In my town in the United States — as is not especially unusual — we have big memorials in prominent public places marking some of the most catastrophically immoral actions of the past. Unfortunately, all five of these major monuments celebrate and glorify these past horrors, rather than reminding us not to repeat them. The University of Virginia is building a memorial to the enslaved people who built the University of Virginia. So, we will have five celebrations of evil, and one cautionary remembrance thereof.
Two of the five monuments celebrate the genocide of the westward expansion across the continent. Two celebrate the losing and pro-slavery side of the U.S. Civil War. One honors the troops who participated in one of the most devastating, destructive, and murderous assaults on a small part of the earth that humanity has yet produced. In the United States people call it “the Vietnam war.”
In Vietnam it’s called the American war. But not just in Vietnam. This was a war that hit hard in Laos and Cambodia and Indonesia. For a well-researched and powerfully presented overview, check out the new book, The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory, Edited by Mark Pavlick and Caroline Luft, with contributions from Richard Falk, Fred Branfman, Channapha Khamvongsa, Elaine Russell, Tuan Nguyen, Ben Kiernan, Taylor Owen, Gareth Porter, Clinton Fernandes, Nick Turse, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, and Ngo Vinh Long.
The United States dropped 6,727,084 tons of bombs on 60 to 70 million people in southeast Asia, more than triple what it had dropped in Asia and Europe combined in World War II. Simultaneously, it launched an equally massive attack with ground artillery. It also sprayed from the air tens of millions of liters of Agent Orange, not to mention napalm, with devastating results. The effects remain today. Tens of millions of bombs remain unexploded, and increasingly dangerous, today. A 2008 study by Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimated 3.8 million violent war deaths, combat and civilian, north and south, during the years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, not counting hundreds of thousands killed in each of these places: Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia. Some 19 million were wounded or made homeless in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Many millions more were forced to live dangerous and impoverished lives, with impacts lasting to this day.
The U.S. soldiers who did 1.6% of the dying, but whose suffering dominates U.S. movies about the war, really did suffer as much and as horribly as depicted. Thousands of veterans have since committed suicide. But imagine what that means for the true extent of the suffering created, even just for humans, ignoring all the other species impacted. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. lists 58,000 names on 150 meters of wall. That’s 387 names per meter. To similarly list 4 million names would require 10,336 meters, or the distance from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and back again, and back to the Capitol once more, and then as far back as all the museums but stopping short of the Washington Monument. Luckily, only some lives matter.
In Laos, about a third of the country’s land remains ruined by the heavy presence of unexploded bombs, which continue to kill large numbers of people. These include some 80 million cluster bomblets and thousands of large bombs, rockets, mortars, shells, and land mines. From 1964 to 1973, the United States conducted one bombing mission against poor, unarmed, farming families every eight minutes, twenty-four/seven — with a goal of wiping out any food that could feed any troops (or anybody else). The United States pretended it was delivering humanitarian aid.
Other times, it was just a matter of littering. Bombers flying from Thailand to Vietnam would sometimes be unable to bomb Vietnam due to weather conditions, and so would simply drop their bombs on Laos rather than perform a more difficult landing with a full load back in Thailand. Yet other times it was a need to put good deadly equipment to use. When President Lyndon Johnson announced an end to bombing in North Vietnam in 1968, planes bombed Laos instead. “We couldn’t just let the planes rust,” explained one official. The poor today in Laos cannot find access to good healthcare when injured by old bombs, and must survive disabled in an economy few will invest in due to all the bombs. The desperate must take on the risky task of selling the metal from bombs they successfully defuse.
Cambodia was treated roughly as Laos was, with similar and predictable results. President Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger who told Alexander Haig to create “a massive bombing campaign . . . anything that flies on anything that moves.” The hard-core right-wing Khmer Rouge grew from 10,000 in 1970 to 200,000 troops in 1973 via recruitment focused on the casualties and destruction of U.S. bombing. By 1975 they’d defeated the pro-U.S. government.
The war on the ground in Vietnam was equally horrific. Massacres of civilians, the use of farmers for target practice, free-fire zones in which any Vietnamese person was deemed “the enemy” — these were not unusual techniques. Elimination of population was a primary goal. This — and not kindness — drove the greater acceptance of refugees than has been practiced during more recent wars. Robert Komer urged the United States to “step up refugee programs deliberately aimed at depriving the VC of a recruiting base.”
The U.S. government understood from the start that the elite military faction it wanted to impose on Vietnam had no significant popular support. It also feared the “demonstration effect” of a leftist government opposing U.S. domination and achieving social and economic progress. Bombs could help with that. In the words of the U.S. military historians who wrote The Pentagon Papers, “essentially, we are fighting the Vietnamese birth rate.” But, of course, this fighting was counter-productive and simply generated more “communists,” requiring further increases in violence to combat them.
How do you get people who think of themselves as good and decent to shell out their money and their support and their boys to slaughter poor farmers and their babies and their elderly relatives? Well, what do we have professors for, if we can’t accomplish such feats? The line developed in the U.S. military-intellectual complex was that the United States was not murdering farmers but, rather, urbanizing and modernizing countries by driving peasants into urban areas through the benevolent use of bombs. As many as 60 percent of the people in the central provinces of Vietnam were reduced to eating bark and roots. Children and the elderly were the first to starve. Those who were driven into U.S. prisons and tortured and experimented on were, in the end, mere Asians, so that the excuses didn’t really have to be all that persuasive.
Millions in the United States opposed the war and worked to stop it. I’m not aware of any monuments to them. They won a close vote in the U.S. Congress on August 15, 1973, to end the bombing of Cambodia. They forced an end to the whole horrible enterprise. They forced a progressive agenda of domestic policies through the Nixon White House. They compelled Congress to hold Nixon accountable in a manner that seems thoroughly foreign to the U.S. Congress today. As peace activists in recent years have marked the 50th anniversary of each particular effort for peace, one question has offered itself to the U.S. society as a whole: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
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I can only imagine that the media people who are saying this is the most right wing cabinet since the 1980’s were not sentient in the 80’s. Thatcher never had a Home Secretary remotely as illiberal as Pritti Patel, never had a Foreign Secretary remotely as xenophobic as Dominic Raab, never even had a Chancellor as anti-State intervention as Sajid Javid (though came closer there) and never had a Defence Secretary as bellicose as Ben Wallace.
Even Thatcher’s final and most right wing Cabinet contained figures like Ken Clarke, Chris Patten, John Major, Virginia Bottomley, Douglas Hurd and William Waldegrave. All Tories with whom I have fundamental disagreements, but every single one of them is far, far to the left of virtually all of Johnson’s appalling cronies.
Thatcher deliberately and cruelly wrecked the social democratic society in which I grew up, with the aim of destroying any ability for working people to be protected against the whims of the wealthy. But Thatcher never introduced privatisation into the NHS or state schools – that was her acolyte Blair. She maintained free university education in England and Wales. That was destroyed by Blair too. We should be more rigorous than to accept Thatcher as the definitive most right wing government possible. It is not only lazy, it obscures the fact we now have the most right wing British government since 1832.
Pritti Patel is a Home Secretary who admires the approach to law and order of Benjamin Netanyahu and voted against a measure to prevent pregnant asylum seekers being slammed into immigration detention pending hearing. Savid Javid is a Chancellor who materially caused the problems of British Steel by, as Business Secretary, vetoing in Brussels tariffs against dumped Chinese steel. Dominic Raab is a foreign secretary who negotiated a deal with the EU then resigned because it was so bad.
This is the biggest political shock to hit the UK in my lifetime and it is potentially worse than Thatcher. Here in Scotland, we need to move immediately for Independence. The time for talking really is behind us.
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Brussels is once again bracing itself for a new round of U.S. tariff threats. And Britain is in the trade war firing line.
Just under a year after U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker struck a transatlantic trade armistice, there’s little left of the “new phase” of relations the two men announced in the White House Rose Garden on July 25 last year.
Trade talks have not yet started. And as EU trade chief Cecilia Malmström has warned – the U.S. is likely to soon impose retaliatory tariffs on up to $25 billion of European products, as part of a dispute over airline subsidies.
Washington has also launched a trade investigation into France’s digital services tax and angered over fines of American tech giants for their privacy misdemeanours.
None of this has been helped by crushing U.S. sanctions against Iran and the inevitable unending pressure on Europe to sever business contact with Tehran. This all adds to further strain on a relationship that is quickly heading southwards.
Seven Commission officials and EU diplomats have already voiced serious fears of an escalation. They fear Trump will carry out a long-standing threat to impose painful auto tariffs as early as this November. The EU has said it is ready to retaliate with its own tariffs targeting €20 billion of U.S. exports. From there, the escalation could easily end up getting worse.
“Trump firmly believes — and has convinced many Americans — that the U.S. has been taken advantage of all these years, and that Europe should make unilateral concessions,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants to slash the U.S.’s $169 billion trade-in-goods deficit with the EU. Needless to say that Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign will have a lot to do with his chest-thumping rhetoric that risks trashing tenuous relationships even further. “Trump really believes that confrontation with foreign countries gets him votes” – Hufbauer said.
Britain is in the middle of this inflating trade war between the US and EU and even if Boris Johnson’s new government carries out its threat of crashing out without a deal – Britain has no deal with America that would ease trade relationships. You can’t simply do a tariff-free deal on cars or anything for that matter as a one-off.
The US, backed by Congress, is pushing the EU on agricultural goods, as it is pushing Britain on its UK/US trade deal – many products of which, are banned in the EU for all manner of health-related protections. But political pressure is mounting on Trump to get agricultural products sold in the biggest trading bloc in the world – Europe – and they are not playing ball.
So watch this space. If in November the car tariff war gets underway, there will be a tit-for-tat battle until someone in the US or EU blinks.
Britain has voted itself off the big-boys table and has little political, economic or diplomatic say in the trade war standoff negotiations until the end of October. Even then, Britain’s application to the WTO as a single trading nation outside of the EU was rejected last autumn. As Britain runs a surplus with the USA, the UK will likely have to give away all manner of legislated protections to sign a trade deal with America that has been calculated by government to add only o.2% to Britain’s GDP.
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US President Donald Trump threatened to “kill 10 million” Afghans in “a week” so as to win a quick victory in America’s longest war, at a joint White House press conference Monday with Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister.
The US Commander-in-Chief cavalierly boasted that he could wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the Earth” if he wanted. But he said that he prefers to “extricate” the US from the eighteen-year-long Afghan War and expects Pakistan to facilitate this by helping secure a “settlement” with the Taliban.
“We’re like policemen,” Trump claimed. “We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win it in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”
To underscore that his remarks were meant as a threat, Trump added,
“I have a plan to win that war in a very short period of time” and repeated the figure of 10 million dead. He then turned toward Khan and declared, “You understand that better than anybody.”
Pakistan’s prime minister voiced no objection to Trump’s threat to unleash genocidal violence against Pakistan’s northern neighbor. Instead Khan slavishly hailed the US president as the head of the “most powerful country in the world.” Later, he issued an obsequious tweet thanking Trump “for his warm & gracious hospitality” and “his wonderful way of putting our entire delegation at ease.”
The US puppet regime in Kabul was forced to call for a “clarification” of Trump’s remarks, while feebly protesting that “foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate in the absence of the Afghan leadership.” In contrast, people across Afghanistan reacted with horror and outrage, sentiments shared by tens of millions around the world.
The US media downplayed Trump’s bloodcurdling remarks. The New York Times buried mention of them at the end of an article titled, “Trump Tries Cooling Tensions With Pakistan to Speed Afghan Peace Talks.”
Trump’s Monday remarks are only his latest threat to annihilate a foreign country and reveal that the US president—who has ordered a $1 trillion “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal and the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia—is actively considering unleashing nuclear violence to forestall the collapse of US global hegemony.
In August 2017, Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea, an impoverished nation of 25 million people. In July 2018, he directed a similar threat again Iran, tweeting that it would “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED”, if it “EVER” dared to “THREATEN” Washington “AGAIN.”
Trump’s crude threats—which recall nothing so much as the menacing rants of Adolf Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War—are viewed as impolitic by much of the Washington elite. But the military-security apparatus and the US political establishment, Democratic and Republican alike, are unanimous in their support for using violence, aggression and war to offset US imperialism’s economic decline.
The Afghan War is only one of an endless series of wars that the US has waged across the Middle East, in Central Asia, and the Balkans since 1991. Moreover, the drive for US global hegemony has now metastasized into strategic offensives, including threatening military deployments, trade wars and economic sanctions, against nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Whilst Afghanistan no doubt was at the center of the discussions that Khan, Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the head of the country’s notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, held with Trump and senior officials in his administration, the US war drive against Iran—Pakistan’s western neighbor—was no doubt also a factor in the decision to invite Pakistan’s prime minister to Washington for the first time in five years.
Last month, US warplanes were just ten minutes away from unleashing bombs on Iran, when Trump called them back for fear that US forces were not sufficiently ready for a military conflict with Iran that would rapidly engulf the entire Middle East and potentially draw in other great powers.
Bowing to the US sanctions against Iran, which are themselves tantamount to war, Pakistan has once again put on ice plans for a pipeline to import Iranian natural gas. But the Pentagon and CIA will also be pressing Pakistan, which enjoys close ties to the virulently anti-Iranian Saudi monarchy, to use its territory as a staging ground for intrigues, if not military operations, against Iran.
US imperialism’s Afghan War debacle
Trump’s claim that the US has not really waged war in Afghanistan is absurd. Over the course of the past 18 years, the US and its NATO allies have deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan, tanks and warplanes, unleashed horrific violence and committed countless atrocities. This includes, under the Trump administration, the dropping on Afghanistan in 2017 of the most powerful conventional or nonnuclear bomb ever deployed.
The war, according to conservative estimates, has resulted in 175,000 deaths. If indirect deaths are included, the figure is probably closer to one million. Millions more have been driven from their homes. To this toll, the deaths of nearly 2,300 US military personnel and 1,100 other foreign troops need to be added.
Yet today the Taliban controls large swathes of the country, more than at any time since the US invasion in the fall of 2001.
If the Taliban, despite their reactionary Islamist ideology, have been able to sustain their insurgency in the face of US firepower, it is because the war is widely recognized to be a neocolonial invasion, aimed at transforming Afghanistan into a US-NATO dependency and outpost in Central Asia; and the Kabul government to be a quisling regime, thoroughly corrupt and comprised of war profiteers, tribal leaders, and other sections of the traditional Afghan elite.
The Afghan debacle—Washington’s failure to subjugate Afghanistan after 18 years of war and the expenditure of more than a trillion dollars—has produced major divisions within the US political and military-strategic establishments.
Trump is seeking to prod the Taliban into a political settlement that will allow the Pentagon to redeploy its resources to pursue aggression elsewhere, whether against Iran, Venezuela, or American imperialism’s more substantial rivals.
However, much of America’s ruling elite, especially in the military-security apparatus, argues that any settlement must ensure a continued military presence in Afghanistan. This is, first and foremost, because of its strategic significance: Afghanistan lies at the heart of energy-rich Central Asia, borders both Iran and China and is proximate to Russia.
The unraveling of US-Pakistan relations
Washington has long been demanding that Pakistan “do more” to place military and political pressure on the Taliban, so as to secure a settlement of the war on terms favorable to Washington.
Pakistan’s military-security apparatus played a key role in the CIA’s sponsoring of the Mujahideen guerilla insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as part of the US drive against the Soviet Union, and subsequently it supported the rise to power of its Taliban offshoot.
After Washington abandoned its own attempts to reach a deal with the Taliban regime and seized on the 9/11 events to establish a US foothold in Central Asia, Pakistan provided Washington with pivotal logistical support and subsequently waged a brutal counterinsurgency war against Taliban-aligned forces in its own Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
But the Pakistani military, drawing on the CIA playbook, was loathe to cut off all ties to the Taliban, so as to ensure that Islamabad had a say in any political settlement to end the war.
Washington’s downgrading of its relations with Islamabad, and its promotion of India as its principal South Asian ally, with the aim of transforming it into a US frontline state against China, caused Islamabad to become even more anxious about securing its interests in Afghanistan, and to expand its longstanding military-security partnership with Beijing. This latter development—which is exemplified by the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor—has enormously aggravated tensions between Washington and Islamabad.
Over the past decade, and particularly since 2011, there has been an unravelling of US-Pakistani ties.
Khan, like his predecessor Nawaz Sharif, had long been pressing for an invitation to Washington, in an attempt to reset relations with the US. For both economic and geopolitical reasons, Islamabad is desperately hoping that it can find a way, as it did in the past, of balancing between China and the US.
Last month, the US-dominated IMF agreed to provide Pakistan with emergency loans. Islamabad has also been rattled by the support Washington has extended to the “surgical” military strikes New Delhi mounted in September 2016 and February of this year, bringing South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers to the brink of war.
Whether Khan’s US trip will in fact arrest the deterioration in US-Pakistani ties remains to be seen.
Trump resisted Khan’s entreaties for the immediate restoration of Afghan War Coalition payments and other aid, arrogantly declaring that relations between the two countries are better than “when we were paying that money.” He then suggested if Islamabad bows to Washington’s diktats that could change, adding, “But all of that can come back, depending on what we work out.”
Trump did please Khan by saying that he “would love to be” a “mediator” or the “arbitrator” of the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir. For decades, Pakistan has sought to involve outside powers, especially Washington, in resolving its differences with New Delhi.
Trump’s remarks, which included the claim that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked for the US to help broker a solution to the Kashmir dispute, immediately set off a political firestorm in India, with New Delhi angrily denying that Modi had ever made such a suggestion.
India’s ruling elite is also perturbed that thus far it has been excluded from any role in the negotiations with the Taliban and discussions about a so-called political settlement of the Afghan war. But like Khan, Modi was entirely silent about Trump’s threats to annihilate ten million Afghans, presumably through the use of nuclear weapons.
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Featured image: President Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks with reporters during their bilateral meeting Monday, July 22, 2019, in the Oval Office. (Photo: Shealah Craighead, White House Flickr)
While Iran’s seizure of a British tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Friday was a clear response to the British capture of an Iranian tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4, both the UK and U.S. governments are insisting that Iran’s operation was illegal while the British acted legally.
The facts surrounding the British detention of the Iranian ship, however, suggest that, like the Iranian detention of the British ship, it was an illegal interference with freedom of navigation through an international strait. And even more importantly, evidence indicates that the British move was part of a bigger scheme coordinated by National Security Advisor John Bolton.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the Iran seizure of the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero “unacceptable” and insisted that it is “essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”
But the British denied Iran that same freedom of navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4.
The rationale for detaining the Iranian vessel and its crew was that it was delivering oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions. This was never questioned by Western news media. But a closer look reveals that the UK had no legal right to enforce those sanctions against that ship, and that it was a blatant violation of the clearly defined global rules that govern the passage of merchant ships through international straits.
The evidence also reveals that Bolton was actively involved in targeting the Grace 1 from the time it began its journey in May as part of the broader Trump administration campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran.
Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The EU Council regulation in question specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel “under the jurisdiction of a member state.”
The UK government planned to claim that the Iranian ship was under British “jurisdiction” when it was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to justify its seizure as legally consistent with the EU regulation. A maritime news outlet has reported that on July 3, the day before the seizure of the ship, the Gibraltar government, which has no control over its internal security or foreign affairs, issued a regulation to provide what it would claim as a legal pretext for the operation. The regulation gave the “chief minister” of the British the power to detain any ship if there were “reasonable grounds” to “suspect” that it had been or even that it was even “likely” to be in breach of EU regulations.
The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered “British Gibraltar Territorial Waters.” Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar’s chief ministerFabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized.
There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship’s location: it is virtually impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of the middle of the Strait.
But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace 1 was in the shipping lane heading east toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this live view of typical ship traffic through the strait. So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters at any time before it was boarded.
But even if the ship had done so, that would not have given the UK “jurisdiction” over the Grace 1 and allowed it to legally seize the ship. Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue—the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union, establish a “regime of transit passage” for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions.
These articles allow coastal states to adopt regulations relating to safety of navigation, pollution control, prevention of fishing, and “loading or unloading any commodity in contravention of customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations” of bordering states—but for no other reason. The British seizure and detention of the Grace 1 was clearly not related to any of these concerns and thus a violation of the treaty.
The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK’s actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration to tighten pressure on Iran’s economy by reducing Iran’s ability to export goods.
The statement by Gibraltar’s chief minister said the decision to seize the ship was taken after the receipt of “information” that provided “reasonable grounds” for suspicion that it was carrying oil destined for Syria’s Banyas refinery. That suggested the intelligence had come from a government that neither he nor the British wished to reveal.
BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Beale reported: “[I]t appears the intelligence came from the United States.” Acting Spanish Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell commented on July 4 that the British seizure had followed “a demand from the United States to the UK.” On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge reported,
“[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel.”
Detailed evidence of Bolton’s deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1.
Panama was the flag state for many of the Iranian-owned vessels carrying various items exported by Iran. But when the Trump administration reinstated economic sanctions against Iran in October 2018, it included prohibitions on industry services such as insurance and reinsurance. This decision was accompanied by political pressure on Panama to withdraw Panamanian flag status from 59 Iranian vessels, many of which were owned by Iranian state-affiliated companies. Without such flag status, the Iranian-owned vessels could not get insurance for shipments by freighter.
That move was aimed at discouraging ports, canal operators, and private firms from allowing Iranian tankers to use their facilities. The State Department’s Brian Hook, who is in charge of the sanctions, warned those entities last November that the Trump administration believed they would be responsible for the costs of an accident involving a self-insured Iranian tanker.
But the Grace 1 was special case, because it still had Panamanian flag status when it began its long journey around the Southern tip of Africa on the way to the Mediterranean. That trip began in late May, according to Automatic Identification System data cited by Riviera Maritime Media. It was no coincidence that the Panamanian Maritime Authority delisted the Grace 1 on May 29—just as the ship was beginning its journey. That decision came immediately after Panama’s National Security Council issued an alert claiming that the Iranian-owned tanker “may be participating in terrorism financing in supporting the destabilization activities of some regimes led by terrorist groups.”
The Panamanian body did not cite any evidence that the Grace 1 had ever been linked to terrorism.
The role of Panama’s National Security Council signaled Bolton’s hand, since he would have been the point of contact with that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy.
Now that Iran has detained a British ship in order to force the UK to release the Grace 1, the British Foreign Ministry will claim that its seizure of the Iranian ship was entirely legitimate. The actual facts, however, give the lie to that claim.
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Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
Featured image: The Stena Impero British tanker (Source: Screenshot from Youtube via Citizen Truth)
The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system.
For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the most evil of purposes — while lawmen and regulators slept.
Now the fight among investigators is coming out into the open. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who gave impetus to long-contained probes, told a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John Kerry that he is getting no cooperation from the Thornburgh Justice Department.
Justice’s Criminal Division chief, Robert Mueller, tells me he will have a hatchet-burying session with the independent-minded D.A. next week, and vehemently denies having told British intelligence to stop cooperating with the Manhattan grand jury.
Mueller’s handling of the BCCI scandal as the point man for the Justice Department was widely criticized. As noted by a Senate report written by Senators Kerry and Brown:
Over the past two years, the Justice Department’s handling of BCCI has been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reflecting similar criticism on the part of several Congressmen, including the chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Kerry; the chief Customs undercover officer who handled the BCCI drug-money laundering sting, Robert Mazur; his superior at Customs, Commissioner William von Raab; New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; former Senate investigator Jack Blum, and, within the Justice Department itself, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Dexter Lehtinen.
Typical editorials criticized Justice’s prosecution of BCCI as “sluggish,” “conspicuously slow,” “inattentive,” and “lethargic.” Several editorials noted that there had been “poor cooperation” by Justice with other agencies. One stated that “the Justice Department seems to have been holding up information that should have been passed on” to regulators and others. Another that “the Justice Department’s secretive conduct in dealing with BCCI requires a better explanation than any so far offered.
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Under Assistant Attorney General Mueller, the Department assigned nearly three dozen attorneys to the case. During 1992, the Department brought several indictments, which remained narrower, less detailed and, at times, seemingly in response to the efforts of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of New York, the Federal Reserve, or both
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Suddenly, on August 22, Dennis Saylor, chief assistant to Assistant Attorney General Mueller, called Lehtinen and, according to the US Attorney, “indicated to me that I was directed not to return the indictment.”
While the Justice Department’s handling of BCCI has received substantial criticism, the office of Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney of New York, has generally received credit for breaking open the BCCI investigation.
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In going after BCCI, Morgenthau’s office quickly found that in addition to fighting off the bank, it would receive resistance from almost every other institution or entity connected to BCCI, including at various times, BCCI’s multitude of prominent and politically well-connected lawyers, BCCI’s accountants, BCCI’s shareholders, the Bank of England, the British Serious Fraud Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Squashing Warning Signs that May Have Stopped 9/11
Robert Mueller first hit my radar … just months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.
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I came to meet and later represent FBI Special Agents Robert Wright and John Vincent, of the agency’s Chicago Counter-Terrorism Field Office. During our meeting, both Special Agents Wright and Vincent revealed to me that they had been conducting a counterterrorism investigation of Saudi money laundering into and in the United States, and they both believed that a massive terrorist attack was imminent.
In the course of this investigation, both special agents had asked a fellow FBI agent who was undercover, one of Muslim descent, to be wired to turn up further evidence of this terrorist operation. The Muslim agent refused, indignantly telling both Wright and Vincent that Muslims don’t spy and rat on other Muslims. In shock, my soon-to-be clients reported this to their supervisors at the FBI, but no action was taken. To make matters worse, Wright’s and Vincent’s FBI supervisors quashed their investigation. They both believed that the order to kill the investigation came from the highest reaches of the FBI, and, upset it not outraged by this cover-up, Wright then decided to write a book detailing this breach of FBI honor.
The only way I could explain this cover-up was that then-FBI Director Robert Muellerwas sensitive to the ties between the family of President George W. Bush and the Saudi royal family.
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Director Mueller, along with his “yes men” supervisors at the agency, not only quashed my clients’ investigation and ignored the disloyalty of the Muslim undercover agent, but then missed the warning signs leading up to September 11 – the biggest intelligence failure in American history, even surpassing Pearl Harbor.
But shamelessly, despite this historic intelligence failure and the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that ensued, Mueller later led an effort to drum both Special Agents Wright and Vincent out of the FBI, in part by attempting to remove their security clearances, as a “reward” for their candor.
The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in.
Mueller was one of the people who dropped the ball and let 9/11 happen.
Allowing Escape of Saudi Persons Connected to Bin Laden
Right after 9/11, American airspace was closed down. Yet Mueller was one of the people who allowed relatives of Bin Laden and other persons of interest fly back to Saudi Arabia.
Entrapping Innocent People for P.R. Purposes
After dropping the ball, Mueller then went on to entrap innocent people for P.R. purposes.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11.
In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style “minders” to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn’t say anything the FBI didn’t like. The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).
Mueller’s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location. See this and this.
Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me recently that Robert Mueller, then the FBI director (and now the special counsel investigating connections between Russia and the Trump campaign) made “the strongest objections” to Jacobson and his colleagues visiting San Diego.
Graham and his team defied Mueller’s efforts, and Jacobson flew west. There he discovered that his hunch was correct. The FBI files in California were replete with extraordinary and damning details …
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Nevertheless, Mueller adamantly refused their demands to interview him, even when backed by a congressional subpoena, and removed Shaikh to an undisclosed location ‘for his own safety.’
Graham also wrote that the FBI also “insisted that we could not, even in the most sanitized manner, tell the American people that an FBI informant had a relationship with two of the hijackers.”
And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out:
Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.
When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Anthrax Frame-Up
Mueller also presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI’s investigation was “flawed and inaccurate”. The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an “independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case.”
The head of the FBI’s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation”, that there were “politically motivated communication embargoes from FBI Headquarters”.
The FBI’s anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins. On July 6, 2006, he filed a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:
(j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.
Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ andFBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.
In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this).
Unsure If Government Can Assassinate U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:
One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.
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He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”
Crippled Investigations of Financial Fraud … Helping to Allow the Great Recession
In a 2013 piece entitled “Mueller: I Crippled FBI Effort v. White-Collar Crime“, the country’s top white collar crime expert, William Black – who put over 1,000 top S&L executives in jail for fraud, and is a professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri – wrote:
The FBI never developed “an intelligence operation” “to analyze threats” of even epidemic fraud.
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White-collar crime investigations and prosecutions are massive money makers that reduce the deficit, but Mueller, Holder, and Obama refuse to make these points and refuse to prosecute the elite bank fraudsters. On substantive and political grounds their actions are either inexplicable or all too explicable and support my readers’ belief that the FBI leadership no longer wants to investigate and prosecute the elite bank frauds.
After the Great Depression, the government cracked down on Wall Street fraud. But Mueller and other Bush and Obama administration officials let it slide
(There are a lot of people more responsible for the Great Recession – and for lack of reform afterwards – than Mueller. For example, Mueller’s boss (the FBI is a part of the Department of Justice) made it more or less official policy not to prosecute financial fraud. But this is another example of Mueller dropping the ball.
NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.
On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:
We have put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.
Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone fcompanies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored:
Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”
Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.
Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”
Simon Tisdall at The Guardian explains the difference between Socialist Spain and the disorganized Conservatives in control of UK on foreign policy.
US national security adviser John Bolton tried to hoodwink both of them about the Grace I, a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker carrying Iranian petroleum through the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain monitored the tanker but declined to intervene because it remained in international waters. The EU position has been that unless ships headed for Syria came within 12 nautical miles of the European coast, they were helpless to take action because you can’t interfere with shipping through international waters.
Britain, in contrast, used its naval position in Gibraltar to seize the tanker in international waters on the grounds that it was headed to Syria, against which the European Union had declared an oil embargo.
There were three problems with the British reasoning, presumably that of Jeremy Hunt, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and trailing candidate for prime minister. (Maybe also painfully inexperienced defense minister Penny Mordaunt, appointed in May):
First, the EU ban on oil sales to Syria concerned only EU member states.
Second, the Grace I was in international waters and seizing it is a form of piracy.
Third, there is no proof it was headed for Syria (which would not have been illegal in international law in any case).
Not only did Spain’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, not fall for Bolton’s over-excited talking points, but he was withering about the British seizure of the tanker, since Spain does not recognize British claims on Gibraltar in the first place and wants decolonization.
That is, as Tisdall deliciously makes clear, Spain is siding with Iran against Britain on this issue.
Bolton and his fellow hawk secretary of state Mike Pompeo have been upset that the rest of the world did not line up with the US when it breached the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and slapped severe sanctions back on Iran (despite Iran’s faithful adherence to the terms of the deal). Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany (informally for the EU) were also signatories and stuck with the deal. France and Germany are even trying to find financial instruments to allow EU trade with Iran despite US opposition.
For Bolton to trick Hunt into seizing the Grace 1 shifts Britain toward the US side of the ledger and sets up a London-Tehran confrontation. Iran has already taken a couple of British tankers in the Gulf into custody to “inspect” them or on charges of smuggling. The UK is probably not willing to take military action in return, especially if Boris Johnson becomes PM tomorrow [update: he just, on Tuesday]. He has told Trump to his face that Britain won’t support military action against Iran.
But Bolton has tricked London into an adversarial posture toward Iran, with ratcheting tensions. And that is a big win for Iran War hawks around Trump. Trump allegedly believes (according to Jonathan Swan at Axios) that it doesn’t matter if he keeps these rabid dogs around him, because he decides if there is war. But Trump is a fool and does not realize that the hawks can put him in a headlock from which he can only escape by looking manly and taking military action. Trump should ask Jeremy Hunt about that.
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US President Donald Trump has vetoed congressional efforts to block $8bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that his administration had authorised without the approval of lawmakers.
Wednesday’s vetoes come after both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed resolutions to halt the arms deals.
The State Department bypassed Congress to push the sales through by declaring an emergency, citing growing tensions with Iran.
The Senate will vote within the next few days on whether to override Trump’s veto, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
McConnell said the vote would be held before 2 August, when lawmakers leave Washington for a five-week-long recess.
However, the three resolutions of disapproval are not expected to garner the two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate needed to override the veto.
Only a handful of Trump’s fellow Republicans, who hold 53 seats in the Senate, backed the resolutions when they passed last month.
‘Reliable partner’
Trump said blocking the deals would damage “the credibility of the United States as a reliable partner”.
“This resolution would weaken America’s global competitiveness and damage the important relationships we share with our allies and partners,” the White House said in a statement late on Wednesday.
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, was quick to denounce the veto late on Wednesday, calling on lawmakers to act against it.
“These arms deals with Saudi Arabia do not serve US interests,” Dingell wrote on Twitter.
“There is already a terrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and we cannot be complicit in worsening the crisis. The Trump Administration can no longer overstep its authority. Congress must override the veto.”
US laws give Congress the power to halt major arms sales to foreign countries.
The decision to sidestep the legislature caused an outcry on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers, including some of the president’s allies, denounced the questionable use of an emergency declaration.
Relationship with Riyadh
The sales were forced through during a time of growing scepticism in Congress towards the US alliance with Saudi Arabia after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the mounting civilian death toll from the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Coupled with anger at Riyadh, legislators were furious over the administration’s failure to follow the normal process for arms sales. Both chambers of Congress held hearings to question administration officials about the emergency declaration.
Earlier this month, Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch Texas conservative who is close to Trump, decried the State Department’s decision to bypass Congress, urging the administration to “follow the damn law and respect it”.
“I have to say I agree with the concerns that have been expressed in this hearing on both sides of the aisle,” Cruz said at a hearing in the Senate.
Congress has been pushing to hold Riyadh accountable for the death of Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi government agents at the country’s consulate in Istanbul last October.
Trump ignored a deadline mandated by the Global Magnitsky Act, a US human rights law, to report to Congress on whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the murder.
Earlier this year, Trump also vetoed a congressional resolution to halt Washington’s support for the war in Yemen.
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Iran has meticulously selected its political steps and military targets in recent months, both in the Gulf and the international arena. Its partial and gradual withdrawal – tactical yet lawful -from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the nuclear deal, is following a determined path. Its clear objective is to corner the US President and his European allies, and indeed Iran seems aiming for a final withdrawal from the JCPOA. Also, despite the effect the US sanctions are having on the Iranian economy – and despite Iran’s determination to reject US hegemony – Iranian officials have publicly put on hold a Russian offer to support its oil sales.
In Iran, sources confirm that
“China rejected the US sanctions and Russia offered to sell one million barrels daily for Iran, and to replace the European financial system with another if needed. But why would Iran make it easy on those who signed the deal (Europe)? If the European countries are divided and not in a position to honour the deal why did they sign it in the first place? Iran will pull out gradually, as stated in the nuclear agreement, up to a complete withdrawal. Iran is experiencing a recession (Trump is expected to be re-elected, which will prolong it), but is not in poverty, and is far from being on its knees economically and politically”.
Despite the harsh US sanctions, Iran is sending unusual and paradoxical signs, playing down the effect of the economic crisis and showing how less than relevant the Trump administration’s measures are: it has frozen the Russian offer designed to ease its financial burden by selling one million barrels of oil daily, and by stepping in to replace the European financial system. The only plausible interpretation is that Iran is determined to pull out of the nuclear deal if possible without invoking worldwide sanctions. In parallel, its military steps continue at a calculated pace.
IRGC Navy speed boats circling the British-flag tanker Stena Impero to slow it down before boarding it by Special Forces.
None of the several military objectives that have been hit in recent months was a casual or impulsive response, starting from the al-Fujeira sabotage, followed by the drone attacks on Aramco pumping stations, and ending with the damage to a Japanese tanker. The first action was not officially claimed by Iran. The second was claimed by the Houthis in Yemen. The third was against a Japanese tanker and the attacker is still at large, officially unknown.
However, Iran came out in public to announce its downing of the US surveillance drone and its capture of a British tanker in the Gulf of Oman. The ship was forced to sail into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Every single reaction by Iran’s opponents was envisaged and calculated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the preparation of these attacks was perfectly planned and equally well executed. However, this doesn’t mean Iran did not take into consideration a possible war scenario where missiles could potentially fly in all directions. Iran is harassing, engaging, and even playing with Trump and Netanyahu’s threats of war, walking on the edge of the abyss.
Most Iranian leaders are repeating the clear message: no one will export oil if we can’t. It is also telling neighbouring countries that any attempt to export their oil by bypassing the Straits of Hormuz will be thwarted, hence the attacks on al-Fujeirah (the Emirates) and Aramco (Saudi Arabia). Both were potential substitutes, ways to export Middle Eastern oil without going through the Iranian controlled straits.
Iran chose to down an unmanned drone, where it could have downed a US spy aircraft with 38 officers onboard. The same US President- who was embarrassed by the lack of reaction to the downing of the drone – had to thank Iran for not shooting down the spy plane with the US personnel on board. That was a masterly planned decision: cool thinking by the IRGC leadership in the face of tough alternatives.
Trump could justify his failure to react by the lack of human victims; he was certainly aware that any military friction could blow up his chances of re-election: a factor very carefully calculated by Iran. Limited war is not an option available to Trump.
Moreover, after the UK Royal Marines landed by helicopter on the Iranian super tanker “Grace 1” to capture it – despite the fact that neither Iran nor Syria are part of the EU, and thus they are not legitimate targets for the sanctions to be applied and validated in this case – Iran first gave a chance to the French envoy Emmanuel Bonne to find an exit to the crisis. When the UK decided to keep “Grace 1” for another month, hours later Iranian IRGC special Forces captured – using the “cut and paste” style of boarding-the British tanker “Stena Impero”, a UK ship, just at the moment when that government was at its weakest, and the UK Prime Minister was bailing out. Again, very thoughtfully planned, and a well-calculated risk.
The US pushed the UK to move against Iran but stood idly by, watching the humiliation of the former “British Empire” which indirectly dominated Iran during the Shah era and before the Imam Khomeini came to power in 1979.
Iran took the UK tanker from the Gulf of Oman and offered a mediocre pretext, equal to the British one when capturing “Grace 1” in Gibraltar. Iran is telling the British that no war confrontation took place and no human losses are registered so far even if the Middle East is in the middle of a war-like situation with the US economic war on Iran.
So far, not one victim has been recorded, notwithstanding the massive and important events that involved several sabotage operations, the downing of one of the most sophisticated and expensive US drones, the capture of two tankers, and a warning to a US spy plane which escaped Iranian missiles by a hair’s breadth.
Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei ordered the IRGC to continue developing its missile programme and injected billions of dollars into it. The leader criticised both President Hassan Rouhani and the Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif for leading the country to a deal with the US and the EU when both are partners to each other and cannot be trusted. Therefore, the only exit seems the direction Iran is taking, particularly since Europe remains divided. The UK is heading towards selecting a Trump-like leader,Boris Johnson, the US President’s favourite candidate. The UK is in a critical situation where the “no-deal British exit” (hard Brexit) from the European community will weaken the country and isolate it- and certainly Trump will not bother to rescue it.
Iran is exposing its policy now: an eye for an eye. It is as prepared for war as much as US; prepared for the “absolute worst” as Trump has said. The US is building up its military capability by re-opening its air base in Saudi Arabia (Prince Sultan desert base) – the same base that the US used for its war against Saddam Hussein in 1990. Iran is active with its allies, Palestinian groups, the Lebanese Hezbollah, various Iraqi groups and Yemeni allies to provide these with enough missiles to sustain a long war if need be, yet without obviously provoking it.
Iran will continue its war in the shadows, and will continue harassing the western countries, disregarding the Arab states so that its war is not turned in a sectarian direction. Middle Eastern peoples are watching the dangerous bickering and can see Iran’s finger is on the trigger. It is gripping it firmly, without no hesitation to fire when appropriate, and regardless of who is the opponent or opponents.
The US most likely will have to wait and think carefully about its next move, particularly the building up of a maritime security coalition to patrol the Gulf and protect ships during the six hours needed for the transit of the Straits of Hormuz. The more western military presence there is in the vicinity of Iran, the richer the bank of objectives and targets offered to the IRGC, and the easier it becomes for Tehran to select its choice of target – in case of war – without launching long-range missiles against US bases established in the Middle East or any other long-distance target.
Washington won’t go to war if the outcome is not clear at least for itself. And, with Iran, no outcome can be predicted with certainty. Iran is aware of this US weakness, and is playing with it. It is showing that the West, for all its bulky muscles, is fragile and even vulnerable.
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The first-ever long-range joint air patrol between the Russian and Chinese Air Forces got off to a scandalous start after South Korea reportedly fired hundreds of warning shots to ward off what it says was Moscow’s violation of its sovereign airspace near the disputed Liancourt Rocks that it administers, which in turn prompted Tokyo to scold Seoul for responding since it said that only Japanese forces have the right to do so over the territory that their government also claims, thus worsening the already-tense relations between these two American military allies.
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The first-ever long-range joint air patrol between the Russian and Chinese Air Forces was supposed to be a moment of celebration for both multipolar Great Powers, but it got off to a scandalous start after South Korea reportedly fired hundreds of warning shots to ward off what it says was Moscow’s violation of its sovereign airspace near the disputed Liancourt Rocks that it administers. Russia refuted the accusations and retorted that no such violation occurred, but slammed South Korea’s escort of its aircraft over neutral waters as amounting to “aerial hooliganism“. Japan, however, jumped into the unexpected diplomatic fray by scolding South Korea for responding to what it claims was a violation of its own airspace seeing as how Tokyo also lays claim to the area, which suddenly worsened these two American allies’ already-tense relations that have been damaged by the island nation’s recent decision to restrict the export of special chemicals to the peninsular country.
The South Korean-Japanese trade dispute was caused by Tokyo’s concerns that some of its partners’ companies are illegally transferring these chemicals to North Korea to aid in its chemical weapons program due to their dual use in that industry as well as the semi-conductor one that they’re officially supposed to be used for. Seoul, however, was skeptical from the get-go since it seemed to its policymakers that Tokyo is doing this in response to their court’s decision that their former colonizer pay reparations for its abuse of forced laborers during World War II, with it being thought that Japan is politicizing this trade dispute in order to compel South Korea into concessions on this super-emotive issue under pain of having its economy contract due to its inability to import the chemicals that are indispensable for use in an industry that accounts for roughly a quarter of its exports on the scale that’s needed to maintain growth.
This weaponization of economic instruments for political ends greatly complicates the US’ efforts to forge a trilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia between itself and its two military allies, and Japan’s latest scolding of South Korea surely doesn’t help at all in this respect. In fact, these two events are leading to a possibly irreconcilable rift between both of them, one that the US might not be able to repair. The Pentagon’s recently released “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” says that “The U.S.-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific”, clearly indicating an overall strategic preference for Japan, which might have been emboldened by this to initiate its trade war with South Korea due to the expectation that the US wouldn’t dare chastise it out of fear of losing the reliability of its top partner for “containing” China. That calculation might of course change, but for now, the US is staying silent and letting its partners work it out themselves.
Such an approach suggests that the US also doesn’t want to risk offending South Korea, whose cooperation on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament is especially important for advancing American grand strategy too. Because of the different roles that both countries play in promoting American interests in Northeast Asia, Washington is hard-pressed to choose between them in picking a so-called “favorite” to throw its weight behind. The US must also tread carefully because it doesn’t want for these two latest events in South Korean-Japanese relations to result in Seoul swiftly pivoting towards Beijing in response, which is a distinct possibility that shouldn’t ever be precluded despite the seemingly low odds of it happening at this moment. Even so, the risk is nevertheless ever-present that this could occur just as unexpectedly as Japan’s export restrictions that suddenly worsened the regional situation.
Returning back to the matter at hand, Japan’s rebuke of South Korea’s self-professed right in firing warning shots to ward off the Russian warplanes that it said violated its airspace brought the Liancourt Rocks into their ever-widening disagreements as of late, meaning that it can now be included in the “full package” of this month’s issues alongside the lingering legacy of World War II, Japan’s claims that some South Korean companies are violating UN sanctions by illegally exporting dual-use chemicals to North Korea, and Tokyo’s trade restrictions on Seoul. The indisputable outcome is that two of America’s most important allies are now locked in a seemingly intractable and very complex dispute over history, international law, trade, and now geopolitics, with each of these issues being ultra-sensitive for their people and therefore reducing the chances that they can reach a “compromise” on ending one of the worst-ever rifts between the US’ top Asian partners.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The widespread opioid epidemic is perhaps the most serious public health crisis in the US.
It’s fueled by Big Pharma greed and indifference to the health and welfare of ordinary people — facilitated by ruling authorities in Washington, doing little to contain it beyond rhetorical posturing.
The Mayo Clinic explained opioid prescription drugs as follows, saying they’re “a broad group of pain-relieving drugs that work by interacting with opioid receptors in your cells.”
“Opioids can be made from the poppy plant — for example, morphine (Kadian, Ms Contin, others) — or synthesized in a laboratory — for example, fentanyl (Actiq, Duragesic, others).”
“When opioid medications travel through your blood and attach to opioid receptors in your brain cells, the cells release signals that muffle your perception of pain and boost your feelings of pleasure.”
What relieves pain can be addictive and hugely dangerous. High doses slow “breathing and heart rate, which can lead to death.”
Opioid addiction is the leading drug overdose issue in the US, responsible for over 50,000 deaths in the country annually.
According to new information published by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), drug producers and distributors sold about 76 billion opioid pain pills between 2006 and 2012 alone, likely much more than earlier in years after this timeframe to the present day.
Millions of Americans use legal and illicit opioids. When used by pregnant women, infants can be drug-dependent at birth.
Trump earlier declared a public health emergency, yet did nothing to address it, no plan or federal funding to combat the crisis, no efforts to control the proliferation of these drugs.
Like his predecessors for the last half century, Trump prioritizes war on drugs strategy, the long ago failed approach to dealing with the crisis. Addiction to legal and illicit drugs is a health issue, not a crime.
Director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program Peter Maybarduk said the following in response to Trump’s hollow announcement:
“Declarations and tweets will do little to curb the deadly opioid push into our communities spurred by Big Pharma.”
Drug companies “hooked millions of Americans on opioids through illegal marketing, greed and undermining safety standards.”
“Big Pharma created this epidemic. Ending its corruption is a necessary part of the solution.”
Trump instead is beholden to corporate interests, doing nothing to curb their destructive practices.
His shameful war on drugs and “Just say no” agenda assures a greater opioid crisis, not the other way around.
A Washington Post report on the growing epidemic quoted Big Pharma emails “show(ing) indifference to” what’s going on, taking scores of US lives daily.
A WaPo quoted email from Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals national account manager Victor Borelli to drug distributor KeySource Medical’s sales vice president Steve Cockrane said check your inventories.
“If you are low, order more. If you are okey, order a little more, Capesce?”
He earlier used the phrase “ship, ship, ship” to describe his job, said WaPo, adding:
“Those email excerpts are quoted in a 144-page plaintiffs’ filing along with thousands of pages of documents unsealed by a judge’s order Friday in a landmark case in Cleveland against many of the largest companies in the drug industry.”
“Nearly 2,000 cities, counties and towns are alleging that the companies knowingly flooded their communities with opioids, fueling an epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 since 1996.”
The figure is likely way understated as the cause of many US deaths go unreported or are misreported.
The Controlled Substances Act requires drug companies to report to the DEA unusually large and frequent orders — and refrain from shipping what may be diverted to the black market.
Plaintiffs in litigation against drug companies and distributors claim firms “ignored red flags and failed at every level.”
WaPo was part of a lawsuit for release of previously sealed DEA documents on opioid sales and distribution.
Drug companies and the DEA unsuccessfully tried to block the release, ordered at the district and appeals court levels, the latter OKing certain redactions, information sought now made public.
WaPo:
“(F)or the first time, provides specific information about how and in what quantity the drugs flowed around the country, from manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies.”
“The case also brings to light internal documents and deliberations by the companies as they sought to promote their products” indifferent to public health and welfare.
Companies named in what amounts to a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) “civil racketeering enterprise” suit include Mallinckrodt, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Purdue Pharma.
Plaintiffs claim opioid producers and distributors failed to “design serious suspicious order monitoring systems that would identify suspicious orders to the DEA,” adding:
“Their failure to identify suspicious orders was their business model: they turned a blind eye and called themselves mere ‘deliverymen’ with no responsibility for what they delivered or to whom.”
“They made no effort actually to identify suspicious orders, failed to flag orders that, under any reasonable algorithm, represented between one-quarter and 90 percent of their business, and kept the flow of drugs coming into Summit and Cuyahoga Counties” — similar practices going on nationwide.
By deposition, an unnamed Mallinckrodt employee called the company the “kingpin within the (opioid) drug cartel.”
In 2011, the DEA said the company “sold excessive amounts of the most highly abused forms of oxycodone, 30 mg and 15 mg tablets, placing them into a stream of commerce that would result in diversion,” adding:
“(E)ven though Mallinckrodt knew of the pattern of excessive sales of its oxycodone feeding massive diversion, it continued to incentivize and supply these suspicious sales,” — never notifying the DEA of suspicious orders.
McKesson is the largest US opioid distributor. According to the ongoing lawsuit, the company “has a long history of absolute deference to retail national account customers when it comes to (opioid) threshold increases,” often increasing amounts shipped to pharmacies like Walgreens, Walmart, and other large chains.
“In August 2014, (the) DOJ noted that McKesson appeared to be willing to approve threshold increases for opioids for the flimsiest of reasons.”
For shipments to Summit and Cuyahoga counties, the company failed to report a single suspicious order from May 2008 to July 2013, according to the lawsuit, adding:
In 2017, the company “failed to design and implement an effective system to detect and report ‘suspicious orders’ ” — after fined earlier for this practice.
“(B)efore the ink of the settlement agreement was even dry,” the company continued “business as usual” by maintaining an unrestricted flow of these drugs.
Its former regulatory affairs director was recently indicted for illegally distributing opioids.
According to the DEA in 2012,
“(n)otwithstanding the ample guidance available, Walgreens has failed to maintain an adequate suspicious order reporting system and as a result, has ignored readily identifiable orders and ordering patterns that, based on the information available throughout the Walgreens Corporation, should have been obvious signs of diversion.”
What’s clear from information released, opioid producers and distributors continue trafficking in these dangerous drugs freely even after fined for abusive practices.
Judicial action won’t stop them. Nor will Congress or the White House.
America’s political process is money controlled, aspirants and officeholders bought like toothpaste, beholden to their large donors.
Corporate giants run things. Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual wins every time.
Trump is like the vast majority of others in Washington, serving corporate interests, doing nothing to curb their destructive practices.
The drug industry fueled opioid crisis keeps worsening because of a bonanza of profits it generates.
Addiction and an overdosing epidemic killing tens of thousands in the US annually is considered a cost of doing business — paid by victims, not opioid traffickers.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Readers aware that I, and Dmitry Orlov, have been chronicling America’s rapid decline ask me, “where did it all begin?”To answer that question would require a massive history such as Jacques Bazun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. All I can do for you is to show you recent evidence from our time.
Let’s begin an occasional series on the subject with asset forfeiture.Asset forfeiture was one of those tactics that Sir Thomas More warned against in the play, “A Man for All Seasons.” Cutting down a protective feature of law in order to better chase after devils exposes the innocent to injustice along with the guilty.The devil was the Mafia.Asset forfeiture originated as a way to prevent gangsters from using their ill-gotten gains to hire better lawyers to defend them than the US Justice Department could hire to prosecute them.In effect, gangsters were denied the use of their money in their defense. This was the beginning of an unconstitutional assault on private property and due process, but the judiciary, desiring that the Mafia be imprisoned, ignored their constitutional responsibility. The judges joined in the chase after devils.
A next step was to go further in the “war on drugs” and confiscate the property of those suspected of drug crimes.The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984 declared forfeitable all real property, including any right, title or interest in anything associated in any way with the commission of a drug crime.
As I have stressed and as legal scholars formerly stressed, the law unfolds to the limit of its logic.Innocent people have had their cars confiscated because they picked up a hitch-hiker who was in possession of drugs discovered in a police stop.Federal agents have confiscated real estate on the grounds of which they conducted a “drug sting.”As one of the participants in the sting committed a crime, the property chosen for the sting can be confiscated on the grounds that the property “facilitated a drug crime.”Multimillionaire Donald Scott was shot dead by police in his home on his 200-acre estate in Malibu, California, because of a conspiracy to seize Mr. Scott’s home on the theory that there was “probable cause” to think that the heir to a vast European chemical and cosmetic fortune was growing marijuana somewhere on his estate (The Tyranny of Good Intentions, pp. 117-120).
Asset forfeiture soon jumped beyond drug crimes to all crimes.A family lost their motel because a prostitute rented a room in which she conducted her business.The motel had unknowingly “faciliated a crime.”Asset forfeiture permits a person’s property to be confiscated even though the owner was not a participant in the crime and had no knowledge of the crime.
There have been vast numbers of innocent American tax-paying victims of police stealing their property under asset forfeiture law. Over the years I have reported cases, and Lawrence Stratton and I addressed police theft from the innocent public in The Tyranny of Good Intentions published in 2000 and a new edition in 2008.The injustice done to so many Americans is one cost of asset forfeiture laws.The criminalization of police departments is another cost.
Local TV stations in Tennessee, for example, have reported many instances of police from different local jurisdictions fighting over seizure rights on different stretches of Interstate 40.The police stop cars with out-of-state tags, search the cars and passengers, and if they find cash in the amount of $100 or greater the police confiscate it on the grounds that the amount indicates the selling of drugs or the intended purchase of drugs. On other pretexts the police seize the cars leaving the family on foot in a strange land.
In The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Larry Stratton and I tell the story of Selena Washington who was stopped on I-95 in Florida on her way to purchase construction materials to repair her hurricane-damaged home. She doubted the building materials company would accept a large check from a black woman and had with her the insurance settlement of $19,000 in cash. Police had set up roadblocks in order to rob people and confiscated her money without even taking her name. With the aid of an attorney and proof of insurance settlement, she was able to recover $15,000 or 79% of her money. To get her money back, she had to agree that the police could keep $4,000. I don’t know what the attorney’s fees were. Most likely, the bandit police prevented the full restoration of her home, just as when the police steal a person’s car they prevent the person from going to work and earning a living. Is the person still responsible for car payments when their car is stolen by police?
Clearly, neither the police nor the local governments that allegedly oversee the police are concerned about the career-destroying impositions, along with the deaths, that they impose on the people who pay their salaries. Why do the idiot “law and order conservatives” romanticize the police? How utterly stupid can a person be?
The Orlando Sentinel investigated police stops in Volusia County, Florida, and concluded that the police had used pretexts to confiscate tens of thousands of dollars from motorists. Only four of the motorists managed to get all of their money back.
Despite massive police abuse, or is it merely enforcement, of forfeiture laws, the practice continues to expand.The public acceptance of police as criminal organizations has resulted in new schemes for stealing people’s property.Police stop motorists and on any number of pretexts impound their car. Impound and storage fees rapidly mount, making it impossible for anyone other than a well-to-do person to recover their car.The cars are then sold to a contractor. The August 2019 issue of Car and Driver describes how this works in Chicago.It is a tale of banditry.And it goes on right in front of our eyes, and nothing is done about it.
When the police who are paid by the public to “serve and protect” instead rob and murder without accountibility, not even insouciant Americans can deny the devastating evidence of American legal, political and societal collapse.
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Government that actually serves the interests of the people who are governed has two essential characteristics: first, it must be transparent in terms of how it debates and develops policies and second, it has to be accountable when it fails in its mandate and ceases to be responsive to the needs of the electorate. Over the past twenty years one might reasonably argue that Washington has become less a “of the people, by the people and for the people” and increasingly a model of how special interests can use money to corrupt government. The recent story about how serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided any serious punishment by virtue of his wealth and his political connections, including to both ex-president Bill Clinton and to current chief executive Donald Trump, demonstrates how even the most despicable criminals can avoid being brought to justice.
This erosion of what one might describe as republican virtue has been exacerbated by a simultaneous weakening of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was intended to serve as a guarantee of individual liberties while also serving as a bulwark against government overreach. In recent cases in the United States, a young man had his admission to Harvard revoked over comments posted online when he was fifteen that were considered racist, while a young woman was stripped of a beauty contest title because she refused to don a hijab at a college event and then wrote online about her experience. In both cases, freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment was ruled to be inadmissible by the relevant authorities.
Be that as it may, governmental lack of transparency and accountability is a more serious matter when the government itself becomes a serial manipulator of the truth as it seeks to protect itself from criticism. Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is seeking legislation that will expand government ability to declare it a crime to reveal the identities of undercover intelligence agents will inevitably lead to major abuse when some clever bureaucrat realizes that the new rule can also be used to hide people and cover up malfeasance.
A law to protect intelligence officers already exists. It was passed in 1982 and is referred to as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (I.I.P.A.). It criminalizes the naming of any C.I.A. officer under cover who has served overseas in the past five years. The new legislation would make the ban on exposure perpetual and would also include Agency sources or agents whose work is classified as well as actual C.I.A. staff employees who exclusively or predominantly work in the United States rather than overseas.
The revised legislation is attached to defense and intelligence bills currently being considered by Congress. If it is passed into law, its expanded range of criminal penalties could be employed to silence whistle blowers inside the Agency who become aware of illegal activity and it might also be directed against journalists that the whistleblowers might contact to tell their story.
The Agency has justified the legislation by claiming in a document obtained by The New York Times that “hundreds of covert officers [serving in the United States] have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization… C.I.A. officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to carry out C.I.A.’s mission regardless of where they are based. Protecting officers’ identities from foreign adversaries is critical.”
Some Congressmen are disturbed by the perpetual nature of the identification ban while also believing that the proposed legislation is too broad in general. Senator Ron Wyden expressed had reservations over how the C.I.A. provision would apply indefinitely.
“I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.
Agency insiders have suggested that the new law is in part a response to increasing leaks of classified information by government employees. It is also a warning shot fired at journalists in the wake of the impending prosecution of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the seldom used Espionage Act of 1918. Covert identities legislation is less broad that the Espionage Act, which is precisely why it is attractive. It permits prosecution and punishment solely because someone either has revealed a “covert” name or is suspected of having done so.
But up until now, government prosecutors have only used the 1982 identities law twice. The first time was a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and the second time was the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to providing a reporter with the name of an under-cover case officer who participated in the agency’s illegal overseas interrogations. Kiriakou has always claimed that he had not in fact named anyone, in spite of his plea, which was agreed to as a plea bargain. The covert officer in question had already been identified in the media.
John Kiriakou also observes how the I.I.P.A. has been inevitably applied selectively. He describes how “These two minor prosecutions aside, very few revelations of C.I.A. identities have ever led to court cases. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously leaked Valerie Plame’s name to two syndicated columnists. He was never charged with a crime. Former C.I.A. Director David Petraeusleaked the names of 10 covert C.I.A. operatives to his adulterous girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to impress her, and was never charged. Former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the covert SEAL Team member who killed Osama bin Laden. He apologized and was not prosecuted.”
Kiriakou also explains how the “…implementation of this law is a joke. The C.I.A. doesn’t care when an operative’s identity is revealed — unless they don’t like the politics of the person making the revelation. If they cared, half of the C.I.A. leadership would be in prison. What they do care about, though, is protecting those employees who commit crimes at the behest of the White House or the C.I.A. leadership.” He goes on to describe how some of those involved in the Agency torture program were placed under cover precisely for that reason, to protect them from prosecution for war crimes.
Even team player Joe Biden, when a Senator, voted against the I.I.P.A., explaining in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that,
“The language (the I.I.P.A.) employs is so broadly drawn that it would subject to prosecution not only the malicious publicizing of agents’ names, but also the efforts of legitimate journalists to expose any corruption, malfeasance, or ineptitude occurring in American intelligence agencies.”
And that was with the much weaker 1982 version of the bill.
The new legislation is an intelligence agency dream, a get out of jail card that has no expiry date. And if one wants to know how dangerous it is, consider for a moment that if it turns out that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was indeed a C.I.A. covert source, which is quite possible, he would be covered and would be able to walk away free on procedural grounds.
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Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review.
His 7-hour Wednesday Q & A spectacle was much ado about nothing.
Undemocratic Dems wanting grist for their rage to impeach Trump got nothing to make their case.
The charade was an embarrassment to the maestro of malign intent, unable to recall key material in his own report, coming across as forgetful, confused, shaky, and more senile than special.
He was appointed despite clear conflicts of interest that should have automatically disqualified him but didn’t – dark forces involved wanting him used as an anti-Trump/anti-Russia fifth column.
His congressional testimony should have, but surely won’t, end the most shameful political chapter in US history since the McCarthy era communist witch hunts, finding nary a one.
McCarthyism became synonymous with baseless slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, and political lynchings.
He paled in comparison with today’s extremist cast of hundreds infesting Washington, amounting to a collective lynch mob, supported by press agent media, having long ago abandoned what journalism the way it should be is all about.
Modern-day Russophobia is far more threatening to world peace, as well as to free and open US-led Western societies than events during the Cold War era.
Mueller’s near-two year Russiagate probe was a colossal hoax, what never should have been initiated in the first place.
It was and remains all about delegitimizing Trump for the wrong reasons, ignoring the right ones.
It’s also about malign Russia bashing because of its sovereign independence, opposition to Washington’s imperial agenda, its aim for multi-world polarity, and status as the world’s dominant military power, its super-weapons exceeding the Pentagon’s best, developed at a small fraction of the cost.
Endless months of House, Senate, and Mueller probes found no evidence of Trump team/Russia collusion, no obstruction of justice.
An earlier article explained the following:
Sacked Peter Strzok led Mueller’s witch hunt Russiagate investigation for the FBI. Text messages between him and former senior agency lawyer Lisa Page showed anti-Trump bias for the wrong reasons.
According to the UK Daily Mail, the Hill, Fox News, and other media, Page admitted in earlier closed-door House Judiciary and Oversight Committees testimony that no evidence suggested Trump team/Russia collusion before Mueller’s appointment as special counsel — showing he never should have been appointed.
On May 18, 2017, the day after Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, Strzok text-messaged Page saying:
“(Y)ou and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
In his January 2017 Department of Justice (DOJ) report, Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz called FBI and DOJ actions dysfunctional and unaccountable.
He said the Russiagate probe “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.”
At the time, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said
“(t)he IG report has destroyed the credibility of the Department of Justice and the FBI.”
Exposure of their malfeasance should have ended Russiagate probes straightaway but they continued — the fallout virtually sure to go on as long as Trump remains president, and I stress:
His highest of high crimes of war, against humanity, more wars by other means, other serious wrongdoing, dereliction of duty, dismissiveness toward ordinary people everywhere, and possible march to a potentially catastrophic war on Iran if launched are ignored or glossed over.
Mueller’s nationally televised Wednesday spectacle before House Judiciary and Intelligence committees exposed him as absented-minded shaky bubbler, unable to remember key parts of his report, along with time and again saying:
“I can’t answer that question…I’m not going to get into that…“That’s outside my purview.”
He barely stopped short of claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. His spectacle also suggested he didn’t read and understand material in the report bearing his name.
Judicial Watch slammed his Wednesday spectacle, saying the following:
“The corruptly formed and constitutionally abusive Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence to support the big lie of Trump-Russia collusion.”
“Nonetheless, Mr. Muller attempted today to smear President Trump with obstruction of justice innuendo despite concluding that no such charges could be credibly sustained.”
“Frankly, Mueller never had a valid basis upon which to investigate President Trump for obstruction of justice.”
“Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, the Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, nor the Deep State ever had a good-faith basis to pursue President Trump on Russia collusion.”
“Russia collusion wasn’t just a hoax, it is a criminal abuse of President Trump, which is why Judicial Watch has fought and will continue to fight for Russiagate and Mueller special counsel abuse documents in federal court.”
Yesterday’s day-long unspectacular spectacle laid an egg, discrediting Mueller and his witch hunt more than already.
It proved once again that the probe never should have been initiated, revealing him as a doddering bumbler bordering on senility.
It’s more evidence of a nation off the rails, threatening everyone everywhere, its ruling authorities serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people, ill-served and exploited.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The newly released documentary directed by Yana Yerlashova together with independent Dutch investigator Max van der Werff proves beyond a doubt that Ukraine and its Western partners did all that they could to cover up the true cause of MH17’s tragic downing half a decade ago, introducing new evidence and testimonies that cast serious doubt on the “official” narrative of what really took place on that dreadful day.
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The entire world is already aware of the two competing theories about MH17’s downing half a decade ago, with the West insisting that a supposedly Russian-supplied BUK surface-to-air missile accidentally destroyed the passenger aircraft while Moscow has always maintained its innocence and claimed that it’s being framed as part of a politically motivated cover-up. Most people have already made up their minds about what they think really happened on that dreadful day, but those who doubt that an actual conspiracy took place might finally reconsider their views after the newly released documentary by Yana Yerlashova together with Dutch investigator Max van der Werff.
The “official” narrative blames Russia for this tragedy, but it’s since been revealed through the new evidence and testimonies that active efforts involving a broad array of countries were undertaken from the get-go to paint Moscow as the culprit despite there being no facts whatsoever to back up that provocative claim.
“MH17 – Call For Justice” sheds light on the dark truth of what happened immediately after the plane’s downing, with journalist John Helmer’s summary of the 28-minute-long documentary pointing out the key takeaways for those who don’t have the time to watch it in full. The video powerfully includes a brief interview with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir, who had earlier spoken out about the cover-up and reaffirms that Russia was blamed for what happened even before any information was conclusively known about the incident.
The Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad also revealed that the West tried to prevent his country’s meaningful involvement in the investigation, which is extremely scandalous, to say the least. The Malaysians weren’t going to be deterred in their quest for justice, however, as the documentary includes a testimony from Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, disclosing that he secretly took a small team to Donetsk to gather evidence from the site after Poroshenko’s officials originally blocked them from doing so.
Malaysia’s possession of the black boxes ensured that the country would know the truth about what really occurred, which explains why Colonel Sakri also said that both the FBI and the Ukrainian government desperately tried to convince him to hand this evidence over to them immediately afterwards. He rightly refused, and that’s why his government never jumped on the bandwagon of blaming Russia since they were aware that there’s no conclusive evidence proving its complicity in this affair. This carries immense normative weight that has unfairly been ignored by the Mainstream Media when discussing this case, though it’s understandable why they wouldn’t want to draw attention to it since that “inconvenient fact” dismantles their anti-Russian infowar. It also would make more people across the world question why they weren’t made aware of any of this in the first place, which in today’s populist-driven environment could produce more anti-elite outrage than ever before.
Few independent investigators have done as much to reveal the truth about MH17 as Yana Yerlashova and Max Van den Werff, who have done the entire world an enormous service with their latest documentary which has proven once that the Mainstream Media narrative was nothing but a politically motivated lie to blame Moscow while deflecting attention from Kiev and its probable culpability in causing this tragedy.
Those who already knew this won’t be surprised, but there are nevertheless many more who had no idea about this side of the story, which is why this documentary is a much-watch and should be shared with as many people as possible, especially on social media so that others can become aware of the evidence and testimonies that his work includes in order to finally make up their minds about what really happened.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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
[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.
[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
[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
[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.”
[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.”
[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
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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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“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 doctrineappearing 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 populationwith 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 Postreported 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 peoplefrom 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.
“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.
“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 Atwaterfor 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 Coatesrefers 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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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.
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
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
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
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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“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.
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).
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.
Thanathorn – despite failing to get into power – has nevertheless pledged to roll back Thailand’s growing ties with China and instead favor US and European interests.
This includes opposing the current construction of a joint Thai-Chinese high-speed railway in favor of the so far nonexistent Hyperloop proposed by US and European-based companies including Virgin.
A tycoon turned politician who opposes Thailand’s military government has criticised its US$5.6 billion high-speed rail project with China because hyperloop technology offers a more modern alternative. An option such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One — which is working on building networks of pods traveling at airplane-like speeds — is better for Thailand as it would help the nation to be a technological leader, according to Future Forward Party head Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.
Thanathorn has also criticized Bangkok’s decision to begin purchasing weapons from China to replace its aging inventory of US arms.
In a Bangkok Post article titled, “Future Forward Party vows to cut army budget,” his party would propose slashing the military’s budget thus hindering the purchase of additional arms from partners like China.
The article claimed:
The Future Forward Party (FFP) has vowed to cut the military budget and reduce the number of generals in the army, according to its secretary-general Piyabutr Saengkanokkul.
Apparently oblivious to the multiple wars the US alone is waging around the globe, the Bangkok Post would quote Thanathorn’s secretary-general, claiming:
“In today’s world, no one engages in wars any more.”
And now with Thanathorn himself touring the US and Europe, being paraded across the Western media and promoted in the halls of Western government – whatever illusions remained of Thanathorn and Future Forward’s working for Thailand rather than themselves and foreign sponsors has evaporated.
Aspiring to be like America, Desiring US Support
During his NBC interview Thanathorn was asked by a fully empathic Andrea Mitchell:
What do you hope to accomplish? You’re travelling. You’re going to different countries. What would you like us to do in the United States? What would you like people around the world to do for Thailand?
Thanathorn’s would answer – confirming his role as a proxy of US interests – that:
Well, I would like to tell our American friends that to take note that Thailand is now not a democratic country. What you see now is an authoritarian regime with an election. I think, I would like to ask our American friends to stand with us to help us build a democratic Thailand. To build a better society together. So that Thailand can be a powerful force helping solve the global problems. For example, problems in Burma, problems in Indonesia. You know, these problems need attention and Thailand can be such a powerful force in the region to help solving global problems.
I believe that the US is a great nation. A nation built up on democratic values. Built up on the rule of law and that is what we aspire to be. So I believe that the US government will be behind our cause.
It is no coincidence that Thanathorn echoes Washington’s desire to see Thailand transformed into a hub of regional meddling. This has been on the agenda of Washington for decades.
Despite Thailand’s role during the Vietnam War – the nation itself has resisted attempts by the US to use its territory to further encircle and contain China – or as a base of operations to meddle in neighboring countries and their internal affairs.
More recently, the very sort of “problem solving” Thanathorn would like to see Thailand involved in was shut down by the Thai government. When the above mentioned FCCT sought to organize an event criticizing the Vietnamese government, Thai police promptly cancelled it.
Police forced a rights group to cancel the launch of a report alleging Vietnam’s persecution of an ethnic minority on Friday, saying it could harm relations between the Southeast Asian neighbours.
It’s clear the current government has placed Thailand on a track – along with much of the region – pivoting away from America’s own “pivot to Asia.” It is a move that the US and Europe has attempted to undo through the familiar means of funding opposition movements, politicians like Thanathorn, economic coercion, and even by organizing violence.
It is not working. Thanathorn’s panhandling across Europe and the US for support against his own nation of Thailand is not going unnoticed in Thailand where Thanathorn’s party has already suffered defeat, is embroiled in legal crisis, and is exposed daily as working against – not for – Thailand’s best interests.
Thanathorn says he aspires to make Thailand more like America. Thais must look at America’s current state of decline and ask themselves why anyone claiming to work for Thailand would aspire to send the nation over the same cliff the United States is going over.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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July 25th, 2019 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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:
‘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.’
An ‘Unconstitutional Animas’ Against A Corbyn Government
Two weeks before the Panorama programme, The Timespublished 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.’
‘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 Expresssaid: ‘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’
‘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’
‘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 Canarypiece 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 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.
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.
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 11th 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 7th 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.
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.”
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.
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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.
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.”
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 6th, 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 23rd, 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 4th, the same day the infamous report was published, Maduro’s government refuted it in 70 points. On July 11th, 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 13th.
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 13th 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.
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
July 24th, 2019 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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 31st 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 Marinesseized 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 21st 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.
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.
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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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.”
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 Weishiapp, 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 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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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.”
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.”
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 Grahamblasted 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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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, …
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.
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 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 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.
Next November will mark the 20th 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 1st 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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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.
“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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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
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.
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.”
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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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, toldNPR 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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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.
