The technology does not exist. Few mentioned the border during the EU referendum in Britain in 2016. It must be stated that no political leader in Ireland or Britain or Northern Ireland wants a hard border. But the uninterrupted passage of either goods or people from Ireland to Northern Ireland, from the EU to the UK, cannot be regulated by technology alone. Northern Ireland is the blind sport of the Tory party. One simple question will prove this. Ask any Tory politician how many counties are in Ulster? It’s a simple question. Most Tory politicians will probably say six. After all, isn’t Northern Ireland often referred to as the Six Counties. That answer however would be wrong. There are nine counties in Ulster, six make up the political entity that is Northern Ireland. All nine are, geographically, in northern Ireland.

Brexit will succeed or fail not on trade deals but the 500km-long border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This crooked line has bedeviled British politics before. Back in 1920 it was it was not the European Union but another union, the United Kingdom that was being divided. London introduced the border (in 1921)  as a temporary partition after the Irish rebelled. Catholic Ireland was breaking away from rule by London. The Protestant-dominated Northeast wanted to remain. So it was agreed that there would be a short-term boundary until a permanent solution was found. This was only meant to last, initially, a matter of about six months. In the time of the Troubles, between 1968 and 1998, the border became one of the most heavily policed in the world.

Then the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (the Good Friday Agreement), a remarkable political achievement, saw the need for such a border to vanish, as did the watchtowers and army patrols. With peace, the border more or less vanished. Ireland and the UK were in the EU. No violence, no need for a border.

For 20 years, people have come and gone freely. They cross into and out of Northern Ireland through approximately 300 major and minor crossings, though there are no checkpoints. The border is crossed 105 million times every year on an island with a population of about 6.6 million.

Brexit. And this where it borders on the criminal. A hard border, involving three jurisdictions, Ireland, the EU and Britain, could be restored in a place where the border has caused untold suffering.

An EU land frontier, separating the UK on the one side and a 27-member bloc on the other.

The “backstop” could solve this. This would allow a seamless border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

But it would not be a complete break by the UK from the EU and Northern Ireland, especially, it would remain largely in the EU and would not need to impose border controls on goods coming from Ireland.

But then of course the Irish would get the blame for Brexit failing.

And many Tories still would not know how many counties there are in Ulster.

At a time when Russiaphobia is increasing in the United States, the thought that the US could be losing the arms race is far from what most Americans believe. Their dramatic game day fly pasts, hand over the heart anthems and flags in abundance – reinforce the sense of American superiority.

Andrei Martyanov paints a different picture! He does so based both on his history and careful research. He was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and graduated class of 1985 from the Caspian Naval Academy. He served on ships of the Soviet Coast Guard through the 1990’s. He now lives and works in the United States and blogs on the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog.

His thesis is that the United States has lost global leadership in the arms race because of a weakness in the culture of American leaders. We will get to that. It reminds me of an expression we used in my early career as a salesperson; we counseled one another not to believe our own bull shit! Martyanov argues that Americans believe theirs.

He begins his book by looking at American myopia through the eyes of Alexis de Tocqueville from almost two centuries ago.

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De Tocqueville was the son of French aristocrats who were fortunate enough to escape the guillotine. He was born in 1805 and when he was 26 got an assignment to travel to America to study the prison system. The French wanted to learn anything they could from the emerging American republican democratic system that could help them replace their old aristocratic order. His two-volume report, Democracy In America, was published in 1835 and 1840 and it’s often required reading in today’s political science courses.

De Tocqueville reported that the American people, even at that early stage in their national development seemed ‘…. insatiable of praise.’ He added “…if you resist their entreaties (to praise them) they fall to praising themselves…. it is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism.”

De Tocqueville saw Americans suffering a sense of self-delusion then which Martyanov sees in the American political class today. These are the people who continue to believe in American exceptionalism. As Martyanov writes “the US since 2008 has not improved in terms of its ability to exercise common sense…. This is inevitable in a nation which…has been fed a steady diet of exceptionalism, greatly based on a falsification of history.”

He builds two cases. One about how this false sense of history affected American military planning and another on how a more battle-hardened Russian view formed the basis for their arms development.

Modern American self-delusion comes, he argues, from their view of the second world war; Americans believe they won it. The fact is that their contribution was far short of that for which they credit themselves. Russia lost almost 24 million people, the United States 418 thousand, (Canada lost 45,000). Far from winning the war, the United States entered reluctantly and then along with the other western nations, left most of the fighting for several years, to the Russians on the eastern front.

As a result of the huge the Russian people they endured on their homeland, Russians have a much deeper understanding of war than Americans. The new world suffered nothing remotely close. And because of the Russian firsthand experience, their post war arms buildup was focused and practical. The Russians were rebuilding their defenses for the nation’s survival. In the west, America was less focused; developing an arms industry for corporate profit and to provide retirement work to ageing military officers.

Martyanov doesn’t just make this assertion, he backs it with facts.

He points out that the United States now must rely on the Russian space program to stay involved in space research. Since 2011 the U.S. has needed to buy tickets (at about $75 million per person per trip) on Russian Soyuz rockets to get Americans to the International Space station.

He reminds us that good military planning requires that a war should have a clear purpose and a plan for the outcome. Contrast that with the bad military advice that went into planning the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. Afghanistan was carpet bombed to get at a handful of people believed to be living in caves. The war in Iraq was based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction and then the Americans were not welcomed as saviors, as we were told they would be. The outcome in Iraq was to take the country from affluent to a failed state. And in Syria the United States persists with a war they continue to lose.

He cites many examples of Americans who give military advice where they have no competence. For example; Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and a Professor at the U.S. Army War college. In 2017 he wrote an article for the Atlantic Council in which he said the US Navy should send war ships into the Sea of Azov for a show of support for the Ukraine government. The problem with his inane advice is that the Sea of Azov, a circle of water about 100-miles in diameter on the North Shore of the Black Sea that is too shallow for American warships.

‘Sadly, Russian expert Stephen Blank is not alone in demonstrating ignorance, delusions of grandeur and barely restrained highly-charged Russophobia.’

The fact that Blank and other equally misinformed people are in positions of power is dangerous. Martyanov advises the United States, and especially its elites, need to understand ‘…the technical dominance the U.S. enjoyed…is over.’

His book is well researched, well written, full of insights and worth reading.

This article was originally written for the Esprit de Corps magazine, a Canadian publication for and about the Canadian military.

Inquiries are under way about the modern arsenals discovered in Piedmont, Lombardy and Tuscany – a veritable neo-Nazi matrix, as revealed by the swastikas and Hitler quotes found with the weapons. However, there is still no answer to the question – is this a trove of Nazi nostalgia, the cache of an arms collector, or are we looking at something far more dangerous?

The investigators – according to the Corriere della Sera – have been looking at «right-wing extremists close to the Azov Battalion», but have so far discovered «nothing useful». And yet for years we have seen ample and documented proof of the role of this armed Ukrainian formation, and others, composed of trained neo-Nazis who were used in the Place Maïdan putsch in 2014, under the orders of the USA/NATO, and in the attack on Ukrainian Russians in the Donbass.

We should point out that the Azov is no longer a military-style battalion (as defined by the Corriere), but has been transformed into a regiment, in other words a regular higher-level military unit. The Azov Battalion was founded in May 2014 by Andriy Biletsky, known as the «White Führer», as a support force for the «racial purity of the Ukrainian nation, to prevent its genes being mixed with those of inferior races», thus ensuring «its historic mission to lead the world’s White Race in its final crusade for survival».

Biletsky recruited neo-Nazi militants for the Azov Battalion who were already under his orders as head of special operations in the Pravy Sektor (Right Sector). The Azov immediately distinguished itself by its ferocity in the attacks against the Russian population of Ukraine, particularly in Mariupol.

In October 2014, the Battalion was incorporated into the National Guard, run by the Minister of the Interior, and Biletsky was promoted to colonel and decorated with the « Order for Personal Courage ». Withdrawn from the Donbass, the Azov was transformed into a regiment of special forces, equipped with tanks and artillery from the 30th Mechanised Brigade. What it retained in this transformation was the emblem, copied from that of the SS Das Reich, and the ideological training of troops based on the Nazi model.

As a unit of the National Guard, the Azov regiment was trained by US instructors and others from NATO. We read in an official text – «In October 2018, representatives of the Italian Carabinieri visited the Ukrainian National Guard to discuss the expansion of cooperation in various sectors, and to sign an agreement on bilateral cooperation between the institutions». In February 2019, the Azov regiment was deployed on the front line in Donbass.

Azov is not only a military unit, but an ideological and political movement. Biletsky, who had created his own party «National Corps» in October 2016 – remains the charismatic leader, particularly for the organisation of the youth, which is indoctrinated by his book «The Words of the White Führer» in the hatred of Russians, and who receive military training. At the same time, Azov, Pravy Sektor and other Ukrainian organisations recruit neo-Nazis from all over Europe (including Italy) and the USA.

After they have been trained and tested in military actions against the Russian population in Donbass, they are sent home, obviously maintaining their links with the recruiting and training centres.

This is happening in Ukraine, a partner country of NATO, already a member, under close command of the USA.

We can therefore understand why the inquiries about the neo-Nazi arsenals in Italy will be unable to reach a conclusion.

We can also understand why those people who talk ceaselessly about anti-fascism remain silent about the rebirth of Nazism in the heart of Europe.

The BBC World Service took its listeners to the English cathedral town of Ely, set in picturesque Cambridgeshire, during the course of a hot July 23 in an effort to take the pulse of the country.  Well, at least that particular, erratic pulse. It found, for the most part, a certain enthusiasm for Boris Johnson, the fop-haired, bumbling wonder of the Conservatives, a quite literally inventive journalist, former magazine editor and Mayor of London who has become the new prime minister of Britain.

One word kept cropping up in discussions like an endangered species searching for a bullet: enthusiasm.  Plain, sprightly, delightful winged enthusiasm. “We need to be enthusiastic; Boris (because, of course, he is Boris to them) is enthusiastic.”  Be gone pessimists and Cassandras; farewell such tactical and strategic realities of being in or out of the European common market; in or out of European regulations; ease of access or difficulty on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

With the Conservatives voting on who to replace Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party, and, it followed, Prime Minister, Johnson won through against Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.  The margin of victory – 66 to 34 percent of the party membership – was nearly two to one, and came from a system Johnson derided as a “gigantic fraud” when employed by the British Labour Party in 2007.

His victory speech had much of what has come before.  It spoke of instincts – the acquisitive standing out (“the instincts to own your own house, to earn and spend your own money”).  These were “noble”, “proper” and “good”.  Nor should the needy be forgotten, the poor abandoned, in realising them.  Words were given like those of a motivational speaker.  “Do you feel daunted?  I don’t think you look remotely daunted to me. And I think we know we can do it, and that the people of this country are trusting in us to do it, and we know that we will do it.”  While he conceded that the campaign of deliver, united and defeat – spelled DUD – did not augur well, detractors had forgotten the E: “E for energise”.  “I say to all doubters, dude, we are going to energise the country.”

The October 31^st deadline for Britain’s exit from the European Union would not change.  The “new spirit of can-do” would prevail.  Britain, “like some slumbering giant” would “rise and ping off the guy ropes of self-doubt and negativity.”  Metaphors of growth and movement abounded: “fantastic full-fibre broadband sprouting in every household”; “more police”.

The Johnson-watchers verged between being worried and thrilled.  Comments seem pitched to a sporting register: How will BJ perform on the field?  Will he restrain himself, or be unduly foolish on the world stage?  As if describing an unusual species, Lloyd Evans remarked that, even at Oxford as a first-year student, he was “weirdly conspicuous – the ruddy jowls, the stooped bullish stances, the booming Duke of Wellington voice, and the freakish white bob crowning his head like a heavenly spotlight.”

James Forsyth, writing in The Spectator, is hopeful the real Boris is partially caged, leaving another version to do get his hands dirty.  “This is a risk; will his approach sound flippant when discussing serious issues?”  On balance, however, Forsyth felt that there was something to be said about the man being let loose.  “When he tried to be a different kind of figure, it didn’t work.  It felt forced rather than natural.”

Finance commentator and regular forecaster of economic apocalypse Robert Peston stated the cold, mad justice of it all.  As Johnson had been instrumental in creating Brexit, it was only fitting that he now try to own it.

Navigating the gong tormented sea of narratives on Johnson, a few career standouts remain, making his attempt to be Big, Bold and British, unconvincing.  The new British PM and Tory leader is a piece of truly befuddled work, one who still manages to play the card of the electable clown.

As a journalist, he fabricated and teased records.  In 1987, when employed by The Times courtesy of family connections, he was fired for a story on the discovery of the Rose Palace, built by Edward II.  His godfather, Oxford historian Colin Lucas, featured.  “The trouble,” he recalled, “was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace.”  Pity, then, that Gaveston was murdered by the time the Rose Palace was built.

After the sack, he ventured over to The Telegraph, and became a shock trooper for anti-EU sentiment in Brussels, feedingEurosceptic fanaticism back in Britain and beyond with such choice titled pieces as “Snails are fish, says EU”, “Brussels recruits sniffers to ensure that EU-manure smells the same” and “Threat to British pink sausages”.  Johnson’s feeling about it all?  A “rather weird sense of power” that his copy had “this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party”.

His casually racist remarks on foreign powers and peoples have given him an enormous inventory of the insulted over the years, producing degrees of consternation and rib-stitching hilarity.  He has deemed Africa a country, its people “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”, compared women who wear burqas to “bank robbers” and “letterboxes” and appraised the chaos within his own conservative party as akin to “Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief killing.”

Other comments have caused less consternation, not least of all his views of the current US president, Donald Trump, whom Johnson deemed “unfit to hold the office of the United States” on account of his “stupefying ignorance”.  This, from a man who himself said that becoming UK prime minister was “about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”  We live in jaw-droppingly interesting times.

Britain is in a mess, and the Boris Broom is unlikely to be able to make its bristles more effective beyond tinkering with the May-EU Brexit plan as it stands.  The EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has expressed the view that some room is open on reworking “the agreed declaration on the new partnership” but that the “withdrawal agreement” would be more or less ratified in its current form.

On the diplomatic front, Johnson is bound to be confused, if his various stances on the Northern Ireland-Ireland border, or non-border, are anything to go by.  Having scolded his predecessor for taking the view that having no firm border between the two would not be in the UK’s interests, he subsequently veered, telling the House of Commons that “there can be no return to a hard border.”  BJ’s slumbering giant may well continue to do a bit more slumbering.  Over to you, dude!

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

The British-flagged tanker “Steno Impero”, heading for Saudi Arabia, was seized on Friday, 19 July 2019, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the Strait of Hormuz, after it rammed an Iranian fishing boat, whose distress call it ignored.

The tanker was taken to an Iranian port, because it was not complying with “international maritime laws and regulations,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said. Most importantly, the ship did not respond to several warnings from helicopters and Iranian boats, as apparently it turned off its transponder. How could that happen under control of professional sailors, other than as an open provocation.

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. If this passage were to be closed due to conflict, it could bring down the world economy.

Do those that play these provocations, the UK as a handler dancing to the strings pulled by of Washington, realize what’s at stake? – Do they want to bring the Middle East to the brink of war? A regional war that could easily convert into a world war? – That may well be the longer-term intention. In the short-run, though it looks like pushing the escalation to a point where US ‘Client Europe’ may be discouraged from insisting on maintaining their part of the Iran Nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and to blackmail Iran into a bilateral negotiation with the US on Iran’s nuclear program.

The first objective may be achieved; the second – no way. Iran is not falling for such fraud, especially with the country that pulled unilaterally out of the deal that was negotiated for two years (since November 2013) before it was signed in Vienna, Austria on 14 July 2015, by the 5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, UK and US – plus Germany  – and the European Union, and of course Iran).

Not only did President Trump, guided by his buddy, Israel’s Netanyahu, tear up the agreement unilaterally, but he also reinstated one of the most severe economic sanctions programs on Iran, plus all the western lies and smear propaganda launched against Iran. It is sheer insanity to believe that Iran would under these circumstances go to the negotiating table with her hangman. That will not happen. But war tensions are being further raised which is fully in the direction of the war criminal-in-chief, John Bolton’s dream, ever since the invasion in 2003 of Iraq which he also helped to engineer. It is like this sick man’s raison d’être. Mass killing by war and conflict is in his genes. The world can only hope that Trump, or those who pull the strings behind Trump, will eventually dismiss Bolton.

Iran has already said that they will launch a full investigation into the British tanker’s, Steno Impero’s, sailing off course and ramming a fishing boat – and that the UK is invited to participate in the investigation.

The Iranian Tanker Grace 1 

Backtracking to 4 July, when the British Royal Marines seized the Iranian tanker Grace 1 in Spanish waters, off the coast of Gibraltar, under the pretext that the super tanker was carrying oil destined for Syria which was under the EU’s sanction program. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, denied that the oil was destined for Syria; did however not elaborate further.

Spanish Foreign Minister, Mr. Josep Borrell, said that Washington informed Spain about the impending capture by the UK of the Iranian tanker in Spanish territorial waters. Spain could have said ‘no’ – but didn’t. Why not? Afraid of sanctions?

The UK did the bidding of Washington against her own interests, because the UK was one of three EU countries – Germany, France and UK – who at least made appear as if they wanted to preserve their part of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Mind you, this is not for love of Iran, but pure business interest. Iran should be aware of that – meaning, Iran could be shot in the back at any time by the EU, by the very countries that try – or make appear they try – to circumvent the US sanctions.

What happened on 4 July was an act of sheer piracy, nothing less. A crime on high seas which the west just tolerated. The vessel is still under British control, while the arrested crew has since been liberated. Aside from the fact that Iran’s capture of the British oil tanker may look like tit for tat – Iran acted fully legitimate, as it’s Revolutionary Guard is policing the Strait of Hormus for security of other ships sailing through the narrow passage.

In one of his typical outbreaks of a madman, President Trump warned in a televised ‘fire and fury’ speech at the white House on Friday 19 July, “We have the greatest ships – the most deadly ships, we don’t want to have to use them. We hope for [Iran’s] sake they don’t do anything foolish. If they do, they will pay a price like nobody’s ever paid.”

Why would Trump not use the same language to warn the Brits for their pirating an Iranian vessel in Spanish waters? – well, we know this is the crazy, unbalanced and off-kilter world we live in. Its so normal, people in the west take this imbalance and injustice, this double-talk and hypocrisy as the gospel.

Towards a War Scenario

All indications are however, while building up a war scene, the US are seeking justification for what they had already called out – an alliance of the willing to send war ships to the Straight of Hormus to assure safe passage for ‘everybody’. Well, this would certainly not fly with Iran. But important to know is what’s behind this idea. Imagine the US navy and her puppet allies controlling the sea passage through which almost a third of all the world’s hydrocarbon sails every day – Washington would have one more tool to sanction, strangle countries they feel do not bend enough to Washington’s dictate. Their oil shipment would be withheld, to bring their economy down – this might be the most effective weapon yet.

World beware! Even those who are in favors with the self-declared hegemon, you never know when the pendulum may swing the other way, simply because the Israel-driven US of A may be on a whim aggression course against an imaginary enemy, or corporate interests are shifting — in conclusion nobody would be safe – and, the world economy could come crashing down, like a house of cards, making 2008 look like a walk in the park.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Prosseguem as investigações  sobre os  arsenais modernos, descobertos no Piemonte, na Lombardia e na Toscana, de clara origem neonazi, como demonstram as suásticas e as citações de Hitler encontradas juntamente com as armas. Mas permanece sem resposta, a pergunta: trata-se de algum nostalgico do nazismo, de um coleccionador de armas, ou estamos perante algo muito mais perigoso?

Os investigadores – refere o ‘Corriere della Sera’ – indagaram sobre “extremistas da direita, familiarizados com o batalhão Azov”, mas não descobriram “nada de útil”. No entanto, tem havido, há anos provas, amplas e documentadas sobre o papel desta e de outras formações armadas ucranianas, compostas de neonazis treinados e utilizados no putsch da Praça Maidan, em 2014, sob a direcção USA/NATO e no ataque aos russos da Ucrânia, em Donbass. Deve esclarecer-se, antes de tudo, que o Azov não é mais um batalhão de tipoparamilitar (como o define o ‘Corriere della Sera’), mas foi transformado num regimento, ou seja, numa unidade militar regular de nível superior.

O batalhão Azov foi fundado em Maio de 2014, por Andriy Biletsky, conhecido como o “Führer branco”, na qualidade de defensor da “pureza racial da nação ucraniana, impedindo que seus genes se misturem com os de raças inferiores”, realizando assim “a sua missão histórica da Raça Branca global na sua cruzada final pela sobrevivência”. Para o batalhão Azov, Biletsky recrutou militantes neonazis já sob o seu comando como chefe de operações especiais de Pravy Sektor. O Azov distingue-se imediatamente pela sua ferocidade nos ataques às populações russas da Ucrânia, em particular em Mariupol.

Em Outubro de 2014, o batalhão foi integrado na Guarda Nacional, dependente do Ministério do Interior e Biletsky foi promovido a coronel e recebeu a “Ordem da Coragem”. Retirado do Donbass, o Azov foi transformado num regimento de forças especiais, equipado com  tanques e com artilharia da 30ª Brigada mecanizada. O que conservou nessa transformação foi o emblema, copiado segundo o da SS Das Reich, e a formação ideológica dos recrutas modelada de acordo com a formação nazi. Na qualidade de unidade da Guarda Nacional, o regimento Azov foi treinado por instrutores USA e da NATO.

“Em Outubro de 2018 – lê-se num texto oficial – representantes dos Carabinieri italianos visitaram a Guarda Nacional Ucraniana para discutir a expansão da cooperação em diferentes direcções e assinar um acordo de cooperação bilateral entre as instituições”.

Em Fevereiro de 2019, o regimento Azov foi enviado para a linha de frente do Donbass. O Azov não é apenas uma unidade militar, mas um movimento ideológico e político. Biletsky – que criou o seu próprio partido em Outubro de 2016, «Corpo Nacional» – continua a ser o dirigente carismático em particular para a organização juvenil que é educada, com o seu livro «As palavras do Führer branco», no ódio contra os russos e treinada militarmente. Simultaneamente, Azov, Pravy Sektor e outras organizações ucranianas recrutam neonazis de toda a Europa (incluindo da Itália) e dos EUA.

Depois de serem treinados e testados em acções militares contra os russos do Donbass, regressam aos seus países, mantendo, evidentemente, vínculos com os centros de recrutamento e treino. Isto acontece na Ucrânia, país parceiro da NATO, já membro de facto, sob comando rígido dos EUA.

Portanto, compreende-se por que é que a investigação sobre os arsenais neonazis, em Itália, não será capaz de ir até ao fim.  Também se percebe por que é que os que enchem a boca com antifascismo, permanecem mudos perante o nazismo, que renasce no coração da Europa.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

In Ucraina vivaio NATO di neonazisti

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Proseguono le indagini sui moderni arsenali scoperti in Piemonte, Lombardia e Toscana, di chiara matrice neonazista come dimostrano le croci uncinate e le citazioni di Hitler trovate insieme alle armi. Resta però senza risposta la domanda: si tratta di qualche nostalgico del nazismo, collezionista di armi, oppure siamo di fronte a qualcosa di ben più pericoloso?

Gli inquirenti –  riferisce il ‘Corriere della Sera’  – hanno indagato su «estremisti di destra vicini al battaglione Azov», ma non hanno scoperto  «nulla di utile». Eppure vi sono da anni ampie e documentate prove sul ruolo di questa e altre formazioni armate ucraine, composte da neonazisti addestrati e impiegati nel putsch di piazza Maidan nel 2014 sotto regia USA/NATO e nell’attacco ai russi di Ucraina nel Donbass. Va chiarito anzitutto che l’Azov non è più un battaglione (come lo definisce il ‘Corriere’) di tipo paramilitare, ma è stato tasformato in reggimento, ossia in unità militare regolare di livello superiore.

Il battaglione Azov venne fondato nel maggio 2014 da Andriy Biletsky, noto come il «Führer bianco» in quanto sostenitore della «purezza razziale della nazione ucraina, impedendo che i suoi geni si mischino con quelli di razze inferiori», svolgendo così «la sua missione storica di guida della Razza Bianca globale nella sua crociata finale per la sopravvivenza». Per il battaglione Azov Biletsky reclutò militanti neonazisti già sotto il suo comando quale capo delle operazioni speciali di Pravy Sektor. L’Azov si distinse subito per la sua ferocia negli attacchi alle popolazioni russe di Ucraina, in particolare a Mariupol.

Nell’ottobre 2014 il battaglione fu inquadrato nella Guardia nazionale, dipendente dal Ministero degli interni, e Biletsky fu promosso a colonnello e insignito dell’«Ordine per il coraggio». Ritirato dal Donbass, l’Azov è stato trasformato in reggimento di forze speciali, dotato dei carrarmati e dell’artiglieria  della 30a Brigata meccanizzata. Ciò che ha conservato in tale trasformazione è l’emblema, ricalcato da quello delle SS Das Reich, e la formazione ideologica delle reclute modellata su quella nazista. Quale unità della Guardia nazionale, il reggimento Azov è stato addestrato da istruttori USA e da altri della NATO.

«Nell’ottobre 2018 – si legge in un testo ufficiale  – rappresentanti dei Carabinieri italiani hanno visitato la Guardia nazionale ucraina per discutere l’espansione della cooperazione in differenti direzioni e firmare un accordo sulla cooperazioe bilaterale tra le istituzioni».

Nel febbraio 2019 il reggimento Azov è stato dislocato in prima linea nel Donbass. L’Azov è non solo una unità militare, ma un movimento ideologico e politico. Biletsky – che  ha creato nell’ottobre 2016 un proprio partito, «Corpo nazionale» – resta il capo carismatico in particolare per l’organizzazione giovanile che viene educata, col suo libro «Le parole del Führer bianco», all’odio contro i russi e addestrata militarmente. Contemporaneamente, Azov, Pravy Sektor e altre organizzazioni ucraine reclutano neonazisti da tutta Europa (Italia compresa) e dagli USA.

Dopo essere stati addestrati e messi alla prova in azioni militari contro i russi del Donbass, vengono fatti rientrare nei loro paesi, mantenendo evidentemente legami con i centri di reclutamento e addestramento.

Ciò avviene in Ucraina, paese partner della NATO, di fatto già suo membro, sotto stretto comando USA. Si capisce quindi perché l‘inchiesta sugli arsenali neonazisti in Italia non potrà andare fino in fondo. Si capisce anche perché coloro che si riempono la bocca di antifascismo restano muti di fronte al rinascente nazismo nel cuore dell’Europa.

Manlio Dinucci

Before meeting Pakistani PM Imran Khan this Monday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he could win the war in Afghanistan in just one week if he really wanted to. But he said he won’t do that because he doesn’t want millions of people to die. He said:

“I don’t want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of earth, it would be gone, it would be over in literally 10 days”

President Trump has often been criticized by international media over his time as president for his mindless and gross remarks about American or world issues. He has been portrayed as a person of limited knowledge on global matters. In fact, he doesn’t know anything about Afghanistan, even the least about the US’s history of presence in this country or, for example, how many US soldiers have died there.

His recent comment on Afghanistan sounds irrelevant to the governing situation and insensible to many observers as it doesn’t represent the language of a president whose country claims dominance over the world. At the same press conference, Trump said that Indian PM Narendra Modi asked him to personally mediate the decade-long territorial disputes between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, an assertion India’s government promptly denied.

We admit that the US holds the power to do almost anything in the region, but it is not a rightful way of responding to the Afghan war.

On the eve of the US Independence Day, 4th of July, Trump praised the US Military and said that “there will be nothing that America cannot do”.

Diplomatically, his words about Afghanistan also stand in strange contrast to the visit of Pakistani PM which is considered a lackey state to Washington. Although, Pakistan’s Prime minister actually came to Washington in relation to Trump’s promise of continued assistance for Pakistan and Afghanistan’s peace process, Trump’s remarks seem pointless at this moment of time, only to rub salt into the wounds of thousands of victims in Afghanistan.

Trump and his military commanders have often failed to find reasonable answers to the peppering questions from correspondents. Trump has a past of personal life, far from politics and international issues, so he can’t reflect on proper feedback quickly and instead utters controversial and often ridiculous responses.

This might be Trump’s own words, not representing the whole of America, but it is also not totally unlikely for the US to kill as many as 10 million people when the time is ripe.

For now,and he is not bound to any limit in this regard. He tends to use big terms like “millions” and “wipe off” to highlight his country’s strengths under his administration in the face of election.

Trump’s comments have sparked mixed reactions from Afghanistan with the most slamming him for his irresponsible and nonsense attack. The Government of Afghanistan has unexpectedly been quick to release a statement criticizing his remarks and seeking clarification.

Trump’s America can end the war in Afghanistan within exactly one week, as he said, but not at the cost of 10 million people, if it really, really want to. His words could also mean that because of the same 10 million people’s possible causality, we will not bring it to an end.

Trump brought the excuse of “not willing to wipe “Afghanistan” off the face of earth” as an answer to the whys of prolonged conflict in Afghanistan. He might have well deceived Americans about Afghanistan, but rest of the world especially Afghanistan laughs at such comments that conflict with the ground realities.

On the other hand, a fresh photo of the Taliban’s Qatar spokesperson, Sohail Shaheen, depicts Pakistan’s flag placed behind his desk, which is an evident revelation of Taliban being Pakistani agents to just play a role in the going symbolic Afghan peace campaign. This flag must be a mouth-shutting evidence for those who still believe that Taliban is an independent force.

Through a resolution released in early July, Taliban and Afghan representatives in Doha agreed on certain conditions including reducing attacks on civilians to zero, but the same day and the ones followed, massive explosions ripped through crowds of civilians in the very public areas, killing hundreds.

The US’s special representative for Afghanistan’s Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been roaming across the region for nearly one year for allegedly peace-making purpose and has held frequent talks with Taliban in Qatar, but everyone’s scratching the head that why every “good move by the US” has taken so long to yield a result. Or is it only killing the time?

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

I’ve stressed time and again that today is the most perilous time in world history.

It’s because of US rage to control planet earth, its resources, and populations by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives — preemptive wars against nonbelligerent states its favored strategy.

Bipartisan US neocons risk the unthinkable – possible nuclear war against key adversaries, the threat hanging like a sword of Damocles over humanity.

Jack Kennedy transformed himself from a warrior to peacemaker in office — why dark forces in Washington eliminated him.

He once slammed extremists during his tenure who wanted to nuke Soviet Russia while the US had a big advantage, saying: “And we call ourselves the human race.”

Since his time in office, none like him have held high-level executive or congressional positions in Washington.

Following his state-sponsored assassination to the present day, the US has been perpetually at war against invented enemies. No real ones existed since Japan’s September 1945 surrender.

Yet countless trillions of dollars have been and continue to be poured down a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse to enrich Wall Street; the military, industrial, security, media complex; and other corporate predators — profiteering at the public trough at the expense of vital homeland needs and social justice.

Sino/Russian unity is a vital anti-imperial counterforce against Washington’s threat to world peace, stability and security.

On Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov discussed major world issues in an interview with a Moscow broadsheet, published in English by Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

Asked if improved relations with the US is possible ahead, he said it won’t “materialize any time soon since it is anything but easy to sort out the mess that our relations are in, which is not our fault,” adding:

“After all, bilateral relations require reciprocal efforts. We have to meet each other half way.”

Russia seeks world peace and cooperative relations with other countries. The US wages endless preemptive wars and other hostile actions against nonbelligerent nations to dominate them — breaching international and constitutional law, operating exclusively by its own rules.

Russia and the US are the world’s leading nuclear powers, Lavrov stressed. They’re founding UN member states and permanent Security Council members, giving them veto power over its actions — for good or ill.

“…Trump talks about seeking to be on good terms with Russia,” said Lavrov — while hardliners in his regime and Congress are overwhelmingly hostile toward the country despite no threat posed by its ruling authorities.

Count the ways. Hostile US actions against Moscow include “financial and economic sanctions, seizing diplomatic property, kidnapping Russian nationals in third countries, opposing Russia’s foreign policy interests, as well as attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs,” Lavrov explained, adding:

“We are seeing system-wide efforts to reach out to almost all countries around the world and persuade them to scale back their relations with Russia.”

“Many US politicians are trying to outshine each other in ramping up anti-Russia phobias, and they are using this factor in their domestic political struggles. We understand that (this) will only escalate in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.”

The Kremlin is falsely accused of all sorts of things it had nothing to do with — from “aggression” in Ukraine, to the Skripal incident, to the downing of MH17, to Crimea joining Russia, to its involvement in Syria, to US election meddling, and much more — all of it Big Lies, assuring hostile, not friendly, relations.

“…Washington has been inconsistent and quite often unpredictable in its actions. For this reason, trying to predict anything in our relations with the US is a fruitless task,” said Lavrov, adding:

“(A)s Russia is concerned, we are ready to patiently work on improving our relations. Of course, this will be possible only if Russia’s interests are respected, and based on equality and mutual respect.”

The US has been hostile toward Russia since its 1917 revolution — except during WW II to defeat the scourge of Nazism and other brief interregnum periods, notably in the late 1980s ahead of Soviet Russia’s December 1991 dissolution.

Bilateral relations today are more dismal than during the height of the Cold War. Nothing in prospect suggests improvement.

It’s highly unlikely as long as US policy prioritizes control of the country and all others. Its aggressive agenda represents an unparalleled threat to planet earth and all its life forms.

In relations with other nations, Russia observes international laws and related obligations — polar opposite how the US and its imperial partners operate, making normalized bilateral relations unattainable.

Lavrov slammed “aggressive (US) methods…using illegal methods” in dealings with Russia and other nations it considers adversaries.

“(T)he Donbass remains extremely disturbing,” he said, US-supported Kiev war on its people in its sixth year, no signs of ending it under new President Vladimir Zelensky — serving US interests and dark forces in his country like his predecessor Poroshenko.

A new era under his leadership didn’t materialize. He broke his inaugural address promise, saying the following:

“(O)ur first task is ceasefire in the Donbass…I’m ready to pay any price to stop the deaths…(W)e are ready for dialogue…”

At the same time, he falsely accused Russia of starting (US orchestrated) war launched by his predecessor, shamefully calling Russia an “aggressor state” — while referring to Donbass and Crimea as “our Ukrainian land.”

Lavrov slammed what he called continuation of “the disastrous course” begun in spring 2014 — following the Obama regime’s coup, replacing Ukraine’s democratically elected government with Nazi-infested putschists.

Lavrov also stressed Russia’s strategic relations with Iran, sharply criticizing US policies toward the country, its leadership and people, saying:

“The escalating tension in the region we are witnessing today is the direct result of Washington and some of its allies raising the stakes in their anti-Iranian policy.”

“The US is flexing its muscles by seeking to discredit Tehran and blame all the sins on the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“This creates a dangerous situation: a single match can start a fire. The responsibility for the possible catastrophic consequences will rest with the United States.”

Iran has no aggressive regional aims, Lavrov stressed. It seeks peace and cooperative relations with other states.

Russia is acting “proactive(ly) to deescalate tensions…” The Kremlin wants the JCPOA nuclear deal preserved.

US and European actions may doom it. As long as Britain, France, Germany, and the EU remain in breach of their obligations, Tehran will continue moving toward fully resuming its legitimate pre-agreement nuclear activities — its legal right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and JCPOA Articles 26 and 36.

Lavrov stressed that the Kremlin is “working with (other JCPOA signatories) to preserve (the deal) to promote a settlement on the Iranian nuclear program.”

Achieving this objective depends on European actions ahead. Based on what’s happened so far, prospects are dim.

As for Russia/US relations now and ahead, Lavrov explained that “after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the West came to believe that it was the end of history and the West can now blatantly interfere (in) the affairs of any country and presumptuously call the shots in its domestic politics.”

This reality reflects the dismal state of world conditions, notably endless US wars of aggression to transform sovereign independent nations into vassal states.

That’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

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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.

China’s relationship to its ethnic minority Uyghur population has been the central issue driving a wedge between China and the Muslim world in recent years. However, the situation is already beginning to change before our eyes – Pakistan, Turkey and many nations throughout the Middle East have suddenly stopped calling the Uyghur education centers in Xinjiang “concentration camps,” while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said that the Uyghurs live “happily” in Xinjiang. These are all indications of large-scale changes on the geopolitical map and the formation of new poles of cooperation.

Context

The Uyghurs (the second largest Muslim population in China after the Hui (回族) who number around 11 million) live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China. The area became a part of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, after Mao Zedong led the country’s communist movement to victory over the Guomindang; Xinjiang has been a zone of political instability ever since.

The Uyghurs are indigenous Turkic people of Eastern Turkestan and Sunni Muslims. Western human rights organizations have recently been paying a great deal of attention to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (e.g., Amnesty International’s 2013 report, Human Rights Watch’s 2018 report, reports from the Munich-based human rights organization World Uyghur Congress), while leading Western publications (CNN, BBC, Foreign Policy) have systematically criticized China’s policies in relation to the ethnic minority group.

The emergence of a number of articles criticizing China’s Xinjiang policies during the escalation of U.S.-China trade relations in 2018 can hardly be seen as a coincidence. For China, Xinjiang is a source of constant risk, since it has become a hub for radical Wahhabist strains of Islam [supported by foreign governments] which have begun to spread among the Muslim population. Most of the recent terrorist acts in China were committed by radicalized Uyghurs.

Assimilating the Uyghurs into Chinese society has been a very difficult process: their writing is based on the Arabic alphabet and their religion is rooted in Sunni Islam. While Sufism had traditionally been the central strain of Islam throughout Central Asia, in recent decades it has increasingly come under the influence of Salafist and Wahhabi tendencies under the influence of Saudi Arabia and in accordance with the USA’s plans to destabilize the region. The efforts of these countries have created a breeding ground for extremism and terrorism.

During the Arab Spring, Chinese authorities were seriously concerned about the possibility of regional destabilzation in Xinjiang as a result of the spread of radical Islam – at that time, Uyghur social networks were brought under direct control (This was accomplished via tools such as the JingWang Weishi app, which monitors photos, audio messagers and video materials online, and also has access to users private messages on WeChat). The Xinjiang region also has 20 million video cameras that can identify any person in the area in a remarkably short time (no more than 7 minutes). While all of this might seem draconian, such security policies are undoubtedly justified – over the past decade, a large number of Uyghurs have come under the influence of radical Islam, such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement  (ETIM).

To fight the spread of this dangerous ideology and to better integrate the Uyghurs into Chinese society, the Chinese authorities opened special education centres that teach the basics of Chinese political culture, Chinese language and conduct a course on the history of the People’s Republic of China. The process is called “transformation through training” or “counterterrorism training.”

The Western media, using an investigation by Human Rights Watch as a basis, has called the centers “concentration camps” (seemingly confusing them with prisons for offenders in the province). Moreover, the Western media and various human rights reports have accused the Chinese authorities of resorting to torture in these institutions, although there is no clear distinction between prisons for criminal offenders and the education centres in the reports. There is the information in these reports that Uyghurs in the education centres are allegedly being forced to renounce Islam. In September 2018, the U.S. government was considering the possibility of imposing sanctions against high-ranking Chinese officials and companies over the alleged violations of the Uygher’s rights and the supposed detention and restriction of freedoms in the “camps.”

More than 20 countries, including Japan and the United Kingdom, have recently issued a joint statement condemning China’s mass detention of Uyghurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region. In a letter to Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, these 22 countries called for an end to “mass arbitrary detentions and related violations” and demanded Beijing grant UN experts access to the region.

Chinese officials have repeatedly termed the criticism of their treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang region as Western media politicising the issue.

37 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, UAE, seem to agree with China's position. https://t.co/UQ0gxM74Om

— The Conversation (@ConversationUK) July 20, 2019

The mass media has devoted numerous articles to the issue, describing how the Chinese authorities do not allow Uughurs to perform religious pilgrimage (hajj), and preventing them from fulfilling their obligations during Ramadan.

Concentration camp, prisons or education centers?

The training has only one purpose: to learn laws and regulations…to eradicate from the mind thoughts about religious extremism and violent terrorism, and to cure ideological diseases. If the education is not going well, we will continue to provide free education, until the students achieve satisfactory results and graduate smoothly.
—Speech by Chinese Communist Youth League Xinjiang Branch, March 2017

Human Rights Watch’s report of 9 September 2018 published a report entitled “Eradicating Ideological Viruses’, which describes the Chinese authorities’ policy on Uyghurs as a policy of destoying the and violating ‘fundamental rights to freedom of expression, religion, and privacy’, practicing  ‘torture and unfair trials’. HRW note that China’s policy is a violation of international law prohibiting discrimination.

The Human Rights Organization report recommends western governments impose sanctions against the secretary of the party, Chen Quango, and other high-ranking officials. “Party Secretary Chen Quanguo and other senior officials responsible for the Strike Hard Campaign should face targeted sanctions – through tools such as the US Global Magnitsky Act and visa protocols.”    The organization also concludes that in order to address the situation in Xinjiang, countries should tighten export control regimes to prevent the development of Chinese technology.

It is important to note that the materials devoted to the issue of the Uyghur population in China began to be actively published in Western media during the escalation of the ongoing trade war between China and the United States. Interestingly, Trump’s protectionist policy against the PRC was joined by globalist corporations and influence groups, which, unlike Trump, see China as a threat not only to the U.S. economy, but also to the liberal globalist doctrine. This has become particularly evident over the past two years as the relationship between Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin grows closer, while Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative has increasingly shown China’s commitment to multipolarism.

It should be noted that, for China, the main goal in building education centers for the Uyghurs is to prevent the emergence of a domestic strain of radical Islam. China is in many ways an excellent breeding ground for the development of radical Islamic ideology,  which is useful for China’s enemies who want to weaken China by fermenting internal destabilization. According to Chinese authorities, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in China is responsible for more than 200 terrorist attacks which have killed more than 160 people and injured more than 400.

In the absence of countermeasures such as education centres, radical Wahhabi ideas could easily spread among the Uyghur population, gradually creating a situation in China similar to the one which tore apart Syria.

With the trade war between the U.S. and China raging for more than a year, such a development would undoubtedly play into the hands of globalists opposed to China’s rising power and influence. New geopolitical strategies have emerged that pose a serious threat to globalism’s enemies without the need to resort to outright military conflict, such as using proxies to destabilize regions. It is no coincidence that Syria, a country that had no external debt before the war, became a target for terrorism.

What is really China’s policy?

Assimilation of the Uyghurs into Chinese society is gradually taking place on a large scale – for the majority of Uyghurs – Chinese has become a second or even first/native language. The Uyghurs have been granted privileges when it comes to entering universities and Chinese schools, as well as in starting up private businesses.

Uyghur children: “The population that is not there.”

One of the peculiarities of Xinjiang’s demographic picture is the conflict between China’s birth control measures (until the end of 2015/beginning of 2016, the “one family, one child” demographic law was in force, today it is the “one family, two children” demographic law) and Islamic tradition, especially in regard to polygamy which is practiced among Uyghurs and the simplicity of divorce measures, which also do not restrict women from remarriage and having more children.

This has resulted in a significant proportion of Xinjiang’s population not having official registration, i.e. citizenship, which naturally severely restricts their rights, access to education, medicine, legal earnings and travel both within and outside China. This environment of an illegal and unrecorded population deprived of legal status has become the basis for recruiting terrorists, Salafist jamaats and the spread of extremist ideology.

Possible solutions

To address the problem, the PRC needs to establish Confucian schools to integrate Uyghurs into PRC culture. In addition, an important step would be to establish Islamic education schools for the Uyghurs, where mullahs would teach the basics of Islam, which could be an important step in China’s fight against international terrorism.

The creation of Uighur integration centres into Chinese society in the Uyghur language could also be extremely effective. Such centres could be a cultural bridge to establishing a dialogue between two cultures with centuries-old histories.

It is crucial to counter Salafi and Wahhabi teachings with traditional Islam, and Sufism in particular. Chinese leadership has so far failed to significantly utilize this approach, despite that these traditional Islamic structures have already helped to stabilize some regions outside China, such as Turkey, Iraq, Syria and the Northern Caucasus in the Russian Federation.

Between Turkey and China

Turkey had heavily criticized China’s Uyghur policy until February 2019. In 2009, during the Uyghur riots in Urumqi in July, the Turkish government stated its disagreement with the Chinese authorities’ assessment of the situation: a member of the Justice and Development Party resigned from his post in the China-Turkey Interparliamentary Friendship Group, and the Minister of Industry and Trade called for a boycott on Chinese goods as a result.  After a series of protests in Ankara and Istanbul, Erdoğan himself condemned China’s policy towards the Uyghurs, calling it “genocide”. The situation was resolved some time later, but tensions between Turkey and China on the Uyghur issue remained until this year.

Interestingly, Turkey’s Kemalist faction, who are close to the Turkish military, have condemned the anti-Chinese position of the Turkish leadership for years. During a speech in Ürümqi (Xinjiang), Doğu Perinçek, the leader of the Vatan Partisi, argued that “the propaganda and lies aimed at China over the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region target Turkey as well, because China’s friendship with Turkey is necessary to both our security and economy. Clearly conscious of this fact, we immediately took a decisive stance against the torrent of lies concerning the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

In July 2019, during his official visit to China, Erdogan admitted that the Uyghurs live happily in China. This was a radical change of position for the Muslim leader who had long criticized China’s policies. Erdogan, who is known for his support of some rather radical Islamic movements, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, described Erdogan’s unexpected change of heart as a “betrayal.” However, only representatives of the Western media seemed to agree, as Erdoğan’s approval was quickly mirrored by other representatives of the Muslim world.

The globalist mass media has claimed that the reason Erdogan changed his position on the issue was predominantly economic.

In the period from 2013 to 2018, China invested 186.3 billion dollars in the framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). According to Morgan Stanley, Chinese investments in the BRI project will reach $1.3 billion by 2027. It is important to note that Turkey’s participation in the BRI is not only economic, but also ideological, as the country also increasingly orients itself toward a multipolar outlook.

Chinese political scientist Eric Li, in an article in Foreign Affairs, noted that the death of “globalism does not mean the end of globalization.” Today, China is developing and offering its partners a new vision of globalization – dialogue and partnership. This vision of globalization is devoid of the liberal dimension of a hegemon mediating between different cultures and states.

Turkey is moving away from its historic cooperation with the U.S., in part due to their support of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen’s anti government putsch three years ago. Turkey is joining the fight against globalism, a movement which is predominantly led by China. This reorientation is vividly demonstrated in Turkey’s deal with the Russian Federation to buy S-400 missile defense systems against Washington’s will. Die Welt called Ankara’s acquisition of the S-400s a de facto “refusal to support their allies in the West.” The publication notes that Turkey is currently reaching a “point of no return”, which may result in sanctions from the EU and the U.S., as well as the impossibility of purchasing F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. as planned.

Today, Turkey has the prospect to become a key player in the Chinese Belt and Road project, which has become the primary movement fighting globalist hegemony. Their participation could represent a significant step forward in the creation of a new, multipolar world.

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All images in this article are from UWI

When in doubt about responsibility for events on the world stage, blame…you guessed it…Russia…who else!

The latest phony blame game accusation involves nonbelligerent Iran v. hostile Britain in cahoots with the Trump regime’s war on the Islamic Republic by other means while pretending otherwise.

First some facts unexplained or glossed over by Western sources and their press agent media.

On July 4, likely timed with Trump’s militarized US independence day commemoration, appendage to the US imperial agenda Britain illegally seized Iran’s Grace 1 supertanker — an act of high seas maritime piracy, according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell (who’ll replace Federica Mogherini as EU foreign policy chief later this year) said Britain’s Grace 1 seizure responded to a US request.

Britain nearly always bows to Washington’s geopolitical will, notably by partnering with its wars of aggression against sovereign independent states threatening no one — along with supporting Israel’s persecution of long-suffering Palestinians.

On July 19, Iran responded to Britain’s indisputable maritime piracy by legally seizing its Stena Impero tanker.

The vessel provocatively turned off its transponder, contravening maritime regulations, breached the right of “innocent passage” in Iranian Hormuz Strait territorial waters, and ignored multiple Iranian warnings of its improper behavior — before impounding the vessel occurred.

Britain breached international maritime law. Iran’s action observed it. There’s no ambiguity about good and bad actors, about which nation’s action was proper v. the other’s breach of its maritime obligations.

Of course, Western officials and establishment media claim otherwise — why they lack credibility time and again, especially related to nations on the US target list for transformation into vassal states, notably Iran.

On July 21, Britain’s Sunday Mirror headlined “Iran tanker crisis: MI6 probe link to Putin after British ship is seized,” saying:

“EXCLUSIVE: British oil tanker may have been driven into danger zone by ‘spoof’ GPS co-ordinates in a Tehran trap operation.”

Screenshot from Mirror Online

The above sounds like the plot of a money-losing, Grade B Hollywood flop.

Here’s the improbable plot, likely fed the Mirror by UK intelligence — wanting Iran wrongfully blamed for acting legally while ducking responsibility for maritime piracy by UK naval forces in a part of the world not their own.

The Mirror: “A British oil tanker was ‘steered’ towards Iranian waters by false GPS co-ordinates sent by Russian spy technology, it is now feared,” adding:

“Security sources say GCHQ and MI6 are investigating whether Iranian intelligence transmitted spoof signals to the skipper of the Stena Impero.”

Since developed in the 1980s, commercial and military vessels have GPS capabilities to aid navigation from satellite signals by their own countries or allied ones.

Britain clearly has this capability. It has communications, reconnaissance, and other orbiting satellites.

Why would its vessels use GPS aid from another country when available from their own nation and allied ones, several options.

Yet the Mirror claimed

“(t)he capture of two tankers (sic) in Iranian waters may have been the result of Russian efforts using spy technology.”

Only one tanker was seized, another briefly stopped, then let proceed on course to its destination.

Falsely blaming Russia for involvement in the Stena Impero’s seizure flies in the face of its all-out efforts to resolve international conflicts and disputes diplomatically.

Among major nations, Russia is the leading proponent of world peace and stability, no evidence whatever suggesting its involvement in any of the hostile actions it’s been falsely accused of.

Yet according to the Mirror,

“(a)n investigation into potential Russian involvement in the Iranian seizure of two tankers (sic) has begun” — the fabricated results easy to imagine.

Despite no evidence suggesting it, the Mirror said UK “(s)ecurity sources said Iranian drones may have tampered with GPS signals,” adding:

“Russia has the technology to spoof GPS and may have helped Iran in this venture as it was extremely brazen.”

“It would make British shipping extremely vulnerable and will be of grave concern to Royal Navy warships in the region” — citing an unnamed “western security source.”

Based on fabricated information fed the Mirror, the broadsheet claimed

“Russia’s apparent involvement (sic) could only happen with President Putin’s approval (sic).”

Virtually all accusations against Russia lacked credible supporting evidence — because none exists.

The scenario repeats time and again, Moscow falsely blamed for things it had nothing to do with.

The same goes for other US/NATO/Israeli adversaries. When repeated enough times by establishment media, most people believe the rubbish fed them.

The US, UK, other key NATO nations, Israel, and their imperial partners pose an unprecedented global menace to world peace, stability and security.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his nation has always been, and will continue to be, the key guardian of regional security, including free navigation through Persian Gulf waters and its strategic chokepoints.

Islamic Republic and Russian Federation history show their dedication to the rule of law and peaceful cooperation with other nations.

The hostile actions and aims of the US and its imperial allies are polar opposite.

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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

Last December, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the Pentagon started the process of withdrawing its troops from Syria. Even then, many people were quite skeptical about the words of the American president while a number of political analysts and experts noted that the Americans are unlikely to pull out their troops from Syria, taking into account the interests of Washington in the Middle East.

It is also worth noting that in April, 2018, before the aforementioned statement by the American president, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, speaking on Fox News said that the United States would not withdraw its troops from Syria until its goals were accomplished. Haley listed three aims for the United States: ensuring that chemical weapons are not used in any way that pose a risk to U.S. interests, that Islamic State is defeated and that there is a good vantage point to watch what Iran is doing.

Apparently the goals have not been achieved, that’s why Defense secretary nominee Mark Esper recently confirmed the true intentions of the Pentagon, stating that the U.S. Armed Forces will remain in Syria and continue the military campaign against ISIS.

In addition, in February, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal conveyed the words of a senior U.S. defense official who revealed the plans of Washington.

US forces will stay in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, where they will continue to conduct joint patrols with their Turkish counterparts. A second group will be based east of the Euphrates River Valley as part of a safe zone between Turkey and Syria. Those U.S. forces also will help train and advise local fighters.

A third contingent will remain in the southern city of al-Tanf, as part of a counter-ISIS campaign and a buffer against Iranian expansion in that region, the defense official said.

Thus, it becomes obvious that the words of Donald Trump about his readiness to let Syria alone are just empty promises that do not reflect the true intentions of the White House. The above statement by Mark Esper also looks quite timely, especially given the increased tensions between Iran and the United States.

Moreover, we do not ignore the fact that the possible withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria could cause a serious split inside the U.S. establishment. Back in December, 2018, Trump’s alleged intentions towards Syria caused a flurry of criticism. For example, the Republican senator and Trump supporter Lindsay Graham blasted the American president’s decision describing it as “a huge Obama-like mistake”. So even if Trump really wanted to finally withdraw the American troops from Syria, he simply wouldn’t be allowed to do this without hindrance.

As a result, there is no doubt that the United States will continue its illegal presence in Syria. The Pentagon does not intend to abandon its plans, which primarily lie in constraining Iran and its nuclear program. At the same time, the veil is no longer important. The Americans will continue to violate the sovereignty of an independent state justifying their crimes either by a military operation against ISIS or by a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces.

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Modi Must be Mad Beyond All Belief at the Khan-Trump Meeting

By Andrew Korybko, July 23, 2019

The long-awaited meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Khan and US President Trump was a nightmare come true for Indian Prime Minister Modi, whose country could only watch in horror as the American leader praised Pakistan’s assistance “extricating” the Pentagon from Afghanistan, …

International Laws Governing the Use of Nuclear Weapons in Outer Space Expiring in 2021

By Deb West, July 23, 2019

There are currently five agreements from as far back as 1967 (Treaty for the prevention of Outer Space) thru the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, due to expire as soon 2021.

If Left Unchecked, Trump Will Obliterate the Right to Asylum

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, July 23, 2019

Pursuant to its “zero tolerance policy,” the administration arrested undocumented immigrants who crossed the border, took thousands of their children away, put them in cages and then lost track of them, in violation of the Constitution’s Due Process Clause and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

When Warriors Become Saints

By Edward Curtin, July 23, 2019

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassett, who lived here in Lisbon for a year after fleeing Franco’s Spain, said it best: “The only genuine ideas are the ideas of the shipwrecked.  All the rest is rhetoric, farce.”

Do You Choose the Truth or War Propaganda? Your Choice Makes a Difference.

By Mark Taliano, July 23, 2019

We first start to lose the truth when we enter the ring of war propaganda, which is the Western press. The lies, the omissions, the false equivalencies, the fabricated narratives, all grow there, mostly undetected.

China Must Avoid a Role in Destruction of Amazon

By Pepe Escobar, July 23, 2019

China is South America’s top trading partner. Together, China’s policy banks – the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China – are the top source of development finance for the whole of Latin America. 

The “Battle of Seattle” and the Anti-globalization Movement

By Rossen Vassilev Jr., July 22, 2019

Next November will mark the 20^th anniversary since the so-called “Battle of Seattle.” It refers to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference held at Seattle, WA, in late 1999, which became the scene of widely-reported protest activity and civil unrest. That’s why it was subsequently called colloquially the “Battle of Seattle.”

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Saudi Arabia’s CEO Amin Nasr’s message to the press that oil flows to the market are guaranteed, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Looking at the current volatility in the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the possibility of a temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Aramco CEO’s message might be a bit overoptimistic. In reality, Aramco will not be able to keep the necessary crude oil and products volumes flowing to Asian and European markets in the case of a full Strait of Hormuz blockade. Even that Aramco owns and operates a crude oil pipeline with a capacity of 5 million bpd, carrying crude 1,200 kilometers between the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea, much more is needed to keep the oil market stable.

Nasr’s move to stabilize the market is praiseworthy but should be seen as an attempt to quell fears of traders and financial analysts, especially just before the OPEC+ meeting in Viennanext week. Nasr reiterated that Aramco (aka the Kingdom) is able to supply sufficient crude through the Red Sea, reiterating that the necessary pipeline and terminal infrastructure is there. However, what analysts tend to forget, Nasr’s statement is only linked to Saudi’s oil export volumes, which will likely be not higher this summer than around the level this pipeline can support. The real issue, if it comes to a full-blown conflict, is that not only Saudi oil is being threatened.

Another consequence of a blockade would be that most available VLCCs and other tankers will either be in the Persian Gulf (and blocked) or will not be able to be rerouted. Before the market will have found a solution for this, days and probably weeks will have gone by, and a price spike for all products is to be expected.  This will likely also be the case for LNG and other commodity flows.

Few analysts are talking about oilfield security and pipeline availability. Any military advisor will put these options as part of his or her 1^st phase military action plan. If Iran were to be attacked, or faces a surgical strike by an opponent, all Arab oil and gas infrastructure will become a legitimate offensive target (at least in the eyes of Tehran and its proxies). Geographically seen, Tehran has been dealt the best cards. Looking at the majority of oil and gas production assets and infrastructure in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, UAE or even Iraq, everything is in reach of short-distance missiles, fighter jets and even drones. Any move against Iran will result in a full-scale attack on Saudi’s Eastern Province (which produces 80% of all its oil and gas), Abu Dhabi’s offshore oil infrastructure and the regional pipelines. Looking at history, denying energy access and diminishing the opponents stability is a no-brainer in military strategy.

It can be taken for granted that Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah and others, already have prepared their oil and gas infrastructure strategy. Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and even Manama, will be frantically looking for answers, but the geographical situation is disastrous.

Quelling fears in the market is the right thing to do, but reality also needs to be addressed. Nasr’s message is that of an oil company CEO, taking all precautions to deal with a calamity. ADNOC’s Sultan will be doing the same. Still, the oil market is at present a victim of geopolitical power projections of emotional leaders superseding rationality. This confrontation is one of a possibly unprecedented order, not for oil (as sceptics again will state) but with oil as a weapon for defeat or survival. The continuing reference to the Iran-Iraq tanker war during 1980-1988 is out of touch with reality. At this time, it is not going to be Iran denying support or trade with Iraq, but a possible Arab-Iranian confrontation, led by the USA if no countermeasures are being implemented.

Asian consumers will need to prepare for severe price hikes in the most optimistic scenario, but also for a shutdown of vast parts of their economy. Hormuz will not be standing on its own, more is to be taken into account, especially proxy reactions in Yemen (Gulf of Aden) or East Med (Hezbollah).  Negative repercussions for Europeans are also in the picture. Saudi Arabia can do a lot, but saving the global economy if the Gulf explodes is not one of their capabilities.

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Voice AI is becoming a normal part of life for many people. Whether it’s a little cylinder of circle on your countertop (Amazon Echo/Alexa, Google Home/Google Assistant) or activated purely through your computer/smartphone (Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana), the Big Tech cartel is encouraging us to use voice AI for anything and everything. They want these voice AI devices to become your one-stop shop for all information – your little circle of omniscience. Since voice AI is hands-free and voice-activated, many people use it on the go. It’s all about convenience. It lends itself even less than other forms of AI to fact-checking, since how likely are users to fact-check its answers when that would defeat the point of the convenience? Are we entering into a world of intellectual passivity, where human thinking will be drastically reduced or even eliminated?

Big Tech: The New Overlords of Epistemology

Big Tech is setting itself up to be the fact-checker for the world and the gatekeeper of all human knowledge. Remember, Big Tech is closely connected with (and seed funded by) the Military Intelligence Complex (MIC). The way things are going, around 3 corporations (Google, Apple and Amazon) will control all knowledge. Epistemology is defined as ‘the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.’ Big Tech wants you to only go via its artificial intelligence to get information. Of course, any kind of AI, including voice AI, is only as good as the information and algorithms with which it is programmed. It has become painstakingly obvious with all the evidence of Google bias that a totally neutral search engine or AI is impossible. Check out this great article on Google search engine auto-suggestions (see image below): according to Google, “organic food is a … lie, sham, myth, waste of money and marketing gimmick.” The algorithms engrained in any particular AI will always and necessarily reflect the worldview, biases and limitations of its programmers. It remains an open question whether self-learning AI will ever be able to overcome these initial limitations, but I doubt it.

Source: GreenMedInfo.com

Google’s Mission Statement and Reorganization to Alphabet

Speaking of Google, over the last few years they have made some changes to the company structure and motto, and have talked of changing their mission statement. In 2018, they dropped their slogan or motto of “do no evil”, an appropriate move given the amount of cooperation they have been giving to tyranny. Google helped the US Government with censorship, the US Military with AI surveillance (Project Maven) and the Chinese Government with censorship (Project Dragonfly). In 2015, they reorganized with Alphabet as the parent company owning Google. I would suggest that the name alphabet – alpha to omega, all the letters in existence – suggests all that is, and that Google wants nothing less than to be the sole keeper of mankind’s knowledge. It wants the ultimate monopoly: a monopoly on all human information. Google’s current mission statement is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Perhaps the reason the company feels it has outgrown this mission statement is because it has already achieved organizing information; the next step is influencing, controlling and owning that information. As I covered in my article on the Selfish Ledger, Google is dreaming about directing human evolution itself.

The Pattern of AI Evolution: From Servant to Master

If you want to understand how the AI Agenda and the Smart Agenda (since they are one and the same thing) works, take a look at the trends and historical patterns. AI begins as an optional assistant, then becomes widespread, then changes from optional (voluntary) to mandatory (enforced under threat of fines and/or jail time). The plan is the same with autonomous vehicles / driverless cars, smart meters, smart cities / Agenda 2030 and more. Returning to the idea of voice AI, see how this ‘virtual assistant’ fits into the plan. At first, you will control what information it gives; then auto-suggestion will begin to creep in; then voice AI will begin giving you ‘advice’ but of course ‘it will be for your own good’; then voice AI will gently disobey your commands and instead give you the products or information it wants you to have. Sorry, you can’t order that product online because it’s too fatty; sorry, you can’t listen to the song because it contains politically incorrect lyrics; here, we’ll give you the sanitized official version of what just happened in the news to spare you the discomfort and pain of trying to sort through contradictory and clashing versions of reality.

Voice AI: The One-Stop Shop for Your Entire View on Reality?

It’s true that we do live in a world of disinformation and misinformation. However, was the whole fake news phenomenon started so as to make people overwhelmed … and prime them to turn to voice AI to get the “right” answer in a sea of disinfo? Remember this chilling quote from ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt (in a 2005 interview with Charlie Rose) which revealed Google’s ambitions to transform from just organizing information (per their mission statement) to controlling information (befitting a digital gatekeeper or digital censor):

“When I’m typing, I want the computer to show me what I should be typing.”

(25-min. mark)

“When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world, because we should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant. You should look for information. We should get it exactly right and we should give it to you in your language and we should never be wrong. That’s our challenge.”

(28-min.mark)

In an interview with Rose 5 years later in 2010, Schmidt talks about Google trying to make us all “better people” as part of an “augmented humanity.” It is hard to miss just how closely this kind of language and thinking exactly mirrors the goals of transhumanism. What will become to the generation of children being raised right now in households with Amazon Echo or Google Home? Will they become utterly accustomed to the idea that whenever you want to know something, you just ask voice AI? Will they unconsciously take on the idea that voice AI is the fountainhead of all knowledge and wisdom? That when you are curious, the first place to go is to your countertop AI oracle? What will happen to rigorous and determined research, to sifting through many different articles, reports or books to obtain the widest possible range of viewpoints, and to fully inform yourself before making up your mind? What will happen to the challenging yet rewarding search for truth? Will we in our future even have the patience required for real research any more?

Voice AI: Stepping Stone to the Orwellian Telescreen

The theme of this article is about the implications for human thinking. I haven’t even touched on the gross violation of privacy these devices constitute. They are always listening, despite whatever fake reassurances Big Tech gives the public. By bringing them into your house, you are willingly letting Big Brother surveil you in your most intimate moments. First it will be by audio, then later by video. Like any smart device currently on the market, they are a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of the System: the constant monitoring and recording of your every thought.

What will Happen to Human Thinking?

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the technology of voice AI is most likely programming future generations for intellectual passivity. Voice AI doesn’t easily lend itself to fact-checking, because it’s hands-free. It is teaching people to want and accept the one ‘right answer’ for any topic, despite the fact that some issues are extremely complex, multifaceted and don’t have just one answer. To those unfamiliar with the NWO (New World Order) conspiracy, it will appear that the coming reduction in human thinking will happen coincidentally (because people innocently respond to new tech and choose convenience over patience) rather than conspiratorially (because Big Tech, on behalf of its MIC-NWO masters, plan it like that). However, the drive to reduce human thinking and turn it over to the machines and to AI is a deep-seated agenda.

The truth is that computers are not crystal balls. Big Tech is promising what can never be. No one can do your thinking for you. No one can make you come to a refined understanding and perception of a complicated issue. Only you can. Don’t buy into the Big Tech false promise – not only will you be sorely disappointed, but also you walk the path to enslavement by narrowing your perception of what Life is and Who You Are.

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This article was originally published on The Freedom Articles.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance. Makia is on Steemit and FB.

All images in this article are from TFA unless otherwise stated

The CBC article headline reads, “Majority of Canadians against accepting more refugees, poll suggests.” It reports that, “the [poll] results come as no surprise to immigration experts and advocates, who point to a negative shift in tone on migration around the world, especially when it comes to refugees. They say that trend is stoked by media coverage in Canada of asylum seekers crossing the country’s border with the U.S.”

Alemayehu Beyene, an Ethiopian who arrived in Canada with his family 2.5 years ago after spending around 20 years in a refugee camp in Sudan told CBC,

“Maybe they don’t understand why we came here. […] Nobody wants to be a refugee. Somebody push[es] you to go into refuge.”

So, where do refugees come from? And as a rich and advanced industrial country, why does the government of Canada have a duty and human obligation to welcome and support hundreds of thousands more refugees and migrants?

Crisis for Humanity: Refugees and Migrants Around the World

Today there are over 70.8 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced from their homes, as reported by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). People whose homes have become so unliveable due to war, occupation, extreme poverty, and the climate crisis that they have left everything that they have ever known in search of somewhere safe to live.

The Mediterranean Sea continues to be the deadliest crossing for migrants, who climb into small boats that have little chance of meeting the shores of Greece, Italy, or Spain. Between 2014 and 2018, more than 17,900 people were found drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean (International Organization for Migration-IOM).

From Central America, thousands of people also die as they travel through Mexico, with nearly 2,000 people dying at the U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years (IOM). Some of the people dying at the border have already spent months walking, in some cases, over 2,250 kilometres in search of safety in the United States.

With many bodies left unidentifiable and unrecoverable, these numbers are only an estimate of the immense human tragedy that is forced migration.

The New Era of War and Occupation

Since the U.S./Canada/NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the world has been engulfed by a new era characterized by ongoing imperialist wars and occupations. The U.S.-led warpath has crossed from North Africa to the Middle East, through Latin America, and into the Caribbean – and with each passing moment threatens another developing country in another corner of the globe. There is of course, an obvious and direct correlation between war and refugees. As one example, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that, as of June 2019, 57% percent of refugees come from just three countries in North Africa and the Middle East, the epicentre of U.S.-led wars: Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

For the last 18 years, since the new era of war and occupation began, there has been no end to the war, violence, and economic devastation imposed on people from Afghanistan to Iraq; Syria to Yemen; and Haiti to Libya by imperialist governments like the U.S., Canada, and the countries of the European Union. These military interventions and sanctions have destroyed infrastructure, housing, hospitals, schools, and completely torn apart the social fabric of many countries. With no end to the war in sight, people have been forced to flee, first their homes, then their countries, and then ultimately the region entirely.

Imperialist governments are also responsible for the economic devastation imposed on colonial and semi-colonial countries around the world. The plunder and exploitation of these countries continues to line the pockets of the ultra-rich while destroying the living conditions and environments of the so-called “third-world”.

The majority of people fleeing their homes (80% according to the UNHCR) settle in a neighbouring country, hoping to return home one day, or lacking the resources to travel further. However, for those that do risk their lives for somewhere to be safe and secure, their hardship is often only just beginning, as they face continued violence, predatory human traffickers, and sexual violence, as well as inhuman border policies, racism, and bigotry when they finally reach a border with Europe, Canada, or the United States.

Photos that Remind Us of Our Shared Humanity

A devastating photograph of a lifeless human being has once again brought the tragedy of migration into the homes of millions of people in the United States and around the world. In the heartbreaking photo, Oscar Martinez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, are face-down on the shore of the Rio Grande, just as Alan Kurdi the 2-year-old Syrian boy who died in 2015 was face-down in the sands of a Turkish beach.

These images tell the same story of hardship and more importantly illustrate the lengths that people will go through when there are no other options. The blame for their deaths and thousands of others like them lies squarely on the shoulders of the United States and their imperialist allies, on the wars, occupations, and plunder that has forced them to flee and the inhuman migration policies that have left them with nowhere to go.

Central & Latin American Migrants Seek a New Life in the U.S.

As Bloomberg News reported,

“More than 144,000 migrants were taken into custody along the U.S. border in May, a 32% jump from April, and the biggest monthly total in 13 years, according to Customs and Border Protection. Almost four-fifths of those apprehended were from the Northern Triangle [a reference used for the countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala].”

In Latin America and the Caribbean, over 500 years of colonization and imperialist intervention and plunder has dug a deep wound. The lack of political and economic stability and devastating violence imposed on these countries is the result of the 56 U.S. military interventions (since 1890), the so-called “U.S. war on drugs,” and continuous U.S. meddling carried out in order to secure the theft and pillaging of Latin America’s resources to benefit the imperialist capitalist class and enable them to create an acceptable living standard for the middle class and working class in countries like the United States. How many people in the advanced industrial countries really realize how their comfort and relatively stable life are paid for by billions of people in colonial and semi-colonial countries, from Puerto Rico and Haiti; to El Salvador and Brazil; to Nigeria and the Congo; to India and the Philippines? Colonial powers such as Canada and the U.S. have successfully disconnected their people from the rest of the world. We must reconnect this disconnection.

The relationship between U.S. intervention in Latin America and the devastating situation in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala is most clearly expressed by the 2009 U.S.-backed coup in Honduras. 10 years ago, the United States backed a right-wing overthrow of the elected government of Manuel Zelaya. Since then political repression, state violence, and increasing poverty in Honduras have escalated, creating structural and institutional vacuums, along with deep instability throughout the country. After the U.S. supported coup Honduras ended Manuel Zelaya’s presidency, a country with a prospect of political and economic development became a failed state.

Gangs throughout the region, like the MS-13 which are so-often referred to by U.S. President Trump, were first formed in U.S. prisons, and then transplanted to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala when people were released from prison and then deported. As the UNHCR reports, the conditions of life for people in the Northern Triangle are not improving, “Current homicide rates are among the highest ever recorded in Central America. Several cities, including San Salvador, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, are among the 10 most dangerous in the world. The most visible evidence of violence is the high rate of brutal homicides, but other human rights abuses are on the rise, including the recruitment of children into gangs, extortion and sexual violence.”

Due to the political instability and deep poverty in the region, many people are being forced to leave their hometowns in search of a better life, sometimes due to threats and violence and other times due to a lack of financial opportunities. The UNHCR predicts that “By the end of 2019, there are expected to be 539,500 displaced people from Central America”. Many of these displaced people are desperately trying to go north and find a way into the United States. The reaction of the U.S. government to the increasing number of migrants at the U.S./Mexico border – for whom it holds responsibility for their desperation – has been to criminalize and detain those trying to flee an unlivable situation in their country. Now, the Trump administration is once again facing backlash for the horrifying conditions for children at the U.S./Mexico border, where children are left alone in cages, uncared for, and without even a toothbrush. Since late 2018 six children have died while detained at the border.

Open air prisons, concentration camps, call them what you would like, the U.S. government is denying migrants their basic human dignity, let alone their rights and protections under international law.

Every day more children arrive, along with more migrants. U.S. government policies are causing deaths and hardship, and make no mistake, it only takes a brief examination of history to understand that a wall and criminalization are not deterrents for people with no options. It only makes the crossings more expensive and more deadly.

Middle Eastern and North African Migrants Seek a New Life in Europe

“In total, there were 24 percent fewer people who journeyed over the Mediterranean in 2018 compared with 2017, and 84 percent fewer than in 2015. The proportion of people losing their lives during the crossing has gone up because they have been forced to choose more dangerous routes, and the Libyan coastguard, which is now patrolling the coast, lacks the rescue skills of European rescue services. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, a total of seven percent of all those travelling over the Mediterranean lost their lives in 2018.” – “Hour of reckoning for European Refugee Policy” report by the Norwegian Refugee Council

The fear experienced, especially by women migrants, is clear in an interview with the Nation magazine in April 2019, and also shockingly similar to interviews and articles about the dangers faced by women and children migrating from the Northern Triangle. The Nation interviewed Leila (not her real name), a refugee from Afghanistan living in the Samos Refugee Camp in Greece, where 4,000 people live in a facility with 648 beds. Leila explained,

“When we arrived here in December, there was no place to sleep, so we had to buy a tent with our own money and set up in the woods outside the camp. […] I was too shocked by the conditions to even think about how cold or squashed I was, but I thought at least there would be rules and security. But there are no rules. People have fights in the camp and you see them bleeding, but no one does anything. Men drink and party all night, so it’s too loud to sleep. It was so frightening at night, we had to go to the toilet together, holding hands.”

As long as the U.S. government and their allies, including countries in the European Union, continue to bomb, sanction and invade the Middle East and North Africa there will be continued migration to Europe. European governments must take responsibility for the devastation that they have caused and accept migrants and refugees with open arms.

Canada Can and Must Do Better!

Some might say, well Canada is different and welcoming of migrants and refugees. However, this distorts the fact that as per the UNHCR’s global trend report in 2018 Canada has only welcomed 28,100 refugees out of about 1.4 million refugees that needed resettlement (globally, sadly just over 90,000 were resettled that year). Others might also say Canada is different because it was not involved in the war in Iraq, or because Canada is still seen by some as a peace-keeping country. However, the hands of the government of Canada are also covered in the blood of people throughout the Middle East and North Africa – think of Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and Mali. Canada currently is even in Iraq, with 250 Canadian Armed Forces personnel scheduled to remain there until November 2020 (Government of Canada website).

Compared to the economy, population, and sheer land mass of Canada, the government has set the targets for accepting refugees shamefully low. In 2018 it was 7,500 and in 2019 it is set for 9,300. There are more than 25 million refugees in the world, and Canada won’t even accept 10,000 a year? The overarching message of Canada’s immigration policy remains that there are open doors for the wealthy, and a long and treacherous process for the poor and exploited who wish to stay for more than a short time to work for low wages.

Not only that, the CBC uncovered in October 2018 that the Canada Border Services Agency has a plan to increase the number of removals of migrants that have been deemed “inadmissible” from Canada to a target of 10,000 each year. So now Canada will be deporting more people than they are settling as refugees?

Open the Borders – Legal Status, Democratic Rights, Civil Rights & Human Rights for All! 

After many promises, the Liberal government ultimately has accepted just over 50,000 refugees from Syria, since Trudeau took office in the fall of 2015. This includes a combination of government and privately sponsored refugees. This is not enough!

Also, as reported by Maclean’s Magazine, “the 2019 federal budget, for example, proposes to take away their right to a full refugee hearing.” Shame on the Trudeau government for saying they are welcoming of refugees, while taking away refugee rights!

The government of Canada has the responsibility to immediately accept 200,000 refugees, and grant them legal status, as well as all democratic, civil and human rights.

However, rather than accepting migrants with open arms, as they have the responsibility to do, the governments of the U.S. and Canada, along with their allies are criminalizing not only the migrants but also the people that are working to save their lives. In June 2019, the government of Italy arrested the captain of a Sea Watch ship that had rescued 40 people from the Mediterranean because she had violated their ban on migrants landing on Italian shores. In the United States, Scott Warren is facing 20 years in prison for leaving water and food for migrants crossing Mexico-U.S. border through deadly desert terrain.

As poor, working, and oppressed people in the U.S. and Canada we must stand in solidarity with the migrants and refugees who are showing up on the doorstep of the White House or Parliament Hill, and letting imperialist governments know that they can no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering that they have imposed on millions of people in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

Open the borders immediately and unconditionally!

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This article was originally published on as Volume 13, Issue 7 of Fire This Time newspaper “Imperialist Made Crisis of Migrants and Refugees”

Alison Bodine is a social justice activist, author and researcher in Vancouver, Canada. She is the Chair of Vancouver’s antiwar coalition, Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO). Alison is also on the Editorial Board of the Fire This Time Newspaper. Follow Alison on Twitter: @alisoncolette

Tamara Hansen is on the editorial board and is a regular contributor to the Fire This Time Newspaper, where she focuses on Cuba, Latin America and Indigenous struggle. Tamara is the coordinator of Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba (VCSC) and a member of the Executive of the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC). Tamara is also a high school social studies teacher and a union member. Follow Tamara on Twitter: @THans01

Featured image is from Defend Democracy Press

The long-awaited meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Khan and US President Trump was a nightmare come true for Indian Prime Minister Modi, whose country could only watch in horror as the American leader praised Pakistan’s assistance “extricating” the Pentagon from Afghanistan, pledged to encourage much more investment in New Delhi’s rival, and even surprisingly offered to mediate the ongoing Kashmir Conflict at what he scandalously said was the Indian leader’s earlier urging.

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The long-awaited meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Khan and US President Trump was nothing short of historic, and it’s an event that’s poised to shape Eurasian geopolitics for years to come. The South Asian country proved that it’s indeed the global pivot state after its leader received nothing but praise from his infamously capricious American counterpart in defiance of most expectations, particularly in respect to the help that it’s providing the US in”extricating” itself from Afghanistan. That in and of itself would be enough to make Indian Prime Minister Modi mad beyond all belief, but his country’s nightmare got worse when Trump also said that he’ll encourage even more investment in New Delhi’s rival. In what could only be described as a moment of horror for Indian strategists, the President also dropped an unexpected bombshell by surprisingly offering to mediate the ongoing Kashmir Conflict at what he said was Modi’s earlier urging, something that New Delhi has since denied but which got the entire world talking about the possible beginning of the US’ Russian-influenced “balancing” act in South Asia.

Going through these three main developments one-by-one, the author earlier predicted that Pakistan would provide the US with a “face-saving” exit strategy from Afghanistan, which presciently came to pass after Trump implied that he’d prefer as much instead of “killing 10 million people” to win the war. India had hitherto been largely successful in driving a wedge between the US and Pakistan over the Taliban, but Islamabad’s irreplaceable facilitation of the latest round of peace talks got Washington to change its tune and realize the inevitability of including the armed group in negotiations if it wants any hope of pulling out of one of its costliest and least successful wars ever. The recent peace progress that’s been made in the previous months changed the US’ perception of Pakistan and worked against India’s grand strategic interests, leaving New Delhi to look like it manipulatively wanted American blood and treasure to be expended on this conflict the entire time in order to expand its own so-called “strategic depth” vis-a-vis its neighbor.

As the US’ billionaire businessman leader begins to realize that India was manipulating his two predecessors for almost two decades already, he’s less likely to indefinitely retain its sanctions waiver for the Iranian port of Chabahar, especially since Pakistan recently reopened its airspace to Indian overflights to Afghanistan and elsewhere. In parallel with this developing change of policy, the President also proudly encouraged American businesses to invest more in Pakistan, which implies his country’s commitment to become an unofficial stakeholder in CPEC, the flagship project of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). This was preceded by the State Department designating the notorious “Baloch Liberation Army” (BLA) as the feudalist terrorists that they’ve always been in a blow to India’s Hybrid War on CPEC, which could even one day lead to the scenario of Washington condemning New Delhi for supporting terrorism in the region as part of its strategy of pressure to compel India into becoming more of a junior partner in “containing” China than it already is. The US’ tacit interest in becoming an indirect stakeholder in CPEC also partially explains its desire to mediate the Kashmir Conflict.

Russia’s “Return to South Asia” has seen it replicate the regional strategic success of its Mideast “balancing” act to become one of the leading powers in that part of the world, which — when combined with the “hardball” that New Delhi is playing with Washington regarding trade and the S-400s — likely influenced the US to follow in Moscow’s footsteps through its own fast-moving rapprochement with Islamabad that was just on full display. It’s unclear whether or not Modi really did request Trump’s diplomatic intervention in Kashmir, but publicly saying as much put tremendous pressure on the Indian leader to no longer remain an obstacle to peace and to welcome America’s own attempts to “balance” the region in competition with Russia otherwise India will probably be sanctioned for the S-400s and experience more punitive tariffs from its top trade partner. Whichever way one looks at it, the Khan-Trump Summit was a nightmare come true for Modi, but there’s not much that he can do to make it any better.

The only realistic options at his strategists’ disposal are to capitulate to the US’ S-400 and trade demands in a bid to regain their country’s status as America’s top South Asian partner, attempt to “compete” with Pakistan for this position through a reinvigorated “balancing” act, or cut the US off as much as possible by pivoting towards Russia and China. The first two options would jeopardize India’s relations with Russia and China, while the last one would do the same with the US, meaning that Modi’s now in a dire dilemma from which it’s impossible to extricate himself. Regardless of which course of action India will take, the resultant outcome will remain in Pakistan’s favor since its role as the global pivot state is now cemented like never before due to its excellent relations with all relevant Great Powers, including most crucially the US in this context. Put another way, Pakistan’s creative practice of “multi-alignment” indisputably succeeded where India’s failed, and the regional strategic chessboard is now forever changed after Kashmir is once again back on the global agenda.

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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.

In recent rhetoric about a treaty between Russia and Pakistan to not be the first to deploy weapons in space, citing “The use of force against space-based objects, the development and deployment of Anti Ballistic Missile systems and their integration into space assets have added worrying dimensions to the issues relating to Outer Space” the two countries voiced concerns about International Law allowing control of space and space assets.

Which is exactly what the Trump Space force intends to do, as explained in an excerpt from The United States Space Force, AMI special issue (Vol. 18 N.66), which states their directive,

“Currently, outer space is protected under International Law…..By 2020, new national laws will be in place to manage the governance, services and support the functions of the space force. Where they conflict with international codes, the latter will have to be modified to adjust to new realities.” 

There are currently five agreements from as far back as 1967 (Treaty for the prevention of Outer Space) thru the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, due to expire as soon 2021.  With 8 current nuclear-powered countries posturing for global economic alliances and control over space-based assets and, the creation of new international laws will be the cornerstone that shapes the future of civilization.

Currently, thirteen countries already have capability to launch into space and leaders like China, Russia, India, Japan, and US are expanding space exploration and manufacturing at an unprecedented rate.

With the escalation of trade tensions, bilateral agreements and pacific-asia trade alliances the topic at the G20 summit, countries like India and the US have directed their officials to meet and resolve trade disputes between the two countries.  Russia’s nuclear weapon stockpile now exceeds the US and China is aggressively developing its next generation of nuclear weapons, conducting an average of five tests a month to simulate nuclear blasts, as stated in the South China Morning Post.

In Vienna Austria, plans are underway for World Space Forum 2019 where new International Laws concerning space will likely headline the various discussions such as this one.

“The various factors of access to space, space technology data and facilities, and the importance of joining a global effort in the development of the entire space arena for the benefit of humanity“, is the title for one of the many meetings taking place under the umbrella “Space-4 All” co organized by the European Space Agency and The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). In addition to the eight nuclear armed countries, NATO member nuclear weapons sharing states include (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey), with Australia the next likely nuclear armed country to join in, as reported recently by the Bangcock Post.

In the meantime, a Treaty to Ban Space-Based Weapons developed and previously ratified by China and Russia back in the 1970s already exists and could set the stage for International Cooperation in space says Peace in Space activist, Dr. Carol Rosin.

“This treaty could be a milestone of diplomacy for us to end the war mentality and evolve into a peaceful, sovereign space-faring society.” Because, she adds “Once we get to space, we all Earthlings.”

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D.A. West has a Masters in International Business from DePaul University in the US. She works as an editor and writer, currently living in Tokyo, Japan. Her background is in advances in nanoscience, astrophysics, everything “Space-related” and the implications to an evolving society.

With the United Kingdom and Iran in the midst of a tense and dangerous standoff after the tit-for-tat seizure of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, international observers are warning that the British government has fallen into a trap set by hawkish U.S. national security adviser John Bolton that could lead to a devastating military conflict.

After British commandos earlier this month swarmed and detained Iran’s Grace 1 oil supertanker in waters east of Gibraltar, Bolton applauded the move as “excellent news” and said “America and our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran and Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade.”

Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs editor and commentator for The Guardian, wrote over the weekend that “Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise.”

“But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident,” wrote Tisdall. “The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.”

Shortly after British forces seized Grace 1, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said the U.K.’s capture of the tanker was carried out under orders from the United States.

Tisdall pointed to a story last week by Spanish newspaper El Pais, which reported that the Iranian tanker “had been under surveillance by U.S. satellites since April.”

“Although Spanish officials, speaking after the event, said they would have intercepted the ship ‘if we had had the information and the opportunity,’ Spain took no action at the time,” Tisdall wrote. “But Bolton, in any case, was not relying on Madrid. The U.S. had already tipped off Britain. On 4 July, after Grace 1 entered British-Gibraltar territorial waters, the fateful order was issued in London—it is not known by whom—and 30 marines stormed aboard.”

The U.K.’s seizure of Grace 1—denounced by the Iranian government as an act of “maritime piracy“—led Iran to counter on Friday by capturing a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, ratcheting up tensions in the Persian Gulf and prompting the British government to warn of “serious consequences” if the tanker was not released.

The perilous standoff, Tisdall argued, is precisely the outcome Bolton was seeking.

“The Bolton gambit succeeded,” Tisdall wrote. “Despite its misgivings, Britain has been co-opted on to the front line of Washington’s confrontation with Iran. The process of polarization, on both sides, is accelerating. The nuclear deal is closer to total collapse. And by threatening Iran with ‘serious consequences,’ without knowing what that may entail, Britain blindly dances to the beat of Bolton’s war drums.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif offered a similar assessment in a series of tweets on Sunday.

Make no mistake:

Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire.

Only prudence and foresight can thwart such ploys.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 21, 2019

The B Team is the name Zarif has given to a group of officials that consists of Bolton, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bolton in particular has been at the center of escalating military tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which were sparked by Trump’s decision last year to violate the Iran nuclear accord.

As Common Dreams reported in May, Bolton used the routine deployment of a U.S. bomber task force to the Middle East to threaten Iran with “unrelenting force.”

After Iran in June shot down an unmanned U.S. drone that it said violated its airspace, Bolton was among the group of officials urging Trump to retaliate with airstrikes. The president approved the strikes then backed off at the last minute.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned Sunday that by following Washington’s orders in the Gulf, the U.K. is repeating the mistakes it made in the lead-up to the U.S.-led invasion if Iraq.

“In 2003, the U.K. broke with the E.U. and foolishly sided with Bush over Iraq. London not only devastated the Middle East, it also undermined the E.U.,” Parsi tweeted. “Now, the U.K. is at it again by doing Bolton’s bidding and allowing him to make the U.K./E.U. collateral damage in his war plans with Iran.”

“Why did the U.K. agree to Bolton’s request to confiscate an Iranian oil tanker, knowing very well Iran would retaliate by taking a British one in return?” Parsi asked. “Does the U.K. want war? Does E.U. interest not matter to London? Stunned these questions haven’t been asked. Answers are needed.”

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The UK got a taste of its own medicine this week as Iran seized a British tanker, the Stena Impero, just two weeks after UK Royal Marines seized a tanker near Gibraltar carrying two million barrels of Iranian oil. 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. Media criticism of the UK is limited to claims that it has not put enough military into the Persian Gulf, not that it should never have seized the Iranian ship in the first place.

The truth is, the UK seizure of the Iranian ship was calculated to force Iran to retaliate and thus provide the pretext the neocons need to get their war.

As usual, Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is in the thick of this operation. Bolton Tweeted that he was so surprised – but pleased – by the UK move against the Iranian tanker. However it is becoming clearer that Bolton was playing a role behind the scenes pushing London to lure Iran into making a move that might trigger the war he’s long been yearning for.

The ramping up of tanker wars comes just as the Pentagon has announced that it will send 500 US troops to Saudi Arabia – the first such US deployment since the US withdrew its troops in 2003. At that time, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz hailed the move out of Saudi Arabia as denying al-Qaeda one of its prime recruiting tools – US troops in their holy land. What will 500 troops do in Saudi Arabia? Some say they will help prepare the Prince Sultan military air base for a possible US air squadron deployment.

We must be clear on how we got to the very edge of war with Iran. President Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) promising he would exchange it for a much better deal for the US. He quickly re-applied all previous US sanctions on Iran and demanded that our allies do the same. The US policy would be to apply “maximum pressure” to Iran which would result in Iran capitulating and agreeing to all US demands.

US economic warfare against Iran would bring the country to its knees, the Administration claimed, and would deliver a big win to the US without a shot being fired. But the whole plan has gone terribly wrong.

Iran did not back down or beg for mercy in the face of Trump’s actions, and the Europeans have at least attempted to keep the JCPOA agreement alive. And the UK following neocon orders has led the country in a serious and unnecessary crisis that does not look to be easily resolved.

How could the US administration have miscalculated so badly? Many of us could have told President Trump that the neocons always promise a “cakewalk” when they are talking up a military action. Time and time again – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria – they promise a quick victory and deliver a quagmire.

The American people overwhelmingly do not want to go to war with Iran and the president wants to be re-elected. Will he return to the political base that elected him on promises of getting along with the rest of the world, or will he continue to follow his neocon advisors down the road to a failed presidency?

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Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has effectuated 600 unilateral changes in immigration policy, more than any president in recent memory.

Pursuant to its “zero tolerance policy,” the administration arrested undocumented immigrants who crossed the border, took thousands of their children away, put them in cages and then lost track of them, in violation of the Constitution’s Due Process Clause and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Trump instituted a Muslim Ban, tried to add a citizenship question to the census, reneged on President Obama’s promise to the Dreamers, and is terrorizing immigrant communities with threats of mass raids.

In an escalation of his war on migrants, Trump’s new asylum rule undermines well-established law and prevents refugees fleeing persecution from receiving asylum.

Trump Administration’s New Rule Violates Right to Asylum

The administration illegally refused to allow people to apply for asylum unless they entered the United States at a port of entry. And a federal judge ruled that the government cannot hold asylum applicants in indefinite detention.

Now the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have enacted a new rule that threatens to virtually obliterate the legal right to asylum for Central American refugees. Many asylum seekers come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which are “experiencing extremely high levels of violence from which their governments have proven unwilling or unable to protect the population.”

On July 15, the administration issued a joint Interim Final Rule (IFR) that creates an enormous bar to eligibility for asylum. Under the IFR, a noncitizen who crosses or tries to cross the U.S. southern border is ineligible to apply for asylum unless he or she: (1) applied for and was denied asylum in at least one country through which he traveled en route to the United States; (2) demonstrates that she is the “victim of a severe form of trafficking in persons”; or (3) has traveled to the U.S. only through countries that were not parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, or the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Most of the asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle countries pass through Mexico as they travel to the United States. Mexico is a party to the Refugee Convention and Protocol and the Convention Against Torture.

Trump’s new asylum rule violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Refugee Convention. Moreover, the bedrock principle of the right to asylum is non-refoulement, which means that no person can be returned to a country where he or she is in danger of torture or being persecuted.

Under the Refugee Convention and the INA, a noncitizen has a right to asylum if he or she can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in the applicant’s home country due to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

A person is ineligible for asylum under the INA only if he or she “was firmly resettled in another country prior to arriving in the United States” or the U.S. has an agreement with a “safe third country” where the individual would have access to “a full and fair procedure” to determine eligibility for asylum. Canada is the only country with which the U.S. has a “safe third country” agreement.

It is well-settled that merely traveling through a third country is not a valid basis to categorically deny asylum to refugees who arrive in the United States. It is also widely accepted in international refugee law that “asylum should not be refused on the ground that it could be sought from another State.”

The IFR makes it virtually impossible for a refugee from Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador who is fleeing a humanitarian crisis to be eligible for asylum unless he or she entered the United States by boat or plane. More than 12,000 migrants are waiting across the U.S. border in Mexico.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said the new asylum rule “will put vulnerable families at risk.” UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, issued a statement saying it “believes the rule excessively curtails the right to apply for asylum, jeopardizes the right to protection from refoulement, significantly raises the burden of proof on asylum seekers beyond the international legal standard, sharply curtails basic rights and freedoms of those who manage to meet it, and is not in line with international obligations.”

In a lawsuit filed on July 16 in the Northern District of California, the ACLU argued on behalf of four immigrants’ rights groups that the IFR violates U.S. and international law. They wrote that the rule is “part of an unlawful effort to significantly undermine, if not virtually repeal, the U.S. asylum system at the southern border, and cruelly closes our doors to refugees fleeing persecution, forcing them to return to harm.”

Mark Morgan, acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told NPR that the government is expecting the new rule to be enjoined by a judge and he doesn’t think it will ultimately withstand legal scrutiny.

The New Asylum Rule Is Part of Trump’s War on Migrants

The new asylum rule is part and parcel of Trump’s systematic assault on migrants, which plays well with his xenophobic base. It comes at a time when he is threatening to conduct mass raids in the United States, instilling fear and terrorizing immigrant communities. Meanwhile, Trump is increasing his illegal militarization of the southern border by deploying 2,100 additional troops to join the 4,500 military personnel already there.

Trump launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists” who were bringing drugs and crime into the United States. He is detaining migrants in conditions so squalid they are called concentration camps. His threat to shut down the government if his wall does not get built, his threat to close the border, and his threat to levy tariffs on Mexico if it doesn’t stem the tide of migrants crossing the U.S. border are emblematic of his war on immigrants.

The administration returns asylum seekers to Mexico pursuant to its “Migrant Protection Protocols” program, colloquially known as “Remain in Mexico.” This program began on January 25, 2019. Five months later, the U.S. had returned 15,079 people – including at least 4,780 children – who came mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Human Rights Watch reported at least 29 instances of harm to asylum seekers in Juárez, including kidnapping, violent attacks and sexual assaults.

After a 20-year-old asylum seeker who fled Guatemala with her four-year-old son was returned to Juárez, she was grabbed in the street and sexually assaulted by two men who threatened to kill her son. She said, “I can still feel the dirtiness of what they did in my body.”

Another asylum seeker from Guatemala who was sent back to Juárez was kidnapped by a taxi driver and freed after paying most of a $1,000 ransom. She was warned, “If you file a report, you know how people die in Juárez.”

The history of U.S. intervention in the Northern Triangle countries has destabilized them and exacerbated the migrant crisis. “[W]e must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States,” Mark Tseng-Putterman wrote.

These desperate people travel thousands of miles at great peril to escape persecution. Yet in defiance of the Statue of Liberty’s entreaty, Trump seeks to turn away rather than embrace “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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

Featured image is from Paper Post

As I sit on the small balcony on the top floor of an old house in the working class neighborhood of Alfama in Lisbon (image below), Portugal, it is early evening, the time for wine and voices wafting on the fragrant breeze through the twisting cobble-stoned streets.  The National Pantheon (Panteao Nacional) stares me in the face.  I stare back, and then look up to the heavens and to the cross that is silhouetted against the blue sky.  It crowns the Pantheon’s massive dome. 

On its façade stand three statues, only one of which I can see clearly.  She is Santa Engracia, a Christian martyr from before the period when the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized and legitimatized Christianity, transforming the cross into a sword. It was her church before the state found it acceptable to convert it into a space to glorify its secular saints and its military and political prowess. 

Rome never dies, although it falls in different guises but is resurrected by the human urge to dominate others.  The savage complicity between church and state perdures through the ages.

Wherever you go, the monuments and statues glorifying humanity’s violent history are always presented as a form of liberation. Tourist attractions. Generals, princes, and kings atop horses, brandishing swords and guns, “grace” squares and monuments as a reminder to the common folk of who is looking down on them and to whom they should look up, or look out.  Yet even when they do show obeisance to their “masters” who rule them from the heights, the commoners are left out of the spoils of empire, and if they object, they are taken out without hesitation.

On a clothesline outside the windows of the house across the street where a woman peeks out, the pants and underwear humbly sway to a different tune, a sad Fado moan that seems to ask: What has happened?  Has it always been like this?

I am tempted to tell the underwear it has but realize its job is to cover-up, not expose the truth.

Rilke, a German language poet of most delicate sensibilities, asked from one of his castle abodes provided by one of his many rich lady friends:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me

Among the angels’ hierarchies?

And even if one of them

Pressed me against his heart

I would be consumed in that

overwhelming existence.

But down below, the omnipresent graffiti on the walls is a bit less circumspect.  It shouts: Fuck the elites! (Translation provided)

The old poor murmur their prayers and the angry young spray their rage on every canvas they can find.  Both seek hope outside the museums and mausoleums erected by the wealthy to glorify themselves.

And fate answers: It’s the same old story, a fight for love and glory.  Those seeking glory, the rich elites, the powerful with the guns in all the countries across the planet, with a few exceptions, smash the lovers and the humble people as they struggle to keep faith and hope alive. Who will liberate them?

Who among the elites will hold the arm of the old Portuguese woman on the one crutch as she teeters on her struggle up the steep hill to the little grocery store?  “Orbrigada – Deus te abinҫoe” is her response to a stranger, whose heart aches.

Here in Lisbon there is a famous tourist attraction, Castelo De S. Jorge, Image right below) a massive hilltop castle and fortress overlooking the city.  Built by the Moors in the eleventh century, it was conquered by Dom Afonso Henriques, who became the first king of Portugal, and began what is so nobly described as “its golden age as a home for the royalty.”  Royals are always noble, and castles and mythic saint/soldiers like St. George intimate friends.  It is a marriage made in hell.

The Spaniard, Ignatius of Loyola, was a soldier seriously wounded in war at the age of thirty.  He subsequently underwent a religious conversion. He founded the Jesuit order eighteen years later and was sainted in 1556, sixty-six years after his death.  Having been educated by the Jesuits, I vividly recall the motto of my Jesuit high school that adorns the school seal, Deo et Patriae, a not so subtle reminder of how my priorities should be linked.  I have failed that test, just as I failed a freshman mathematics exam, probably because I couldn’t figure out what two plus two equaled, since I was reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground at the time and might have thought it was five because I believed I was free and not what Ignatius urged Jesuits to be – “as if a dead body” in obedience to the Pope.

The so-called rational ones have brought the earth to the point of extinction with their instrumental rationality and their diseased souls.  We are living in the Crystal Palace that Dostoevsky so mocked long before the crystal turned digital. One plus zero may equal one in such a glass house, but such counting will not protect us from the whirlwind we have conjured from the smart man’s equation of E=mc² 

Only a spiritual equivalent will save us, as James Douglass has so eloquently argued in his slim but powerful book, Lightning East to West: Jesus, Gandhi, and the Nuclear Age,where, taking up Gandhi’s suggestion, he argues that there is a spiritual equivalent to Einstein’s law of physical change that we must discover that will allow for a radical transformation of society and the world.  Douglass’s country is the world.

I, however, am reminded of a very different Jesuit-trained American (one among many), who has passed the American indoctrination exam “admirably” and who has worked assiduously for God and country and followed that American motto of “In God We Trust” when  he recently led the CIA in its holy wars under President Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner – John Brennan. Was his excuse he was just following orders, “as if a dead body”?

I think the dead children in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and so many other places he helped to destroy would not buy that excuse. Yet Fordham University thought to honor him.  Is this what the Jesuit motto means: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salutem (for the greater glory of God and the salvation of humanity)?

Has Fordham ever heard of the Nuremberg Trials?

In the men’s room of St. George’s Castle, there is a wall dispenser selling M&Ms.  Imperialism and colonialism take many forms.

It is hard to say what’s new since humanity’s savage history just rolls along.  The technology changes, but people do not. Spray paint is about 75 years old, about the same age as nuclear weapons, both products of WW II.  One leads to “Fuck the elites,” while the other says, “We are the elites and see what we can do to the Japanese.”

War spurs technological development like nothing else, and as the brilliant French social thinker Paul Virilio has shown with his war model, “history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems.” Modern societies, with increased technological speed, the administration of fear (terror), and digital gadgetry, are engaged in a battle for people’s minds through technological perception management.  Virilio makes it clear, following on the work of his fellow countryman Jacques Ellul, that built into the technology is the “integral accident,” by which he means that every new technology creates its own potential “accident.”

While most people welcome new technology because they have been conditioned to think only in scientific and positivistic terms, they fail to see the price to be paid.  The nuclear bomb, nicknamed “The Gadget” by its one-dimensional, sick scientific inventors, is an accident waiting to happen, unless human madness first leads to its intended use once again.

Or unless we can first discover the spiritual power to eliminate what we have created.

Now we have what Virilio calls the “information bomb,” the glut of information that overloads people’s ability to think clearly or to concentrate, but a boom to the elites who think they are in full control of people’s minds and the technology they promote.

On the ramparts of Castelo De S. Jorge, the tourists snap photo after photo with their cell phones, failing to realize that these memories they are “shooting” from the heights where canons once shot the infidels, have imprisoned them in a dungeon as deep and dark as the one in the castle below their feet.

Visiting castles, like so many trips into the past, can awaken one to the truth of human history or put one to sleep.  It is usually the latter.

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassett, who lived here in Lisbon for a year after fleeing Franco’s Spain, said it best: “The only genuine ideas are the ideas of the shipwrecked.  All the rest is rhetoric, farce.”

We are all shipwrecked now, not just the Portuguese sailors long lost at sea never to return to home despite the lament of the Fado singers.

If we are to make this earth our home again, we had better learn to sing a different tune.  If not, we will be eliminated by accident or intent, and no one will be singing for our return.  It is a harsh truth, but quite simple.

In the Foz district of Porto, Portugal on the Atlantic, in the park and on the beaches, children play and laugh and the music of their voices rises into the air to remind me that they are our hope on this dark and tempestuous sea on which we are shipwrecked, hoping to find our way home.

Dostoevsky said it well: “The soul is healed by being with children.”

Can we hear their voices, singing?

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

When Noam Chomsky first observed that the United States had attacked South Vietnam, he was upending a particularly tedious case of media conformism from that era, namely that the West was fighting Communists in the North to defend Saigon. However, the young professor was spectacularly right. By the end of the war, two thirds of US bombs – twice the total tonnage detonated in the Second World War – had fallen on the South.

The leading military historian Bernard Fall – who believed in the US presence there – said at the time that

‘Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity… is threatened with extinction… [as] the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size.’

Yet, as Chomsky argued, mainstream media opinion saw US actions in Vietnam either ‘as a “noble cause” that could have been won with more dedication,’ or, on the other side of the political spectrum, the critics spoke of ‘“a mistake” that proved too costly’.

The war consumed everything like a vortex: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, even Bernard Fall himself was killed by a landmine.

Timor limited

Similarly, when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, Chomsky and his co-author, Edward S Herman, cut lonely figures in observing that the attack had even happened. Aerial bombing, mass executions and enforced famine claimed 200,000 lives, but the occupation received almost no US coverage whatsoever.

We found that reporting on East Timor in Canadian papers like The Globe and Mail declined after the invasion and virtually flatlined as the atrocities reached their peak in 1978. Two decades on, Elaine Brière’s documentary Bitter Paradise: The Sell-Out of East Timor (1996) told the story but was itself bought – and then buried – by a major Canadian outlet.

The other exception was John Pilger’s Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1994), which was broadcast in Britain by ITV. Pilger, director David Munro and journalist Christopher Wenner had entered Timor posing as representatives of a travel firm and the film exposed Western complicity in what most analysts consider genocide.

Pilger cited former CIA officer C Philip Liechty, who was stationed in Jakarta, saying that Indonesian

president Suharto ‘was given the green light [by the US] to do what he did. We supplied them with everything they needed [from] M16 rifles [to] US military logistical support…. When the atrocities began to appear in the CIA reporting, the way they dealt with these was to cover them up as long as possible.’

Paired examples

As media scholars critically engaged with Herman and Chomsky’s work on propaganda, we are particularly interested in perspectives that are ignored in the mainstream, especially by the most progressive news media outlets.

Over the past 10 years, in a series of peer-reviewed studies about Western media representations of numerous countries, we have observed that the West’s enemies are still portrayed very differently to those of its allies such as those Cold War-era dictatorships in South Vietnam and Indonesia.

Crimes by ‘anti-Western’ regimes in places like Serbia/Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria routinely prompt media campaigns for external intervention. While such moral indignation can be justified, the US and UK – alongside allies such as Israel, Egypt and Colombia – commit atrocities that are given a constructive spin or only token coverage.

Some coups are cool

For example, our work shows how Venezuela has been demonised in the media as a ‘socialist dictatorship’ since the 1998 presidential election of the wildly-popular Hugo Chavez.

Following a 2002 coup, the New York Times, for example, endorsed a short-lived US-backed dictatorship in Venezuela as a ‘refreshing manifestation of democracy‘. And the mainstream press – not to forget some blood-curdling video games – have continued to advocate another coup against Chavez’s successor Nicolás Maduro, elected president in 2013, which the media justify on the grounds of his alleged economic mismanagement.

When, on 30 April 2019, opposition politician and self-appointed president Juan Guaidó called on the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro, Western media outlets were reluctant even to call this an attempted coup.

A survey by the US media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that literally no elite US commentators opposed the April 2019 coup attempt, describing it as an ‘uprising‘, a ‘protest‘, or even an ‘opposition-led military-backed challenge‘.

Fresh US/UK sanctions have been celebrated in the mainstream media, even as they exacerbate the crisis. The United States has blocked the importation of insulin, dialysis machines, cancer and HIV medication, including those Venezuela had already paid for.

As a result specifically of the sanctions, 40,000 Venezuelans died between August 2017 and December 2018 alone, according to a report produced by leading economists at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. The report establishes in detail how in the absence of sanctions a state with such ‘vast oil reserves would… have the ability to avoid this kind of an economic crisis’.

As part of a March 2019 Veterans For Peace delegation to Venezuela, Dan Shea, a US veteran from Portland, Oregon, asked us why,

‘if America is there out of humanitarian concerns, does the US put sanctions on people, to starve them, to take their medications away, to not allow them to have some quality of life? It is against the Geneva Conventions to stop medical supplies and food from coming in. They’re stopping everything from coming in and then the US turns around and blames the Maduro government for it.’

The sanctions were formally condemned at the United Nations, with a former secretary of the UN human rights council describing them as akin to a medieval siege and a ‘crime against humanity.’ None of this information has appeared in any mainstream national publication in the US or UK, except in one report for the Independent.

War of altruism

Venezuela is merely the rule, not the exception. Back in February 2011, when conflict erupted between the Libyan government and opposition groups, our news media depicted the actions of the Libyan government as indiscriminate crimes, ordered by the highest levels of government. However, it transpired that the Libyan security forces had not indiscriminately targeted protesters after all, as the UK house of commons later confirmed.

One of just two New York Times articles critical of the subsequent French-led NATO intervention in Libya, identified in a systematic postgraduate study, lamented the ‘folly’ of ‘endless wars of altruism’. They also opposed the war for tactical reasons while ignoring the views of academics critical of the intervention at much more fundamental levels.

It thus hardly mattered for the news media when the NATO intervention, according to a study in the high ranked journal International Security, magnified the death toll in Libya by at least seven times.

Mideast murders

In Egypt, after the military overthrew the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on 3 July 2013, protesters occupied Rab’a al-Adawiya Square in Cairo, calling for Morsi’s reinstatement.

On 14 August, Egyptian security forces under general Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – a valuable Western ally who would become president in 2014 after a coup – killed 817 people while dispersing the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in.

Human Rights Watch called it ‘one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history’ – but it led only to mild rebukes in the Western news media and among the diplomatic community.

Al-Sisi, after all, was considered to be a more stable leader, in the mould of former president Hosni Mubarak. To this day, the New York Times refrains from labelling al-Sisi a ‘dictator’ – despite him now being due to rule until 2034 – instead referring to him as a ‘bulwark against Islamist militancy‘.

Not that the West is opposed to Islamic fundamentalists per se. Another key Western ally, Saudi Arabia, is only now starting to struggle with its human rights narrative. Saudi’s war against the people of Yemen has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

At the same time, US intelligence concluded that its dictator ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The grisly killing and dismemberment of the Washington Post journalist was widely reported and condemned in the media, but coverage of the war in Yemen has been woeful, especially in the first years of the conflict.

In an incredible rationalisation that passed without comment, the UK’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt recently insinuated in Politico magazine that by being the second largest weapons dealer to Saudi Arabia, the UK is uniquely placed to help stop the violence soon. Somehow, sometime – after four years and counting.

War is peace, indeed.

Red herring

And then there’s ‘Russiagate‘, the jaw-dropping master narrative, long touted by US Democrats, that Russian president Vladimir Putin secretly controls US president Donald Trump by threatening to expose his secrets – and has interfered with ballot boxes and social media to manipulate US foreign policy and fix the 2016 US presidential election.

The long-awaited Mueller report into these alleged dealings substantially weakened the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, even while far more evident influences, such as massive corporations and the Israeli government and, indeed, the enormous influence of the US itself on other countries’ democratic systems, has been softballed.

The ‘Russiagate’ narrative also collapses when we examine the political advertising data. According to Facebook, a Russian firm, the Internet Research Agency, spent about $100,000 on Facebook ads during the 2016 US presidential election cycle. In contrast, the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump election campaigns together spent $81 million on Facebook ads.

Furthermore, unlike the Russian agency, the Trump and Clinton campaign teams also worked with the social media giants to strengthen their performance online. Facebook even sent staff to assist the Trump campaign as it spent tens of millions on the platform.

As communications scholars Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor comment:

‘Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election has come under extraordinary scrutiny…. But our research shows another, less discussed aspect of Facebook’s political influence was far more consequential in terms of the election outcome. The entirely routine use of Facebook by Trump’s campaign and others – a major part of the $1.1 billion of paid digital advertising during the cycle – is likely to have had far greater reach than Russian bots and fake news sites.’ (The $1.1bn includes spending by politicians and groups outside the Trump and Clinton campaigns.)

Yet, the last time a ‘Russiagate’ sceptic was allowed on MSNBC, the most liberal television network in the US, was in January 2017, just as Trump took office.

‘Russiagate’ has provoked a new Cold War. Moreover, the media’s obsession with Russia has shifted media attention yet further away from the Trump administration’s other, more dangerous, actions on issues such as climate change, abortion rights and corporate bailouts.

Not all news values are determined by powerful forces. Nor is it surprising or necessarily harmful that consensus forms around certain ideas. But power is strikingly relevant and consensus views clearly correlate with elite interests.

As global mass movements react to multiple foreign policy failures in an era of misrule, major media institutions still routinely support their state’s narrative lines.

Mass distraction

Perhaps they did so most spectacularly over Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction fiasco. Major studies on US and UK media reporting of the Iraq War suggest that news discourses mirrored the views held by powerful political and military elites. It was hardly on the agenda of the media that the invasion-occupation of Iraq constituted aggression, the supreme international crime in international law.

That said, at least the cameras were rolling when the 2003 invasion began a campaign that contributed to a six-figure number of violent deaths – by even the most conservative estimates.

One might ask where were those great Western pens and lenses in the preceding decade, when sanctions led to an explosion in child deaths – the numbers are still debated but the best indications are that they were comparable to the extremely high casualties caused by the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation.

Similarly, our work suggests that the war in Syria has been reported in a highly partisan fashion mirroring the media’s poor performance during the Iraq War. According to veteran correspondent Patrick Cockburn,

‘Western news organisations have almost entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side’ of the conflict.

As a consequence, according to Cockburn,

‘fabricated news and one-sided reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the First World War’.

Lies in Syria

To add one further example: the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been tasked to investigate alleged chemical attacks in the Syrian conflict via its Fact-Finding Mission (FFM).

In 2019, anonymous OPCW whistleblowers leaked inside information about the fact-gathering process of the FFM, as well as an engineering assessment that was seemingly suppressed by the OPCW.

These leaks to the UK-based ‘Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media’ (WGSPM), together with other facts assembled by the WGSPM, indicate that some of the OPCW’s reports had been manipulated by the technical secretariat that heads the FFM.

A report by the WGSPM suggests that the technical secretariat has been co-opted by an alliance of state parties led by France, the UK and the US.

It further suggests that some of the OPCW’s reports have excluded or ignored evidence that some of the alleged chemical attacks in Syria might have been staged.

These revelations indicate that Syrian opposition forces might have manufactured atrocities to incite ‘humanitarian’ military intervention by the West.

In fact, one of the alleged chemical attacks whose authorship is now in question was the April 2018 attack in Douma that triggered a series of strikes by France, the US and the UK.

This story of the OPCW leaks has exploded in the independent media but has been largely confined in the mainstream to the columns of Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail and Robert Fisk in the Independent (the story has also been reported by France24/AFP and Fox News).

Abuse, not truth

National media systems everywhere, far from challenging state-corporate abuses, as they invariably claim, routinely defend them. This is a problem in both autocracies and democracies, and in both the East and West. It is a situation that conforms to the predictions advanced by Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model with regard to patterns of media performance.

Millions do die. These are avoidable deaths caused by powerful individuals and institutions in the West through the predictable consequences of economic and military warfare.

None of this is even to touch on the long-trailing bloodstains left in the wake of certain bloated and coddled industries operating from our shores – notably tobacco, mining, and armaments, or the grossly disproportionateeffect that Western militaries have on pollution and global warming, or what fresh hell might be unleashed at any minute over Iran or even China and Russia.

Uncontested contrary facts, reliable analysis and well-presented alternative narratives can be found in a wide range of sources, such as Media Lens, but in even the most laudable corporate outlets they are piecemeal at best.

The media is complicit. And it happens all the time.

In fact it just did.

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How this article was censored

We set out in Spring 2019 to write a short and very readable article for the mainstream press, which critiqued the media’s treatment of Western foreign policy. As we expected, our efforts were roundly ignored.

However, as fate would have it, one leading liberal publication was excited by the project. Not only that, they worked closely with us for several weeks to create a version of the piece we all thought was exceptionally well done.

Its editor even generated a uniquely stark headline: ‘How Western media amplifies and rationalises state-sanctioned war and violence – while millions die’.

The article was due to be published on a Thursday morning in April but the head editor intervened as a final check. An hour later, we were called on the phone by the first editor to say there was a problem and delay.

‘While millions die’ had been deleted from the title. All references to Western involvement in East Timor, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Venezuela had been removed. Our references to Ed Herman, Noam Chomsky, and even our own status as scholars of propaganda had been removed.

The head editor was confused by our criticism of the _New York Times_, supposing that their twisted use of criticism of the NATO intervention in Libya (lamenting the ‘folly’ of ‘endless wars of altruism’) was a ‘good thing’ by our terms. Would it be a good or legitimate criticism of, say, Syrian dictator Assad, we responded, to lambast him for pursuing ‘endless wars of altruism’?

Our paragraph on the NATO bombing of Libya was annotated with: ‘Needs line in here about nature of Gaddafi regime. Can’t ignore its atrocities.’ In response, we observed that official sources made it clear that it was our side and our ‘rebels’ in Libya, specifically not the Gaddafi government, who conducted large-scale human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing – against black Africans.

Our piece had been extensively hyperlinked to the most thorough and reliable sources available, including our own original peer-reviewed journal articles. We responded to every query raised and maintained weekly contact with the publication for over a month before finally being told that we should take it elsewhere.

Noam Chomsky wrote to us as the events unfolded:

‘Quite a tale. While these statements [about historical US war crimes] were highly controversial at the time, I thought even the mainstream might tolerate them today – transmuting them to ancient history, mistakes, and so on.’ Amidst Chomsky’s ‘shock’ and ‘surprise’ at the unusually-pointed and clearly-documented nature of our publishing experience, he observed that ‘unfortunately, it’s the norm’.

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Dr Matthew Alford lectures in American Studies & International Relations at the University of Bath, UK.

Professor Daniel Broudy lectures in Applied Linguistics at Okinawa Christian University, Japan.

Dr Jeffery Klaehn is an independent scholar in Canada.

Dr Alan MacLeod is a journalist for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and

Dr Florian Zollmann teaches journalism at Newcastle University: both are based in the UK.

The Middle East is heading for “maximum danger” following the “maximum pressure” imposed on Iran by US President Donald Trump who, unilaterally and unlawfully, withdrew over a year ago from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the nuclear agreement, and imposed harsh sanctions on Iran that Tehran considers a declaration of economic war. Trump’s move against Iran has provoked a gathering storm of tanker wars, the mutual detention of tankers by Iran and Britain. Indeed, the US administration has been pushing London to confront Iran starting from the capture of an Iranian super tanker (Grace 1) at Gibraltar on July 4, which has now triggered an Iranian tit-for-tat reaction (capturing a British tanker in the Straits of Hormuz). While the US and the UK are walking, along with Iran, on the edge of the abyss, the Iranian supreme leader, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, has publicly proclaimed “three points of guidance” for officials in the country, which includes a road map to follow even in his own absence.

Iran has detained a British oil tanker “Stena Impero” hours after the British High Court of Gibraltar announced the extension of an additional month of the arrest of Iranian tanker “Grace 1”, carrying two million barrels of oil. When this news reached the Iranian leadership, they realised that mediation efforts by French President Emmanuel Macron had stumbled and that it was time for Iran to take the matter in hand.

This does not mean that Iran is closing the door to French diplomacy or attempts by other intermediary states to de-escalate the extremely tense situation that is intensifying daily in the Middle East, particularly with the gathering of new British naval war vessels and the arrival of additional US military forces in Saudi Arabia.

President Emmanuel Macron’s chief adviser, Ambassador Emmanuel Bonne, had visited Tehran this month and met with Iranian leaders, and he promised to intervene to secure the release of the Iranian super tanker Grace 1 and to play a mediation role between Tehran and Washington.

According to Iranian sources, the detention of the Iranian super tanker was an effort by the US to implicate Europe further in the US offensive against Iran. The US is lurking behind London, watching the first recent UK confrontation with Tehran escalate, as Iranian Special Forces took the situation in hand and confiscated a British tanker.

The US seems to have pushed the UK to take the decision to hold Grace 1 at the beginning of the tanker crisis, in response to Iran’s downing of a US drone. Unfortunately, London agreed to become involved on behalf of its US ally, further confirming European apprehensions about effects of the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, which European states did not support– since Iran has not violated any clause of the agreement for 14 months.

The US decision to revoke the nuclear deal and the US “maximum sanctions” imposed on Iran are in fact causing mounting pressure and increased danger of a possible war in the Middle East.

It is clear that Iran does not intend to back down in the face of US sanctions and aggression. The Middle East is on the path towards “maximum danger” because Iran considers itself already at (economic) war with the US and its allies. At this stage Iran does not differentiate between the economic war imposed by the US administration and a military war: the results in both cases are devastating.

I learned that Sayyed Ali Khamenei met with the Iranian leaders and gave three directives for Iran to follow, whatever difficulties might arise at any time in the future, as fixed principles.

“The US is seemingly aware of Tehran’s planning and objectives. This is why this administration, like previous ones, tried to thwart Iran’s nuclear and missile development, and support for its allies- to no avail”, said the source.

Khamenei’s directives are:

1 – Adherence to Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment and everything related to this science at all costs. Nuclear enrichment is a sword Iran can hold in the face of the West, which wants to take it from Tehran. It is Iran’s card to obstruct any US intention of “obliterating” Iran.

2 – Continue to develop Iran’s missile capability and ballistic programs. This is Iran’s deterrent weapon that prevents its enemies from waging war against it. Sayyed Ali Khamenei considers the missile program a balancing power to prevent harm against Iran.

3 – Support Iran’s allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and never abandon them, because they are essential to Iran’s national security.

Sayyed Khamenei’s three points are a response to the 12 conditions announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who asked the Iranian government to stop its nuclear and missile programs and abandon its allies in the Middle East, thus depriving Iran of any defence, and turning it into a vulnerable country.

Sources added: “Sayyed Khamenei recommended these commandments to preserve the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that each of these three items is equally important for the safety of Iran, its existence and continuity, and national and strategic security.”

Iran began to develop its missile capabilities under US sanctions. It has developed its nuclear program during the 40 years that the US has imposed a suffocating blockade on the country. Today, Iran has reached a very advanced stage in both programs to the extent that it will never retreat on either initiative, but will continue to move forward.

As for its allies, recent years have shown how Iran and its allies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, have been able to take the initiative in the Middle East and turn things in their favour.

It is not unlikely that Tehran will set up ballistic missiles at close range to the enemies or countries that could be targeted by these missiles. Its allies will defend Iran at a moment’s notice.

The situation today is as follow: Iran has detained the British tanker “Stena Impero” along with its 23 crew members in Bandar Abbas pending the release of its carrier Grace 1. The US Central Command has announced that it is working with its allies to secure freedom of movement. Iran has threatened to not allow any oil exports from the Persian Gulf region if it cannot export its own oil. Tehran downed an American drone. Trump himself announced the shooting down of an unmanned Iranian drone –a claim Iran denies – thus placing himself on the same level as the Iranian IRGC- which Trump calls a terrorist group!

The US is sending new troops to Saudi Arabia, and Britain has sent additional war vessels in the Persian Gulf. All this deployment in a small area in the Middle East, a narrow strait that can hardly accommodate all these events. The region is heading towards maximum danger where all countries and allies are putting their hands on the trigger instead of going to the negotiating table and respecting the agreements signed. What comes next may be even worse.

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Featured image is from the author

On July 1, the Japanese government announced it would impose restrictions on the sale of special chemicals to the Republic of Korea (ROK) that are required for use in its massive semiconductor industry. It took effect on July 4. It is claiming that this is due to some companies illegally re-exporting these materials to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in violation of international sanctions

Seoul, however, is convinced that it’s in retaliation for its demand that Japanese companies pay restitution to the forced laborers that it abused during World War II. Observers all across the world are very worried that this dispute could further disrupt the global supply chain of high-tech products that has already been somewhat destabilized by the U.S.’ trade war against China.

ROK activists hold a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, ROK, July 11, 2019. /VCG Photo

What most commentators are missing, however, is that this event debunks many of the Western mainstream media’s anti-Chinese narratives, especially the one regarding the scenario of China weaponizing its economic role in the world for political ends. Far from worrying about Beijing restricting the export of rare earth minerals to other countries to win the trade war, nothing of the sort has yet to transpire. It’s actually none other than the U.S.’ top Asian ally, Japan, that’s proven itself willing to start its own trade war for seemingly political reasons.

That might not be a coincidence either since the Pentagon’s recently released “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” proudly proclaims that “The U.S.-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.” Although the document doesn’t focus on economic security much, the implications of trade disputes on ordinary people can be wide-ranging. It shouldn’t also be forgotten that Prime Minister Abe is a close friend of President Trump, with the two seeing eye-to-eye on most issues.

Bearing this in mind and against the background of the latest ROK-Japanese trade dispute, it certainly seems like Tokyo is applying Washington’s trade war strategy against Seoul. Whether Japan is acting on its own initiative after misinterpreting American signals or if it’s receiving tacit encouragement behind the scenes is inconsequential in the sense it doesn’t change the fact that Tokyo is weaponizing economic instruments for perceived political ends just like Washington is.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Kono (L) holds a meeting with ROK Ambassador to Japan Nam Gwan-pyo (R) at his office in foreign ministry in Tokyo, Japan, July 19, 2019. /VCG Photo

China and ROK are therefore both victims of separate trade wars that might even possibly be connected to an uncertain degree. It puts them in the same position vis-a-vis their relationships with the U.S. and Japan respectively, and creates the conditions for both of them to possibly work closely together from here on out. Just like the U.S. wrongly thought that it would bring China to its knees with tariffs, so too did Japan wrongly think that it could do the same to ROK by restricting the sale of indispensable semi-conductor chemicals to it as well. It suggests that America’s top Asian ally is following a similarly flawed strategy as its patron.

As has been the trend since President Trump first started waging his trade war, these sorts of aggressive unconventional campaigns have a tendency to backfire against their practitioners, as Japan will soon find out too. Both countries’ international reputations have been marred by their unprovoked economic attacks against their two victims. The situation might also draw China and ROK even closer together. In addition, the rest of the world is now seeing that economic warfare isn’t “natural,” but is driven by political motives, whether ambitions of global leadership in the U.S.’ case or avoiding its ethical post-war responsibilities in Japan’s.

Most importantly, though, the world now knows that the Western mainstream media’s fearmongering about China was based on nothing but falsehoods since the exact same scenarios that they said Beijing would end up pulling have actually been fulfilled by Washington, and now Tokyo. It’s in the interests of everyone (except of course the U.S.) that Japan stops following in America’s strategic footsteps and realizes that the future lays in non-politicized trade between nations along the lines of what China’s Belt & Road Initiative is trying to achieve, not the wielding of economic instruments as weapons of political warfare against its former colony.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Featured image is from CGTN 

The US-led war of terror against Syria continues its most recent attacks via attrition terrorism, the brutal form of slow genocide against the Syrian citizenry. Yesterday, NATO countries beloved ‘armed moderates’ attacked a phosphate freight train in eastern Homs.

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The phosphate freight train in the eastern Homs countryside was attacked 21 July by a sabotage terrorist, which led to the towing of the locomotive, the passenger car, the calibration truck, the phosphate tanks, the fire in the locomotive, the train crew were injured and the necessary treatment and treatment provided. The Ministry of Transport said in a statement received by SANA copy that terrorists infiltrated the site of the railway between the positions of the gap and insight and planted an explosive device on the train line next to the phosphate mines in the region of Khnevis in the eastern Homs. The ministry indicated that its technical workshops have begun work to remove the damage caused by the terrorist attack, repair the railway and resume transport operations.

As the sons and daughters of Syrians — the Syrian Arab Army — continue to make military gains to cleanse every inch of the Republic from foreign-owned savages, attrition terrorism has seen a massive spike, in recent weeks.

In less than one month, oil and gas pipelines have been sabotaged around the country:

• 22 June, undersea pipelines from tankers to the Baniyas Refinery were cut. Though Syrian engineers and technicians were able to quickly make repairs, oil pollution traveled 26km. It is noteworthy that MSM, UN, and ecology activists were all mute over this near disaster, but that NATO-media came to life to cheer the English royal thugs piracy against an Iranian tanker that was suspected of carrying crude to the SAR (warmongering media now screeching that the EU is screeching about a Brit tanker boarded by the government of Iran, in compliance with international law). Empire media also remains mute over the economic terrorism euphemistically called ‘sanctions‘ imposed against the Syrian people.
• 14 July, NATO and Gulfie armed savages engaged in attrition terrorism, sabotaging the al Shaer Gas pipeline in Homs, which was almost immediately repaired.

Though the warmonger media of NATO countries have ignored the recent spike in attrition terrorism against Syria’s essential infrastructure, they have continued to pimp out emotional war porn, breaching Nuremberg Principle VI, crimes against humanity: On 11 July, Channel 4 ran a report that could fit into an insanity screenwriting genre.

AFP again is demanding its readers engage in Hollywood suspension of disbelief; while ignoring the atrocities against Syria, today it shamelessly runs another photo, one of an ongoing series of miracles in the lives of the stethoscope-less, CPR-less, spinal precautions-less death squad fake paramedics.

Here we have yet another photo of man ‘rescued from the rubble.’ As with every other similar photograph, this man has no crushing injuries — which would be expected if a bombed building fell on him. He is fully ambulatory and is able to move all extremities. He has nicely painted the shade of Helmets Gray Rubble, and his hair was coiffed before having been painted.

Another miraculous Zombie Man rescue. No crushing injuries. Fully ambulatory.
This absurdity — or another in ongoing miracles — is not quite as ludicrous as other Helmets Productions, shown here.

Attrition terrorism is not limited to the wanton, criminal destruction of essential infrastructure. Attrition terrorism includes ‘brain drain’ assassinations; in the early days, when all of al Qaeda in Syria was FSA, these ‘moderates’ murdered professors, physicians, and heads of hospitals, while NATO media remained silent. Attrition terrorism includes trying to destroy joy, as was attempted with the terror bombing of the Damascus Fair in 2017, and more recently, in the mortar attacks on Aleppo, as the city celebrates its rebuilding, creation of a mini-renaissance.

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Featured image: US/EU supported terrorists attacked phosphate train in Homs, latest crime in terrorist attrition. (Source: SANA)

We first start to lose the truth when we enter the ring of war propaganda, which is the Western press. The lies, the omissions, the false equivalencies, the fabricated narratives, all grow there, mostly undetected.

In Western books promoted by Western publishers we read about Bana Alabed and “White Helmet Saviours” but it isn’t the truth either. It is vile war propaganda.

When we accept the War Lies as the Truth, as so many of us do now and so many have done in the past, we become easily manipulated cogs in an apparatus of deception.  And we become complicit in the vast crimes waged in our names.

In opposition to Western governments and their agencies, is the “Axis of Resistance”, that defends and upholds the rule of international law and the inviolability of nation-state sovereignty.

If Westerners were to free themselves from the Press and scrape off the layers of war propaganda, they would recall that it is the West that is waging a publicly- proclaimed Regime Change war against Syria.  Syria is not waging a war of aggression against us. Syria and its allies are acting within the framework of international law. The West is not. The West rejects international law as policy.

The truth about Syria shines brightest when Syrians themselves speak. They are the ones on the front lines, combatting Western terrorism and barbarism, and ignorance, and stupidity. They are the heroes and heroines of the on-going Western imposed catastrophe – whether the history books tell us so or not.

In the interview below, conducted by Vanessa Beeley, the evidence-based Truth shines brightly for all who care to listen.  Throughout the interview, Dr. Issam Hawsheh, Director of Al Sqeilbiyyeh National Hospital, describes the impacts of the criminal economic warfare that the West wages against Syria and Syrians.  He describes the atrocities that Western-supported terrorists inflict on Syrians, and he assesses the war propaganda against Syria.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

China is South America’s top trading partner. Together, China’s policy banks – the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China – are the top source of development finance for the whole of Latin America. 

Over the past few decades, the Brazilian government, leading national companies and multinational corporations have configured what Fernando Mires, already in 1990, defined as the “Amazon mode of production”: a terribly predatory, technological-intensive mode of production and destruction, including subjugation of indigenous populations in slave-based working conditions, with everything geared for export to global markets.

The Amazon is spread out over 6.5 million square kilometers covering two-fifths of Latin America – half of Peru, a third of Colombia, a great deal of Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname, and most of all, 3.5 million square kilometers in Brazil.

The original population diversity was staggering. Before the arrival of the Europeans in Brazil in 1500, there were no less than 1,400 tribes, 60% of them in the Amazon. Ethnologists marveled that nowhere else in the world compared to the linguistic diversity in tropical South America.

The Tupi-guarani tribe even constituted a sort of “empire”, occupying a huge territory from the Andes to the Pampas in southern Brazil. A sort of “proto-state” traded with the Andes and the Caribbean. This all laid to rest the Western-peddled myth of a “savage”, un-civilized Amazon.

Now let’s fast-forward to the current Western outcry over the Jair Bolsonaro government’s destruction of the Amazon.

Brazil, still under the second presidential term of Dilma Rousseff – later impeached under spurious charges – was a signatory of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. Article 5 of the agreement rules that parties “should take action” to preserve endangered forests. Brasilia pledged to protect the Amazon by restoring 12 million hectares of forests by 2030.  

And yet under Bolsonaro, “should take action” metastasized into “reverse previous action.” The new mantra is “Amazon development.” In fact, a turbo-charged and even more predatory 2.0 version of the “Amazon mode of production,” much to the horror of Western environmentalists, who fear an imminent transformation of the Amazon into a dry savanna, with dire consequences for the whole planet.

Staggering natural wealth

The Brazilian Army is fond of noting that the Amazon’s natural wealth has been evaluated at a staggering $23 trillion. This is a 2017 figure announced by General Eduardo Villas Boas, who added:

“Brazil is a highly endowed individual imprisoned in the body of a teenager. The Amazon is practically abandoned, there’s no national project and density of thinking.”

In fact, there is a national (military) project to “develop” the Amazon at breakneck pace, while preventing, by all means, the “Balkanization of the Amazon” and the action of Western NGOs.

In April this year, one of Bolsonaro’s sons posted a video of Dad engaged in a “surprising” conversation with four indigenous people in Brasilia.

Top anthropologist Piero Leirner – a specialist on the Brazilian military and their activities in the Amazon – explains the context. The Bolsonaro government carefully picked four natives involved in the business of soybeans and mining. They spoke for themselves. Immediately after, an official indigenous people association released a letter disowning them.

“That was classic Divide and Conquer,” Leirner argued. “Nobody paid attention to the letter. For most of Brazil, the case was closed in terms of ‘social communication’ – solidifying the government’s narrative of NGOs fighting for the internationalization of the Amazon.”

Mining giants in Brazil would rather have indigenous peoples as spokespersons instead of the military. In fact, it’s a maze of interlocking interests – as in captains and colonels in business with mining entrepreneurs acting in protected indigenous areas.

What happened during these past few years is that most indigenous peoples ended up figuring out they cannot win – whatever the scenario. As Leirner explained:

“Belo Monte [the world’s third-largest dam] unveiled the real game: in the end, the dam practically works to the benefit of mining companies, and opened space for Belo Sun, which will excavate the whole of Xingu in search of gold.”

So that’s the perverse project inbuilt in the “development of the Amazon” – to turn indigenous peoples into a sub-proletarian workforce in mining operations.

And then there’s the crucial – for the industrialized West – niobium angle (a metal known for its hardness). Roughly 78% of Brazilian niobium reserves are located in the southeast, not in the Amazon, which accounts at best for 18%. The abundance of niobium in Brazil will last all the way to 2200 – even taking into consideration non-stop, exponential Chinese GDP growth. But the Amazon is not about niobium. It’s about gold – to be duly shipped to the West.

Rolling down the river

Bolsonaro is keen to bring roads, bridges and hydroelectric plants to the most remote areas of the Amazon. Under the “sovereignty” mantra, he has promised to impose the hand of the state in the strategic Triple-A area – Amazon, Andes, Atlantic Ocean – thus countering the alleged intent of Western NGOs of creating an independent strip for environmental preservation.

So, how does China fit into the Amazon puzzle? A recent report addresses some of the hard questions. 

Since last year, Beijing officially started to consider the whole of Latin America as a “natural extension” of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as an “indispensable partner.” That was spelled out by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the 2018 China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Ministerial Forum.

All of BRI’s guidelines now apply – and that includes the Amazon: policy cooperation, infrastructure development, investment and trade facilitation, financial integration, and cultural and social exchange.

China’s internal green drive – restricting coal production, supporting solar panel factories, remaking Hainan island into an eco-development zone – will have to be translated into its projects in the Amazon. That means Chinese companies will need to pay extremely close attention to local communities, especially indigenous people. And that also means that the Chinese will be under intense scrutiny by Western NGOs.

Brazil may have ratified the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, known as ILO 169, which enshrines the rights of indigenous communities to be consulted by the state on decisions that directly affect them.

Yet with less than seven months of Bolsonaro in power, all that is in effect null and void.

There’s slim hope that an exhaustive set of guidelines for large projects in the Amazon established by the Center of Sustainability Studies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, linked to the World Bank, may be respected by the government. But no one is holding their breath.

Key projects with Chinese involvement include the Amazon waterway in Peru, which featured prior consultations with over 400 indigenous villages, according to the government in Lima.

But most of all there’s the $2.8 billion, under construction 2,500 km-long Belo Monte Transmission Line, with an installed capacity of 11.2 gigawatts. China’s State Grid is part of the consortium, with financing coming from the Brazilian National Development Bank. The first and second transmission lines directly affect the Amazon ecosystem and run near 10 conservation areas and an array of ethnic groups.

The “China in the Amazon” report correctly notes that

“Chinese companies are not well attuned to the importance of direct engagement with local non-governmental stakeholders, and have faced repeated costs, work stoppages, and delays as a result. Chinese deference to host-country policies should extend to the commitments by host countries to international treaties and law, such as ILO 169 and its standard of free, prior, and informed consent for indigenous peoples. Indigenous organizations and civil society organizations in the Amazon region have a long and strong trajectory of actively participating in government decisions relating to the use of indigenous territories and natural resources.”

The report suggests establishing a “multidisciplinary working group comprised of NGOs, local indigenous groups, academics, and scientists to review existing principles and standards” for sustainable infrastructure projects.

The chances of this being adopted by the Bolsonaro administration and endorsed by the Brazilian military are less than zero. The Big Picture in Brazil under Bolsonaro spells out neocolonial dependence, over-exploitation of workers, not to mention indigenous peoples, and the complete expropriation of Brazilian natural wealth.

Only a pawn in their game

China may be Brazil’s top trade partner. But Beijing must tread carefully – and strictly enforce BRI guidelines when it comes to projects especially involving the Amazon.

There’s no way the UN Security Council, with climate change in mind, would ever sanction Brazil for the destruction of the Amazon. France and Britain would be for it. But Russia and China – both BRICS members – would certainly abstain, and the US under Trump would vote against it.

Brazil is now a privileged pawn in the most important geopolitical game of the 21st century: the clash between the US and the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The last thing Beijing needs in terms of global public relations is to be branded as an accomplice in the destruction of the Amazon.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The situation in the Middle East is heating up once again.

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.

Pro-Israeli sources speculated that several Iranian-backed fighters and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed or injured in the attack. They further claimed that the targeted positions had been used to store Iranian-delivered rockets.

The Iraqi military released a statement saying that two PMU members were wounded in the attack. The PMU said that no Iranian military advisers or other personnel had been wounded.

The airstrike was likely delivered by the Israeli Air Force. Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to attack Iranian targets across the region. Mainstream Israeli-US propaganda argues that the PMU, likely the most powerful armed formation in Iraq, is an Iranian proxy force.

On July 18, the US claimed that its warship – the USS Boxer, currently positioned in the Persian Gulf downed an Iranian drone flying above it.

In response, Iran released a video of the USS Boxer, presumably filmed by the said drone. The IRGC further said that the drone hadn’t been downed, with the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister mocking the US that it may have “accidentally downed its own drone.”

The US claimed that it could provide evidence that it had destroyed an Iranian UAV, but no such information has been released. Washington did vow to destroy any Iranian drone that flew above its warships from now on.

On July 19, the IRGC seized a UK-tanker – the Stena Impero. It also detained and subsequently released another tanker – the MV Mesdar, with its sailors saying that the IRGC were professional, they boarded the vessel, carried out an inspection and let it go on its way.

The Stena Impero, however, according to the Iranian side had its tracker turned off and collided with a fishing boat, while in Iranian territorial waters. The crew of 23 is on the ship, while an investigation is carried out and their safety is ensured, according to the IRGC. The IRGC boarded the Stena Impero, using a helicopter and military boats.

The British side threatened Iran with “severe consequences” that would likely include sanctions on Iran, as well as more deployments to the Persian Gulf.

To top it all off, UK media alleged that Russia played a part in the seizure of the Stena Impero by spoofing GPS, and thus moving the British tanker into Iranian waters. No evidence to substantiate the claims was provided, but as it has become apparent simply mentioning “Russian malign influence” instantly makes it fact.

The US has continued its military buildup in the region by deploying 500 troops, a Patriot missile defense battery and other equipment to an airbase near Riyadh. The additional troops could potentially participate in clandestine operations to support the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, where it is fighting the Houthis, which Washington sees as Iranian proxies.

Despite all of this, Persian Gulf states maintained a restrained attitude. Although some Gulf countries do not like the regional activities of Iran, they understand that the United States will not be able to protect them in the case of a serious conflict. The consequences of such a war cannot be predicted, and even the United States cannot be confident of victory.

In the case of an attack, Iran could destroy vital facilities in the Persian Gulf, such as oil refineries, hydropower plants and desalination systems. The military doctrine of Iran adopted in 1988 aims to transfer any war to the enemy’s territory. For example, Iran could use Syria, Lebanon and Gaza as a launching pad to strike Israel, similar to the way it uses Yemen against Saudi Arabia. A fully-fledged war could lead to a repartition of influence and the rise of the pro-Iranian Shi’a, which would collapse the oil-rich Sunni monarchies. As a result the world might be overcome by an economic crisis, perhaps even more global than all the previous ones.

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On Monday, The Sun ran a scary story insisting evil Hezbollah sleeper cells are “preparing to strike” the UK in the wake of Iran’s tit-for-tat seizure of a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The newspaper picked up the story from The Telegraph. 

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Intelligence agencies believe Iran has organised and funded sleeper terror cells across Europe including the UK and could greenlight attackshttps://t.co/4mmZmBvuSE

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 22, 2019

As usual, there is no evidence of this, only speculation the corporate propaganda media spins into reality, thus building step-by-step an excuse to attack Iran. 

Iran-backed terror cells could be deployed to launch deadly attacks in the UK, according to intelligence sources quoted last night.

As tensions escalate over the seizure of a British oil tanker, spy chiefs believe Iran may give the green light to its hidden proxy fighters if the crisis deepens.

Should open warfare erupt, MI5 and MI6 think Iran could call upon its network of terrorist sleeper cells to carry out atrocities, The Telegraph reported.

Pair the verbs “could” and “believe” with The Sun’s clickbait headline telling us an attack is a foregone conclusion. Because many if not most people are headline skimmers, this misleading headline has become a fact. It is added to the muddle of fake news and half-truth the media cranks out.

Meanwhile, the US, Israel, and the UK have attempted to destabilize Iran from within the country for more than a decade. Recall Iran’s accusation of black ops run by MI6 terrorists back in 2010. 

 Dr. Ismail Salami wrote in 2012:

British elements were behind five assassinations in 2007 and 2008 in Iran. The detainees said they had been promised USD 20,000 for every assassination. They reportedly received instructions from their commander Jalal Fattahi in Sulaimaniya, Iraq. Fattahi, who was also a commander with the terrorist Komala group, resides in London and has, on the strength of the detainees’ testimonies, conducted a number of assassinations in western Iranian cities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

The Israeli Mossad has carried out an assassination program inside Iran for years, killing scientists allegedly working on a nuclear weapons program that cannot be confirmed. Both the US and Israel worked on the Stuxnet virus to cripple Iranian power plants. The malware subsequently posed a threat to countries outside of Iran. 

It was the 10th anniversary of Stuxnet right around the same time Americans were 10min from striking Iran 2 weeks ago. I wrote about how precedent of Stuxnet, rising tensions, sanctions &the threat of cyberwar are legitimising internet controls in Iran. https://t.co/f0Ol5Mx0YO

— mahsa alimardani 🌒 (@maasalan) July 3, 2019

On Monday, the Iranians released a video documentary on the long history of CIA efforts to undermine and destabilize the country. Titled Mole Hunt, it will air on July 23. 

⚡️⚡️⚡️ Coming soon on @PressTV: Mole Hunt ⚡️⚡️⚡️#Iran has dealt a heavy blow to a @CIA spy network. This documentary will shed more light on #Iran’s counter-intelligence operations. pic.twitter.com/mlQ3e8aqft

Mole Hunt is to be aired on July 23, 1:32 GMT

— Press TV (@PressTV) July 20, 2019

This coincided with Iran claiming it has exposed a number of CIA operatives working on subversion and intelligence gathering programs in the country. 

Iran Releases Photos of CIA Officers Handling Spieshttps://t.co/xeuAJ5J6wE pic.twitter.com/etLnfiPfOF

— Fars News Agency (@EnglishFars) July 22, 2019

According to Trump, however, the capture of CIA operatives never happened. 

The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false. Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot down drone) put out by a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do. Their Economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2019

The success of the ongoing plan to malnourish children and inflict “maximum pressure” on ordinary Iranians is being orchestrated by an Israeli citizen, Sigal Mandelker, the successor to a number of Zionists at the US Treasury. 

All the Iran drama is in the Gulf, but most of the actual action in US Iran policy is in Treasury. Here’s my piece on Sigal Mandelker, the woman running the maximum pressure campaign https://t.co/QTGFAxeQap

— Kathy Gilsinan (@kgilsinan) July 20, 2019

In 2008 she worked at the DOJ and conspired with others, including Mark Filip, John Roth, Alice Fisher, and Jeffrey Sloman to make sure the Mossad’s Epstein child sex blackmail op never came to light. 

Mandelker was also the DOJ official who Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers say permitted his non-prosecution agreement with Miami’s then-US Attorney Alex Acosta in 2007 https://t.co/pyIpDetDUo

— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) July 20, 2019

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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

Next November will mark the 20^th anniversary since the so-called “Battle of Seattle.” It refers to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference held at Seattle, WA, in late 1999, which became the scene of widely-reported protest activity and civil unrest. That’s why it was subsequently called colloquially the “Battle of Seattle.”

I recently watched with interest and great sympathy the videotaped protests of the anti-globalization activists in a collection of five videos entitled Showdown in Seattle (1999). Tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated in the streets of Seattle from November 26 to December 1, 1999, for labor rights and against the abuses of the corporate state, including the government-sanctioned degradation of our environment in the name of capitalist greed and profit. I found myself fully agreeing with their views on how economic globalization and global trade should benefit everybody, especially the world’s poor (globalization’s “losers”), rather than just the rich and politically mighty (globalization’s “winners”). I was shocked to see how the peaceful protesters against the WTO were attacked and mauled by the Seattle police force—reinforced by two battalions of the Washington Army National Guard, the 81^st Brigade of the Washington State Patrol, and many other local law-enforcement and paramilitary agents—in the same violent and brutal manner that the Occupy Wall Street movement would be assaulted and suppressed a decade later.

You can see from the five videos that what happened in Seattle was—as aptly described by many eyewitnesses—an officially-sponsored “police riot,” in which heavily-armed troopers covered from head to toe in black Darth Vader-like armor used the city Mayor-imposed “state of emergency” and “curfew” as an excuse to resort to brute force—using truncheons, beatings, attack dogs, plastic bullets, water cannon, tear-gas cannisters, pepper spray, tasers, stun grenades, even armored cars and helicopters, They made mass arrests in downtown Seattle’s 50-bloc “No-Protest Zone” in violation of the protesters’ constitutionally-guaranteed rights to peaceful assembly and free speech. And what was the official justification for such excessive use of violent police-state tactics? A few store windows had been smashed by roving gangs of masked “anarchists” who—as the local media (including the prestigious Seattle Times) reported only a few weeks later—turned out to have been plainclothes policemen acting as undercover agent-provocateurs. The corrupt big media gave very slanted coverage of the street protests—as several participants and one legal observer complain in the Showdown in Seattle videos.

The “turtles”: protestors in sea turtle costumes (CC BY 2.0)

The New York Times lied as usual, falsely accusing the marchers of throwing Molotov cocktails at the police (later its belatedly shamed editors officially retracted this fabricated news story). Instead of being a “voice of the people,” the corporate news media once again served as an obedient mouthpiece for the “Washington Consensus” free-marketeers and their Big Business paymasters. It is amazing that the Bill Clinton administration condoned this thuggish crackdown on peaceful protest, even though the anti-WTO “Big March” included a few prominent Democrats such as the late Senator Paul Wellstone (MN) and Representative Maxine Waters (CA)—both interviewed in one of the videos—as well as Representatives Dennis Kucinich (OH) and George Miller (CA). My favorite Republican, Congressman Ron Paul (TX), reportedly made only a brief appearance—probably deterred by police violence against the “trouble-makers.” A couple of protest leaders were, in fact, snatched death-squad style from the Seattle streets by plainclothes cops in unmarked cars.

Seattle police on Union Street, during the protests (CC BY 2.0)

Numerous participants in the unprecedentedly huge Seattle demonstrations—estimated to have included up to 60,000 people—are seen in the videos carrying placards with slogans like “Shut Down the WTO,” “Resist McDomination,” “Democracy—Not Globalization,” “Fair Trade—Not Free Trade,” and “Save the Family Farms!” Why was corporate globalization so unpopular with so many different people? Why did so many protesters of divergent professional, educational, regional, ethnic, racial, religious, and ideological backgrounds stand united against the WTO? The anti-WTO activists were opposed not to globalization per se but just to corporate globalization. They wanted anti-corporate globalization—the so-called “new internationalism”—because, according to Showdown in Seattle, in the age of capitalist globalization “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” They insisted that nobody was benefiting from corporate globalization except for the global corporations that “rule the world” and their corrupt “servants” in government, as one conservative Republican charged at that time in his now classic bestseller book (David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, Berrett-Koehler, 2^nd edition, 2001). A Nobel Prize-winning former senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank (another major organizational force behind corporate globalization) complained in his bestseller book that the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” as well as between rich and poor countries was fast growing (Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, W.W. Norton: 2003). Nearly half of the world’s people lived on $2.00 or less per day—and almost a quarter of them survived on as little as $1.00 or even less per day.

Equally disturbing statistics from the IMF (yet another major organizational driver of corporate globalization) showed that the annual per-capita GDP in what is sometimes called the “Fourth World”—two dozen or so severely underdeveloped nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia at the very bottom of the world’s economic hierarchy—was about $500 or less. At the annual World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland, attended by many of the world’s richest and most powerful “decision-makers”—another telling video about globalization, The Corporation (2004), called them “globalization’s high priests”— Oxfam, an international NGO fighting global poverty, revealed that the 85 richest people on the planet had as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s entire population. According to a CNN Money article, the typical American CEO earns at least 354 times more than the average full-time American worker (in 1980, at the beginning of corporate globalization, the factor of inequality was “only” 42 times). A McDonald’s executive earns $8.75 million a year, but a McDonald’s food-service worker earns just $8.25 an hour (David Jamieson, Huffington Post, January 28, 2014). Along with Walmart, McDonald’s is among the most  notorious “welfare queens,” who have been urging their poorly-paid employees to apply for food stamps and other welfare for the poor.

Reportedly, the richest 10% in the world own 86% of all global wealth, while the top 1% alone own fully 46% of all global assets (“Richest 1 Percent Hold 46 Percent of the World’s Wealth,” Reuters, September 10, 2013). According to David Stockman, President Reagan’s Budget Office Director, while in 1985 the top 5% of U.S. households owned “only” $9 trillion in private wealth, today that figure has jumped to well over $40 trillion (interview with Stockman, “60 Minutes,” CNBC, January 26, 2014). At the same time, the household incomes for the rest have stagnated in real terms (when adjusted for inflation), while for those at the bottom of the social pyramid—mostly service-sector and blue-collar employees with only high-school education (or less)—real household incomes have actually declined since 1973 (Joseph Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%,” Vanity Fair, May 2011).

There are more impoverished people around the globe now—both percentage-wise and in sheer numbers—than fifty years ago, when Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan launched the corporate globalization revolution. When asked, older Americans still remember a pre-globalization time, when only Dad worked outside the home—usually in a well-paying blue-collar job—but earned enough money for his all-American family to buy a nice house, maybe a backyard pool, own a couple of cars, pay for the college education of the kids, go on expensive family vacations, and generally enjoy a comfortable middle-class life-style. Thanks largely to corporate globalization, the so-called “American Dream” is fading for the millions of chronically unemployed and underemployed, the working poor (the minimum-wage earners), and for many young people. As mentioned in one of the Showdown in Seattlevideos, as workers everywhere are pitted against each other in a brutal “race to the bottom” competition designed to cut wages and “improve” worker productivity, well-paying American jobs (even high-tech jobs) are being “outsourced” and “off-shored” to poor Third World countries where the average worker pay is just a small fraction of our minimum wage. Despite Donald Trump’s demagogic promises, this unfortunate economic trend has not changed.

Another controversial issue on the anti-globalization marchers’ agenda in Seattle was protecting our environment from pillage, plunder and destruction by greedy and manipulative transnational corporations (which The Corporation video denounces as “Earth plunderers” and “monsters trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense”). Environmentalists from all over the world complain in the same video that the secretive and West-dominated WTO has turned their countries into “colonies,” since their governments must now accept the binding rulings of anonymous WTO tribunals that can overturn any domestic environmental, labor or worker-safety law and regulation at the behest of litigating foreign corporations—or face crippling economic sanctions. Not only is corporate globalization eroding important ecological protections by demanding and receiving corporate exemptions to the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act, it is also threatening ordinary people’s livelihoods.

To illustrate its nefarious impact on Third Wold nations, The Corporationvideo shows ordinary Bolivians protesting en massin the streets over their suddenly unaffordable water-use bills after their debt-ridden government (under heavy pressure from the IMF) had all of Bolivia’s water utilities, including drinking water and even rainwater, privatized and sold to the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corporation. The resulting popular revolt brought down Bolivia’s globalization-friendly conservative cabinet which was replaced by the populist government of President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous Indian head of state (who went on to restore public ownership over the water-service utilities).

It is obvious that ordinary people around the globe don’t want economic globalization to be at their expense. They are losing good, well-paying jobs and a middle-class standard of living, as foot-loose global corporations roam the world in search of maximum profits for their shareholders. Corporations are also increasingly turning to tax avoidance, financial shenanigans, and usury (“loan sharking”). Even General Motors is making most of its money nowadays not so much from selling cars assembled from parts manufactured in China, Mexico and Brazil, but from providing high-interest auto loans to its customers. John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, summarizes in one of the Showdown in Seattle videos the main demand of the anti-globalization protesters, namely the restructuring of global economic governance: “We don’t want to reform globalization. We want to replace it with a new internationalism, driven by our mutual concern for dignity, fairness, and freedom.”

Corporations seem to be very dear to the hearts of the Geneva-based WTO bureaucrats who apply strict WTO agreements and rules only to governments—local, provincial/state, or national—especially in Third World countries, but rarely to corporations, even though they account for much of global trade. The result: nearly every ecological, worker-safety and public-health law or regulation which corporations challenge at the WTO has been ruled illegal by the secretive and anonymous WTO tribunals. The WTO is so antagonistic to basic public-health laws and regulations that it has ruled against the landmark Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, one of President Barak Obama‘s proudest domestic-policy achievements (“Public Citizen Condemns WTO Attack on U.S. Efforts to Reduce Teen Smoking,” Public Citizen, April 4, 2012). The “free trade” philosophy of the WTO reflects the anti-government zeal of the so-called “Conservative Revolution”—from Republican President Reagan proclaiming in 1981 that “Government is the problem, not the solution,” to the GOP’s response to President Obama’s last State of the Union address, in which the Republicans blamed the government for “inequality” and “poverty” in America!

The WTO is hardly promoting “free trade” (or so-called “trade liberalization”), let alone the world’s “economic well-being.” According to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2008,

“A main critique of trade liberalization methods such as the WTO…is that the developed world    demands trade liberalization from lesser developed countries without removing its own trade-distorting barriers. For example, the developing world must reduce tariffs on textiles and sensitive agricultural products, but the United States and the European Union maintain substantial subsidies on agriculture.” (Rachel Denae Thrasher, “Free Trade,“ in The Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability: The Business of Sustainability, p. 241)

Nor is “increased consumer satisfaction” guaranteed by corporate globalization. I have already mentioned the instructive case of Bolivia where ordinary people rioted in the streets over the unaffordable water-use bills of Bechtel Corporation. The same outbursts of popular anger are taking place in other countries where foreign corporations have taken over the formerly public utilities. Take, for example, the case of post-Communist Bulgaria, a EU member located in southeastern Europe. Under overwhelming pressure from the IMF and the EU, successive governments privatized Bulgaria’s energy sector and began gradually to deactivate its only Soviet-built nuclear-power plant. In 2013, Bulgarians—many of them accustomed to paying virtually nothing for their electricity use under Communism—rioted in the streets over the unaffordable electric-power bills which, as local pensioners complained, were exceeding their meager incomes. Rioters trashed the local offices of the two electric-distribution corporations—one Austrian and the other Czech—and toppled the globalization-friendly conservative government of the day.

The protesters in Seattle demanded a fair, socially just and environmentally sustainable economic order. They wanted nobody among the world’s “have-nots” to be slaving their wretched lives away in sweatshops with horrible Dickensian working conditions and grueling 12-hour shifts a day just to provide food and shelter to their families—but, in fact, only making their modern slave-owners richer. The Seattle protesters opposed any return to the 1800s—in contrast to the misguided proponents of 19^thcentury “liberalism” like ex-British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, who once boasted that “I was asked whether I was trying to restore 19^th century Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.”

But what did Thatcher want restored exactly?! The “unfettered,” “dog-eat-dog” capitalism and William Blake‘s “dark satanic mills” of the 19^th century’s Industrial Revolution (vividly if painfully described by Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli and Emil Zola)? The age of mass-scale institutionalized slavery in America, Europe’s barbarous colonial empires in Africa and Asia, Mark Twain‘s “Gilded Age” of the notorious robber barons with their “ostentatious,” untaxed wealth and arrogantly “conspicuous consumption” (sociologist Thorstein Veblen‘s words, not mine)? Or the merciless exploitation of  millions of wretched manual laborers, many of them starving pre-teenage kids, who worked 16-hour shifts a day, seven days a week, for a mere pittance and in most brutalizing working conditions—without any breaks, paid vacations, or sickness leave? Perhaps one needs to read False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, a short polemic book published in 1998 by London School of Economics professor John Gray, once a champion of neo-liberalism turned implacable foe. Dr. Gray prophetically predicted that the neo-liberal laissez-faire experiment imposed on the world by the notorious “Iron Lady” Thatcher, her American pal Ronnie Reagan, and pro-corporate international organizations like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO would be tragically disastrous for most of mankind.

Nobody participating in the Seattle protests was willing to go back to the “good old days” of laissez-faire capitalism, because it would simply mean doing away with the 8-hour work day, the five-day work week, the minimum wage, old-age and disability pensions, anti-child labor laws, unemployment insurance, unionization and collective bargaining, worker-safety legislation, government welfare for the poor, the universal right to vote (including for women and minorities), and all the other political, social, and economic acquisitions of the 20th century. The anti-globalization activists in Seattle demanded  globalization that benefits everyone on the planet—not just the few rich who already have more than enough to live on. The incomes and living standards of the “have-nots” have either stagnated or even declined, according to economists such as Nobel Prize-winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who attribute nearly all of globalization’s “economic growth” to hidden inflation (especially from the uncounted “volatile” prices of food or energy), and to the dynamic statistical effects of the massive redistribution of wealth from the lower to the upper classes.

It is the right-wing conservatives who are longing for the “free-wheeling and dealing” capitalism of the 1800s. Elected conservatives (both Republican and Democrat) have already gutted President Teddy Roosevelt‘s anti-trust/anti-cartel legislation designed to rein in corporations: no anti-trust laws have been used since the late 1970s when the Bell Telephone Corporation was broken up. Instead, conservatives have approvingly suggested that “corporations are increasingly taking a role beside and equal with state actors.” But governments—elected or not—are ultimately accountable to voters/citizens and can be removed—one way or another, sooner or later—from power, should they fail to meet public expectations. Whom are global corporations and the multinational organizations that favor them accountable to? Corporations are accountable only to their shareholders, while the IMF and the WTO are responsible only to their most generous and influential member states.

If corporations indeed rule the world with the help of international institutions like the WTO and the IMF—as David Korten claims in his bestseller book When Corporations Rule the World —then we live in a world which is even more unjust and authoritarian than the one that is ruled by undemocratic governments. Many public-interest NGOs complain that the WTO has undermined the right of sovereign states to enact and effectively enforce public-health, labor, worker-safety, and environmental standards. For example, the WTO has sided with one foreign-based corporation in forcing the U.S. to scrap its cleaner-gasoline regulations and allow more polluting gasoline to be imported in violation of the Clean Air Act. But what right does the WTO or that particular foreign corporation have to interfere with our ecological legislation and, ultimately, with our way of life? I don’t remember ever voting for the WTO, nor have I ever cast my vote for the multinational corporations whose operations have a direct impact on our well-being. Because when the accusations of “unfair trade” come from the World Bank itself (World Bank, World Development Report 2008, Washington, D.C., 2007, p. 40)—the WTO’s sister organization equally infamous for promoting corporate globalization and free trade—it’s a sure sign that there is a lot of trouble in globalization paradise. Just ask the weekly gilets jaunes protesters in the streets of France….

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

Featured image: WTO protests in Seattle, November 30, 1999 Pepper spray is applied to the crowd. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Fourth Estate, that historical unelected grouping of society’s scrutineers, has become something of a rabble. An essential premise in the work of WikiLeaks was demonstrating, to a good, stone-throwing degree, how media figures and practitioners had been bought by the state or the corporate sector, unwittingly or otherwise.  At the very least, the traditionalists had swallowed their reservations and preferred to proclaim, rather unconvincingly, that they were operating with freedom to scrutinise and question, facing down the rebels from the WikiLeaks set.

The Fourth Estate has, however, been placed on poor gruel and life support.  Gone are the days when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ferreted their way through sources and obtaining the material – leaks from confidential sources, no less – that would make them famous and lay the way for the demise of a US President.  Such energy is frowned upon these days; the investigative journalist is being treated more as an irritating remnant, a costly undusted fossil.  The way for what Nozomi Hayase calls the “Global Fourth Estate” is being well and truly paved as a result.

The corporate factor in this process is undeniable.  The Australian media tycoon and ageing tyrant Rupert Murdoch has proven to be the kiss of death to much decent journalism, though he is by no means the only contributor.  As a man who takes pride in directly intervening in the policies and directions of his newspapers, identifying the credible view from the crafty slant is a hard thing.  Political and business interests tend to converge in such an empire.  Balanced reporting is for the bleeding hearts.

Meshed in this compromised journalism is a particular type of commentator, the holder of opinions with an open channel to the national security establishment.  They are the Deep Throats turned into media judges and avengers.  They might be flatteringly called the national security fraternity, a club of the military and espionage clubbables, the sort who find it inconceivable that someone from the public might throw open the larder of government secrets to expose a state’s misdeeds.  It went without saying that such individuals would see, in WikiLeaks, the incarnation of a pseudo-intelligence service, or at the very least, its tailor for one.

The national security fraternity is typified by the revolving door.  It whirs around, not merely in oil companies, the US State Department and merchant banks, but the issue of the media stable.  The state demands its permanent loyalties; those who have served in advisory roles in the state will keep paying once they leave.  Security-trained and watered thoroughbreds are bound to see outliers and vigilantes as challengers who need to be put down.

Samantha Vinograd supplies a nice example.  The crossover into journalism from the National Security State (NSS) is made from experience as advisor to the National Security Council as the Director for Iraq.  (That could hardly have gone that well.)  Her teeth well cut on security matters and advice, her journalism is bound to be tinged and flavoured by the apparatus of the state.  Julian Assange, she argues, is “the self-anointed director of his own intel service.”

The evidence she assesses on whether Assange requires punishment is deemed self-evident; the evidence comes from a source that need not be questioned.  Vinograd exudes the confidence of one clutching to the inside of the establishment, and one with lapels suggesting patriot and defender of state.  An Assange-like figure is bound to not merely be poison making its way to the vestal virgins; it is a figure to be extirpated.

In casting her own eye over the list of expanded charges against Assange, has taken the allegations against him of espionage to be factual. But she does so by attempting to repudiate his credentials as a publisher and journalist.

“If anyone is making the [sic] Assange is a free speech champion, read paragraph 36,” she intones.  “He knowingly endangered the lives of journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents and did incredible harm to all our security.”

This devious interpretation on the part of the drafters has the purpose of demonising Assange – self-interested, maniacal, even sociopathic, they imply – while tagging, at the end, the only issue that concerns the US security apparatus: the fictional endangering of US national security.  Absent here are observations and studies by the Pentagon which claimed on several occasions that there was little in way of evidence that lives had been compromised in the leak.

The same goes for former FBI types who see the accumulating dossier against Assange as an incriminating tissue of evidence.  The issue here was pre-determined; it is shut and done.  There is no broader philosophical point, because the only point that matters is realpolitik and the beating heart of the secretly minded patriot. Curiously enough, the distinction between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, ceases to exist in such circles.  We are left with the operating rationale of the big bad NSS, decked out in all its nasty, modern tinsel.

Asha Rangappa, former FBI “special agent” and editor at Just Security, is one of the NSS’s glorified commentators, even if much of her strategy lies in cringeworthy self-advertising.  She was drooling with a certain social media imbecility at the news that an 18-count superseding indictment against Assange had been issued by the Department of Justice.  “Awwwww yeah,” came her remark on Twitter.  Don the gloves; go into action: Team America needs you.

Rangappa is a wonderful illustration of a corrupted type of journalist cum commentator, one conscious of a cop culture that is celebrated rather than questioned, paraded rather than critiqued. She is even featured in Elle Magazine, with a slush-filled gooey tribute from Sylvie McNamara.  “I’m at Asha Rangappa’s dinner table because, for the past few years, her commentary on CNN and Twitter has helped hundreds of thousands of people understand the news.”

If a certain type of blinkered understanding is what you are out for, then she is your glamorous source.  She was keen on putting away “bad guys”; she “rooted for the United States to beat the Soviet Union in the Olympics”; she acknowledges who “we had to fight for our values”.  McNamara is won over, and hardly one to question. “Rangappa knows from previous experience how the FBI handles Russian spies and disinformation; add to the mix her professional skill at explaining complex ideas, and she is ideally positioned to break down the bewildering political events in recent years.”  If you consciously avoid or fail to spot the inauthenticity in any of that, then you are well on the way to joining the National Security Club.

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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 from The Activist Post

Winston Churchill famously said in 1940, a time of the Battle of Britain, that ‘If the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour.‘ Without any doubt, the Tory party can now claim for its entire existence, that right now, this has been their worst. Their party and more importantly the country is more divided than ever. Even the middle ground on Brexit has now completely collapsed, according to a new POLITICO-Hanbury poll – leading to voters so fed up that they would rather risk either revoking Article 50 or pursuing a no-deal Brexit. Both will be disastrous for a cohesive society in the years ahead.

In the background, away from the headlines of Brexit, Johnson, Trump and oil tankers in Iran – all of which are crisis upon crisis, the crisis of daily life continues in the sixth-largest economy in the world where the rich get richer and the poor are made to pay the price.

Death, despair and poverty

A struggling dad of three took his own life after being driven into debt and given an eviction order because of the minimum five-week wait for Universal Credit, it has been reported. Phillip Herron, 34, had just £4.61 in his bank account when he took the unimaginable decision to commit suicide, leaving behind three children. He took his own life shortly after uploading a tearful video to social media, in which he apologies to friends and family for what he is about to do. A suicide note read that Mr Herron believed his family “would be better off if he wasn’t there any more”, said his mother Sheena Derbyshire.

Meanwhile, 61 top civil servants working for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were charged with implementing widespread and draconian cuts to vital social security benefits, have been rewarded with as much as £17.5k each in bonuses while low-income households struggle to put food on the table.

The news comes as figures from the UK’s largest food bank network, the Trussell Trust, reveal that a record 1.6m food bank parcels were given to people in desperate need over the last year, including more than half a million children from low-income households.

SNP MSP Shona Robison said:

“People will rightly be asking questions about where the DWP’s priorities lie. They scrapped the £10 bonus for people struggling over Christmas and inflicted cuts on low-income families across Scotland but are rewarding senior staff with huge bonuses.”

In a TruePublica article entitled ‘Killed by the State‘ written by independent disability studies researcher Mo Stewart – it was determined that 80 people a month are dying after being declared “fit for work”. These are complex figures but analysis pointed to two notable facts. First that 2,380 people died between December 2011 and February 2014 shortly after being judged “fit for work” and rejected for the sickness and disability benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). It was also determined that 7,200 claimants died after being awarded ESA and being placed in the work-related activity group, by definition, people whom the government had judged were able to “prepare” to get back to work.”

When it comes to poverty, the UK’s social safety net has been “deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”, a report commissioned by the UN has said. Special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said “ideological” cuts to Britain’s public services since 2010 have led to “tragic consequences“.

Poverty has other consequences. Take children for instance. Referrals to child mental health units from UK primary schools for pupils aged 11 and under have risen by nearly 50% in just three years.

In the meantime – workers’ representatives have expressed anger over the decision to award MPs a pay rise above inflation. The 2.7% pay hike for MPs, took their basic annual salary from £77,379 to £79,468, and is presumably in recognition of their outstanding performance while in government in ensuring the best outcomes for the citizens of Britain!

The £2,089 increase to their income announced last February by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), that became effective from 1 April 2019, far outstrips the current inflation rate of 1.8% on the main CPI measure.

Houses and apartments apartheid

If you’re homeless, on average, you’ll only live to the age of 44. People sleeping on the street are almost 17 times more likely to have been victims of violence and homeless people are over nine times more likely to take their own life than the general population. Official figures show that homelessness has doubled since 2010 but as many don’t get on to official records as homeless, that number is likely to be much greater. Last year 57,890 households were accepted as homeless in England. A recent investigation found that about ten homeless people now die on the streets of Britain each week.

Meanwhile – Persimmon Homes, the UK’s most profitable housebuilder faced some criticism after a pay scheme tying rewards to share price performance caused a furore, with £500m in bonuses paid out to 150 executives amid a sector-record annual profit of £1.1bn on the back of the government’s Help-to-Buy scheme. That scheme, politically sold to the public by Tory chancellor George Osborne, as a scheme to help young couples and families get on the housing ladder, has now be mired in scandal as it doesn’t actually help that many who would normally struggle to attain homeownership. It turns out that the majority of people who bought a home thanks to Help-to-Buy were actually some of the most privileged already. A report released from the National Audit Office showed that two-thirds of the people who benefited from the scheme would have been able to buy a property anyway and a small but not insignificant number of recipients used the scheme even though they had a household income of more than £100,000.

Further evidence shows that the scheme has also driven up house prices, further boosting the wealth profile of not just homeowners, but housebuilders like Persimmon – whilst keeping voters, particularly wealthier voters happy with properties they already owned increasing in value. The economic outturn of house prices that increase faster than average wages inevitably increases homelessness numbers.

Bashing the bedridden

“Bashing bedridden citizens” – a slogan displayed on banners by disgruntled pensioners were protesting outside the BBC’s headquarters across the UK last month over its ‘scandalous’ decision to axe free TV licences for over 75s. Perhaps what these pensioners knew little of was that the person who opened the way to allowing the BBC to scrap blanket free TV licenses for the over 75’s in the first place is none other than Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt.

Meanwhile – the BBC showered its top executives with pay rises by as much as £75,000 a year and increased not just the pay of its top male lineup such as – Gary Lineker on £1,750,000, Chris Evans – £1,250,000, Graham Norton – £610,000 and Huw Edwards on £490,000, but also dramatically increased their female stars pay to close the scandalous pay gap.

Healthcare into wealthcare

Earlier this year it was reported that the NHS has been priced out of buying a life-saving drug by pharmaceutical company Vertex. The cystic fibrosis drug, which can extend the life of children, now costs £105,000 a year – a price which the NHS says is “unaffordable” and despite requests from the NHS, the big pharma company has refused to make it available at a lower price. It is understood that the fair price for this particular drug would be around £5,000 a year.

Meanwhile – The same company made a whopping £2.5 billion from sales of the same drug in 2017. But they didn’t even pay for the research to develop it. It was discovered in the first place thanks to money donated by none other than … drum roll … through a cystic fibrosis charity.

Staying with the NHS, many people believe that the NHS is too precious an institution for the Conservatives to destroy without risking political suicide. Again, what many do not realise is that a group of ambitious MPs co-authored a book in 2005 called ‘DIRECT DEMOCRACY – An Agenda for a New Model Party’ (no need to pay here’s a free copy in pdf if you really want to read it). Contributors include Douglas Carswell, Michael Gove and most importantly, Jeremy Hunt who explicitly lays out the desire of the authors, (including Jeremy Hunt himself), to fully privatise the NHS.

Interestingly, the book is just 128 pages long but costs … £139.98. It has one 4-star rating and all the others are 1-star with review comments such as ‘despicable tripe’, ‘pigs at the trough’ and so on.

One of the two Tory front-runners to be crowned Prime Minister is, of course, Boris Johnson. A trade deal with the USA will then be a top priority for Johnson, who has already demonstrated his will to ensure Britain bends over backwards for President Trump. Trump has insisted, if it is signed will include full access to the health and welfare systems of the UK.

When that happens, Britain will be fully divided into two groups – those that have (insurance) and those that do not – as the NHS is very much regarded as the last institution that upholds the value of healthcare for all at the point of need.

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A political scandal recently pushed thousands of Puerto Rican people into the streets to march under the catchword ‘Ricky Renuncia!’, Ricardo, quit! – Ricardo Rossello is the island’s current governor.

On 11 July 2019, an anonymous source published personal messages from the governor’s Telegram account (a crypted application similar to Whatsapp). Two days later, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Centre for Investigative Journalism) in Puerto Rico published them on line, thus exposing messages that are marked by misogyny and homophobia, and place him in line with Donald Trump. Two of the senders immediately resigned, including State Secretary Luis Rivera Marín. But his was not enough to appease the wrath of the people.

Marches reached a peak on Wednesday 17 July, with close to 100,000 people in the streets of San Juan, the island’s capital city, when the consortium of journalists exposed a ‘network of embezzlement of several millions dollars’, involving several public companies.

Since 2016, Puerto Rico is supervised by a Financial Oversight Board that was set up by the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, adopted when Obama was president. The object of the board consisting of non-elected delegates is to outline a schedule to repay the island’s creditors (mainly major US investment funds) and implement radical austerity policies, including closure of schools, huge cuts in pensions and no investment at all in the local economy, infrastructures or social policies.

It was in this context, which is a perfect illustration of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, that the island was hit twice in a row by devastating hurricanes that killed over 3,000 people and destroyed the power network. It took 11 months for power to be restored over the whole island, which sharply increased the number of death casualties as a result of the hurricanes, bad maintenance of the network, and disastrous choices in the management in the crisis. The revelations by the consortium of journalists largely confirm this last element.

To restore the power network, the public company PREPA (Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority) first contracted with a company that had no experience whatsoever but that was well connected with the secretary of the Ministry for Home Affairs, Ryan Zinke. The contract was eventually cancelled and a new contract was signed with a company related to the fossil energy giant Mammoth Energy Services, despite the fact that the geographical situation of the island and its exposure to hurricanes have amply demonstrated that Puerto Rico needs to rely on the local production of renewable energy.

Ricardo Rossello will probably not be able to withstand this wave of discontent. His political adversaries are preparing an impeachment. But this will not undo what has happened and will not change the programme set up by the Financial Oversight Board, which will continue with austerity policies, to the greater benefit of the island’s creditors who make huge profits. The hurricane season is just starting.

Let us remember that the CADTM international network went to Puerto Rico in December 2018 and that a most successful set of events had been organized by our local partner, the Citizens’ front to audit the debt.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated into English by Christine Pagnoule

Featured image is from CADTM

Sino/Russian unity represents a vital anti-imperial alliance. A DOD/Pentagon white paper called Russia a strategic US  threat, especially united with China.

NYT editors addressed the issue, falsely calling both countries “adversaries.” Indeed they’re “growing closer,” both nations portrayed as strategic threats to US rage for global dominance.

The Times:

“(S)ince Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2014 (sic), Chinese and Russian authorities have increasingly found common cause, disparaging Western-style democracy (sic) and offering themselves as alternatives to America’s postwar leadership.”

“Now China and Russia are growing even closer, suggesting a more permanent arrangement that could pose a complex challenge to the United States.”

Fact: No Russian Federation invasion of Ukraine or any other country occurred — a US/NATO specialty, not how the Kremlin operates.

Fact: So-called “Western-style democracy” is pure fantasy, not the real thing.

Fact: The US poses an imperial threat to Russia, China, and other countries, not the other way around.

China’s Xi Jinping earlier called Sino/Russia ties stronger than ever, the “best in history,” both nations “each other’s most trustworthy strategic partners,” adding:

“President Putin and I have built good working relations and a close personal friendship” — bilateral ties deepening, Xi calling Putin his “best and bosom friend.”

Leaders of both nations regard each other as key strategic allies — a vital counterforce to endless US aggression, threatening world peace, stability, and security.

Both countries rely on mutual cooperation, sharing a multi-world polarity worldview. They’re jointly implementing Beijing’s hugely ambitious One Belt One Road initiative for greater regional integration and development, involving well over $1 trillion in longterm investments.

The 2,500 mile Power of Siberian pipeline, linking Russia’s Far East to China to be completed this year will supply around 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China annually for 30 years, according to agreed on terms between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation.

Construction of the Power to Siberia-2 pipeline will deliver another 30 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China via a Western route – both projects and other major ones of huge importance to both countries.

Putin and Xi have met face-to-face around two dozen times — testimony to their longterm strategic partnership and friendship.

China is an economic powerhouse, Russia the world’s dominant military power, its super-weapons exceeding the best in the West.

Russia is rich in what China needs most — oil and gas, technological expertise, industrial equipment, and state-of-the-art weapons.

Sharing a common border, both countries want them for defense, not offense like the US, NATO and Israel operate.

A Sino/Russian Investment Committee fosters expanding economic and financial ties, diversifying trade to reduce dependence on global economic conditions.

It promotes and facilitates cooperation in technology-intensive industrial, financial, commercial, and military areas.

Both nations are increasingly trading in their own currencies, bypassing dollar transactions. Global de-dollarization is an idea whose time has come.

Dollar hegemony as the world’s reserve currency facilitates US global dominance.

It finances Washington’s reckless spending, global militarism, its empire of bases, endless wars, corporate takeovers, as well as speculative excesses creating bubbles and economic crises – at the expense of democratic freedoms and beneficial social change.

Ending dollar dominance would be the political, economic, financial, military equivalent of cutting the biblical Sampson’s hair, eliminating his strength.

According to the DOD/Pentagon white paper, the US and its allies aren’t acting effectively enough to counter Sino/Russian aims — falsely accusing both countries of using “gray zone” tactics to foment instability.

It’s how US-dominated NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners operate, not Russia and China.

They’re growing world powers, the US a nation in decline politically, economically and militarily — despite spending countless trillions of dollars to maintain global supremacy.

The myth of American exceptionalism, the indispensable state, an illusory moral superiority, and military supremacy persist despite hard evidence debunking these notions.

The US has been declining for decades. The late Gabriel Kolko believes it began during US aggression against North Korea, continued during a decade of Southeast Asia war, and accelerated post-9/11.

It’s the same dynamic that doomed all other empire in history. The US is declining  because of its imperial arrogance, hubris, endless wars against invented enemies, and unwillingness to change.

Ruinous military spending persists while vital homeland needs go begging.

The US ruling class serves privileged interests exclusively at the expense of peace, equity and justice.

Its power and influence are waning on the global stage while Russia and China are rising — especially united for common longterm constructive aims.

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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 UAE’s large-scale military drawdown in Yemen is extremely disadvantageous to the Saudis’ strategic objectives in the conflict and will likely lead to the Kingdom scrambling for a “face-saving” exit of its own.

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Nobody’s won the War on Yemen (except for maybe the Southern Transitional Council), but that doesn’t mean that they lost, either, except for Saudi Arabia. The Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) administer the most demographically and economically important part of the country even though they failed to take control of the state’s entire territory, while the UAE obtained invaluable experience managing mercenary groups and also acquired several regional bases throughout the course of its campaign, to say nothing of the rising South Yemeni proxy state that they’re largely responsible for creating. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is less secure than it was at the onset of the conflict now that the Ansar Allah’s military capabilities have evolved to the point of enabling them to regularly bomb the Kingdom’s territory, and it’s dangerously falling into the trap of “mission creep” by seeking to replace some of the withdrawn Emirati units with its own.

Saudi Arabia has hitherto eschewed any significant involvement on the ground in favor of more safely bombing targets from the air, but its ally’s military drawdown is compelling it take a more direct role in the conflict. This is a mistake since the Kingdom cannot possibly hope to make progress in the war on its own if it was unable to do so when the UAE and the Emirate’s much more numerous mercenary allies were fighting on the ground on Riyadh’s behalf. It appears as though MBS isn’t quite sure what to do in this scenario which seemingly caught him by surprise so he’s reacting as expected and diving deeper into the quagmire instead of extricating himself from it. Nevertheless, it appears to only be a matter of time before his country realizes the inevitability of a “compromise” solution to the conflict, one which will probably recognize the de-facto restoration of North and South Yemen’s independence through a “federalized” arrangement as the most realistic outcome of the war.

In any case, it’s impossible to spin the war as a success for the Saudis since their defeat is visible for the entire world to see. The world’s largest weapons purchaser was unable to dislodge a group of rebels from the neighboring state in which it traditionally wielded domineering influence for decades despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars attempting to do so. Its main ally, the UAE, has left it high and dry in pursuit of its own interests mainly having to do with restoring its reputation after it was besmirched through its leading involvement in what’s since become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Saudi Arabia is now forced to scramble for its own “face-saving” exit as well, though that might no longer be possible after the obviousness of its strategic defeat. Although some might still look to Saudi Arabia as the leader of the “Ummah” for reasons of religious symbolism, few would consider it the community’s geopolitical leader after the War on Yemen.

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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 Yemen Press