Global Research

With the suppression by the military of the popular movement for democracy in the Republic of Sudan the current situation inside the country remains indecisive.

On June 3 the Rapid Security Forces (RSF) backed by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) violently disrupted an occupation being staged in Khartoum over the previous two months.

Demonstrations have taken place in this oil-rich nation since December when a sharp increase in bread and other commodities prices prompted mass protest. After commencement of the sit-in on April 6, just five days later the military leadership overthrew the government of President Omer Hassan al-Bashir who had ruled Sudan for three decades.

Sudan demonstrations led to the ouster of President al-Bashir

Negotiations between the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), an alliance of professional groups and various opposition political organizations, have broken down. FFC leaders are refusing hold direct talks with the TMC due to the actions carried out by the army and militias which resulted in the deaths of over 100 people.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited Khartoum in an effort to mediate a settlement aimed moving the country towards civilian rule. Nonetheless, differing interpretations of the process for restarting talks have resulted in a social quagmire where neither the opposition groupings, which have not achieve total uniformity, along the military leadership, both appear to be unsure over which immediate directions are appropriate for the present circumstances.

Outside international interests including the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are taking measures which bolster the TMC. Through Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the TMC is being subsidizes providing the basis for non-compliance with the demands of the FFC.

Egypt, which is the current chair of the continental African Union (AU), has supported the military in Khartoum. The approach of the AU as represented by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is designed to maintain stability while at the same time follow the stated mandate of the AU of not recognizing regimes which come to power through military force.

Consequently, the Republic of Sudan has been suspended from AU membership while at the same time the TMC is hosting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy as well as an appointed mediator from Addis Ababa, the seat of the continental organization. Although the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump condemned the crackdown on protesters in early June, a very limited role within the diplomatic arena is evident from Washington.

The U.S. had for many years maintained a hostile stance towards Sudan. The National Congress Party (NCP) government of ousted President al-Bashir over an extended period refused to abide by the foreign policy imperatives set down by successive administrations in Washington.

Two of the primary factors in the strained relations were the role of the People’s Republic of China in the burgeoning oil industry during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21^stcentury, where Beijing has been enhancing its relations with the emerging petroleum producing state. In addition, support for the Palestinians and close diplomatic relations with Iran was strongly objected to by the U.S.

However, over the last several years there has been a dramatic foreign policy shift by the NCP administration. The participation by the Sudanese military in the western-backed war against the Ansurallah in Yemen marked a departure in regard to its relations with Tehran.

Overtures to the U.S. have become more pronounced while greater dependence upon Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Cairo increased. Despite these efforts by Khartoum, Washington and Wall Street is committed to bringing about the total subservience to an imperialist agenda for Sudan.

Political Composition of the FFC and Implications for Domestic and Foreign Policy

The most prominent of the opposition groups in Sudan which had demanded the resignation of the NCP government of ousted President al-Bashir is the Forces for Freedom and Change. This alliance issued a statement on January 1, 2019 with a program calling for various reforms to be enacted immediately.

According to the Declaration for Freedom and Change Forces (FFC):

“We, the people of Sudan across cities and villages, in the north, the south, the east, and the west; join our political and social movements, trade unions and community groups in affirming through this declaration that we will continue the course of peaceful struggle until the totalitarian regime is removed and the following goals are achieved: First, the immediate and unconditional end of General Omer al-Bashir’s presidency and the conclusion of his administration. Secondly: The formation of a National Transitional Government. This transitional government will be composed of qualified people based on merits of competency and good reputation, representing various Sudanese groups and receiving the consensus of the majority. Their role is to govern for a term of four years, until a sound democratic structure is established, and elections held.” (See this)

This same document continues by demanding an end to civil wars still raging inside the Republic of Sudan; the creation of a united front made up of various political interests; that special attention should be paid to improving the economic status and social welfare of the people inside the country; an effort to what is described as the rehabilitation of the image of the Republic of Sudan; the building of relations with neighboring governments and foreign states, with specific focus upon the newly-founded Republic of South Sudan which broke away from Khartoum with the full support of the U.S., Britain and Israel during 2011; and a respect for freedom of speech and the right to gather in order to address grievances.

The Declaration was signed by 22 different organizations including the SPA, which is listed first, and other academic, youth, women’s and civil society groupings. Interestingly enough, various opposition parties which have long been at odds with the NCP were not listed as signatories to the document.

Sudan protests chants led by women opposition forces

Another political force involved in the mass efforts to overthrow the military and bring into existence civilian rule is the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). The party has expressed its solidarity with the FFC and the SPA. Nevertheless, the SCP in its statements emphatically emphasizes the critical role of trade unions in the struggle to replace the TMC.

In a statement issued on June 17, the SCP also urges elements within the military which are disgruntled with TMC rule to join the popular movement. This line says specifically that:

“Attempts must be made to win the soldiers of the armed forces into the revolution, and there are already references to the possibility of doing so. A TV channel had a dialogue with a member of the intelligence agency who had split to join the revolution, saying that the uniformed soldiers were stripped of their weapons and moved from their positions near the picket (sit-in) before the massacre and replaced by elements of the support forces (RSF). In other words, the generals were not fully confident of the loyalty of sectors of soldiers, who might have been following orders to kill the demonstrators.” (See this)

Prospects for Change and the Role of Divergent Political Interests

Other armed groups including the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (North) and various organizations in Darfur where a full blown conflict had taken place several years ago against the central government in Khartoum, have been engaged in the discussions centering on establishing a new dispensation. However, it appears these efforts have not been successful in destabilizing the TMC during the period since the crushing of the mass demonstrations in early June.

The question becomes how long can the TMC hold out for its ultimate aim which is the acceptance of its “legitimate” role in the post-Bashir era? TMC spokespersons continue to articulate their willingness for the transition to a civilian government despite the repressive measures utilized against protesters.

At the same time the FFC and its allies must reset the character of popular resistance while maintaining a semblance of unity. Further repression against the FFC can only be transcended by the utilization of tactics which subvert the capacity of the TMC to maintain state power.

Washington is covertly attempting to influence the developments in Sudan since its objective is to ensure the maintenance of the state within imperialist sphere of influence. Only the sustainable resistance and revolutionary fervor of the people organized can supersede the forces of reaction leading to a people’s government and revolutionary transformation process.

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

All images in this article are from the author

Canada Day 2019

“O Canada our home and native land … 

The sovereignty of Canada is precarious.  Our government has been coopted by Washington. 

Among the millions of Canadians celebrating the 152nd anniversary of the signing of the British North American Act (July 1st 1867) how many are actually aware that our Southern neighbour, the United States of America had formulated in 1924 a carefully designed plan to invade Canada and bomb Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and Vancouver.

War Plan Red was officially approved by the US War Department in May 1930.

The 1928 draft stated that “it should be made quite clear to Canada that in a war she would suffer grievously”.

And guess who was in charge of planning the bombing raids against Canadian cities:  General Douglas MacArthur who during World War was put in charge of waging the Pacific War and coordinating the extensive bombing of Japanese cities (1941-1945). 

The war plan was explicitly geared towards the conquest of Canada. “The U.S. Army’s mission, written in capital letters, was “ULTIMATELY, TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL OF CRIMSON [Canada].”

Canada’s Global and Mail has twisted realities upside down. The Red War Plan to Attack CRIMSON was casually presented as a peacemaking endeavor. It was a plan to rightfully defend the US:

First approved in 1930, Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan – Red was drawn up to defend the United States in the event of war with Britain.

It was one of a series of such contingency plans produced in the late 1920s. Canada, identified as Crimson, would be invaded to prevent the Britons from using it as a staging ground to attack the United States. (Globe and Mail, December 31, 2005, emphasis added)

We bring to the attention of our readers this carefully documented article by Prof. Floyd Rudmin, first published in 2006. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 1st, 2019

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Between the First and Second World Wars–that is, between 1918 and 1939–the United States developed and approved as official national policy three major war plans: a War Plan ORANGE against Japan; a War Plan GREEN against Mexico, and a War Plan RED against the UK. (The most useful source here is R.A. Preston’s 1977 book, The Defence of the Undefended Border: Planning for War in North America, 1867-1939.) But there were other war plans as well. Special Plan VIOLET was approved by the Joint Board of the Army and Navy in 1925 for interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean “to forestall action by other countries including the League of Nations.” There was a War Plan WHITE initiated in 1920 for suppressing internal insurrection by U.S. citizens, but it was not developed or approved.

These war plans were all declassified in 1974 and (can be purchased from the U.S. National Archives. Germany was color-coded black, but there never was a War Plan BLACK. War Plan RED was the largest of the war plans, the most detailed, the most amended, and the most acted upon. The Plan presumed that a war with the UK would begin by U.S. interference in British Commonwealth commercial trade, “although other proximate causes to war may be alleged”. The Plan presumed that the British navy would take the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal. In exchange for these losses, the U.S.A. would invade and conquer Canada.

Though ostensibly for war against Britain Plan RED is almost devoid of plans to fight the British. The Plan is focused on the conquest of Canada, which was color-coded CRIMSON. The U.S. Army’s mission, written in capital letters, was “ULTIMATELY, TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL OF CRIMSON.” The 1924 draft declared that U.S. “intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained… The Dominion government [of Canada] will be abolished.” War Plan RED was approved in May 1930 at the Cabinet level by the Secretary of War and Secretary of Navy. It was not a plan of defense. The U.S.A. would start the war, and even should Canada declare neutrality, it was still to be invaded and occupied.

In December 1930, the US Naval Attaché in Ottawa made an espionage report to the Joint Board on Canada’s lack of readiness for war: “In as much as Canada had no idea of trouble with any other country it was not considered necessary to maintain a proper air force.” The U.S. focus on invading Canada accelerated during the 1930s. Even as late as 1939, when World War II was beginning and the free world was mobilizing to fight fascism, Preston describes how the U.S. Army War College and the Naval War College had set as their planning priority the task of coordinating land and sea forces for a project entitled, “Overseas Expeditionary Force to Capture Halifax from Red-Crimson Coalition.”

For some unexplained reason, The Washington Post and Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, recently decided to report on War Plan RED. Peter Carlson’s Dec. 30, 2005, article in The Washington Post was entitled, “Raiding the Ice Box.” Shawn McCarthy’s Dec. 31, 2005, article in The Globe and Mail was entitled, “They’d take Halifax (then we’d kill Kenny).” Both articles are written with doses of disbelief, derision, and sometimes giggling or guffaws.

Source: The Globe and Mail

But War Plan RED is certainly not news, nor is the re-re-reporting of re-re-discoveries of War Plan RED. The first news report of the Plan was in 1935, when secret Congressional budgeting for three camouflaged air bases for surprise attacks on Canada, at $19,000,000 each, was mistakenly made public by the government printing office, which published “Air Defense Bases: Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, Seventy-Fourth Congress”. This was reported by the New York Times on its front page and re-reported by the Toronto Globe under the headline, “U.S. Disavows Airport Yarn”. War Plan RED was re-discovered and re-reported in 1975 by the Reuters wire service, and the Globe and Mail re-reported it. It was again re- discovered and re-reported as news in 1991 and again in 2005. History has lessons, but they cannot be learned by re-re-repeated disbelief or by giggling.

If U.S. war plans for the conquest of Canada provoke laughter, that is a comment on those who are laughing, not a comment on the war plans. In its day, War Plan RED was not meant to be funny. The 1928 draft stated that “it should be made quite clear to Canada that in a war she would suffer grievously”. The 1930 draft stated that “large parts of CRIMSON territory will become theaters of military operations with consequent suffering to the population and widespread destruction and devastation of the country…” In October 1934, the Secretary of War and Secretary of Navy approved an amendment authorizing the strategic bombing of Halifax, Montreal and Quebec City by “immediate air operations on as large a scale as practicable.” A second amendment, also approved at the Cabinet level, directed the U.S. Army, in capital letters,

“TO MAKE ALL NECESSARY PREPARATIONS FOR THE USE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE FROM THE OUTBREAK OF WAR. THE USE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE, INCLUDING THE USE OF TOXIC AGENTS, FROM THE INCEPTION OF HOSTILITIES, IS AUTHORIZED…”

The use of poison gas was conceived as a humanitarian action that would cause Canada to quickly surrender and thus save American lives. (Commander Carpender, A. S., & Colonel Krueger, W. (1934), memo to the Joint Board, Oct. 17, 1934, available in U.S. National Archive in documents appended to War Plan RED.)

In March 1935, General Douglas MacArthur proposed an amendment making Vancouver a priority target comparable to Halifax and Montreal. This was approved in May 1935, and in October 1935, his son Douglas MacArthur Jr. began his espionage career as vice-consul in Vancouver. In August 1935, the U.S.A. held its then largest ever peace time military maneuvers, with more than 50,000 troops practicing a motorized invasion of Canada, duly reported in the New York Times by its star military reporter, Hanson Baldwin.

What is the mentality and line of logic that leads ranking military professionals, executive cabinet officers, and congressmen to plan and prepare war on an ally and good neighbor?

Secret border bases? Surprise attacks? Strategic bombing of populated cities? Immediate first use of poison gas? And at the same time they were planning this for Canada, they failed to plan for war against German fascism, a very great threat to America. Clearly, something was wrong in the thinking of many high-level civilian and military decision makers. These war plans warrant proper study, not dismissive derision, if America is ever to understand and control its military impulses.

For example, War Plan GREEN, for the invasion of Mexico, looks like a mirror image of America’s current invasion plan for Iraq. Here are some direct quotations from the Mexican War Plan approved by Secretary of War in August 1919.

“The oil fields of Tampico and Tuxpan are important not only to the commerce of the United States and of the world, but to that of Mexico… The fields are largely owned by American and British interests and are susceptible to great damage by the Mexicans. It is therefore important to seize these fields at once…”.

“The first rule for conquering a nation is to defeat its army. The Mexican army if it accepts battle at all, will certainly do so in defense of the heart of its country. And the heart of the country is the Mexico City locality… An attack on Mexico City will not only bring the Mexican army to a decisive battle, but will, if successful, afford to the United States the facilities it will need to reorganize and reestablish the government” .

“The period of active operations will be short, as compared to the period of guerilla operations. The early disbandment of temporary [U.S.] troops is highly desirable. It is the testimony of all well acquainted with Mexican character that any number of Mexicans can be hired to fight against anyone and for any one who will regularly pay and feed them. The Mexican soldier will be cheaper and more efficient against banditry than the American and the cost can be more easily charged against the Mexican government”.

“In addition, an Army can be established that will not be anti-American and which may, for many years in the future, exercise on the Mexican government an influence favorable to the United States”.

Some further direct quotes from the 1927 draft of War Plan GREEN:

“The military purpose of this Plan is the use of the armed forces of the United States to overthrow the present existing Federal Government of Mexico and to control Mexico City until a government satisfactory to the United States has been set up”.

“…the foregoing purpose can best be initiated by depriving the existing Federal Government of munitions of war from outside sources, interrupting the receipt of its revenues as far as practicable , driving it from Mexico City and accomplishing its overthrow. Wide publicity as to the object of the military operations may reduce Mexican resistance by influencing the Mexican people to give allegiance to a new Federal Government”.

“The United States should declare a state of war against Mexico and establish a blockade, in order to interrupt the entrance of munitions of war and receipt of revenues. In the event that a state of war is not declared to exist, blockade operations are limited to such ‘peaceful blockade’ as is authorized by the President”.

Replace the word “Mexico” with “Iraq” and change the corresponding city names, and this war plan will read like America’s current military strategy in Iraq:

In both plans, the goal is to seize control of another nation’s oil.

In both plans, there is a priority on protecting the oil production facilities from damage by the defending national forces.

In both plans, economic sanctions and blockade will weaken the nation prior to the U.S. invasion.

In both plans, Congressional authorization for war can be circumvented by presidential command and by twisting of words.

In both plans, propaganda will claim that the invasion is benevolent, intended to free the population from a bad government.

In both plans, the war is seen to be quick and easy to win, against a weakened national army defending an overly centralized government in the national capital.

In both plans, there is contempt for the military abilities and valor of the defending national forces.

In both plans, the U.S.A. imagines that it can make a new government in the conquered country that will serve U.S. interests.

In both plans, a national militia army will be hired in order to cheaply save American soldiers from being bogged down in a protracted guerrilla war.

In both plans, the conquered nation will pay the costs of this national militia.

In both plans, this militia army is expected to be used by the U.S.A. to control the national government for years into the future.

The current U.S. plan for the invasion, occupation, and continuing control of Iraq is not new.

It is almost 100 years old.

Thus, the core of the militarism that is endangering America and driving us into bankruptcy, disdain, and dishonor is not new. The fundamental causes of the Iraq war cannot be found in contemporary geopolitics nor in the personalities of the Bush administration, as so many critics of the war think. There is something wrong at a much deeper level in American political culture. The American malady of militarism extends across decades, across generations, and is so deeply rooted in the American mind that attacking another nation seems to be the natural, spontaneous reaction of choice.

In fact, the U.S.A. is the least threatened nation on the planet. Its geographic, demographic, and economic size, and its location, give it far greater security than Russia, or Holland, or Hungary, or France, or Finland, or Iraq, or Iran. These nations are easily attacked from several sides, and in modern history have been thus attacked. These nations have reason to be fearful, but in fact are less fearful than is America. Certainly it is impossible for foreign forces to invade and occupy the U.S.A. even should the U.S. have the most minimal defenses.

But Americans feel more threatened than most other people on the planet. The U.S. military budget now exceeds that of all other nations combined. The U.S.A. is now the only nation with two defense departments; one to defend the homeland and one to….to do what? To project “defense” of America outside of our borders into other nations? That is normally called “aggression”.

Projection may be the key to marketing military projects in America. These may begin as “realpolitik” projects: schemes to take economic resources, for example, to increase trade or to control oil. Then we imagine that others are planning to do to us what we know we are planning to do to them, like the “Golden Rule” in reverse. It is classic psychopathic projection. And we feel fear. We believe we are realistic and rational because our plans and our actions fit the fear we have imagined. That is normally called “neurosis” or “insanity”. We get into a feed-forward loop of our own belligerent plans projected into others, imagined to have similar belligerent plans against us, causing fear which further justifies our original belligerence. Thus we enter an accelerating cycle of belligerence and fear; each feeding the other and turning “aggression” into “defense”. We imagined that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas would invade Texas. We imagined that a socialist government in Grenada would destabilize the Western Hemisphere. We imagined that Iraq would put nuclear bombs into New York subways. These are all comic claims, but many in America did not laugh. Instead, we attacked these nations.

In the mistakenly published 1935 testimony to Congress about the need for new air bases to attack Canada, a military expert explained that Canada has thousands of lakes, and each of these is a potential floatplane base. He asked the congressmen to imagine the fearful vision of the sky filled with bush-pilot float planes flying down from Canadian forests to bomb Boston and Baltimore:

“…the Creator has given countless operating bases within a radius of action of this country in the vast number of sheltered water areas that are available deep in Canada… from which pontoon-equipped aircraft could operate at will… There is no necessity for starting with an observation in order to know what they are going to bomb. They know now what they are going to bomb. They know where every railroad crosses every river. They know where every refinery lies. They know where every power plant is located. They know all about our water supply systems… Now they are dispersed widely out over this area. Their location is most difficult for us to learn, for our own air force to learn. We have to hunt them up. We have to find out where they are before we can attack them.”

No one in the hearings laughed at this. Instead, Congressman Wilcox complemented the speaker, Captain H. L. George, as “a mighty good teacher” and Congressman Hill said, “Captain, you made what to my mind is a very interesting, clear, and lucid statement.” No one asked Captain George how he knew with such certainty that Canada or Britain had located and targeted U.S. railroad bridges, oil refineries, power plants and water systems. In fact, the U.S.A. had located and targeted such facilities in Canada as part of War Plan RED. We imagine that others are planning to do to us what we know we are planning to do to them. Projected military imagination causes paranoia.

Just weeks before this testimony, the Joint Board had dispatched a secret reconnaissance team to the wilds of Hudsons Bay and Labrador to hunt for hidden Canadian float-plane facilities. Congressman Kvale commented, “All we are interested in is defense. Predicate your building of your bases on defense and not on offense”; and Captain George responded that “the best defense against air attack is offense against the places from which the air attack originates.” Thus, even pre-emptive attack is not a new idea. The committee was persuaded, and on June 6, the House approved appropriations for the new air bases. On August 10, the bill was signed into law by President Roosevelt.

Perhaps the malady of American militarism can be understood, diagnosed, and eventually curbed or cured. Perhaps an international coalition of social scientists willing to focus their full attention on the history and the social and mental processes of American militarism can begin to understand how it is rooted in our psyche and political culture. Such a coalition should include historians, psychologists, psychiatrists, military strategists, and cultural anthropologists. Considering the large numbers of innocent people we Americans kill when we act on our militarized imagination, considering the immense amount of money we waste building weapons and attacking other nations because our own imagination frightens us, it should be a national priority to understand what is happening, why we act as we do, and how we might stop doing it.

Collective neurosis is hard to notice in contemporary contexts. There are few reference points for normality by which to see that our fears are unfounded. But in historical retrospect, it is easy to see how neurotic we were in our projected paranoia, and how wrong. America’s historical war plans offer a rare opportunity for insight into the militarization of the American mind. We should take a look inside and try to learn.

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Floyd Rudmin teaches in the Psychology Dept. University of Troms, Norway. He can be reached at [email protected]

Africa’s second most populace state was the scene of an attempted putsch on June 22 when the head of the military was assassinated in the capital of Addis Ababa.

There were initial reports of four people killed in the attacks on the police headquarters, the ruling party offices and the regional presidential headquarters in the Amhara regional capital of Bahir Dar.

Other details which have emerged suggest that a militia connected with the Amhara police forces were behind the failed coup. Efforts were made to seize control of the local state-run media. In the fighting, the Amhara state President Ambachew Mekonnen was killed along with a high-ranking advisor to the local administration.

Ethiopia General Seare Mekonnen was killed in coup attempt on June 22, 2019

Additional reports have stated that the mastermind behind the coup attempt was the Amhara state security chief Brigadier General Asaminew Tsige. The dissident military official was said to have been killed on June 24 attempting to flee his hideout in Bahir Dar. Asaminew was released from prison in 2018 having been incarcerated for nine years after an earlier coup attempt.

State-controlled press agency sources in Amhara claim that a total of 13 people died in the fighting when elements loyal to the national federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took measures which thwarted the efforts to seize power. Questions remain whether the failed coup was only aimed at taking power in Amhara or whether the assassination of the Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian Defense Forces General Seare Mekonnen and another retired general was part of a countrywide plan to unseat Abiy.

A state funeral was held in the capital of Addis Ababa on June 25 where over a thousand soldiers and the families of the slain military leaders gathered to pay their last respects to the deceased whose coffins were draped in the Ethiopian national flag. The following day on June 26, thousands lined the streets in Bahir Dar to mourn the five officials killed there.

Ethiopia women soldiers mourn the lost of slain army chief of staff General Seare Mekonnen at state funeral on June 25, 2019

General Seare was buried in his home region of Tigray on June 26. The nation of 112 million people have been reminded of the ongoing instability within the country where a tenuous balance of federal regional states and the national government can be torn asunder by a series of conflicts over political control.

The Significance of Ethiopia as a Nation-State

Ethiopia is the headquarters for the African Union (AU), the 55-member continental organization founded as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963.

Since 2002, the reformed institution has placed greater emphasis on the ideas of the visionaries who established the OAU as a direct outcome of the ideological and political developments of the Pan-African Movement since the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The 2063 AU blueprint calls for further economic, political, cultural and telecommunications integration.

In Ethiopia specifically, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been lauded over the previous 15 months for his rapid ascendancy to power and the implementation of domestic and foreign policy reforms which have been responsible for groundbreaking developments. There has been the release of political prisoners and the return of exiles from outside the country. The appointment of women to key positions in government has raised their profile within Ethiopia, Africa as a whole, as well as internationally.

Nearly one year ago, Abiy signed two peace treaties with neighboring Eritrea, a nation born in a three decades-long secessionist armed struggle against the Addis Ababa government. Other plans were announced involving economic cooperation between the two states and the enhancement of mutual cooperation and friendship among its people.

Ethnic and micro-nationality conflicts have surfaced as well since Abiy took power where violent clashes among the Oromo and Amharic groups have resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries along with the displacement of hundreds of thousands. The much trumpeted easing of tensions with Eritrea, where two wars were waged in 1998 and 2000, many years after the declaration of independence by Asmara in 1991 in the wake of the collapse of the previous socialist-oriented administration of Mengistu Haile Mariam, has been dampened when the closing of border crossings made news earlier in the year.

United Nations reports indicate that 2.4 million people are dislocated within Ethiopia. This is said to be largest of such displacement on the African continent.

During the period of monarchical rule of His Imperial Majesty (HIM) Haile Selassie I in Ethiopia, the Amhara were dominant within state and economic institutions. The war with Eritrea, which began in 1961, was followed by similar armed conflicts against the central government within the regions of Tigray, Oromo and Ogaden. The government which came to power in 1991 had also waged an armed struggle against the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) administration. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) was formed and led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), based in the north of the country.

A federalized system of government since the early 1990s has served as a mechanism for obfuscating the underlying ethnic and micro-nationality tensions which are by-product of contemporary Africa under neo-colonialism. Overcoming these contradictions remains the major challenge of the AU member-states notwithstanding the masses of workers, farmers and youth.

Implications of the Coup Attempt on June 22 for Ethiopia and Other AU Member-states

Details of the actual events are still being uncovered in the subsequent days since the apparent attempt to seize power by a section of the security forces based in the Amhara region. There are strong sentiments against the Abiy government based upon the reforms he has initiated and the normalization of relations with Eritrea.

The resentment against Abiy’s government and policies has simmered since his taking of power after mass demonstrations, violent unrest and strikes during the early months of 2018. The previous administration of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had lost legitimacy among large sections of the impoverished and marginalized population.

Despite its phenomenal economic growth in recent years due to the attraction of investments from both the Western capitalist states and the People’s Republic of China, discontent over the distribution of wealth and services has created a volatile social situation. Abiy who is from the Oromo region sought immediately after taking office to normalize relations between the southern areas and the central and northern territories of Ethiopia.

Genuine development could not take place without some rapprochement with neighboring Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti. However, the role of the Gulf Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through their military usage of Eritrean ports will inevitably place major obstacles in regard to relations with other African and Middle Eastern regional states.

These developments in Ethiopia are by no means isolated incidents confined to any one particular country on the continent. The vastness and diversity of Ethiopia cannot fully explain the regional and micro-nationality conflicts.

Although Ethiopia was never formally colonized, the country was occupied by Italian fascism from 1935-1941. After the restoration of the Monarchy, Ethiopia remained closely allied with the West until the Revolution of 1974 which saw lower-ranking military officers taking power riding the waves of social change and the demands for non-capitalist development. During the period from the late 1970s to 1991, Ethiopia worked in close partnership with the Soviet Union, the socialist states in Eastern Europe and the Republic of Cuba, drawing therefore the ire of Washington.

The establishment of 55 independent sovereign states in Africa since the emergence of independence movements from the 1950s to the 21^st century poses profound challenges to the AU project of integration and unity. In neighboring Republic of Sudan, the instability inherited from the colonial system has led to the partitioning of the oil-rich nation compounded by contradictions between the regional, military and civilian interests.

Ethiopia has been involved in mediation efforts aimed at resolving the conflict between the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the Transitional Military Council (TMC) since the overthrow of former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on April 11. Prime Minister Abiy has traveled to Khartoum for talks with both the TMC and the main opposition parties and alliances.

Yet within Ethiopia itself these issues related to the role of regional interests, the military and security forces are still not resolved. It appears for now that the Abiy administration has been able to halt further destabilization and political fracturing. However, these problems must be confronted on a strategic level since they will arise again due to the inability to forge a national and Pan-African policy of reconciliation and an equitable distribution of the country’s wealth.

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

All images in this article are from the author

This past weekend, June 29, Trump and China president, Xi, met again at the G20 in Japan in the midst of a pending escalating trade war. But the outcome looks eerily similar to that of the prior G20 meeting in Buenos Aires on December 2, 2018, when Trump and Xi also met.

Once more, the same post-G20 ‘spin is in’: i.e. Trump declares publicly he has such a great relationship with Xi. There’s a great trade deal soon forthcoming between the two countries. US and China trade teams will now begin to thrash out the details on the remaining 10% or so of US-China trade differences. In the interim, once again, Trump announced he will withhold imposing more tariffs (this time on an additional $325 billion of China imports to the US). In other words, coming out of the latest G20 it’s almost an exact déjà vu all over again to the outcome which occurred at last December 2, 2018’s G20 meeting between Trump and Xi in Buenos Aires.

Will it be different this time? Will there by an agreement? Or will Trump once again just be buying time—i.e. until just before the 2020 elections? Until he sees China’s economy softening further and he raises US demands further again? Or maybe Trump and his neocon trade advisers—Lighthizer, Navarro, Bolton who are now driving US trade (and most of US foreign) policy—don’t want to compromise and will accept nothing less than China’s capitulation on the nextgen technology issue that was at the core of the blow up of negotiations in May 2019?

It’s probably becoming increasingly clear to the Chinese that the US did not just launch a ‘tariff war’ back in March 2018. US policy is driving toward a bonafide economic war between the US and China longer term.

In the nearer term, the current differences may well transform the ‘tariff’ war into a ‘currency war’ that will spread contagion and reverberate globally across other economies—at a time at which the global capitalist economy is slowing fast and approaching as well a new financial instability. All China has to do is allow its currency, the Yuan-Renminbi, to devalue naturally in response to US policy and the slowing global economy. That devaluation would more than offset US tariffs. Thus far, China has intervened in global money exchange markets to prevent this. But all it needs to do is allow it to occur according to prevailing economic and market forces and just not intervene in global money markets further to prop up the Yuan. That will become inevitable as the China, US, and global economy weaken further in coming months. China doesn’t have to manipulate its currency. It only has to allow global market forces, unleased in large part by Trump policies, to naturally devalue the Yuan.

Then there’s China’s $1.3 trillion of US assets, mostly US Treasuries. It could slow its purchase of new US government debt, which it appears it may now be doing. Should the tariff-currency war intensify, if necessary it could stop or even sell off its dollar hoard of US Treasuries. It’s been moving toward that since September 2018, as its purchases of US securities first slowed and then declined in March 2019. That reduction of purchases, if not offset by other economies buying more, would drive up long term interest rates in the US and in turn the value of the US dollar still more—all of which further slows global growth.

Rising US rates and the dollar will likely precipitate another US stock and junk bond sell-off, similar to that which occurred late 2018. And we know Trump doesn’t like stock market declines.

There are numerous other ‘actions’ the Chinese could take in response to US neocons intensifying or prolonging the US-China tariff-trade war, further driving the differences into a broader economic war. Various bureaucratic obstacles to US corporations’ majority ownership of operations in China, ‘buy China’ not America in China movements, restrictions on the sale of what’s called ‘rare earths’ minerals key to technology and military production would likely be imposed. Even if US neocons don’t understand this, or don’t care, widespread business and banking interests do and could intervene more forcefully should Trump’s drift toward economic war continue.

Economic Slowdown & Recession ‘Wild Card’

And there’s a wild card in the trade war deck that may check the neocons influence perhaps. That’s the current softening of the US and China economies. That could force both sides to an agreement. Trump may grab the major concessions on China purchases and US majority ownership rights in China and announce a big victory—just before the 2020 US elections.

China’s economy is clearly slowing, growing likely no more than 4%-5%, not the official 6.5%. But so too is the US economy as well, which will start to become more obvious once the data for the 2nd quarter US GDP start to come in by late July.

The US 1st Quarter GDP numbers were propped up by temporary factors associated with inventory over-investment and net exports, both of which are fading rapidly this quarter. Moreover, US household consumer spending is barely growing, most recently at less than 1%. The housing sector has slowed for the past 17 months. Manufacturing orders and production is now stagnant and business investment has turned negative. Lagging indicators, like jobs, are now beginning to turn down as well. The US Central bank’s lowering of interest rates in the second half of 2019, which is helping to drive the massive $1.5 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts scheduled for this year, may succeed in putting a temporary floor under stock markets. But the real side of the US economy is being driven to slowdown, or even worse by year end. More bank research departments, big finance capitalists, and even some economists, a notorious conservative and timid forecasting lot, have begun to predict recession by year end 2019.

A more rapidly slowing US economy, now clearly beginning, may thus change the trade negotiations dynamic, forcing both sides to some kind of a deal. And if the US slips into recession by winter 2019-20, which this writer has also been predicting the past year, the pressure to cut a deal will grow.

Trump may yet be convinced to take the China concessions already on the table—and temporarily suspend the US demand for China’s capitulation on the technology issue. Trump could yet take what’s been offered by China—i.e. to buy $1 trillion more US farm goods and allow US corporations majority ownership of operations in China—and declare a major victory in the trade negotiations in 2020 just before the elections. The nextgen tech-military confrontation—the real core of the US-China dispute—could be re-raised and revisited thereafter later. That’s one possible scenario. Because for Trump a ‘deal is never a deal’, it’s never concluded, but subject to reopening whenever he so chooses.

Breaking an agreement is standard practice for Trump. Just ask the Mexicans, where Trump recently threatened to levy 25% more tariffs even after US concluding a new NAFTA 2.0 deal last year. Or ask the Iranians, who thought they had an agreement with the US. Or the Europeans who thought they had a Climate deal. For Trump, negotiations are a continuing process, punctuated by happy talk events stroking foreign leaders, followed by more threats of sanctions, and personal insults and intimidations, to force a reopening of deals once thought concluded by trading partners—allied and challengers alike.

In other words, even if a China-US trade deal is done, perhaps next year, the trade war with China will not be over. It will have just begun, as it evolves toward a broader ‘economic’ war after the 2020 elections, perhaps even before.

The key to a China trade deal occurring sooner. rather than later, is whether Trump and US big bankers and multinational capitalists can convince the neocons and the military industrial complex to agree to a short term deal with China now that provides only token nextgen technology concessions—backed by the Trump-Neocon assurance that the US will reopen and resume the technology offensive after the 2020 elections once again.

For the US economic and political elites are in basic agreement with the neocons behind the Trump daily circus on the nextgen technology issue. Neither will allow China to challenge US global hegemony next decade by leveraging nextgen technologies that are the key to both economic and military hegemony. It’s just a question of timing by the US—elites, Trump, neocons. Take two bites of the bargaining apple from the Chinese, and come back later for the big bite: i.e. the fight over nextgen technology. Either that or Trump and the Neocons will continue to insist on three bites all at once.

This writer’s guess and prediction is that the now slowing US and global economy will result in the former, and the US will reopen any deal reached and renew its technology demands after the 2020 elections. For the current tariff-trade war is just the opening salvo in an epic struggle between the US and China. The technology war has already begun, albeit in early stages. The Trump trade war today is just the opening move today to a more fundamental technology war tomorrow.

Historical Precedents

Just as European and American imperialists jockeyed and maneuvered in the years leading up to 1914 and the first world war, with their focus on disputes over markets and global natural resource control, in the 21st century the jockeying and maneuvering has similarly begun—albeit this time with a different focus on nextgen technologies, over who controls global money flows, whose currency will continue to dominant, over who calls the shots in global institutions like the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and so on.

The 2020s decade ahead will prove a highly dangerous period. The global capitalist economy is slowing, as has always done periodically. A new restructuring of global capitalism is on the agenda, as it was in the late 1970s, in the mid-1940s, and during the years immediately leading up to 1914.

Trump’s trade wars and other policies should be understood as part of a broad reordering of US economic and political policies, and relations with other nation States allied and adversary alike, to ensure the continuation of US global economic and military hegemony for the coming decade. Nextgen technology development is at the core of that restructuring and restoration of US hegemony. Trump is just the appearance, the historic vehicle, behind the deeper global capitalist transformation in progress.

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Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, September 2019; and the recently published ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’, Lexington books, March 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his website is http://www.kyklosproductions.com . Dr. Rasmus tweets at @drjackrasmus and hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio Network. 

Featured image is from Susan Walsh/AP

A senior author and analyst based in Sweden said Palestinians are regarded “as a people without a country” in the economic plan raised by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a recent conference in Bahrain.

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“I have examined carefully the Jared Kushner/White House document Peace to Prosperity – The Economic Plan: A New Vision for the Palestinian People,” Hussein Askary said in an interview with Tasnim.

“The document refers to the ‘Palestinian people’, but there is no mention even once to the term ‘state’, nor ‘Palestinian Authority’. There is no mention of ‘Palestine’ (although this is easy to understand given who wrote it). So, the ‘Palestinian people’ here are regarded as a people without a country,” he stated.

Askary is an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen. He is the Southwest Asia Coordinator of the International Schiller Institute. Askary has worked as an economic and strategic analyst on Southwest Asia and North and East Africa for the Washington-based weekly magazine Executive Intelligence Review since 1996. He is the co-author of several books on the New Silk Road strategy and its impact on the world economy. His latest book-length special report “Extending the New Silk Road to West Asia and Africa” was published in November 2017. He has spoken on these matters in international conferences and seminars in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Japan, and China. In 2018, he wrote an 80-page study on the reconstruction of Yemen and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: Bahrain hosted the so-called “Peace to Prosperity” conference to discuss what the US has described as the economic part of President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”, a plan which aims to consign the Palestinian cause to oblivion. The Palestinian leadership boycotted the meeting in Manama on June 25 and 26, leading critics to question the credibility of the event. In your opinion, what goals are the US and Israel pursuing by holding the conference? Would they reach their goals?

Askary:  I have examined carefully the Jared Kushner/White House document “Peace to Prosperity – The Economic Plan: A New Vision for the Palestinian People.” If the reader of this proposal is an alien who has just landed from Mars and has no idea what has happened on this planet in the past 75 years, he or she might find some of the ideas useful; infrastructure, education, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, etc. But that is not the reality. The document refers to the “Palestinian people”, but there is no mention even once to the term “state”, nor “Palestinian Authority”. There is no mention of “Palestine” (although this is easy to understand given who wrote it). So, the “Palestinian people” here are regarded as a people without a country. They just happen to inhabit an area called the West Bank and Gaza. The “Palestinian people”, whose pictures in this document are glowing with happiness and optimism, will be enjoying their lives under the benevolent shadow of the Israeli army’s guns. The term “occupation” is mentioned only to mean vocational practice, not military occupation. So, the whole thing is an unserious attempt to dilute and eliminate the Palestinian issue. The danger is that President Donald Trump and many Americans and Europeans might think this is a great offer.

If you look at the “financing” part of this proposal, it shows clearly that the authors never have in mind a Palestinian government or state. “Capital raised through this international effort will be placed into a new fund administered by an established multilateral development bank,” the document says. It is a “fund” which will be created through donations by mainly the US and the (Persian) Gulf countries, like all other failed donation operations in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, etc. And, it will be administered not by the representatives of the “Palestinian people” but by a foreign agency (most probably the World Bank). This means no sovereignty and no independence for the “Palestinian people”.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s focus on an economic plan, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, is a strategic mistake that could stymie the peace negotiations even before they begin. What is your assessment of the US approach to the conflict and the future of the plan? Is it practical at all?

Askary: I am a strong believer in the concept promoted by the late American political prisoner and economist Lyndon LaRouche that there could be no peace without economic development. But what is being presented here is intended to fail not to succeed. Remember that these are the same ideas proposed during the Oslo Peace process two decades ago. Kushner is presenting this plan in Bahrain in a conference downgraded to workshop because it was already boycotted by the Palestinian Authority and denounced by all Palestinian political groups. Kushner himself says that he is presenting this economic part of the “Deal of the Century” because the political part is so disputed. The Palestinians, and I agree with them, say this economic plan is blackmail to force them to accept the political part. But Kushner already knows what the Palestinian answer will be. If they refuse, then they will look like bigots who are biting the hand which is trying to feed their people. And if everything collapses and more violence is practiced against the Palestinian people by Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government, then the US could say that the Palestinians should blame no one but themselves. The British (the instigators of this whole problem from start) and the right-wing Israelis will stretch this conflict as far as it goes to keep the region unstable and prone to conflicts. Besides, the Likud extremists’ philosophy is that “Jordan is Palestine”, which means all Palestinians will probably wake up one morning to find themselves in Jordan. So, there is no intention, at least from the Israeli right wing, to reach peace.

According to my sources in the US, Trump personally might not harbor similar ideology like the Likud or Zionist lobby, but he has accepted the Likud regime uncritically and listens to people like billionaire Sheldon Adelson on how to deal with the Middle East.  For the moment, he is focused on Iran where he is surrounded by war hawks like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo who preach the whole Netanyahu’s line that ‘Iran is the source of terrorism in the region’.

I am optimistic, though, that if a genuine dialog between Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping takes place soon (on the sidelines of the coming G-20 Summit), it can bring some rationality to the situation, because the whole world can be affected by a large military conflict in the Persian Gulf. This will affect the Palestinian issue too.

Tasnim: Last Friday, Israeli forces once again opened fire on Palestinians taking part in the peaceful “Great March of Return” protests, along the separation fence between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied territories, injuring at least 79 peaceful protesters. According to media reports, more than 270 people, including 52 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in March 2018. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. Why has the international community, particularly the Western mainstream media, made a muted response to the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians so far?

Askary: There are two reasons for this indifference in the Western mainstream media to the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli army: 1. They are busy, upon orders of the political and economic forces that own them, demonizing Russia, China and their allies, like Iran and Syria, and whoever in the West would dare to show friendliness or promote closer and friendly relations with Russia and China. The Transatlantic imperial forces are upset because their system of control over the world economy is collapsing, and that of Russia, China, and their allies and friends is thriving along the New Silk Road. 2. Many of the large media outlets are owned or controlled by powerful economic interests that are friendly to or are part of the so-called Zionist lobby, who attempt to suppress any information about the suffering of the Palestinian people or Yemen for example.

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 Featured image is from TNA

The most important trilateral at the G20 in Osaka was confined to a shoddy environment unworthy of Japan’s unrivaled aesthetic minimalism.

Japan excels in perfect planning and execution. So it’s hard to take this setup as an unfortunate “accident.” At least the – unofficial – Russia-India-China summit at the sidelines of the G20 transcended the fate of an interior decorator deserving to commit seppuku.

Leaders of these three countries met in virtual secrecy. The very few media representatives present in the shabby room were soon invited to leave. Presidents Putin, Xi and Modi were flanked by streamlined teams who barely found enough space to sit down. There were no leaks. Cynics would rather joke that the room may have been bugged anyway. After all, Xi is able to call Putin and Modi to Beijing anytime he wants to discuss serious business.

New Delhi is spinning that Modi took the initiative to meet in Osaka. That’s not exactly the case. Osaka is a culmination of a long process led by Xi and Putin to seduce Modi into a serious Eurasia integration triangular road map, consolidated at their previous meeting last month at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek.

Now Russia-India-China (RIC) is fully back in business; the next meeting is set for the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September.

In their introductory remarks, Putin, Xi and Modi made it clear that RIC is all about configuring, in Putin’s words, an “indivisible security architecture” for Eurasia.

Modi – very much in a Macron vein – stressed the multilateral effort to fight climate change, and complained that the global economy is being ruled by a “one-sided” dictate, emphasizing the necessity of a reform of the World Trade Organization.

Putin went a step ahead, insisting, “our countries are in favor of preserving the system of international relations, whose core is the UN Charter and the rule of law. We uphold such important principles of interstate relations as respect for sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs.”

Putin clearly underlined the geopolitical interconnection of the UN, BRICS, SCO and G20, plus “strengthening the authority of the WTO” and the International Monetary Fund as the “paragon of a modern and just multipolar world that denies sanctions as legitimate actions.”

The Russia-India-China contrast with the Trump administration could not be starker.

Those ‘tremendous assets’

BRICS, as it stands, is dead. There was an “official,” pro-forma BRICS meeting before the RIC. But it’s no secret both Putin and Xi completely distrust Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, regarded as a Trump neocolonial asset.

Ahead of his bilateral with Trump, Bolsonaro peddled Brazil’s mineral wealth, claiming the country may now export “niobium trinkets.”

Well, that’s certainly less controversial than the Brazilian military sherpa arrested in Spain for carrying industrial quantities of cocaine (36kg) in the presidential plane, definitely ruining the after-hours party time in Osaka.

Later on, Trump eagerly praised Brazil’s “tremendous assets,” now being fully privatized to the benefit of US companies.

Xi, as he addressed the BRICS meeting, denounced protectionism and called for a stronger WTO. BRICS nations, he said, should “increase our resilience and capability to cope with external risks.”

Putin went one up. Apart from denouncing “protectionist” tendencies in global trade, he called for bilateral trade in national currencies bypassing the US dollar – mirroring a commitment by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Russia-China, via Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and head of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, have signed an agreement to switch to rubles and yuan in bilateral trade, starting with energy and agriculture, and increase cross-currency settlements by 50% in the next few years.

There will be a concerted effort to increasingly bypass SWIFT, using the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) and the Chinese Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS).

Sooner or later Russia-China will entice India to join. Moscow has excellent bilateral relations with both Beijing and New Delhi, and is decisively playing the role of privileged messenger.

The mini-trade war against New Delhi launched by the Trump administration – including the loss of India’s special trade status and punishment for buying Russian S-400 missile systems – is quickening the pace of the process. India, by the way, will pay for the S-400s in euros.

Image below from Mikhail Klimentyev / Sputnik

There were no leaks whatsoever from Russia-India-China about Iran. But diplomats say that was a key theme of the discussion. Russia is already – covertly – helping Iran on myriad levels. India has an existential choice to make: keep buying Iranian oil or say goodbye to Iran’s strategic help, via the Chabahar port, to facilitate India’s mini-Silk Road to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

China sees Iran as a key node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative. Russia sees Iran as essential for strategic stability in Southwest Asia – a key theme of the Putin-Trump bilateral, which also discussed Syria and Ukraine.

RIC or Belt and Road?

Whatever the psyops tactics employed by Trump, Russia-India-China is also directly implicated in the massive short and long-term ramifications of the Trump-Xi bilateral in Osaka. The Big Picture is not going to change; the Trump administration is betting on re-routing global supply chains out of China, while Beijing advances full speed ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative.

Trump is heavily distrusted across Europe – as Brussels knows the EU is the target of another imminent trade war. Meanwhile, with over 60 nations committed to myriad Belt and Road projects, and with the Eurasia Economic Union also interlinked with Belt and Road, Beijing knows it’s just a matter of time before the whole of the EU hits the BRI highway.

There’s no evidence that India may suddenly join Belt and Road projects. The geopolitical lure of “Indo-Pacific” – essentially just another strategy for containment of China – looms large. That’s good old imperial Divide and Rule – and all the major players know it.

Yet India, now on the record, is starting to spin that Indo-Pacific is not “against somebody.” India getting deeper into RIC does not imply getting closer to Belt and Road.

It’s time for Modi to rise to the occasion; ultimately, he will decide which way the geoeconomic pendulum swings.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

A comprehensive analysis of nearly 1,500 scientific studies, government reports, and media stories on the consequences of fracking released Wednesday found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows the drilling method poses a profound threat to public health and the climate.

The sixth edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking (the Compendium), published by Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, found that “90.3 percent of all original research studies published from 2016-2018 on the health impacts of fracking found a positive association with harm or potential harm.”

The analysis (pdf) also found that:

• 69 percent of original research studies on water quality found potential for, or actual evidence of, fracking-associated water contamination;
• 87 percent of original research studies on air quality found significant air pollutant emissions; and
• 84 percent of original research studies on human health risks found signs of harm or indication of potential harm.

“There is no evidence that fracking can operate without threatening public health directly and without imperiling climate stability upon which public health depends,” the Compendium states.

Sandra Steingraber, PhD, co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, said in a statement that “the case against fracking becomes more damning” with the publication of each edition of the Compendium.

“As the science continues to come in, early inklings of harm have converged into a wide river of corroborating evidence,” said Steingraber. “All together, the data show that fracking impairs the health of people who live nearby, especially pregnant women, and swings a wrecking ball at the climate. We urgently call on political leaders to act on the knowledge we’ve compiled.”

MUST READ: @PSRenvironment⁩ and Concerned Health Professionals of New York @ssteingraber1 have released the 6th edition of the #fracking science #Compendium! Compiling and analyzing ~1500 studies, this critical resource shows how #FrackingHarmsHealth! https://t.co/QW8ioIYKUU pic.twitter.com/jztVLQgBoI

— PSR Environment (@PSRenvironment) June 19, 2019

According to the Compendium, the first edition of which was published in 2014, the “feverish pace” of U.S. fossil fuel extraction—which has accelerated under President Donald Trump—”has spurred a massive build-out of fracking infrastructure,” putting air quality and water sources at risk in communities across the United States.

In addition to the harmful effects of fracking on those who live near oil and gas development projects, the Compendium found, the drilling practice is “also at odds with the emerging scientific consensus on the scale and tempo of necessary climate change mitigation and with rising public alarm about the impending climate crisis that this consensus has amplified.”

“Despite efforts by the gas industry to suppress all health data on fracking, the Compendium documents the serious harm fracking holds for pregnant women, children, and those with respiratory disease,” Walter Tsou, MD, MPH, interim executive director of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility, said in a statement. “We need to ban fracking.”

The sixth edition of the Compendium comes just days after more than 100 environmental groups sent a letter urging Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to investigate the link between fracking and the emergence of rare childhood cancers in rural Pennsylvania counties.

As Steingraber—one of the letter’s signatories—told online environmental outlet The Daily Climate on Wednesday, much of the data in the Compendium comes from Pennsylvania, which is home to over 100,000 active oil and gas wells.

“What makes fracking different from any other industry I’ve studied in public health is that there’s no industrial zone,” Steingraber said. “It’s taking place literally in our backyards, and unfortunately some of the best evidence for both polluting emissions and emerging health crises is coming out of southwestern Pennsylvania.”

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The US oil cartel has given Florida’s Rick Scott 500 million reasons to be one of the Senate’s most fanatical cheerleaders for toppling Venezuela’s leftist government.

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While National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio have helped drive the Trump administration’s maximum pressure-style campaign against Venezuela, Rubio’s counterpart, Senator Rick Scott, has been every bit as fanatical about regime change in Caracas.

Speaking to a packed house of former government officials, oil executives, and lobbyists at a June 20th Atlantic Council event entitled “Russian Influence in Venezuela: What Should the United States Do?,” Scott launched into a tirade against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Watch @SenRickScott rail against Venezuela and call for a possible US military strike at the NATO-funded Atlantic Council. Scott's hundreds of millions of dollars are largely tied to oil, and his campaign was financed by oil corporations seeking regime change in Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/TZf0dzMYPO

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) June 25, 2019

“There is clearly genocide happening in Venezuela right now,” Scott declared. “Tens of thousands are dead, and it’s clearly genocide and it’s in our hemisphere.”

Scott wasn’t referring to the tens of thousands of Venezuelans that have died as a result of the crippling US sanctions regime since 2017. He was pointing instead at Venezuela’s president.

“We are watching little children like my grandson Eli starve to death, intentionally!” Scott bellowed. “And there is one person that’s primarily responsible for it, and his name is Nicolás Maduro… I think we have to be very clear, whether it’s President Putin, President Xi or the Castro regime or Iran, they are part of killing little children.”

In August 2017, as the United States launched the opening salvo of its economic assault on Venezuela, American oil and gas corporations who poured huge sums into Scott’s electoral campaign colluded in an attempt to suffocate the country’s energy sector.

At the same time, Scott – whose oil-heavy investment portfolio stood to grow as a result of the prospective coup – led the way in the halls of power in Washington.

Scott’s donors in big oil have a clear interest in toppling Venezuela’s government. Since 2007, when President Hugo Chávez nationalized the assets of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA), companies like ExxonMobil have been cut out of the country’s market.

“They will never rob us again, those bandits of ExxonMobil; they are imperialist bandits, white collar criminals, corruptors of governments, over-throwers of governments, who supported the invasion and bombing of Iraq and continue supporting the genocide in Iraq,” Chávez thundered that year on his weekly TV show Alo Presidente.

Rex Tillerson, who was CEO of ExxonMobil at the time, sued Venezuela in international arbitration court, demanding the full $10 billion in lost assets. Tillerson was initially awarded $1.6 billion, but the compensation was reduced to approximately $188 million before a US appeals court blocked the award altogether.

In 2017, Tillerson became Trump’s first secretary of state and initiated the administration’s push for regime change in an apparent attempt at revenge.

When Rick Scott launched his first campaign for Florida governor, he relied on heavy donations from the same US-based oil titans seeking to retake Venezuela’s oil wealth. As the wealthiest person to serve as Florida’s governor, Scott also dipped into his $500 million family fortune to fund his campaign. But those assets were also heavily tied up in oil industry investments.

Big oil fills Scott’s stock portfolio and stuffs his campaign coffers

During his 2018 campaign for the Senate, Scott raked in tens of thousands of dollars from oil and gas industry political action committees, many of which had previously been customers of Venezuela’s national PDVSA oil company.

FEC records show Scott received $7,500 from Marathon Oil Corporation in 2018 through its PAC. Marathon had long anticipated the rounds of sanctions against Venezuela and had weaned itself off of the country’s crude in preparation.

Prior to the January 2019 sanctions that made importing fuel from PDVSA illegal, Marathon slashed its imports by 90 percent.

“We saw this coming a long time ago,” Marathon CEO Gary Heminger said. “Five years ago [sanctions] would have had impact.”

As president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors, Cuba-born Maximo Alvarez contributed $38,500 to political action committees (PACs) supporting Scott’s run for Senate, while funneling a joint total of $66,200 in individual contributions with Sunshine Vice President Sandra Reuss.

Alvarez currently owns more than 300 gas stations in south Florida, maintaining gasoline contracts with Marathon, CITGO, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, and Texaco.

Valero Energy Corporation was the top purchaser of Venezuelan oil until the US embargo choked off the country’s exports. When Scott ran for Senate, this oil titan’s PAC contributed $5,000.

Scott’s campaign bragged that companies supported Scott because of his hard-line stance against Venezuela’s leftist government.

“Those who contribute to the campaign do so to support his candidacy, which includes calling for an end to the Maduro regime,” a spokesperson told Politico.

Chevron’s PAC gave Rick Scott $10,000 in 2018 after it had cut Venezuelan oil imports by 27 percent, and Exxon’s PAC had contributed $5,000 to the campaign as well.

Scott and his wife owned as much as $30,000 in Chevron stocks and $65,000 in ExxonMobil stocks at the time the companies were funding his campaign, putting the couple in prime position to reap profits from regime change.

By 2014, Scott had a stake of $528,032 in Phillips 66. This oil giant was the fourth-largest importer of Venezuelan crude oil until 2017, and stopped importing Venezuelan oil altogether when the country was placed under embargo the following year.

As governor of Florida, Scott was the driving force behind his state’s decision to prohibit investment in Venezuela in 2017. A year later, he led the charge to enshrine that measure into state law.

Begging for an invasion

From the Atlantic Council podium, Scott opened up the floor for new ideas on attacking Venezuela’s economy.

“I tell people every day, ‘If you have an idea, I will see if I can make it happen,” the senator remarked, gazing out at the audience.

As the event transitioned into Q&A, a fresh-faced young Venezuelan emigre named Daniel DiMartino rose nervously from the crowd to deliver a plea for the US to wage a military assault on Venezuela.

During Q&A, Indiana-based Venezuelan high school graduate @DanielDiMartino read a prepared question asking what it would take for the US to attack Venezuela. He's an underling of @MariaCorinaYA, the US-govt funded oppo figure who was implicated in an alleged plot to murder Maduro pic.twitter.com/uFqGdyuk0L

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) June 25, 2019

“I think this is just what every Venezuelan is asking right now,” DiMartino declared insistently, “and I think the most important question here is what will it take from the United States to give a real threat of military action to free Venezuela and actually follow through on that threat?”

While DiMartino sought to portray himself as an average Venezuelan, he was, in fact, a member of the hard-line Vente Venezuela (Come On Venezuela), an opposition party founded in 2012 by María Corina Machado.

One of Venezuela’s most extreme right-wing rabble rousers, Machado was implicated in an alleged plot to assassinate President Maduro in 2010. This January, when the US-backed coup was put into motion, Machado’s party introduced a call for the US military to enact the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, a thinly veiled call for invasion.

DiMartino is also an intern for Republican Indiana Sen. Todd Young, and a regular guest on Fox News and CNN, where he implores the US to invade Venezuela, just as he did at the Atlantic Council.

But his call fell on deaf ears.

“We in the United States don’t have a lot of public support for a military intervention in Venezuela, or anywhere else for that matter, at the moment,” former Pentagon official Evelyn Farkas lamented.

Farkas might have been as hawkish as anyone on the stage. She oversaw the Obama administration’s Russia policy until 2015 and proposed sending offensive weapons to far-right militias in Ukraine, a plan that was shelved until the Trump administration approved it in 2017. But even a hardliner like her understood that an invasion of Venezuela was a recipe for political and military disaster.

With Maduro still entrenched in the Miraflores presidential palace and firmly in control of PDVSA, Rick Scott may have to wait a while for his Exxon stocks to skyrocket.

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Dan Cohen is a journalist and co-producer of the award-winning documentary, Killing Gaza. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine, Latin America, the US-Mexico border and Washington DC. Follow him on Twitter at @DanCohen3000.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

In a surprise decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the four liberal members of the Supreme Court — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — halted the Trump administration’s plans, at least temporarily, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The Court thought the stated motive for adding the question seemed “contrived,” and sent the case, Department of Commerce v. New York, back to the federal district court to review whether the government can come up with a legally acceptable rationale for adding the citizenship question.

After oral arguments in April, it appeared the justices were poised to allow the Trump administration to add this question to the census: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” That question would deter households with undocumented residents from responding to the census.

The Census Department estimated that 6.5 million people could be uncounted if the question was added. This is significant because the census is used to determine the number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, the number of Electoral College votes each state will have in the presidential elections starting in 2024, and how $900 billion in annual federal funds will be distributed to the states for health care, hospitals, schools and infrastructure for the next decade.
The plaintiffs in this case — a coalition of states, counties and cities — are claiming that the addition of the question is unconstitutional.

On May 30, the high court received newly discovered evidence of a cover-up of an illegal racist motive for adding the citizenship question. Thomas Hofeller was a Republican strategist and architect of the citizenship question strategy. After he died in 2018, Hofeller’s daughter found documents revealing that he urged the question be added to the census because it would “be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” in redistricting.

Roberts and the four liberal justices found that the reason Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross gave for adding the question to the census “seems to have been contrived.” Ross testified before Congress that the sole reason he and the Department of Justice (DOJ) sought to add the question was to better enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

“[W]e share the District Court’s conviction that the decision to reinstate a citizenship question cannot be adequately explained in terms of DOJ’s request for improved citizenship data to better enforce the VRA,” Roberts wrote. “Altogether, the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.”

Breyer noted in his concurrence,

“[T]he consequences of mistakes in the census count, of even a few hundred thousand, are grave. Differences of a few thousand people, as between one State and another, can mean a loss or gain of a congressional seat—a matter of great consequence to a State…. And similar small differences can make a large difference to the allocation of federal funds among competing state programs.”

Trump called the Court’s decision “totally ridiculous,” tweeting that he asked his lawyers to “delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter.”

…..United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2019

Although it is theoretically possible the question could still be added in time for the 2020 census, it is highly unlikely, given the July 1 printing deadline.

Last week, the Justice Department told the Court that the deadline could be extended to October 31. But The New York Times quoted experts as saying,

“the printing work is so vast — more than a billion pieces of paper — and such a logistical tangle that the bureau’s ability to put off its start is measured in weeks, not months.”

A former senior bureau official told the Times,

“You’d really be putting the operational plan at great risk if this stretches into mid-August. You may not have a census at all in 2020.”

Meanwhile, a different case pending before U.S. District Judge George Hazel in Maryland could block the inclusion of the citizenship question in the census. On June 25, in light of the new Hofeller evidence, a panel of the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sent a case back to Hazel to decide if there was discriminatory intent behind the citizenship question and thus a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. One of the panel judges suggested that Hazel issue an injunction to stop the question from being included in the census until the case was resolved. This is a different issue than the one in Department of Commerce v. New York.

The opinion by Roberts and the liberal justices is significant as it confronts the Trump administration’s false justification for adding the citizenship question. As Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted,

“Trump lied about his motivations, and five justices called him on it. His proposal to add a citizenship question to the census was nothing but a racist attempt to disenfranchise communities of color.”

Trump lied about his motivations, and five justices called him on it. His proposal to add a citizenship question to the census was nothing but a racist attempt to disenfranchise communities of color. https://t.co/OPZfQbpgNK

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 27, 2019

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

The United Arab Emirates appeared to part ways with the Trump administration Wednesday on the question of whether Iran is responsible for the recent attacks on merchant tankers in the Gulf of Oman. 

The White House maintains that Iran or Iran-backed forces carried out the attacks, which damaged six vessels in two separate incidents in May and June. U.S. Central Command has released video and imagery showing what appear to be Iranian servicemembers removing a limpet mine from the hull of the tanker Kokuka Courageous after the second attack, and it has allowed media to view and photograph debris collected from the vessel.

However, the UAE said Wednesday that it would like more concrete proof before reaching a definitive conclusion that Iran was behind the attacks. Iran has so far denied involvement, though it claimed responsibility for shooting down an American surveillance drone on June 20.

“Honestly we can’t point the blame [for the tanker attacks] at any country because we don’t have evidence,” said UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, speaking alongside his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at a joint press conference in Moscow. “If there is a country that has the evidence, then I’m convinced that the international community will listen to it. But we need to make sure the evidence is precise and convincing.”

In a joint investigation conducted with officials from Saudi Arabia and Norway, the UAE determined that the first attacks on tankers off Fujairah “were most probably carried out by actors with a considerable amount of intelligence and technical expertise,” but did not accuse any specific entity. Sheikh Bin Zayed said that that assessment has already been submitted to the UN Security Council and that “we will continue our commitment to professionalism on this issue.”

Lavrov’s presence provided subtext for the announcement: the Russian government has criticized U.S. policy towards Tehran, and a top official recently hinted that it might provide Iran with support if the U.S. should launch a retaliatory attack.

“Many other countries sympathize and empathize with Iran,” said Zamir Kabulov, a Russian special envoy, speaking to Kommersant Wednesday. “Tehran won’t be alone if the U.S., God forbid, takes insane and irresponsible actions against it.”

The UAE is an ally of the United States and of Saudi Arabia, which both accuse Iran of orchestrating the attacks. Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the de facto ruler of the UAE, met Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; in a statement after the meeting, the sheikh’s office “reiterated that both countries are standing side by side toward the challenges besetting the region.”

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US relations with other countries, especially sovereign independent ones it doesn’t control, are long on unacceptable demands, woefully short on seeking cooperative relations.

Two summits between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed to improve bilateral relations.

They featured one-sided unacceptable US demands in return for empty promises — how Washington always deals with nations it wants transformed into vassal states.

The Trump regime wants a North Korean client state bordering China. Its hardliners want the DPRK rendered defenseless by eliminating its nuclear deterrent and ballistic missiles.

According to John Bolton earlier,

“(w)e have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004. There are obviously differences. The Libyan program was much smaller, but that was basically the agreement that we made.”

In 2011, US-led aggression raped and destroyed the country, Gaddafi sodomized to death, a fate Kim understands, wanting a similar outcome for himself from future US aggression avoided.

On Friday in Osaka, Trump said he’d like to meet Kim at the DMZ, separating North and South Korea — “just to shake his hand and sell HELLO,” he tweeted, adding:

“After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (to meet with President Moon).”

“While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border…”

Both leaders last met in Hanoi, Vietnam last February. Two Kim/Trump summits achieved virtually nothing toward stepping back from the brink on the Korean peninsula toward regional peace, stability, and normalized bilateral relations.

North Korea maintains a nuclear and ballistic missile deterrent because of the genuine fear of possible US aggression.

Bilateral relations are dismal, pockmarked by multiple rounds of oppressive sanctions, showing extreme US hostility toward the country and its people.

Kim showed good faith during summit talks with Trump — in June 2018, again in February, accomplishing nothing, showing the futility of negotiating with a partner bent on dominating North Korea, unwilling to deal with its ruling authorities cooperatively.

Nothing suggests a change of US tactics ahead. Talks in Hanoi broke down because Trump regime officials refused to offer any concessions, nothing as a show of good faith, something not in the US imperial vocabulary.

Kim asked DJT for partial sanctions relief alone, wanting only ones affecting North Korea’s economy lifted.

Trump refused, insisting on full compliance with his regime’s unacceptable one-sided demands, refusing even a modest gesture of good faith in return.

Bilateral talks were suspended following the failed summit. At the time, DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui blamed Trump regime officials for the breakdown, saying:

“We have no intention to yield to the (one-sided) US demands in any form, nor are we willing to engage in negotiations of this kind,” adding:

Pompeo and Bolton “created the atmosphere of hostility and mistrust and, therefore, obstructed the constructive effort for negotiations between the supreme leaders of North Korea and the United States.”

Choe quoted Kim saying:

“For what reason do we have to make this (65-hour) train trip again? Choe added: “I want to make it clear that the gangster-like stand of the US will eventually put the situation in danger.”

“We have neither the intention to compromise with the US in any form nor much less the desire or plan to conduct this kind of negotiation.”

On June 20 and 21, days before the Osaka G20 summit, China’s Xi Jinping visited Pyongyang, his first state visit as head of state following Kim’s invitation, part of efforts by both countries to work cooperatively.

Both leaders said they reached consensus on “important issues,” agreeing to further cooperative relations, especially given US hostility toward North Korea.

There’s virtually no prospect for normalizing US relations with the country.

An uneasy armistice has persisted between them since US aggression in the early 1950s ended.

It continued endlessly by other means from then to the present day. It won’t end as long as the DPRK defends its independence, its sovereign right.

It rejects the acceptable US demand to subordinate its sovereignty to its interests — as it should. The same goes for all nations.

Note: On Sunday, Trump and Kim met in the DMZ, DJT saying talks between both nations will begin “over the next two or three weeks.” He also stepped over the demilitarized zone border into North Korea, the first sitting US president to do it.

Talks are better than conflict even if there’s no prospect that the Trump regime will take steps toward normalizing bilateral relations.

This is a developing story, more on it as further information becomes available.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: President Trump and North Korean President Kim Jong Un shake hands in summit room, June 12, 2018. (Office of the President of the United States/Public Domain)

Iran’s decision to increase its stock of low enriched uranium from 174.1 kilograms on 20 May to beyond the JCPOA’s agreed limit of 300 kilograms on 27 June 2019, is not a “violation” or “breach” of the nuclear deal, as has been described.  Neither is Iran’s suspending the implementation of some of its commitments under the JCPOA, on 7 July, that is, at the end of its 60 day ultimatum to the European troika to observe their part of the deal and produce practical measures to counter the calamitous effects of US sanctions on the lives of Iranians.  It is Iran’s legitimate and necessary response to a contract already left by the US and breached by its European allies. 

Despite continued promises, the Europeans signatories have lacked both willingness and sovereignty to secure mechanisms for trade with Iran.  To expect Iran to continue adhering to its commitments unilaterally with the population strangulated under sanctions and tortured by threats of war, is the product of a colonial mindset; disingenuous, cruel, outrageous and delusional.  This legitimate stance is clearly acknowledged by Nathalie Tocci, advisor to the EU’s Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Federica Mogherini:

“if I were Iran I would probably not stick with the JCPOA because indeed, as I said, the social contract can only hold if both sides live up to the bargain”.

Spurred by Iran’s decision, on 27 June the Europeans announced that their mechanism for trade labelled Instex which had been promised in February after months of empty talks since US’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, will now become operational in a matter of days.  However, INSTEX is limited in scope and tied to the Financial Action Task Force (FTAF), the accession to which requires Iran adopting the Terrorist Financing Convention (CFT) and Palermo Convention.  These would seriously compromise Iran’s sovereignty and rather than combatting sanctions, become an instrument of pressure on Iran.  It is important to see the preconditions for Instex and how it would work in practice.

After years of unsubstantiated accusations and fabrications against Iran’s peaceful civilian nuclear programme, the imposition of inhumane sanctions and the chronic shadow of war over the Iranian population, on 14th July 2015, two years of intense negotiations resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Nuclear Deal, between the Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1) and Iran.  The nuclear deal which was adopted unanimously in the Security Council Resolution 2231 on 20th July 2015, severely curbed Iran’s nuclear programme and placed it under strict monitoring within an agreed time frame.  In return, the Security Council Resolutions and sanctions on Iran – secured through US manipulation and threats of military action – were removed and Iran’s file was normalised and returned to the jurisdiction of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  Iran’s right to uranium enrichment was recognised, and US/EU comprehensive sanctions on Iran were to be removed.

The nuclear deal lifted the shadow of war, and raised hopes for economic, social and democratic progress for Iranian people.  However, despite all the IAEA verification and monitoring reports of the past 4 years, consistently confirming Iran’s faithful adherence to its obligations under the nuclear deal, from the beginning the US refused to adhere to its part of the deal in the removal of all the sanctions, and directly or indirectly through whipping up a climate of uncertainty and fear of punitive measures dissuaded its European allies from fully meeting their commitments, particularly in the removal of the banking sanctions and the operation of SWIFT for international banking transactions.

Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal on 8th May 2018 and the imposition of wide-ranging sanctions intending “to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero” depriving the country of “its principal source of revenue” has been an explicit declaration of war on a population of 80 million, inflicting intense suffering, pauperising and wiping out the middle class, destroying the country’s infrastructure, civil society and democratic aspirations.  On the occasion of the recent unprecedented floods in Iran in April of this year which left thousands homeless, without access to food and clean water, the US sanctions blocked the accounts of Iran’s Red Crescent preventing humanitarian aid being sent to Iran, an egregious crime against humanity, to which the Europeans helplessly bowed down.  Where does the violation of Iranians’ human rights to jobs, homes, medicine, affordable food, and to live without the terror of war fit in with Europe’s deafening advocacy of “human rights” for which it wages wars of aggression, as in Libya and Syria?

Sanctions rather than military intervention is the option of choice for President Trump and Pentagon analysts.  The idea being that given enough time and assisted by propaganda, sanctions would create large scale discontent, would weaken Iran’s defensive capabilities and human resources, and ripen it for regime change or make it an easier target for future military attack.

Iran’s planned suspension of part of its commitment under the JCPOA, such as increasing the level of enrichment and increasing its stock of heavy water, are not violations of its NPT obligations and a path to nuclear weaponisation.  Possession and stockpile of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction have been forbidden by repeated religious FATWAs for decades including the Fatwa from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.  The US and Israel’s fabricated accusations of weaponization against Iran come in the context of Israel’s possession of hundreds of nuclear warheads targeting Iran.  The US has continued its refusal to ratify the nuclear Test Ban Treaty and its recent announcement that limited wars fought with “low yield nuclear weapons”, are winnable, is a clear threat against Iran, described by Moscow as “blackmailing the countries, who oppose American dictates”.

Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and sabre rattling against Iran are led and fuelled by hawks in his cabinet, his National Security Adviser John Bolton, the architect of the invasion of Iraq, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, powerful Christian Zionists,  and the military industrial complex.

Arms manufacturers  play a crucial role in creating climates of threat and igniting wars.  This was exemplified on 21 June, the day after Iran downed the US spy drone over Iranian territory.  James Winnefeld, a Raytheon board member and retired Navy admiral, masquerading as CBS’s news analyst heavily criticised President Trump for calling off retaliatory strikes against Iran, insisting that the US will “lose a lot of credibility”.

US’s demand to “drag” Iran into ‘talks’ with a gun to its head and under the pressure of sanctions is clearly an aggressive non-starter.  US’s demands, outlined in Pompeo’s “twelve pre-conditions” for talks, are nothing short of Iran signing its own death warrant, that is, signing the conditions for its surrender and invitation for military attack.  Indeed,  US’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA and its demands and behaviour have helped unify Iranians and cemented a deep mistrust towards the US.

The Trump administration tore up an international agreement, supported by the UN Security Council, with impunity, holding a nation of 80 million at gunpoint.  Europeans have proven compliant and cooperative with the US’s lawlessness. What is there to guarantee the US’s adherence to any other agreement that could conceivably be reached?  International law and treaties do not operate in a vacuum and outside of the context of the balance of power. The JCPOA, negotiated over two years, which involves domestically contentious concessions from Iran, addresses all concerns about any potential weaponisation risks by Iran.  It is not open to re-negotiation.

The US’s real concern however is Iran’s conventional missile programme which is proving increasingly vital for Iran’s defence and a powerful deterrent against regional adventurism.  Iran’s leading role in the Axis of Resistance,  its success in defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria and foiling the US/Israeli/Saudi regime change agenda in Syria, with Iran as the next target, is the focus of the US concerns and demands.  Iran’s regional links, and the respect and loyalty it commands at popular level, has provided it with strategic depth and influence and a powerful defence for Iran.

This is viewed as a serious obstacle to US/Israeli hegemonic agenda in the region and a challenge to Saudi/Emirati sectarian regional ambitions. This is the context in which the accusations of “Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism” needs to be viewed.  Not ISIS or many thousands of  Saudi/NATO recruited and sponsored, head-chopping, heart-eating, rapist sectarian ‘jihadists’ from 80 countries around the world, who unleashed a bloodbath in Syria and Iraq, who routinely kill and maim citizens not only across the Middle East but also in Western heartlands.  No, many of these are the West’s “freedom fighters”, just as the Neo-Nazi thugs who were supported to take power in Ukraine’s “Maidan Revolution”. The bothersome “terrorists” are the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah and the popular forces of the Axis of Resistance pushing against US-led agenda and its hand-reared terrorists.  Remarkably, a confidential report to the US Congress on 18th June refuted Pompeo’s public claim that Iran “had hosted al Qaeda, they have permitted al Qaeda to transit their country … There is no doubt there is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Al Qaea. Period, full stop”.  The report confirmed that there is no evidence of Al-Qaeda cooperation with Iranian government.

Trump might be reluctant to engage in a costly military confrontation.  The assessment of Pentagon, military analysts and economists might be that such a war would seriously damage world economy and could escalate into a global war.   However pressure from war lobbies and the hawks in Trump’s cabinet and the huge US military build-up in the Persian Gulf make igniting war through false flag operations and miscalculation a real possibility.  The designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation has closed vital channels of communication between the US and Iran and increased the risk of miscalculations.

The tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf which were immediately blamed on Iran without any credible evidence, and the trigger happy reaction of the US to attack Iran over the shooting down of the US spy done over Iranian territory  (an attack which was allegedly called off by Trump 10 minutes before the operation, and to the huge dismay of the hawks), are clear indications of the incendiary circumstances ripe for false flag operations and which could very quickly slide into military confrontation.  The idea put forward by Trump that war with Iran would be short-lived is another dangerously erroneous assumption which could lead to miscalculation and a catastrophic war.

Whatever, the evidence and counter evidence, with Trump’s policy of “Maximum Pressure on Iran’, all responsibility for any attack or confrontation squarely falls on the US.  As Daniel Larison says very clearly in American Conservative (June 18, 2019),

“It is the U.S. that has been ramping up pressure and inflicting collective punishment on all Iranians. It is the U.S. that reneged on the JCPOA, and it is the U.S. that has issued unrealistic ultimatums effectively demanding Iranian capitulation. After strangling and kicking Iran for more than a year, the administration tries to pretend that Iran is engaged in “aggression” when it pushes back against relentless economic warfare and escalating threats. “Maximum pressure” is what has brought us to the verge of war, and Trump is the proud owner of that policy. If we want to avoid further escalation, the U.S. needs to back off on its pressure campaign at a minimum.”

The possibility for an unstoppable regional and potentially global war, is real, and it is only a matter of time for a spark to ignite a military confrontation. It is crucial for the Europeans, if they have any concern for the security of their own populations, to, instead of pressuring Iran to effectively ‘lie down and die’ under sanctions, actively pressure the US to remove the sanctions on Iran and return to the JCPOA.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “has hidden behind protocol” rather than push for an investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the UN special rapporteur who probed the killing has told Middle East Eye.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 41st UN Human Rights Council, which she will address on Wednesday, Agnes Callamard said Khashoggi could be “a model case” for the UN to show that it takes targeted killings seriously.

It could have acted as a mediator, allowing better coordination during the investigation of the brutal killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October, and between the parties involved, she said.

Instead, the inaction of Gutteres and various UN bodies has “poisoned” what was already a terrible crime.

“In my view, the secretary-general could have set a more proactive process for himself and the UN and he chose otherwise,” Callamard said.

“I think by now they must understand that inaction and silence and hoping that it is going to disappear is just not going to work with this particular killing.”

Last week, Callamard, a human rights expert who serves as the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, released a nearly 100-page report into the murder of the US resident who wrote for the Washington Post and Middle East Eye.

The inquiry, based on more than 120 interviews, concluded that there was credible evidence that the killing was premeditated and that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other high-level officials were liable.

‘Sacrificial animal’

It also gave the fullest public account so far of the 59-year-old’s final moments inside the consulate where a team of Saudis were recorded discussing dismembering him and referring to him as a “sacrificial animal” in the minutes before he arrived, according to Callamard’s inquiry.

The Saudi Human Rights Commission rejected the report’s findings, saying it was biased and that Callamard breached UN principles of impartiality, objectivity and professionalism.

The crime, she told MEE on Tuesday, was exceptional in its brutality, yet unexceptional because it represents a pattern of other killings that have been the focus of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

“So it was little bit paradoxical that there was no more commitment to find a meaningful role for the UN when confronted with a crime that was, by November or December, becoming an international crisis,” she said.

It was the inaction, she said, that drove her to pursue her inquiry.

“I could not understand why the UN – the secretary-general, the Security Council, the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly – have not moved forward with more resolve.”

Now, she said, she hopes the UN will hear her call, and push for an international investigation.

“I’m not suggesting they intervene in all [killings], but they should intervene in a killing that is demonstrated to be an international killing touching on many aspects of international law,” she said.

Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee who spoke with Callamard on a panel hosted by the Canadian government at the UN on Tuesday, said it was “scandalous” that high-level officials may be implicated.

“I don’t want this significance to remain on a piece of paper, or to remain on the shelves of the UN,” she told a packed room of diplomats, NGO representatives and reporters. “If the UN will not do the follow up on such murders, who will do it?”

MEE contacted Guterres’ office for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.

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Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will visit China from July 3 to 5, during which time she’s expected to ink several agreements focusing mostly on power generation and economic cooperation, according to her country’s media. The South Asian state has always enjoyed excellent relations with China and has recently become one of its largest overseas investment destinations, with some reports calculating that the People’s Republic has approximately 30-billion-U.S.-dollars’ worth of interests there already.

A lot of this is concentrated in the power generation industry, just like the lion’s share of investments in the nearby China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), though textiles are quickly catching the attention of Chinese businessmen nowadays too. Bangladesh is already one of the world’s largest garment producers, and its role in this trade is only expected to increase as more companies come to appreciate its low-cost labor, high-quality production capabilities, and strategic location.

China and Bangladesh have yet to sign a free trade agreement even though Beijing proposed one back in 2014. Negotiations are presently ongoing and some progress might be made on this front during Prime Minister Hasina’s visit, though no breakthrough should be expected at this point in time. Although the two sides are very close partners and located in near proximity to one another, they lack the physical connectivity between them that could take their trading ties to the next level and make the clinching of a free trade agreement a reality.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) and Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali deliver speeches after the meeting in Beijing, China, June 29, 2018. /CGTN photo

China has been trying to pioneer the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor for quite a few years but the project stalled after New Delhi expressed disinterest due to what some observers speculated might have been political reasons. India is opposed to anything having to do with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) because it believes that the CPEC, its flagship project, infringes on its sovereignty since it transits through Pakistani territory that it claims as its own per its maximalist approach to the Kashmir Conflict.

Even so, Indian Prime Minister Modi sent some positive signals to President Xi during their interactions at the SCO Summit in Bishkek and the G20 in Osaka, especially since the latter event saw the hosting of an informal summit between the Russian, India and Chinese leaders who collectively represent the Eurasian core of BRICS.

It’s therefore not entirely unforeseeable that India might reconsider its inflexible stance towards the BRI and decide to selectively participate in some projects of shared interest such as the BCIM Economic Corridor, which in that case would naturally improve China and India’s trading ties with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

After all, they already have converging interests in those two countries, so it makes sense to cooperate with one another instead of competing like some observers have suggested they’re doing. Should that scenario eventually transpire, then Bangladesh and Myanmar would be all the more developed and stable because of it.

And that’s exactly what those two neighboring countries need most of all and as soon as possible, too, since the Rohingya issue continues to plague their bilateral relations and endanger regional stability. Bangladesh is hosting around 700,000 Rohingya refugees that fled a large-scale anti-terrorist operation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State back in 2017 that some countries criticized as excessive and possibly even deliberately targeting the civilian members of this demographic.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Qingdao to attend the SCO Qingdao Summit in Qingdao, China, June 9, 2018. /VCG Photo

In any case, the BCIM Economic Corridor probably won’t make any progress until this humanitarian issue is resolved between Bangladesh and Myanmar, but it’s here where China could play a constructive peacemaking role by helping to mediate a solution among its two partners. In fact, some Bangladeshi media reports even speculated that Prime Minister Hasina might discuss this issue during her upcoming trip to China and ask Beijing to encourage Naypyidaw to guarantee the safe and dignified return of Rohingya refugees.

It’s too early to make any predictions about how exactly China could help to resolve this humanitarian problem, but it’s nevertheless important to point out that it does indeed have the diplomatic sway to at the very least make any prospective proposals heard in Myanmar. Considering that China’s vision is to ensure regional peace through equitable development and that the BCIM Economic Corridor would greatly facilitate its goal in this regard, then it wouldn’t be too surprising if its leaders listen attentively to whatever Prime Minister Hasina might suggest that they do about this during her upcoming trip.

Altogether, while the bulk of the Bangladeshi leader’s trip to China is expected to entail discussions and deal-making about various economic topics, there’s also the possibility that the Rohingya issue will be brought up too since its ultimate resolution would greatly facilitate more economic cooperation between all sides through the BCIM Economic Corridor that would then become politically feasible for all participants.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Featured image is from CGTN

Trump’s dream of holding a military parade in the American capital will finally come true this July 4th, which epitomizes his promise to “Make America Great Again” and might even begin a new annual tradition.

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President Trump is an unapologetic American nationalist who came to power on his promise to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), and being the showbiz celebrity that he is, he’s about to put on a big show this July 4th by holding a military parade in the capital.

He’s been wanting to do this for a few years already but only recently was able to pull it off after the Secretary of Interior announced the details at the end of last month. According to the Cabinet member, “for the first time in many years, the World War II Memorial and areas around the Reflecting Pool will be open for the public to enjoy a stunning fireworks display and an address by our Commander-in-Chief”, which might begin a new annual tradition. Furthermore, a separate “Salute to America” event will also be held to honor the Armed Forces, whom Trump has the deepest admiration for.

His love of the military isn’t just due to his patriotism, but is also connected to his business interests, too. The US is the world’s largest arms exporter by far, which has only increased since Trump entered into office and began “poaching” some of Russia’s traditional military partners like India. The US’ exercise of “military diplomacy” differs from Russia’s in that Washington wants to disrupt the balance of power in various regions of the world by selling its customers arms that allow them to gain an edge over their adversaries and therefore increase the odds of conflict breaking out, whereas Russia prefers to maintain the balance of power by selling arms to competing rivals (ex: Armenia/Azerbaijan, Iran/Saudi Arabia, China/India, China/Vietnam) in order to reduce the risk of war and encourage a political solution to their disputes.

Accordingly, the upcoming parade will probably be used to also showcase American arms, which might lead to an increase in sales throughout the rest of the year. It’s important for the US to maintain its dominance in the international arms market because of the myriad behind-the-scenes partnerships that grow out of these transactions, which include training, maintenance (especially the profitable sale of spare parts), and sometimes even interoperability with the American military. That’s why the parade is such a big deal and perfectly epitomizes Trump’s MAGA slogan because it proudly shows the world that America’s global leadership is upheld first and foremost by its military, which secures its trade routes and coerces geopolitically independent countries to tow the line of the so-called Washington Consensus.

There is no America without the might of the American military, which doesn’t necessarily make the country “great” or not but is just a fact of life nowadays even though it wasn’t always like this. The US has expanded its interests and become so dependent on the rest of the world for their resources, products, and markets over the past century that it cannot realistically extricate itself from the hyper-imperial “security dilemma” that it’s trapped in. That’s not to say that it should wage wars of aggression and carry out regime change subversion all across the globe, but just that it’s driven by strategic necessity to do so to a certain extent, though one that’s more intense and has a much wider reach than any of its competitors. The military is the backbone of modern-day America, for better or for worse, which is why Trump wants to celebrate it.

Objectively speaking, a country isn’t truly sovereign (or at least as much as is possible in today’s interconnected globalized world) unless it has a strong military, so it’s understandable why the US and others would want to pay tribute to their Armed Forces on patriotic holidays such as their day of independence. The US is no different in this respect even if its military is much more controversial than probably anyone else’s other than Israel’s. Be it through the direct use of military force, the threat thereof, or “military diplomacy”, the American military is a force to be reckoned with and has a reputation for being among the most lethal in the world, which is why other countries might shudder at its Fourth of July military parade but most Americans will wildly applaud it.

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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.

Inarguably, Washington has a long history of supporting terrorists. As General William Odom, President Reagan’s former National Security Agency (NSA) Director wrote in his 2007 article “American Hegemony, How to Use It, How to Lose It”:

 “[T]errorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics…”.

Despite this long-standing use of tactic, there is no record of terrorists operating but a stone’s throw away from the White House.  Nor has there been such brazen embrace of  a terrorist group dubbed an undemocratic cult – until now.

The 1997 Patterns of Global Terrorism report issued by the State Department stated the following about the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO, NCRI and various other acronyms):

“During the 1970s, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran to destabilize and embarrass the Shah’s regime; the group killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. The group also supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran. In April 1992 the MEK carried out attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas.”

Listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997,  the offices of the group’s spokesperson, Alireza Jafarzadeh was located at 1717 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Even after the attacks of September 11 and America’s declared “war on terror”, the spokesperson and representative of the terror group was just down the street from the White House. Later, the organization would move its offices to 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, remaining close to the residence of the President of the United States of America located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It is said that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. This is certainly not true of Washington officials and their cozy ties with the MEK cult.   It seems that they are inching ever closer and have the audacity to flaunt  their ties. Washington’s actions are a long cry from Israel’s who in the 1990’s was secretly aiding the group. (The Israeli-MEK relations continues to be omitted from news headlines while the accusatory finger is pointed to Saudi Arabia for their financial support of the cult).

Connie Brock of The New Yorker writes:

“Israel had a relationship with the M.E.K at least since the late nineties, and had supplied a satellite signal for N.C.R.I. broadcasts from Paris into Iran. An Israeli diplomat said: “The M.E.K is useful,” but did not elaborate.”.

According to the same report, the Israelis provided the MEK with unsubstantiated ‘intelligence’ on Iran’s nuclear program. Not surprising since the aforementioned 1997 Patterns of Global Terrorism report states,

“The MEK directs a worldwide campaign against the Iranian Government that stresses propaganda and occasionally uses terrorist violence .”.

The close relationship with Israel may help explain why it was that in spite of being listed as terrorists, the group managed to bribe prominent politicians; even as a provision of the defense authorization bill would grant the military the authority to detain and hold anyone indefinitely, or to assassinate any individual suspected of having ties to terrorists/al Qaeda. Yet, these terrorists were giving speaking fees to American politicians. (The group also has its tentacles around British politicians – see HERE).

What is even more mind-boggling is the fact that Israel was supporting a terrorist cult that had massacred the Kurds in Iraq in 1991, and only a few year later, the Israelis were training the Kurds in Iraq who has survived the massacre (obviously something that has been lost on the Kurds)  while their killers, the MEK, were being chauffeured around by American soldiers a short distance away in Iraq – in America’s ‘war on terror’!

Meanwhile, back home, politicians were being bribed by the terrorists! Clearly, FATF (Financial Action Task Force) did not prevent money from being funneled to and from terrorists. Shamelessly, Washington is demanding that Iran become a member of FATF to stop terrorism financing!

Even while the terrorist group was doling out money to corrupt politicians so they could be removed from the FTO list, and Washington politicians accepted money from terrorists, the group continued with its terrorism and carried out cross-border raids inside Iran with the full knowledge and encouragement of the Bush administration (History Commons).

Concurrently, Washington was using other group members to promote propaganda against Iran with emphasis on ‘human rights’.  The leader of the terrorist cult, Maryam Rajavi’s live satellite broadcast into Washington was  cheered. This certainly gave new meaning to ‘human rights’ promotion by America – as well as its ‘war on terror’.

The hypocrisy reached across the aisle. Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much, but both parties supported this terrorist cult – all the way to the top. When Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2008, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D -Texas), co-chair of Hillary’s presidential campaign, not only shared her friendship with America’s then presidential hopeful, but she also promoted America’s pet terrorists – the MEK. Congresswoman Jackson Lee went as far as calling Maryam Rajavi “Sister Maryam,[i]. (Would this make Hillaryand Maryam ‘sisters’ too?).

Certainly, Hillary’s push to remove the MEK from the FTO was a very sisterly act.

It is important to bear in mind that the group was removed from the list of FTO after  U.S. officials disclosed to NBC that the  MEK terrorist group was financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service and responsible for the killing of Iran’s nuclear scientists; and at a time when the United States was negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Deal.

This year, as the Iranians mark the 38^th anniversary of a horrendous attack by the MEK cult, the Trump administration is openly promoting the cult and flaunts Washington’s decades long, bipartisan infatuation with a notorious, anti-democratic cult.    What makes the MEK stand out?

Israel’s support aside, they seem to be brought out in the open whenever Washington wants to play tis psychological games with Iran – its  ‘stick’, the term [offensive] policy makers like to use.  Washington knows full well that the group is hated in Iran.  That not a single member of this group will be tolerated in Iran, and there is no future for the group.  History also shows that Washington has experienced blow-back every time it has supported an unsavory group or when it has encouraged terror and terrorists.  Terrorism, like pollution, does not recognize borders.  Why the mad romancing of the MEK?

Perhaps Washington hopes that this cult will simply come to an end.  As the Council on Foreign Relations has reported:

“Many analysts, including Rubin, have characterized the MEK as a cult, citing the group’s fealty to the Rajavis. Older women were reportedly required to divorce their husbands in the late 1980s, and younger girls cannot marry or have children.”.

Perhaps Washington’s thinking is that their numbers will dwindle and there will be no future generations of this cult to come back and haunt it. Now there is a wish both Washington and Tehran share!

But wishes don’t make policies. Washington needs to understand that its stick is a boomerang that will come back at it.  Washington has become morally and fiscally bankrupt as a result of its wrong policies. Its high time to save itself from the quagmire of its own creation before sinking beyond redemption.

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Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy

Note

[i] Financial Times, October 6, 2005.

Libyan National Army leader General Haftar ordered his forces to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, as well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country, which is nothing short of an effort to trick Turkey into overextending itself by provoking it into “mission creep” so that it ends up trapped in the Libyan quagmire.

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The Libyan Civil War might be entering a new phase if the forces led by Libyan National Army (LNA) leader General  Haftar do good on their leader’s threats to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), a well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country. The popular warlord has already succeeded in capturing most of the country with the notable exception being the capital of Tripoli, which has only held out as long as it has supposedly because of Turkish support.

The Libyan Civil War was directly caused by NATO’s 2011 War on Libya and the subsequent scramble for influence in the energy-rich and geostrategically positioned North African state, with Turkey playing a leading role in the latter because the de-facto Muslim Brotherhood-led country envisions restoring its Ottoman-era empire through the establishment of ideologically allied governments in this vast trans-continental space. The GNA is comprised of Muslim Brotherhood fighters and their offshoots who came to power after 2011, which is why Erdogan supports them so strongly and has a stake in their continued leadership of the country, something that Haftar is adamantly opposed to because he sees his countrymen’s collaboration with Turkey as treasonous.

The LNA leader is now threatening to impose serious physical costs to Turkey’s unofficial intervention in the Libyan Civil War, hoping that this will either compel it to retreat or counterproductively dig in through “mission creep” and risk overextending itself in what has become a regional proxy war between secular and Islamist forces backed by the UAE/Egypt/France and Turkey/Qatar/Libya respectively. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s ego, his ambition for regional influence, and the domestic political pressure that he’s under after the latest mayoral election rerun in Istanbul are responsible for Turkey’s vow to retaliate against the Libyan warlord.

Should Turkey suffer highly publicized losses at the hands of Haftar’s forces, then it might embolden the country’s Cypriot, Greek, Kurdish separatist, and Syrian enemies in its immediate neighborhood if they interpret those developments as a sign of weakness proving that the Turkish military is just a “paper tiger” incapable of properly defending its interests and/or defeating its first conventional military adversary in decades. Erdogan is therefore in a classic dilemma since he’s damned if he retreats but equally damned if he doesn’t and ends up being humiliated by Haftar. It’ll remain to be seen what ultimately happens, but Turkey is in a very tricky position nowadays and needs to be careful that it doesn’t get trapped in the Libyan quagmire.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The decision of the San Francisco school board to obliterate the historic murals in George Washington High School is not just another instance of Identity Politics foolishness. It is also a terrifying illustration of the drastic mental decline of what is called “the Left”.

Back in the 1930s there was a Left that had brains.  You could agree or disagree with it, you could love it or hate it, but it had ideas, purpose, talent, and a sense of common humanity.  It was working for a just society that would end exploitation and benefit humanity as a whole.

As an example, there were the artistic projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the principal New Deal program to combat the Depression, which extended from creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority to artistic enhancement of public buildings. A beneficiary of this enhancement was George Washington High School in San Francisco, which was blessed with a striking set of murals by a leading artist, Victor Arnautoff, a Russian immigrant who had worked with the Mexican master of socially conscience mural art, Diego Rivera.   One would expect that the presence of these powerful murals would be a lasting cause of pride in their school for staff and students. 

The WPA, not least in its art projects, was animated by leftists, and even downright Communists, like Arnautoff, who chose to depart from the sterilized “I cannot tell a lie” cherry tree myth and the crossing of the Delaware glorification of George Washington to introduce reminders of the forgotten victims of the foundation of the United States – the exploitation of African slaves and the violent expropriation of Native American lands.  The murals were clearly part of the leftwing WPA intellectuals’ endeavor to raise social consciousness, a step toward the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s. 

In the age of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy’s drunken rampage, such red-tinged WPA projects exposing the less glorious side of the birth of the republic aroused hostile suspicion.  And yet, the Arnautoff murals survived Nixon, HUAC and McCarthy witch hunts.  It took Identity Politics to call for their destruction.

What is most shocking is that the African-American president of the San Francisco Board of Education, Stevon Cook, supports this destruction of the murals on grounds that they include “violent images that are offensive to certain communities.”  Joely Proudfit, director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center in San Marcos, said it was not worth saving the art if one native student “is triggered by that”.

Everything is wrong with such a position.  Education should include teaching people to analyze what they see rather than simply “be triggered”.  The contemporary world is crammed with images that are deeply offensive.  When a student can have an historic mural torn down because she or he is “triggered” by it, what sort of preparation is this for the future? School should not be a “safe place” for emotions but a preparation for using reason to master those emotions as one goes through life.  The protesters have chosen the worst possible way of interpreting the murals instead of using their reason to understand them and place them in their context. Yes, slavery happened and yes, American Indians were slaughtered, and their descendants can think of the strength they needed to resist and survive, and draw from their tragic history a sense of compassion for all who suffer from comparable injustice today. The attack on the mural is a gesture of impotent spite.

What are the hurt feelings of a San Francisco high school student compared to the pain and hunger of a Yemeni child living under U.S.-supported bombing?  George Washington is dead, but in the city named after him, American leaders are sponsoring the massacre of innocent civilians all around the world.  Why don’t these super-sensitive American students use their sensitivity to oppose such ongoing crimes and develop their intelligence to figure out how to join with others in fighting to end the Permanent War State in Washington?

But the snowflake trend has no use for real strength, the strength of courage to overcome obstacles, and draws an artificial moral strength from perpetual emotional weakness. Instead of gaining strength from increased knowledge, a certain tendency of young persons who have NOT suffered as their forebears did cling to their victimhood as the key to their own privileges.  This may bring a few momentary advantages but is disastrous in the long run.

A healthy society is based on a balance between respect for the individual, regardless of identity or origins, and awareness of belonging to humanity as a whole, with all its sufferings, joys, tragedies and aspirations. Closing oneself into a limited identity group denies both respect for individuals and awareness of universal humanity.  It can only be a basis for endless conflict, “my people are better than your people”, “no, my people are better than your people”.  Those who “win” a momentary victory by imposing on others a destructive act of iconoclasm are only confirming their identification as “losers” as their sole key to success. 

With such divisions, the American people will be absorbed in tribal skirmishes, while their criminal rulers continue to spread devastation around the world.

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Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at [email protected].  Diana Johnstone is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization  (CRG). 

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Capitalist Development and Community Demolitions in Detroit

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 30, 2019

One of the latest schemes of the billionaire ruling interests and their agents is the proposal announced by Duggan to issue $200 million in bonds specifically designed to raise monies for the demolition of even more vacant edifices in the city. The stated objective is to eliminate all vacant homes by 2024.

Persian Peril: Brinkmanship in the Post-INF Treaty Era

By Michael Welch, Scott Ritter, and Bruce Gagnon, June 30, 2019

Diplomats from China, Russia, Great Britain, Germany and France met with their Iranian counterparts on Friday June 28th in an urgent attempt to steer the Islamic Republic away from breaching conditions of the JCPOA agreement.

Crisis in Northern Syria: A Look Inside the Real Idlib Today

By Steven Sahiounie, June 29, 2019

Idlib has always been a small farming area, but the western media has inflated it to gargantuan proportions.  There were only 34 hospitals total in Idlib, and yet we hear of dozens of hospitals being hit by airstrikes.

Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange

By Nils Melzer, June 29, 2019

For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.

Tanzania’s Decision to Suspend the Bagamoyo Port Project: A Surprise Blow against China’s Silk Road Vision for East Africa

By Andrew Korybko, June 29, 2019

The East African country has the proud distinction of hosting China’s first modern-day Silk Road, the 1970s TAZARA railway, which is why Tanzania’s decision to suspend the $10 billion Bagamoyo port project that was supposed to be built by the People’s Republic is such a big deal and could greatly hamper Beijing’s regional strategy.

Investigate Egypt’s Former President Morsi’s Death

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, June 28, 2019

Immediately after Dr Mohammed Morsi’s death on the 17^th of June 2019, a number of organisations and individuals had called for a thorough, independent investigation into the cause of his death while on trial in a Cairo court for espionage charges. The United Nations was one of the organisations that demanded an independent investigation.

Libra: Facebook’s Audacious Bid for Global Monetary Control

By Ellen Brown, June 28, 2019

On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. The New York Times says Facebook has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.

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As of beginning July 2019 prospects look positive for a re-election of Donald Trump as President in November 2020. Headline stock market and GDP figures all look positive…at the present. The huge unanswered question is whether that can be sustained until the fateful elections. We see signs already that spell potential trouble for the Republicans.

A major problem for the Trump prospects to win a second term in November 2020 is the fact that since 1913 no American President, nor the Congress, control the decisions of the central bank, the legendary Federal Reserve or Fed. What few are aware of is the fact that the Fed is not a government agency. This is despite the fact the President nominates persons to serve as directors. The reality is that the Fed is privately owned largely by the international banks and financial groups that control global money flows. They determine in complex ways the control of US money creation, the heart of the economy.

In December 1913 a cabal of Wall Street Republican international bankers led by J.P. Morgan, John D Rockefeller, Paul Warburg and cronies pulled off the fateful coup d’etat that saw “Democrat” Woodrow Wilson sign away the money power of the government to the bankers. Since then, the Fed has determined the course of the nation’s economy independent of the interests of the national economy or the citizens.

The President of the New York Fed, Benjamin Strong, as head of the most powerful of the 12 reserve banks, literally determined the fate of the US and Europe until his death in 1928. His interest rate policies were directly responsible for creating the 1920s stock market bubble and the October 1929 Wall Street Great Crash. That in turn led to the 1931 global banking crisis and the Great Depression. It was the Fed under Allan Greenspan that was responsible for the creation of the securitization USA housing bubble and also for its deliberate destruction into the “Great Recession” of 2007-2008, a key factor in the 2008 Obama win. This Fed is the real power over economic good times or bad.

It can be demonstrated that every recession or boom, every so-called business cycle since 1914 has been determined by the Fed. When Donald Trump became President he selected several directors of the Fed Board of Governors, including Chairman Jerome Powell beginning February 2018, apparently believing Powell would continue an easy money regimen.

When Powell and the Fed continued the Janet Yellen interest rate increases and withdrawal from Quantitative Easing by selling off the assets it bought after the 2008 financial crisis, the effects were initially overshadowed by the Trump tax law and other factors that spurred both the stock market, the dollar and the economy. By late 2018, however, it began to become clear that the Fed was on course to create a collapse of the post-2008 asset bubble in stocks and real estate, prompting unprecedented criticism from Donald Trump of Jerome Powell, his choice for Fed chairman.

By December 2018, almost a year into Powell’s term, financial markets appeared in freefall, the stock markets down by 30% in six weeks, junk bond markets freezing and oil prices down by 40%. At that point on the urging of a group of influential business people, Trump began to attack Powell for trying to create a new recession.

By March 2019 Powell announced the Fed would likely not raise Fed Funds rates as had been planned further in 2019, holding it at 2.375%, suspending plans to do three or four added rate hikes in 2019. Markets were euphoric.

But by then Fed prior actions had set into motion deep shifts in the economy which are now becoming undeniable. Monetary actions tend to have a lag effect of six to nine months in the real economy. The aggressive Fed tightening through the end of 2018 is just beginning to show damage in the real economy. This is beginning to concern the White House. Here are some preliminary indicators that all is not peachy.

Trucking and Agriculture

According to the Bank of America’s Trucking Diffusion Index for the week of June 21, the national truck freight outlook hit the lowest level since October, 2016, just before the US elections. More alarming, the indicator is down 29% year-on-year, the largest decline since the index started. The current US outlook for freight demand is at a five-year low. Reports are that the construction sector is struggling due to weather issues in key markets.

What this suggests is that the volume of goods being shipped by truck through the US economy is showing a not healthy trend. How long this goes on is at this point not clear. It is an indicator of real problems.

If we add to this the developing crisis in US agriculture, the picture becomes darker not only for trucking but for the overall economy. Record rainfall across the Midwest farmbelt has so far had a devastating impact on crop prospects well into the key summer growing season.

The US Department of Agriculture cut its estimate of the corn harvest, a rare event, in June. Farmers say the government is downplaying the crisis. In addition lack of Congressional action on the Mexico and Canada trade agreements and the Chinese restrictions on US soybean exports are combining to create one of the worst US farm crises in recent years. The US Farm Bureau Federation, a major lobby, has stated that a third emergency farmer bailout would be necessary if export markets for US farm products are not soon reopened. The Farm Bureau states that the combination of disruption of key export markets together with low spot prices, high inventory levels, a slowing economic outlook, and damaging weather across the Midwest, “could culminate into a full-blown farm crisis on par to the 1980s.”

These are not the only signs of storm clouds in the US economy. Sales of existing homes have declined on a Year-on-Year basis for 15 straight months. Rising interest rates are a major deterrent for home buying. Further, the monthly Philadelphia fed survey of Business Outlook expectations, which monitors expected company new orders, sales, employment and other indicators of business activity, registered a sharp drop from 16.6 in May to only 0.3 in June.

This all does not yet indicate a full recession in the overall economy. However it shows how vulnerable the fragile recovery from the 2008 debacle still is. In this situation the Powell Fed is not at all playing a constructive role.

Powell proclaims Fed Independence

On June 25, Fed Chairman Powell gave a speech to the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the original think-tank of the Wall Street bankers created in the wake of World War I parallel to the British Chatham House. In his remarks Powell stressed the Fed’s independence from political pressures: “The Fed is insulated from short-term political pressures — what is often referred to as our ‘independence,” Powell said. “Congress chose to insulate the Fed this way because it had seen the damage that often arises when policy bends to short-term political interests. Central banks in major democracies around the world have similar independence.” It was a declaration of independence from Trump.

The reality, as Donald Trump noted repeatedly in public speeches in March and April, despite the Fed statement about interest rate pause in March, the Fed has not stopped tightening. It is via the little-noticed policy called Quantitative Tightening, the moves by the Fed to tighten money liquidity in the banking system and economy by forcing major banks to buy back some of the almost $4 trillion in corporate bonds and other assets the Fed bought to bail out the major banks and financial giants after the September 2008 Lehman Bros. crisis.

In early 2018 as it was simultaneously raising Fed Funds interest rates, the Fed delivered a double-whammy effect on market interest rates by “selling” some $50 billion a month of its assets from the unprecedented Quantitative Easing (QE) experiment of 2008. QE was a de facto policy of Fed money printing by buying select bonds and other securities, including mortgages, from primary security dealer banks, giving them huge liquidity in return. QT is the attempt to put the QE liquidity Genie back in the bottle by reversing the process, a highly dangerous experiment, one by no means urgent.

As the impact of Fed QT actions began to cause alarm, in February 2019 the Fed agreed to reduce the tightening, but only from $50 to $40 billion a month until now. That comes to almost half-a-trillion dollars less liquidity in the economy annually, not small. If a recession now unfolds over the next 16 months until the November, 2020 elections, it will once again by the “gods of money” at the Fed and their banker backers who caused it. If Trump then loses the 2020 re-election it will owe more to the Fed than to his bizarre Democrat opponents.

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

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

In May, the Trump regime placed China’s tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates on its so-called Entity List.

The action shut them out of the US market, along with banning sales of US tech products and components to the companies without Washington’s approval.

The move was unrelated to US national security concerns. It’s all about wanting US telecommunication companies to have a competitive advantage over Huawei.

The Chinese tech giant is leading the race to roll out 5G technology in Western and world markets. At stake are trillions of dollars of economic value, why the company is targeted.

The Trump regime wants China prevented from becoming an economic, industrial, and technological powerhouse on the world stage.

Following talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the just concluded G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump suspended the ban on sales of tech products and components to Huawei — while keeping the company and its affiliates blacklisted from doing business in the US market.

Easing the Trump regime’s restrictions on Huawei reportedly was the price Xi demanded for meeting Trump for discussions at the G20.

In remarks to reporters following the summit, Trump said “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei,” adding: There is no “great national emergency problem.”

“(O)ur companies were very upset” about the ban. Where things stand on Huawei remains very much uncertain, Trump delaying how the company will be treated overall until there’s a deal or no deal with China.

As for de-blacklisting Huawei, its affiliates, and other Chinese tech companies, Trump said

“I don’t want to talk about it now. We will look at it very carefully.”

If talks remain at impasse ahead over unacceptable US demands, how things have gone so far for the past year, toughness against Huawei and other Chinese companies could continue, along with imposing US tariffs up to 25% on all Chinese imports.

Trump added that a Tuesday Commerce Department meeting will decide on whether to take Huawei off the US Entity List.

China’s Foreign Ministry official Wang Zialolong said he has no information on whether the US lifted restrictions on the tech giant, adding:

“We will welcome it if they can do what they have said. Huawei is a private company and its technology is at a pioneering position.”

According to Sino/US analyst Liu Weidong, it’s unclear “under what conditions” Trump will soften his position on Huawei and other Chinese companies.

Clearly he wants something in return, likely unacceptable demands China rejects. Moreover, time and again, he says one thing and does something entirely different.

China has no intention of sacrificing its sovereign rights to US interests — why world’s apart bilateral differences most likely will resurface when talks resume.

Huawei’s CEO Ren Zhengfei said if Google fails to sell its Android operating system to the company, it’ll lose up to 800 million users, a major financial loss for the firm.

Loss of the Chinese market for other US tech companies will be a major blow to their profitability — why suspending the ban on their sales to Huawei and other Chinese companies may stick.

A politically motivated US Justice Department 13-count indictment against Huawei charged the company with wire fraud, money laundering, intellectual property theft, and obstruction of justice.

The action remains a major unresolved bilateral issue.

So is charging its chief financial officer Sabrina Weng Wanzhou with bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, related to allegedly violating (illegal) US sanctions on Iran.

The Trump regime formally requested Canada to extradite her to the US. Currently she’s illegally held under house arrest in Vancouver.

A second 10-count US indictment charges Huawei and its US affiliate with theft of trade secrets from T-Mobile USA, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice – also alleging Huawei “offer(ed) bonuses to employees who succeeded in stealing confidential information from other companies.”

China and Huawei deny US charges. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry accused Washington of using state power to subvert the operations of Chinese companies, notably high-tech ones like Huawei and ZTE – vowing to protect their legitimate rights.

Canadian authorities approved Meng’s extradition to the US, acting on Trump regime orders, her legal team contesting the order.

A legal battle is ongoing for her release. Her status is a major unresolved contentious issue with the US and Canada since her arrest in Vancouver on December 1 last year, Ottawa acting as a Trump regime proxy.

Following her arrest and detention, Trump said he’d intervene for her if China agrees to his demands in talks — showing she’s a political bargaining chip, why action was taken against her, what Beijing considers unacceptable.

In May, her legal team said charges against her are “guided by political considerations and tactics, not by the rule of law.”

Remaining under house arrest, her next court appearance is scheduled on September 23, formal extradition hearings expected to begin in January.

Sino/Canadian relations are at a crossroads over Ottawa’s mistreatment of Meng. Canada is subservient to US interests. It’s Washington’s call on  how the issue will be handled. It’s a major Sino/US sticking point.

*

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

A white corporate-imposed mayor of the City of Detroit has been projected by the mainstream media as a savior of the majority African American populated municipality.

Although there have been enormous problems since the ascendancy of Mike Duggan through a write-in campaign during late 2013 while the city was under an illegal emergency management system and bankruptcy, no one who relies on the television stations which spew out ruling class propaganda will  hear of the profound contradictions plaguing the area.

Nonetheless, if people seek out the information through various newspaper and social media accounts it would become quite clear that most residents of the city are facing impoverishment and economic uncertainty. Overall unemployment in the state of Michigan has risen sharply in the last quarter even though the national jobless rate in far less than 4%.

One of the latest schemes of the billionaire ruling interests and their agents is the proposal announced by Duggan to issue $200 million in bonds specifically designed to raise monies for the demolition of even more vacant edifices in the city. The stated objective is to eliminate all vacant homes by 2024.

What such news reports ignore is the systematic redirecting of hundreds of millions in Federal Hardest Hit Funds (HHF) from their intended purpose. The allocations grew out of the government bailout of the banks and insurances companies beginning in 2008-2009. These HHFs were supposed to assist the hundreds of thousands of people in the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan facing mortgage and property tax foreclosures.

During the administration of President Barack Obama, a coterie of purported political leaders, officials and capitalists went to the White House to make a request that rule changes should be implemented to focus on demolition as opposed to any minimum program of stabilization. Rather than restore neighborhood devastated by the crisis in contemporary capitalism, the decisions made by the ruling class sought to destroy and drive out even more people from the city.

An irrational notion that demolishing homes and apartment buildings would translate into economic development has proven to be false. Blight in Detroit has worsened while the much championed rising property values only served to force more African Americans and working class people from the city. Once a majority home-owning city, Detroit is now a place where renters outnumber those who own the residences where they live.

Demolition, Not Development

Not surprisingly, the demolition program channeled through the quasi-governmental agency known as the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) has been riddled with corruption and waste of federal funds. Recently, the city administration stated it would take control of demolition efforts undoubtedly insuring the continuation of graft and inefficiency.

Most of the so-called “development” in Detroit is occurring in the downtown and midtown areas where tax captures and other publically-subsidized prestige projects are presented to the people as “progress.” Dan Gilbert, the owner of Quicken Loans, a notorious usurious enterprise which dominates the discourse on urban planning, is projected by the corporate media as yet another paragon of economic virtue. Gilbert, who suffered a stroke in late May, is a major culprit in the current plight of the city.

The family of the late Mike Illitch constitutes a major problem as well as represented in the cajoling of a subservient majority on the Detroit City Council to sign off on the District Detroit plan where $324 million in tax dollars were utilized to build a new sports arena complex, which also has restaurants, shops and bars. This was to be only the first step in a broader “development plan” which would see gentrified housing complexes, shops and other businesses to be frequented by a transplanted largely white clientele along with tourists.

Detroit Demonstration at Wayne County Treasurer on Sept. 5, 2017

After the arena was built and opened in 2017, nothing else has occurred. All of the vacant land in the areas formerly known as the Cass Corridor remained run down. What actually exist in the area are scattered parking lots for the patrons of the Little Caesar’s complex which is the venue for the local sport teams: the Red Wings and Pistons. The Illitch family also owns the Tigers baseball team which plays home games at the nearby Comerica Park. Right next to Comerica Park is Ford Field, the home to the Lions, owned by the automotive family which bares its name.

All of the promises made over the last 25 years in relationship to the building of stadia, gambling casinos, hotels, the repurposing of buildings for apartment dwellers and condo owners, has not benefited the people of Detroit. African Americans, retirees, working class and poor residents of the downtown and Cass Corridor districts have been largely displaced.

Moreover, many of those who have moved into these areas harbor no long term commitments to the city. As soon as the money eviscerates and the start-up firms fail, these people will leave as well. This pattern was well underway under the administrations of former Mayors Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick. Then of course the Great Recession arrived shattering these illusions.

Alternative Development Planning and Implementation Needed

While communities are being bulldozed, disinvested and neglected, billions in public monies are being funneled into the downtown and midtown districts despite the lack of profitability and prospects for sustainable growth. Why should these prestige projects seek elongated profitability when the masses are the guarantors of their wealth?

These automotive companies, service providers, financial institutions and large insurance firms actually created the conditions for the near collapse of the economy during the latter years of the first decade of this century. A host of predatory loan schemes backed by insurance companies and government entities proved to be unsound requiring the tax dollars and savings of working people to rescue them from their own insatiable need for mega-profits and administrative domination.

Only a people-centered program of development can address the current crises. Housing, education, municipal services, environmental quality, universal healthcare and independent media are prerequisites for genuine growth and development. Detroit cannot be rebuilt when the school system which has been looted for the last two decades by the State of Michigan and corporate entities through the interference of governance institutions and tax captures, remains enforce as policy priorities. No real revitalization can take place when hundreds of thousands of residents are daily threatened with eviction, water and utility shut-offs, school closings, mass lay-offs, declining real wages and inadequate public services.

The city cannot raise the standard of living for its majority African American population when the superstructure is compliant with the disenfranchisement and super-exploitation of the people. Improvements to the neighborhoods, educational institutions and access to adequate incomes would represent a beginning point for reconstruction and empowerment of the working class.

Such a program would necessitate an independent political character for the African American majority and its allies. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are responsible for the crises within the capitalist system today. Under both regimes in the last four decades to start with, African Americans have lost household wealth, personal incomes and community institutions including schools, food and consumer goods outlets, etc. The prison population has increased by 500 percent encapsulating many African Americans and Latinx people. As the news of declining crime rates proliferate, the repressive apparatus of the state intensifies leading to an epidemic of police killings and brutalization of civilians along with the criminalization of youth by the judicial system.

These problems are not confined to Detroit, although they exist in exaggerated forms. Straight across the United States and indeed the world, urban, suburban and rural communities are being marginalized while the wealth generated from the labor of the people is even more concentrated in the possession of fewer hands.

The military industrial complex marches on uninhibited by the desire for peace and cooperation among peoples. Neither of the ruling class parties speaks to the need to overthrow imperialist militarism. Propaganda targeting the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Republic of Cuba, among many other states, political interests and peoples, are broadcast daily in an effort to enflame pro-war sentiments undergirded by racism, xenophobia and pseudo-national chauvinism.

Within the U.S., the corporate media idolizes the rich while they proceed to take even greater shares of the wealth rightfully belonging to the working people. This is why African Americans, the nationally oppressed as a collective, along with the working masses and poor, need their own political party. A party which can speak in the name of the people based upon its uncompromising positions demanding total freedom, justice, equality and self-determination.

Such a party would be able to form real alliances with international forces desirous of socialist development and global peace. Under these circumstances a genuine development program could revitalize the municipalities and the rural areas.

However, as long as the ruling capitalist class maintains its control over the world economy the status-quo will prevail.

*

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

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Detroit Moratorium NOW! Coalition demonstration outside the Wayne County Treasurer Office against property tax foreclosures

“By sending this signal of massive retaliation, I think Iran may have stopped an American attack on Natanz (nuclear facility) in July, because the United States now knows that any attack against Iran cannot be contained. It will not be a limited action. It will be massive retaliation leading to a full-out war that the United States is neither prepared to fight nor has the capacity to fight at this time.” -Scott Ritter (From this week’s interview.)

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Diplomats from China, Russia, Great Britain, Germany and France met with their Iranian counterparts on Friday June 28th in an urgent attempt to steer the Islamic Republic away from breaching conditions of the JCPOA agreement. [1]

According to Tehran, the Islamic Republic has now amassed more enriched uranium than is allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal, and is on a course to breach another condition relating to the purity of the enriched uranium by early July. [2]

This comes a week after Iran shot down a U.S. drone. U.S. President Trump refrained from launching an attack on Iran, but nevertheless threatened in a Tuesday tweet that “any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force.”

 

Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words “nice” or “compassion,” they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019

This apparent defiance is coming in the face of U.S. belligerence and a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, designed apparently to convince the Iranian government to return to the bargaining table and agree to a better nuclear deal than the one arrived at under his predecessor President Obama. In the meantime, the Trump administration is resolute in its determination to sanction any country, without exemption, that purchases oil from Iran.

On Friday June 28th, the U.S. AIR Force Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed the deployment of F-22 stealth fighters to the al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, intended to “defend American forces and interests” in the region.

The backdrop of these developments is the spectre of a more relaxed attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons. In February of this year, the U.S. announced its abandonment of the three decade old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed at the height of the Cold War in order to eliminate all ground-launched conventional and nuclear-armed cruise missiles with ranges of between 1,000 and 5,500 kilometers.

In late January of this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists unveiled its Doomsday Clock revealing a time of two minutes to midnight. Not since the Soviets detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1953 has the world come so close to the unthinkable in the estimation of the organization.

In a climate of hostile rhetoric and economic uncertainty, what is likely to happen when the irresistible force that is the United States war machine, comes in contact with the immovable object that is Iran? This is the question at the core of this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program.

Two guests, Scott Ritter and Bruce Gagnon discuss the current twists and turns in America’s foreign and diplomatic postures in Iran and beyond, as well as the various factors shaping its policy.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Intelligence Officer and former Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq. In 1987 Ritter was hand-picked to serve with the On Site Inspection Agency, where he was responsible for carrying out the provisions of the Intermediate range Nuclear Forces or (INF) Treaty. In 2002, he was outspoken against the Bush Administration’s case for a military assault on Iraq. A regular contributor to The American Conservative and Truth Dig among other online publications, he is also the author of nine books including his most recent, Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal (2018) from Clarity Press.

Bruce Gagnon has a 3 decade long history of involvement in the peace movement and active resistance to the militarization of and use of nuclear weapons in outer space. A member of the group Veterans for Peace, he co-founded the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space in 1992 in which he serves as secretary/Coordinator. He has contributed to a number of publications including  CounterPunch, Z Magazine, Space News, National Catholic Reporter, Global Research, Asia Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Canadian Dimension. He also has a blog and has produced educational videos all of which appear at his group’s site space4peace.org.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 266)

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 3pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time.

Notes:

1.  John Irish, Francois Murphy (June 28, 2019), ‘Iran says progress at last-ditch nuclear deal talks ‘not enough’ ‘, Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-talks-idUSKCN1TT16V
2. ibid

 

There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear.” – Buffalo Springfield

The Sunday newspaper had been left on the park bench.  Its book page had lists of best-sellers, as if numbers two through ten could be the “best” along with number one.  Absurdities were everywhere for the taking.  On the Non-Fiction Hardcover list, numbers 3, 5, and 10 each had the word fuck in the title.  The books were published by two old and respected publishing houses: Harper and Little Brown.  However, something was odd, for the word fuck was spelled f*ck.  These books were about hope, acceptance, and living the good life, cliché topics in a feel-good culture: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Everything is F*cked, and Calm the F*ck Down.  It seemed you had to be f*cked first before you could accept the hope that the good life was coming your way. He wondered if these publishing houses thought that by eliminating the “u” they kept their hands clean and were not descending into the gutter with hoi polloi, while simultaneously titillating potential readers.  Did they think readers would be offended by the word fuck, but would not be by f*ck?  Then it occurred to him that he didn’t know what the fuck non-fiction books were anyway.  Maybe he had been wrong all his life and the opposite of up was non-up, not down.

*

On every table in the seaside resort’s breakfast room there was a brightly colored flower in a clear watered vase.  When he picked it up to smell the orange blossom, there was no smell and the water didn’t move.  He imagined an ersatz form of plastic happiness, a conjurer’s delight, where everything was a trick, nothing moved, not even water.

*

Leaving the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in southern California where white and black Marines were regularly fighting and there were even some killings never reported by the press, the two young Marines escaped the tense and claustrophobic atmosphere on a weekend pass.  It was early February 1967, and they took an overnight bus up the coast to San Francisco where they wandered around and found a breakfast restaurant near Union Square. There they read in the newspaper that for the week of January 12-19 the U.S. military had suffered its highest casualty count so far in Vietnam: 144 killed, 1, 044 wounded, and 6 missing-in-action.  It jolted them awake more than the coffee.  Later that afternoon, the two naifs wandered into the Haight-Ashbury district were they were startled by the first waves of acid-dazed hippies, who would soon arrive in hoards for the “summer of love.”  In the evening when they visited a bar for some beers, the waitress who delivered their drinks was topless.  While they regarded this slight anomaly with manly indifference, she must have noticed their military haircuts that stood out among the longhairs, and so she served them buttons with their beers.  The buttons read: Vietnam Love It Or Leave It. Heading back to the base, they knew where they didn’t want to go.

*

The young man was studying for a PhD.  He was intent on learning what made the world and people tick.  He was attending a small seminar at the home of his professor, a famous German emigre who had worked for the Rand Corporation and U.S.  Intelligence. Each of the five students was to give a short presentation on the subject of fake news and the issue of knowledge, since the course concerned the sociology of knowledge.  The student began his presentation by quoting a famous philosopher’s words: “In formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: What can we know?  That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything?  Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, ‘My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.’ By “knowable,” incidentally, I do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be Known or to possess a Knownness or Knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.”

The student paused and the eminent professor said, “So very interesting.  Who is that philosopher?”  The student replied, “Woody Allen.”  “He is very perceptive,” said the professor, “and yet I have never heard of him.  I will have to read his work.”  The student realized he was in good hands with such U.S. intelligence and Rand Corporation experts, so he asked the professor’s wife for another glass of the German wine she was serving and toasted his good fortune with a wry grin. None of the other students got the joke.

*

A young man was reading a book that he highly recommended to his uncle.  Leafing through it, the older man came upon this passage: “the free individual is just a fictional tale concocted by an assembly of biochemical algorithms.”  So what was the point of reading such a book, he wondered, since doing so was an exercise in pre-programmed absurdity since there was no freedom.

*

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that says: “Shit Happens.”  Some people are just lucky, I suppose, and odd coincidences mark their lives. When he was just out of Columbia College and working for Business International Corporation, a known CIA front company, Barack Obama had a chance encounter with a young woman, Genevieve Cook, with whom he had a 1-2 year relationship.

Like Obama and at about the same time, Cook just happened to have lived in Indonesia with her father, Michael Cook, who just happened to become Australia’s top spook, the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, and also the Ambassador to Washington.

Of course, Obama’s mother, as is well-known, just happened to be living in Indonesia with Barack and Obama’s step-father, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian military officer under the command of General Suharto.

The CIA supported General Suharto’s coup against President Sukarno and the slaughter of over a million Indonesian Communists and Indonesian-Chinese.

Image: Indonesia massacre 1965

As is also well-known, it just so happened that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, trained in the Russian language, after teaching English in the US Embassy in Jakarta that housed one of the largest CIA stations in Asia, did her “anthropological” work in Indonesia and Southeast Asia financed by the well-known CIA conduits, USAID and the Ford Foundation. Then there is Cook’s stepfather, Philip C. Jessup, who just happened to be in Indonesia at the same time, doing nickel-mining deals with the genocidal Suharto government.  Anyway, “shit happens.”  You never know whom you might meet along the way of life.

*

The hostess at the seaside restaurant had an eastern European accent, so he asked her where she was from.  She said, “Belgrade, Serbia.”  He told her he was sorry for what the U.S. government led by Bill Clinton had done to her country and that he considered Clinton a war criminal. She said the bombing in 1999 was terrifying, and even though she was young at the time, she vividly remembered it. It traumatized her, her parents, and her family.  Then she smiled and said that in the month she had been in the U.S. for her summer job, all the Americans she had met had been so friendly.  He welcomed her to the U.S., and as he was walking away, he remembered that Clinton’s savage bombing of Serbia that had killed so many Serbian children and other innocents had been code-named “Operation Noble Anvil.”  He wondered what kind of “noble” people would think of innocent children as anvils: “heavy usually steel-faced iron blocks on which metal is shaped,” and did the friendly Americans accept Clinton’s sick lies when he ended his March 24, 1999 war address to the American people with these words: “Our thoughts and prayers tonight must be with the men and women of our armed forces, who are undertaking this mission for the sake of our values and our children’s future. May God bless them, and may God bless America.”

*

The banal, 1967 hit song, “San Francisco” (Be sure to wear flowers in your hair), which was influential in enticing young people to come to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, was written by “Papa” John Philips, who attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and whose father was a Marine Corps Captain.  “Papa” John’s wife had worked at the Pentagon and her father was involved in covert intelligence work in Vietnam.  His neighbor and Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles) buddy was Jim Morrison of Doors fame, whose father US Navy Admiral George Morrison commanded U.S. warships in Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf during the “Tonkin Gulf Incident.” Frank Zappa, the father figure of Laurel Canyon’s many musicians who just happened to converge in one place at the same time where a covert military film studio operated, had a father who was a chemical warfare specialist at Edgewood Arsenal.  Stephen Stills, David Crosby and many other soon to be famous musicians all came from military and intelligence backgrounds and frolicked in Laurel Canyon.  Although they were draft age, none of them was drafted as they played music, dropped acid, and created the folk-rock movement whose music was catchy but innocuous and posed no threat to the establishment. But “shit happens.”  In his disturbing book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, David McGowan raises the question: “what if the musicians themselves (and various other leaders and founders of the ‘movement’) were every bit as much a part of the intelligence community as the people who were supposedly harassing them?  What if, in other words, the entire youth culture of the 1960s was created not as a grass-roots challenge to the status quo, but as a cynical exercise in discrediting and marginalizing the budding anti-war movement and creating a fake opposition that could be easily controlled and led astray….What if, in reality, they were pretty much all playing on the same team?”

*

The reporter was interviewing four of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s (image left) young “executive governors,” who were all dressed in three-piece business suits.  They were in the process of conducting Transcendental Meditation’s weeklong course leading to supernormal abilities, including, flying, levitating, disappearing, x-ray vision, and other siddhis, or supernormal powers.  Their recent press release had advertised the course as “a new breakthrough for human life on earth” for any person.  The reporter was a bit skeptical that people could be taught – for a large fee – to fly or disappear.

He asked one of the executive governors, “Can you literally rise into the air and move horizontally; can you see yourself and can others see you actually fly?” “Absolutely,” Larry Johnson replied without hesitation, “absolutely.  Once you eliminate all stress from your nervous system, you have unbounded, unlimited potential.  A human can achieve any desire he wants, flying is only one of them.”  “People will be skeptical,” the reporter continued, “How about a demonstration?”  “A public demonstration would cause too much of a ruckus,” said Johnson.  “And we couldn’t show you because we only do it for each other.  Actually, we do our techniques with our eyes closed, but we do peek out once in a while and see each other flying around the room.

You know, one of the siddhis is a technique for making yourself invisible, and the Mararishi has said, ‘Don’t peek out to see if you’ve disappeared.’” Johnson giggled and added, “We can also teach people to x-ray their own bodies and see through walls. Absolutely, absolutely.  It’s all about infinite correlation.  Absolutely.” As the battered reporter left the interview, he wondered if the Maharishi was a creation of the CIA.  He remembered John Lennon’s song lines about the Maharishi’s assistant:  “But he often spread rumors through his right hand man/Who used to be with the CIA”

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What is “exactly clear” is that Buffalo Springfield (Stephen Stills, Neil Young et al.) toured with their Laurel Canyon buddies, the Beach Boys, in late 1967 (their other mutual bud, Charlie Manson, stayed out west presumably to work on his craft) and performed at a very odd venue for a “dissident” rock group, The U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  At that time nearly 500,000 American troops were waging war on the Vietnamese.  That concert was an odd happening, wouldn’t you say?

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If  everyone actually looked, they’d see precisely what went down, “what’s going down,” and why we are going down.  If you think many of these things “just happen” for no reason, then I guess you are just “f*cked.”  Excuse me, but it’s true.  Does the asterisk help?

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

Xi Jinping/Trump talks on the sidelines of the Osaka, Japan G20 summit turned out as expected — replicating the outcome of their talks at the Buenos Aires G20 summit late last year.

Then and now, both leaders agreed to continue trade talks. Trump said he won’t impose tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese imports, at least not now, later very possible if stalemate continues.

Bilateral trade differences have little to do with the trade deficit hugely favoring China.

It exists because corporate America relocated much of its manufacturing and other operations to low-wage countries, notably China.

US policymakers are to blame for permitting unrestricted offshoring of millions of high-pay, good benefits jobs abroad, thirdworldizing America for most of its citizens, letting poverty become the nation’s leading growth industry.

Census data show half or more of US households are impoverished or bordering it. Most US workers struggle to get by on one or more part-time, low-pay, poor-or-no benefits, rotten jobs.

The world’s richest country serves its privileged class exclusively at the expense of the vast majority of its people, social justice fast eroding, on the chopping block for slow-motion elimination.

Sino/US differences have everything to do with major structural issues, little to do with the trade deficit.

The US seeks dominance over all other nations. China, the world’s second largest economy, is heading toward becoming number one in the years ahead.

It’s already the world’s leading economy on a purchase-price basis — what a basket of goods and services costs in the country compared to the US.

In his opening remarks, Xi said

“China and United States both benefit from cooperation and lose in a confrontation. Cooperation is better than friction, and dialogue is better than confrontation.”

He downplayed major bilateral political, economic, financial, trade, and military differences, adding:

“We have an excellent relationship, but we want to do something that will even it up with respect to trade. I think that is something that is actually very easy to do.”

“I actually think that we were very close and then something happened, it slipped a little bit, and now we are getting a little bit closer, but it would be historic if we could do a fair trade deal.”

Following talks, Trump said his meeting with Xi was “excellent…as good as it was going to be,” adding:

“We discussed a lot of things and we’re right back on track and we’ll see what happens, but we had a really good meeting.”

“I think President Xi will be putting out a statement…and we will too. We had a very, very good meeting with China, I would say probably even better than expected. The negotiations are continuing…We’re doing very well.”

Remarks by both leaders belied world’s apart bilateral differences, unlikely to be resolved as long as the US position remains hardline.

Based on the failure of 11 rounds of talks over the past year to resolve them, chances that the Trump regime will soften its unacceptable demands seem unlikely — leaving bilateral relations at an impasse if things turn out this way.

Both leaders approached summit talks intending to put a brave face  on world’s apart bilateral differences.

The US wants its main global competitors, notably China and Russia, marginalized, weakened, isolated, and contained.

Major Sino/US differences have been irreconcilable. They’re all about China’s growing political, economic, financial, and military clout.

The US wants China’s aim to advance 10 economic, industrial, and technological sectors to world-class status undermined.

They include high technology, high-end machinery and robotics, aerospace, marine equipment and ships, advanced rail transport, new-energy vehicles, electric power, agricultural machinery, new materials and biomedical products.

Premier Li Keqiang earlier said that Beijing’s blueprint for advancing economically, industrially, and technologically remains unchanged, stressing:

“We will strengthen the supporting capacity of quality infrastructure…and improve the quality of products and services to encourage more domestic and foreign users to choose Chinese goods and services.”

Achieving this goal clashes with US objectives, why resolving major bilateral differences have been unattainable.

Blacklisting Chinese tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates from the US market remains is a major obstacle to resolving differences, along with barring US tech companies from doing business with Huawei.

Xi’s terms for resolving major bilateral differences reportedly include lifting tariffs in place on Chinese imports, removing Huawei and its affiliates from the US blacklist, and rescinding the ban on US technology sales to the company.

There’s no indication from summit talks that Trump is amenable to this demand, just the opposite based on his regime’s dealings with China, North Korea, Turkey and other countries.

The record shows a US history of making unacceptable demands in return for empty promises, aiming to maintain its global dominance.

The strategy fails times and again. China clearly rejects it. Ahead of Xi/Trump summit talks, the official People’s Daily broadsheet said the trade deficit favoring Beijing is not evidence of “being taken advantage of,” adding: Wrongfully blaming China reflects  “whole-body smell of selfishness.”

China’s Global Times noted unacceptable US actions, headlining: “World must contain capricious US actions,” saying:

“(T)he US…accus(es) almost all partners of profiting at its expense,” adding:

“Washington has adopted a non-cooperative attitude toward the major tasks facing human beings. It is interested in flexing its muscle to maximize its own interests.”

Its unacceptable actions “are catastrophic to global governance.” Trump’s “ ‘America first’ doctrine is dragging global governance into a quagmire…”

“The world needs to rein in the US,” GT stressed.

The commentary noted “the perfidy…the US has placed (on) the Persian Gulf region…whose situation (is) under the cloud of (potentially catastrophic) war” on Iran.

Director-General of China’s Foreign Ministry department of arms control Fu Cong said

“(w)e do not support the US policy of reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero,” adding:

“We reject the unilateral imposition of sanctions. For us energy security is important.” China will continue importing Iranian oil, he stressed — this issue alone to create friction with the US.

Trump and Xi smiles, handshakes, and friendly remarks in Osaka left major structural issues unresolved.

Bilateral discussions will likely continue in the weeks and months ahead, resolution remaining unattainable unless the US side softens its position.

It hasn’t happened so far. No evidence suggests a likely change of US policy ahead.

The South China Morning Post noted reality in Osaka, headlining:

“Beneath the smiles and handshakes, tensions simmer as world leaders meet for G20.”

Discussions between major world leaders did little to defuse them.

Note: Trump said “at least for the time being we are not going to be lifting tariffs on China.” Leaving them in place remains a major obstacle to resolving bilateral differences.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

One of the most important energy battles of the future will be fought in the field of liquid natural gas (LNG). Suggested as one of the main solutions to pollution, LNG offers the possibility of still managing to meet a country’s industrial needs while ameliorating environmental concerns caused by other energy sources. At the same time, a little like the US dollar, LNG is becoming a tool Washington intends to use against Moscow at the expense of Washington’s European allies.

To understand the rise of LNG in global strategies, it is wise to look at a graph (page 7) produced by the International Gas Union (IGU) where the following four key indicators are highlighted: global regasification capacities; total volumes of LNG exchanged; exporting countries; and importing countries.

From 1990 to today, the world has grown from 220 million tons per annum (MTPA) to around 850 MTPA of regasification capacity. The volume of trade increased from 20-30 MTPA to around 300 MTPA. Likewise, the number of LNG-importing countries has increased from just over a dozen to almost 40 over the course of 15 years, while the number of producers has remained almost unchanged, except for a few exceptions like the US entering the LNG market in 2016.

There are two methods used to transport gas. The first is through pipelines, which reduce costs and facilitate interconnection between countries, an important example of this being seen in Europe’s importation of gas. The four main pipelines for Europe come from four distinct geographical regions: the Middle East, Africa, Northern Europe and Russia.

The second method of transporting gas is by sea in the form of LNG, which in the short term is more expensive, complex and difficult to implement on a large scale. Gas transported by sea is processed to be cooled so as to reduce its volume, and then liquified again to allow storage and transport by ship. This process adds 20% to costs when compared to gas transported through pipelines.

Less than half of the gas necessary for Europe is produced domestically, the rest being imported from Russia (39%), Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). In 2017, gas imports from outside of the EU reached 14%. Spain led with imports of 31%, followed by France with 20% and Italy with 15%.

The construction of infrastructure to accommodate LNG ships is ongoing in Europe, and some European countries already have a limited capacity to accommodate LNG and direct it to the national and European network or act as an energy hub to ship LNG to other ports using smaller ships.

According to King & Spalding:

“All of Europe’s LNG terminals are import facilities, with the exception of (non-EU) Norway and Russia which export LNG. There are currently 28 large-scale LNG import terminals in Europe (including non-EU Turkey). There are also 8 small-scale LNG facilities in Europe (in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and Gibraltar). Of the 28 large-scale LNG import terminals, 24 are in EU countries (and therefore subject to EU regulation) and 4 are in Turkey, 23 are land-based import terminals, and 4 are floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs), and the one import facility in Malta comprises a Floating Storage Unit (FSU) and onshore regasification facilities.”

The countries currently most involved in the export of LNG are Qatar (24.9%), Australia (21.7%), Malaysia (7.7%), the US (6.7%), Nigeria (6.5%) and Russia (6%).

Europe is one of the main markets for gas, given its strong demand for clean energy for domestic and industrial needs. For this reason, Germany has for years been engaged in the Nord Stream 2 project, which aims to double the transport capacity of gas from Russia to Germany. Currently the flow of the Nord Stream is 55 billion cubic meters of gas. With the new Nord Stream 2, the capacity will double to 110 billion cubic meters per year.

The South Stream project, led by Eni, Gazprom, EDF and Wintershall, should have increased the capacity of the Russian Federation to supply Europe with 63 billion cubic meters annually, positively impacting the economy with cheap supplies of gas to Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European Union on Russian companies like Gazprom, and the continuing pressure from Washington to abandon the project and embrace imports from the US, the construction of the pipeline have slowed down and generated tensions between Europe and the US. Washington is piling on pressure on Germany to derail Nord Stream 2 and stop the construction of this important energy linkage.

Further tension has been added since ENI, an Italian company that is a leader in the LNG sector, recently discovered off-shore in Egypt one of the largest gas fields in the world, with an estimated total capacity of 850 billion cubic meters. To put this in perspective, all EU countries demand is about 470 billion cubic meters of gas in 2017.

ENI’s discovery has generated important planning for the future of LNG in Europe and in Italy.

Problems have arisen ever since Donald Trump sought to oblige Europeans to purchase LNG from the US in order to reduce the trade deficit and benefit US companies at the expense of other gas-exporting countries like Algeria, Russia and Norway. As mentioned, LNG imported to Europe from the US costs about 20% more than gas traditionally received through pipelines. This is without including all the investment necessary to build regasification plants in countries destined to receive this ship-borne gas. Europe currently does not have the necessary facilities on its Atlantic coast to receive LNG from the US, introduce it into its energy networks, and simultaneously decrease demand from traditional sources.

This situation could change in the future, with LNG from the US seeing a sharp increase recently. In 2010, American LNG exports to Europe were at 10%; the following year they rose to 11%; and in the first few months of 2019, they jumped to 35%. A significant decrease in LNG exports to Asian countries, which are less profitable, offers an explanation for this corresponding increase in Europe.

But Europe finds itself in a decidedly uncomfortable situation that cannot be easily resolved. The anti-Russia hysteria drummed up by the Euro-Atlantic globalist establishment aides Donald Trump’s efforts to economically squeeze as much as possible out of European allies, hurting European citizens in the process who will have to pay more for American LNG, which costs about a fifth more than gas from Russian, Norwegian or Algerian sources.

Projects to build offshore regasifiers in Europe appear to have begun and seem unlikely to be affected by future political vagaries, given the investment committed and planning times involved:

“There are currently in the region of 22 large-scale LNG import terminals considered as planned in Europe, except for the planned terminals in Ukraine (Odessa FSRU LNG), Russia (Kaliningrad LNG), Albania (Eagle LNG) – Albania being a candidate for EU membership – and Turkey (FSRU Iskenderun and FSRU Gulf of Saros). Many of these planned terminals, including Greece (where one additional import terminal is planned – Alexandroupolis), Italy (which is considering or planning two additional terminals – Porto Empedocle in Sicily and Gioia Tauro LNG in Calabria) , Poland (FSRU Polish Baltic Sea Coast), Turkey (two FSRUs) and the UK (which is planning the Port Meridian FSRU LNG project and UK Trafigura Teesside LNG). LNG import terminal for Albania (Eagle LNG), Croatia (Krk Island), Cyprus (Vassiliko FSRU), Estonia (Muuga (Tallinn) LNG and Padalski LNG), Germany ( Brunsbüttel LNG), Ireland (Shannon LNG and Cork LNG), Latvia (Riga LNG), Romania (Constanta LNG), Russia (Kaliningrad LNG) and Ukraine (Odessa). Nine of the planned terminals are FSRUs: Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the UK. “In addition, there are numerous plans for expansion of existing terminals, including in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK.”

Washington, with its LNG ships, has no capacity to compete in Asia against Qatar and Australia, who have the lion’s share of the market, with Moscow’s pipelines taking up the rest. The only large remaining market lies in Europe, so it is therefore not surprising that Donald Trump has decided to weaponize LNG, a bit as he has the US dollar. This has only driven EU countries to seek energy diversification in the interests of security.

The European countries do not appear to be dragging their feet at the prospect of swapping to US LNG, even though there is no economic advantage to doing so. As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, “Jump!”, European allies respond, “How high?” This, however, is not the case with all allies. Germany is not economically able to interrupt Nord Stream 2. And even though the project has many high-level sponsors, including former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the project constantly seems to be on the verge of being stopped – at least in Washington’s delusions.

Even Eni’s discovery of the gas field in Egypt has annoyed the US, which wants less competition (even when illegal, as in the case of Huawei) and wants to be able to force its exports onto Europeans while maintaining the price of the LNG in dollars, thereby further supporting the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency in the same manner as the petrodollar.

The generalized hysteria against the Russian Federation, together with the cutting off of Iranian oil imports at Washington’s behest, limit the room for maneuver of European countries, in addition to costing European taxpayers a lot. The Europeans appear prepared to set whatever course the US has charted them, one away from cheaper gas sources to the more expensive LNG supplied from across the Atlantic. Given the investments already committed to receive this LNG, it seems unlikely that the course set for the Europeans will be changed.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

An estimated 20% of US consumers had medical debt in collections in 2014.¹ Medical debt has been increasing with direct patient billing, rising insurance deductibles, and more out-of-network care being delivered, even at in-network facilities. Bills sent directly to patients may use the undiscounted price of a hospital’s services and can result in financial hardship² and avoidance of future medical care.³ Hospitals need to be paid for care delivered, but some bills are unpaid. Hospitals may negotiate, reduce, or write off payments. Some have begun adopting a range of aggressive strategies for collecting unpaid bills, including suing patients and garnishing their wages or bank savings.³ We examined garnishment legal actions among Virginia hospitals.

We searched 2017 Virginia court records on completed warrant-in-debt lawsuits (defined as a party suing an individual for an unpaid debt) filed by hospitals resulting in garnishment of a patient’s wages. Data were collected from the General District Court Online Case Information System within the Virginia Judicial System website.⁴ We searched for civil cases categorized as “warrant in debt” and “garnishment” in each Virginia district that contained the words “hospital” or “medical center” and extracted all cases in which a medical entity was the plaintiff against an individual. Virginia was chosen because of its consolidated online court records and because the state contains a broad mix of income, political party constituents, and metropolitan and rural areas. We used the American Hospital Directory to identify hospital characteristics (Table 1) and collected employer data from court records. We used a nonparametric negative binomial model (ie, a generalized additive model with a negative binomial response) to study hospital characteristics associated with the number of wage garnishment cases per hospital per year. Statistical analyses were performed in R version 3.4.0 using the GAMLSS package.⁵ The statistical significance level was set at P < .05 using 2-sided tests.

We identified 20 054 warrant-in-debt lawsuits and 9232 garnishment cases in 2017. Garnishing was conducted by 48 of 135 Virginia hospitals (36%), of which 71% were nonprofit and 75% urban, compared with 53% nonprofit and 91% urban among hospitals that did not garnish (Table 1). The mean annual gross revenue of garnishing hospitals was $806 million and the mean amount garnished per hospital was $722 342 (0.1% of gross revenue). The mean amount garnished per patient was $2783.15 (range, $24.80-$25 000). The mean number of garnishments per hospital was 82, and 8399 patients had wages garnished.

Garnishments were more likely among nonprofit vs for-profit hospitals (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 11.52; 95% CI, 2.05-64.64) and hospitals with a higher markup ratio relative to the Medicare allowable amount (IRR, 2.81 per 100% increase; 95% CI, 1.69-4.69) (Table 2). Garnishments decreased with annual gross revenue (IRR, 0.76 per $100 million; 95% CI, 0.65-0.89). Five hospitals (4 nonprofit and 1 for-profit) accounted for 51% (4690/9232) of all garnishment cases in the state.

The most common employers of those having wages garnished were Walmart, Wells Fargo, Amazon, and Lowes, accounting for 8% of patients whose wages were garnished.

Thirty-six percent of Virginia hospitals garnished wages in 2017, with a small number of hospitals accounting for most cases. Some characteristics suggest that hospitals with greater financial need (nonprofit, lower annual gross revenue) may be pursuing debt collection to the final stage of garnishment.

This study has some limitations. Importantly, patient-level data beyond the name of the employer was not available and thus conclusions could not be made about the association of income, insurance, or employment with garnishment. Implications may differ depending on whose wages are being garnished. In addition, the findings are limited to a single state in a single year and relied on court records, without data on cases settled out of court or dismissed. Furthermore, because of the relatively small sample size, the effect estimates of certain variables had wide confidence intervals. Future studies should examine the contribution of garnishment to a hospital’s revenue and the effect of garnishment on patients.

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1. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Consumer Credit Reports: A Study of Medical and Non-medical Collections. December 2014. https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201412_cfpb_reports_consumer-credit-medical-and-non-medical-collections.pdf. Accessed June 2018.

2. Cook K, Dranove D, Sfekas A. Does major illness cause financial catastrophe? Health Serv Res. 2010;45(2):418-436. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6773.2009.01049.x

3. Weinick RM, Byron SC, Bierman AS. Who can’t pay for health care? J Gen Intern Med. 2005;20(6):504-509. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.0087.x

4. Virginia Judicial System website. http://courts.state.va.us/. Accessed September 10, 2018.

5. Rigby RA, Stasinopoulos DM. Generalized additive models for location, scale and shape (with discussion). Appl Stat. 2005;54(Pt 3):507-554.

Apparently, if we add up all the ‘values’ that make up Planet Earth, we arrive at the figure of $5 quadrillion [1]! We’ve reduced the irreducible to the level of an accountant’s spreadsheet. Yet, it’s exactly this kind of thinking that’s created the disaster that, forget 10 years, it’s already with us and it’s been building to this since the start of the Industrial Revolution approximately 200 years ago.

For centuries, the West (Europe, N. America) has approached our once beautiful planet as nothing more than a source of raw materials, slaves, cheap labour and markets to fill with an endless stream of consumer products. Endless, they thought, profit and endless, they thought, Nature. After all Nature doesn’t cost us anything, it’s God’s gift to Mankind. Subdue and exploit, the Lord said.

So, let us begin by not exactly counting the real cost, but at least adding up what we’ve done to our once pristine planet. In fact, how do you count the cost, not in dollars but in what we’ve lost? What can’t actually be counted. ‘We’ve trashed our house, let’s move to a new one’, except there isn’t a new one to move to.

Air – fouled • Antibiotics in just about everything • Asthma • Autism • Bodies – fouled • Cancer • EMF, millimeter radiation (4G, 5G) • Fracking • Heart Disease • Hormonal Disruption • Land – poisoned • Nuclear radiation • Oceans – fouled • Pesticides, everywhere and in everyone and every animal • Plastic – everywhere and in everything • Thousands of untested chemicals, most likely also in everyone • Soil – fouled • Space – fouled  • Water – fouled

And for what?

Well, for guns and bombs, missiles and planes and warships and surveillance systems, police and security services and the vast profits generated therefrom. The US military is the single biggest consumer of oil on the planet and one of the worst polluters on the planet.

And secondly, for the most banal of reasons; profits for the owners of the corporations that are shitting in our house, so no wonder they don’t want to talk about it.

Why not? Doesn’t the capitalist class not live on the same planet, drink the same water, eat the same food, breathe the same air, use the same pesticides, swim in the same oceans and get sick from our fouled collective nest?

We have to keep asking the question, why? Why does capitalism not acknowledge that it is the cause of planetary destruction? You would think that the instinct for self-preservation also exists amongst the 1%?

You would think that such an obvious question would be asked by just about everyone given our collective condition, yet the question is never asked. Why not?

It’s as if the cause, that relationship between planetary destruction and capitalism, is a secret never to be divulged. Which, of course, it is. It has to be a secret that capitalism caused this planetary disaster and worse, having known about it for decades, chose not to do anything about it, chose in fact, to hide it, to ignore it, to deny its existence. Even now, the ruling classes prevaricate. Are the ruling classes really that myopic? That stupid?

Or do they have a secret that us mere mortals know nothing about? A secret for their survival. Or perhaps it’s simply hyper-hubris, that somehow, they will survive. Their wealth, their power, their resources, their technology will protect them while all else perishes. I suppose it’s conceivable. Some retreat perhaps, high up in temperate climes? But all would be lost. Or perhaps it’s really that they don’t believe what the science is telling them and even if they do, they just don’t care. Do they care about the millions slaughtered by their resource wars? No, they build monuments to do that for them.

Yes, perhaps that’s it. Climate disaster is just WWIII by another name. It takes care of several perennial problems that confront capitalist society that historically have been ‘handled’ by a really big war. In one, fell swoop, ‘surplus’ populations, over-production, too much unused capital sloshing about, falling rates of profit, all taken care of. Destructive destruction. The final act.

And what of our governments? After all, aren’t they the best-placed to act? They have the means, they have resources, they have the power but of course, they’re in sway to their masters, their paymasters that is. And of course the state also becomes a haven, of a kind, within which (potential) decision-makers can hide. The state ‘anonymises’ the individual, it’s not personal. It’s just statistics. It’s just policy. It’s just…nothing really.

So obviously, we can’t leave it up to the ruling classes or their state machines, it’s simply not designed to deal with this kind of emergency. Instead, this is something that virtually every last one of us, in one way or another is going to have to get involved in and we have to start by removing the 1% and getting rid of their state apparatuses in order for us to take the vital steps needed to address the crisis. And there is no getting around this. You can hide from it the way Extinction/Rebellion does by focusing on carbon dioxide to the exclusion of everything else but in its own way, it actually puts off actually recognising that real steps that deal with, not just climate change but the way we live, the way we make our living. The way we relate to our planet and its creatures and places.

We still have time.

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This article was originally published on Investigating Imperialism.

Idlib has always been a small farming area, but the western media has inflated it to gargantuan proportions.  There were only 34 hospitals total in Idlib, and yet we hear of dozens of hospitals being hit by airstrikes.  The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) is a pro-opposition group headquartered in Washington, DC and funded by the U.S. government.   SAMS served only those areas under terrorist occupation.  Former members call SAMS “Al Qaeda’s MASH unit.”

San Antonio is the county seat of Bexar County, Texas.  The population of the county is roughly 2 million, which is comparable to Idlib province, Syria.  Imagine an armed terrorist group, funded by the enemies of the U.S. were to occupy the county and hold the civilian population hostage.  What would be the response of the county Sheriff, and the U.S. Military?  Would the President listen as the Presidents of Canada and Mexico urge restraint and a cease-fire, allowing the terrorists to receive more weapons and reinforcements from over the border?

The original inhabitants of Idlib province, as of March 2011, were typical farmers, shop keepers, and all the normal occupations you find everywhere.  Agriculture was the biggest industry there, as it is home to some of the finest olives and pistachios.  Prior to the war, Syria was ranked 7th in the world in olive oil production, and Idlib province played a major role.

As the crisis in Syria spread and worsened, many people of Idlib fled to areas of safety.  Em Ahmad said she went to sleep one night in her home in Idlib, and as it approached dawn, she heard a loudspeaker informing everyone that Jabhat al Nusra had taken control of the region.  She got up and grabbed her purse and car keys and drove to Latakia.  Most people tell you the same story: we left just with the clothes on our back; we were sure we would return in a few days.

Not everyone left.  Some decided to try to make the best of a bad situation, and try to wait it out; the same mental process people are faced with before a tornado or hurricane.  They are willing to take their chances, hoping the situation will be over soon, and their lives will return to normal.  Maybe they were so attached or invested in their home, farm, shop, office, or factory that they were unwilling to surrender it so fast. But, the days turned into years, and along the way, the terrorists became increasingly more difficult to live under.  They occupied every empty home, and when thousands more terrorists came flooding into the area from Turkey and from the “Green Buses”, they wanted everything.  They had weapons and were cold-blooded murderers.  When they came to a house, the owners were expected to leave immediately, and quietly.  Everything they worked for was gone in an instant.  Many faced a worse loss, as the terrorists demanded their wife, or sister, or daughter as a sex slave.  They were an ‘army’ and it was useless to think of fighting back.

The “Green Buses” delivered thousands of armed terrorists and their wives and children to Idlib, as part of peace deals made between the Syrian government and the terrorists.  This happened from Homs to Aleppo, to Deraa, and East Ghouta.  These were hardened Jihadists aligned with Al Qaeda and in some cases ISIS.  None of these were moderate rebels, even though they had all been funded and supported previously by the U.S., UK, NATO, EU and the Arab Gulf monarchies.

Some of the original residents went along with the terrorists because they followed their Radical Islamic ideology.  They were possibly the most fortunate, as they could accept the terrorists as ‘brothers’ and adapt to their lifestyle.  They would be employed as agents, reporting back every detail on their neighbors, and hoping that as long as their neighbors were getting flogged, raped, or maimed, they themselves would be spared.   Some of the residents made aprofit off providing supplies to the terrorists; in war, everything is for sale.

Idlib today is full of foreigners who have no connection to Idlib.  The Chinese government is aware of almost 5,000 Chinese citizens in Idlib.  A list of nationalities in Idlib would encompass the western world, Africa and Asia.   The western media talk about the ‘rebels’ fighting back as they are being attacked by the only legitimate army of Syria (SAA) and its Russian ally.  Pres. Putin said long ago, he could either fight the terrorists on the streets in Syria or fight them on the streets of Moscow.  The global Jihad is spreading, and one day could reach the streets in the U.S.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

Steven Sahiounie is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoRos

MSNBC, with its empire loving moderators, held the 2nd of two great ‘nights of comedy’ last evening. With an audience made up of nice folks, a majority of whom don’t have a clue as to how the Two Party/One Party scam affects them, it made great theater. Here’s what this writer observed of what went down:

• For the one hour and forty five minutes that I stayed with it, the moderators made sure to once again, for the 2nd straight night, stay clear of the Neo Con militarism and vital foreign policy issues. Maybe they felt obligated to cover Iran in the last 15 minutes, but by then the die was already cast. The night before, it took Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, when asked the one of maybe two questions she received, to change the subject and bring up what she  and too few a number of Americans  felt was crucial. That being our obscene militarism and phony wars in the Middle East. Gabbard focused on our 17 year occupation of Afghanistan. Of course, the phony television/news talk hosts just passed on any real opening for debate on that ‘too hot to handle’ subject. After all, they knew that the Jackass party is ‘on point’ with the other party on increased militarism and military spending. Again, when Ms. Gabbard brought up the overkill spending and how it was going to bankrupt us… Silence from the lambs of empire.

Last night the aforementioned subject was not even brought up by the moderators or for that matter most of the Jackasses on stage. Perhaps ‘Feel the Bern’ may have inserted it into one of his responses, but it was NEVER made into a real and crucial talking point. Instead, they did what every previous Jackass party outline covered, important issues (yes, they all are) like healthcare, immigration, racial injustice and a woman’s right to choose. Agreed, they all are vital issues, but damn it, so is this Military Industrial Empire! How many in the audience even realized (well, the corporate mainstream media will never inform them of this) that more than HALF of their federal tax money goes for military related spending? How many knew (or even cared, sadly) that the cost of keeping a soldier in Afghanistan is over ONE Million Dollars a year? As my old street corner activist, the late, great Walt DeYoung would say ‘Nuff Said’.

• On the subject of health care, especially the new ‘Flavor of the month’ Medicare for All, the female moderator in part one of last night’s Jackass debate actually attempted to pin Sanders down with the (oh my goodness) dirty word of Socialism. She asked others to weigh in on (God Forbid) the use of socialism for our country’s ails. I think she even, later on, referred to Sanders as inspiring a new Revolution for America. I kid you not! So, Sanders was being painted as some radical Commie attempting to stir the flames of revolution here in good old America. Disgraceful! Then, oh how ‘Feel the Bern’ needed to be taken to task because he dares to suggest that the private insurers should NOT be part of his plan. That is actually treasonous! Of course, the rest of the Jackasses, even the ones who label themselves as progressive, did not agree with forcing private insurers out completely. (Please note that  the problem Sanders creates with this rhetoric is this: In a fully government run Medicare for All, the private insurers  can still exist, just NOT part of the new plan. If anyone wishes to purchase insurance through private insurers, let them… just not as part of a 100% government run plan. He needed to make that clear to the minions who were watching).
• To highlight the utter lack of sophistication of both the audience and the moderators (or was it intentional when it comes to the moderators?) Senator Gillibrand introduced something in one of her retorts that fell on totally deaf ears. She actually made one of the most vital points by saying that until we have public funding of all elections, without the current obscenity of private money allowed, we will never have a true democracy. The audience and the phony corporate ‘journalists’ just ignored that point, which should have been one of the first issues discussed in any debate. Well, they had to do that, and here is why: In the 2008 election, candidate McCain received over 7 million dollars from the health care industry. Candidate Obama received… over 21 million dollars! You think his (tongue in cheek) plea for a ‘Public Option’ for buying into Medicare had a chance? So, he gave us Obama Care, which recruited over 40 million new customers for the private insurers.

Nothing was really accomplished by those two evenings of  Jackass (so called) debates. The interesting point to be made here is that the other party, the Bloated Elephants, would have spent much of their two hours in any debate by saluting the flag they hijacked and climbing over each other to see who wants to spend more of your tax money on militarism and phony wars. Either way, the serfs will continue to get what they sadly deserve by their ignorance of what really matters.  The rest of us, the ones who see through this delusion, will be the ‘baby with the bathwater’.

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

Featured image is Drew Angerer (Getty Images)

JCPOA nuclear deal Joint Commission members include Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. 

On Friday, talks in Vienna involving officials of these countries fell short, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying the following at their conclusion:

“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations” for normal trade relations between Tehran and European countries, affirmed under JCPOA nuclear deal provisions.

“(W)e took a step forward but there is still a long way to reach Iran’s set targets,” Araghchi added.

Days earlier, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Governor Abdolanser Hemmati said

“Instex will not work miracles. Monetary transactions should be done via it and for that Europeans should purchase our oil or open credit lines for Iran,” adding:

“Europeans should buy oil from us as did Italy and Greece in the past or in other case, they can provide us with $10 million to $15 million credit lines in order to have monetary transactions take place in INSTEX to meet Iran’s needs under the US sanctions.”

What was presented in Vienna excludes exports of Iranian oil to European markets, making it unacceptable to Tehran.

Separately, Iran established a STFI counterpart system to Instex, aiming to more greatly facilitate trade.

As long as acceptable progress toward normalizing relations remains unachieved, Iran will continue reducing its JCPOA commitments.

They only work if all signatories to the agreement fulfill their obligations — what Russia and China have done, not European countries.

The EU’s Instex trade mechanism with Iran, bypassing dollar transactions through the SWIFT interbank financial transactions system, is supposed to circumvent illegally imposed US sanctions.

Initially it’s designed to focus on “pharmaceutical, medical devices and agri-food goods,” according to a statement, adding:

It “aims in the long term to be open to economic operators from third countries who wish to trade with Iran and the E3 (as well as other European nations) continue to explore how to achieve this objective.”

Since announcing Instex in February, EU countries delayed its implementation, showing it’s largely a rhetorical gesture without fulfillment the way it should be.

Iranian Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani earlier slammed the system, saying “(a)fter nine months of dawdling and negotiations, European countries have come up with a limited-capacity mechanism not for exchange of money with Iran, but to supply food and medicine.”

As it now stands, it does not facilitate the sale of Iranian oil, gas, and other products to European markets, what’s fundamental to make it work.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry following the Vienna meeting,

“experts from the member nations have been tasked to elaborate practical measures to make it possible for Iran to export low enriched uranium and heavy water in bypassing the US sanctions.”

Days earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow and other JCPOA signatories will take steps to counter illegal US sanctions on Iran — what Europe hasn’t done so far, leaving serious doubts about its intentions.

Iran said steps it will take ahead depend on what policies European countries adopt. So far they’re complying with illegal US sanctions instead of rejecting them.

Separately, while Pompeo and Bolton are seeking coalition partners for war on Iran, the Pentagon is increasing US military strength in the Middle East.

Additional stealth F-22 warplanes were deployed to Qatar — on the phony pretext of “defending American forces and interests,” despite no regional threats to the US except invented ones.

Trump regime officials warning about a “credible threat” from Iran is a bald-faced Big Lie. An aircraft carrier strike group, B-52 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and around 1,000 ground troops were deployed to the region in early June.

In late June, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in the Middle East, along with an amphibious transport vessel. A CENTCOM statement about the deployment was posted and removed.

The USS Boxer deployed to the region carries an air squadron comprised of attack helicopters and AV-8B Harrier II strike aircraft. It’s able to launch Sea Sparrow anti-ship missiles.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) commander-in-chief Hossein Salami said the country’s anti-ship missiles can strike targets “with great precision…”

A Final Comment

On Friday, the US Senate defeated an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) legislation, requiring Trump to seek congressional approval to attack Iran or other countries.

The measure required a 60-vote super-majority for adoption, falling one vote short. GOP Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell opposed the amendment, saying its “radical new restrictions (sic) (would leave Trump’s) hands…tied” if adopted.

Things are moving incrementally toward possible preemptive US war on Iran, risking likely devastating consequences if the Trump regime goes this far.

He threatened “overwhelming force to “obliterate” Iran if “anything American” is attacked.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif responded, saying his threat amounts to “genocide,” adding: “(W)hoever begins war will not be the one ending it.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Updated on July 24

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.

Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the United States had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, Swedish prosecution informed the tabloid press that he was suspected of having raped two women. Strangely, however, the women themselves never claimed to have been raped, nor did they intend to report a criminal offence. Go figure. Moreover, the forensic examination of a condom submitted as evidence, supposedly worn and torn during intercourse with Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever — neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else’s. Go figure again. One woman even texted that she only wanted Assange to take an HIV test, but that the police were “keen on getting their hands on him”. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Alright, I thought, but surely Assange must be a hacker! But what I found is that all his disclosures had been freely leaked to him, and that no one accuses him of having hacked a single computer. In fact, the only arguable hacking-charge against him relates to his alleged unsuccessful attempt to help breaking a password which, had it been successful, might have helped his source to cover her tracks. In short: a rather isolated, speculative, and inconsequential chain of events; a bit like trying to prosecute a driver who unsuccessfully attempted to exceed the speed-limit, but failed because their car was too weak.

Image below: Professor Nils Melzer

Well then, I thought, at least we know for sure that Assange is a Russian spy, has interfered with US elections, and negligently caused people’s deaths! But all I found is that he consistently published true information of inherent public interest without any breach of trust, duty or allegiance. Yes, he exposed war crimes, corruption and abuse, but let’s not confuse national security with governmental impunity. Yes, the facts he disclosed empowered US voters to take more informed decisions, but isn’t that simply democracy? Yes, there are ethical discussions to be had regarding the legitimacy of unredacted disclosures. But if actual harm had really been caused, how come neither Assange nor Wikileaks ever faced related criminal charges or civil lawsuits for just compensation?

But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration. This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law.

In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. And thus, a legal precedent is being set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which in the future can and will be applied just as well to disclosures by The Guardian, the New York Times and ABC News.

Very well, you may say, but what does slander have to do with torture? Well, this is a slippery slope. What may look like mere «mudslinging» in public debate, quickly becomes “mobbing” when used against the defenseless, and even “persecution” once the State is involved. Now just add purposefulness and severe suffering, and what you get is full-fledged psychological torture.

Yes, living in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard may seem like a sweet deal when you believe the rest of the lies. But when no one remembers the reason for the hate you endure, when no one even wants to hear the truth, when neither the courts nor the media hold the powerful to account, then your refuge really is but a rubber boat in a shark-pool, and neither your cat nor your skateboard will save your life.

Even so, you may say, why spend so much breath on Assange, when countless others are tortured worldwide? Because this is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.

This Op-Ed has been offered for publication to the Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Canberra Times, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Newsweek.

None responded positively.

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Nils Melzer is a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture

The East African country has the proud distinction of hosting China’s first modern-day Silk Road, the 1970s TAZARA railway, which is why Tanzania’s decision to suspend the $10 billion Bagamoyo port project that was supposed to be built by the People’s Republic is such a big deal and could greatly hamper Beijing’s regional strategy.

Tanzania’s nationalist leader John Magafuli just dealt a surprise blow to China’s Silk Road vision for East Africa by suspending the $10 billion Bagamoyo port project that was supposed to figure prominently in the regional connectivity vision being pursued by the People’s Republic. His reasoning was that “they want us to give them a guarantee of 33 years and a lease of 99 years, and we should not question whoever comes to invest there once the port is operational. They want to take the land as their own but we have to compensate them for drilling construction of that port”, which he described as “exploitative and awkward”. This decision was all the more unexpected because the East African country has the proud distinction of hosting China’s first modern-day Silk Road, the 1970s TAZARA railway, and its Foreign Minister was just in Beijing a few days prior where his counterpart praised their historical cooperation as an example for other Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) countries to follow.

This sudden setback jeopardizes the enhanced regional connectivity role that Tanzania was poised to play in Beijing’s BRI plans for Africa but might also interestingly endear Magufuli to the West once more after recently falling out of their favor for his socio-conservative policies. Judging by his remarks, he feels uncomfortable with the excessive amount of influence that China could wield in his country through what he apparently believes is the lopsided Bagamoyo deal, which in a sense is reminiscent of the reason why Myanmar distanced itself from China earlier in the decade over similar concerns stemming from the Myitsone Dam project. If the Myanmar Model is actually in effect in Tanzania, however, then it would suggest that Tanzania might one day return to China’s embrace like Myanmar once again has if the pro-Western rapprochement brought about by its anti-Chinese policy moves doesn’t yield tangible results.

In any case, the abrupt move to back out of this gargantuan infrastructure project might set into motion a regional chain reaction that could negatively impact the prospects of expanding China’s Standard Gauge Railroad (SGR) in neighboring Kenya into Uganda, Rwanda, the Congo, and beyond, especially if it inspires “economic nationalism” at the grassroots level throughout the rest of the East African Community. Furthermore, this development creates a strategic opening for the joint Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (AAGC) to replace China’s role with American and Emirati assistance if there’s enough political will to do so, which might be predicated on creating a precedent for how to reverse China’s Silk Road influence in Africa. Whatever may or may not happen next, there’s no doubt that the suspension of the Bagamoyo port project is a huge blow to Beijing’s regional influence and advances America’s strategic objectives in the New Cold War.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Today, environmental and consumer organizations are delivering more than 149,000 public comments to the Environmental Protection Agency advocating for a ban on glyphosate, aka Monsanto’s RoundUp, which is linked to cancer. The EPA is collecting public comments until July 5th for glyphosate’s proposed interim registration review, which could allow glyphosate to be used in the U.S. for another 15 years.

“The science is clear about glyphosate. This dangerous herbicide causes serious health risks, including cancer, and threatens our environment,” said Jason Davidson with Friends of the Earth.“EPA must do its job and ban this toxic pesticide instead of prioritizing corporate profits.”

Monsanto (now owned by Bayer (BAYRY), made $4.8 billion in revenue from glyphosate sales in 2015. The EPA claims that glyphosate does not cause cancer, ignoring the United Nations and California’s Office of Health Hazard Assessment, both of which have classified the herbicide as linked to cancer. However, EPA’s Office of Research and Development determined that the Office of Pesticide Programs did not follow proper protocol in its evaluation of glyphosate. EPA included Monsanto-funded studies in its evaluation of the chemical and has a history of collusion with industry.

“EPA is getting the science wrong on glyphosate, and needs to listen to international agencies and peer-reviewed literature on the dangers posed by widespread use of this herbicide,” said Drew Toher, community resource and policy director at Beyond Pesticides. “While continuing to pressure EPA, we encourage advocates to get active in their community, and work with their local elected officials towards organic policies that stop glyphosate and other toxic pesticides like it.”

“No company’s profits are more important than children’s health and the health of our fragile ecosystems. The EPA must uphold its mission and ban glyphosate,” said Brandy Doyle with CREDO Action.

“It’s time for the EPA to acknowledge that glyphosate, which is never used alone, if reapproved, will continue in the form of glyphosate herbicides, to contaminate our tap water, breast milk, baby food, formulas, cereals, thousands of food types, and cotton products,” said Zen Honeycutt, executive director, Moms Across America. “It will continue to destroy soil quality, which contributes to climate change, the decline of marine and wildlife and the environment. In short, the only way the EPA can do its job, is to revoke it’s license.”

“Getting cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma shouldn’t be a condition of employment in agriculture or landscaping—or a risk of using a weedkiller at home,” said Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association. “It’s time for the EPA to stand up to Monsanto-Bayer and protect farmers, farm workers, lawn care workers and consumers. If Trump’s EPA chooses to ignore the science, Congress should step in.”

“It is not enough for companies to offer some products that are organic to consumers who are willing to pay for them.  We need the EPA to protect all consumers from toxins in foods. And we need to protect our pollinators, farm workers, and the environment, so we can ensure that future generations have safe and healthy foods,” said Todd Larsen, executive co-director, Green America.

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Capitalist ideology apparatuses (i.e. talk shows, cable news, think tanks, business press editorialists, etc.) have been gearing up in recent months, targeting new progressive ideas that have begun to emerge: medicare for all, modern money theory, green new deal, Socialism, etc.  Ideology defined here refers to purposeful manipulation and distortion of ideas in defense of the economic interests of dominate elites and classes. 

This ideological manipulation, which aims at misrepresentation and distortion of original ideas, is based on various techniques of language transformation. One such technique is to delete reference to essential propositions that are part of the original idea; to add contradictory propositions to further distort the original idea; to invert the logic and relationships of elements in the idea; to reverse the causal relationships between the elements; to substitute correlations for causation, etc. (For more detail on the methodology see my various blog pieces at jackrasmus.com on how ideology works in economics, as well as my forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism’, Clarity Press, September 2019).

Ideological manipulation is not new. A number of such notions lie at the heart of Neoliberalism. Among Neoliberalism’s most notable examples are nonsense like ‘free trade benefits all’, ‘business tax cuts create jobs’, ‘inflation is always due to too much money chasing too few goods’, ‘markets are always efficient’ (and the corollary, government is always inefficient); ‘productivity determines wage gains’, ‘central banks are independent’; ‘recessions are caused only by ‘external’ shocks to an otherwise stable system’; ‘the crash of 2008-09 was due to a ‘global savings glut’, and so on. It can be shown that none of these notions are supported by the facts

Attacks by the ideological apparatuses on ideas of Medicare for All, green new deal, socialism, and Modern Money Theory, are the new ideological offensives, now being added to the old.

Wall St. types are now leading the charge. One of the main champions of distortion from among their ranks is David Rubenstein, a host of many well known (among investors and watchers of Bloomberg news TV) interviews of famous US capitalists, and who is also a co-founder of the Carlyl Group, one of the biggest Private Equity firms (and thus shadow banks) in the world. (The Bush family has been a big investor in Carlyl).  Rubinstein has been giving interviews all over on the media and attending elite conferences, attacking MMT, green new deal, medicare for all, etc. He always ends up as well with the further attack on social security retirement, mouthing the typical garbage that it’s going broke in a couple of years and therefore benefits must be cut, especially raising the retirement age (to as high as 80).

Rubenstein was joined this past week by another of his shadow banker buddies, Paul Singer of the big hedge fund Elliott Management. Together they were interviewed by Bloomberg hosts at the Aspen Conference, a gathering of the US economic elite. Bloomberg hosts fed them loaded questions about Medicare for all, social security retirement, MMT and all the rest.

The essence of Rubenstein-Singer’s attack on Medicare for All, is to grossly distort its cost, while arguing 180 million Americans love their private, employer provided health insurance.  In distorting the costs they echoes the same themes being peddled around the media now by lesser hired, and well paid ideologists, in the business media, think tanks, cable shows, etc.

The gist of the attack on Medicare for All is they conveniently ignore the facts that 162 million US workers (the size of the US labor force today ) pay only a tax of 1.45% on payroll while working, and the nearly 60 million over age 65 pay only a $135 annual deductible when retired when they collect Medicare.

Compare that ‘cost’ to those households still on private health insurance. According to Kaiser Foundation’s latest report this past week, the cost of premiums for private health insurance have risen from $5000 a year in 2001 to $20,000 a year 2016 (no doubt higher now under Trump). That $20k is $1,666 a month. And that’s not counting the tens of millions who can’t afford that and who have had to opt for the barely affordable private insurance, now paying $2k to $5k annual deductibles, thousands of dollars more in co-pays, and even so facing hundreds of health procedures not even covered. And then there’s the tens of millions who can’t afford anything–even Obamacare since their states won’t participate or, if they do, the premiums have escalated beyond affordability.

That’s a comparison of Medicare, with a cost of just low hundreds of dollars a year, compared to private health insurance costing $20k a year on average and more, and sometimes far more.  But you’ll never hear that comparison or facts from Rubinstein-Elliott or the other of their ilk. That’s because they simple ‘delete’ reference to such facts when they talk about and attack Medicare for All. But that’s how ideology works. Delete the facts, insert false facts, invert the logic, reverse causation, argue correlation is causation, etc. It’s all about ‘language games’ to distort the truth, so they can attack and propose their solutions that benefit them and not the rest.

Then there’s Rubinstein-Singer’s further ideological argument that 180 million want to keep their private health insurance coverage instead of being forced onto Medicare. Well, if the rich want to pay for private coverage on top of the minimal healthcare tax, they can certainly do so in the proposals for Medicare for All on the table right now. But it’s not likely that the more than 100 million US households now being gouged by private health insurance will want to keep those token plans and not want to go to Medicare. If they were so happy with their current health insurance, why do 74% of voters now say they are dissatisfied with the current health insurance system?

And there’s the growing ideological assault on anything that has to do with making the rich pay taxes or having government spend on programs that benefit the rest of us, not just corporations and investors.

What used to be accepted social programs in the 50s, 60s and 70s, designed to provide income for the middle class and working class (really the same folks), is now painted with the broad brush of ‘socialism’.  Invest in alternative energy, that’s socialism. Provide relief to the tens of millions of students in debt to the tune of $1.5 trillion, that’s socialism too.  Medicare? That’s really socialism. No tuition at public colleges…socialism. (But let government gouge students with 6.8% interest rates on student debt, while letting banks borrow at 0.25%, that’s ok.  That’s not socialism). Stop writing government checks ($79 billion last year) to corporations with big profits, that’s socialism for the capitalists but that kind of socialism is ok). What were in past decades ‘normal’ social programs and spending are now being conveniently labeled ‘socialist’.  But let them continue with that ideological theme, I say.  It’s convincing two-thirds of millenials, now the biggest population group, that they prefer ‘socialism’ to the present capitalism, according to recent polls. (Of course, ‘socialism’ to them so far means ‘anything but the above’, but that’s a good place to start).

Then there’s the more sophisticated ideological attack on the emerging idea of Modern Money Theory, or MMT.  Rubinstein-Singer are really against that as well.  MMT in one of its propositions (elements of meaning of an idea) calls for fiscal-social spending by the central bank, the Fed, creating money and using it to fund infrastructure spending and social programs that would benefit the rest of us.  It’s interesting to watch Rubinstein & Co. attack that. They say, ‘Oh, it would mean excess money and inflation, create too much debt at the central bank, it would mean a rising national debt further out of control, and so on.

But wait a minute. That’s just what the Fed did since 2009 with its ‘quantitative easing’ QE program that bailed out the banks with trillion dollar cash injections, followed by zero borrowing rates for bankers like Rubinstein and Singer for 7 more years.  One didn’t hear Rubinstein-Elliott and friends complain about that QMT, ‘QE Money Theory’, because it directly benefited them. Their shadow banks–private equity firms, hedge funds, etc.–got to borrow at 0.15% for years after they were even bailed out (by 2010). They got free money from the Fed until 2016, and then the cost of borrowing went up a miniscule couple of percentages (still way below the 6.8% that students had to keep borrowing at). They loved QE and never complained about debt, inflation in stocks and bond prices, or the massive income and wealth they accumulated personally because of QE.

QE was just MMT turned on its head. Now the theorists of MMT are just trying to turn the tables on the Rubinsteins, Elliotts, et. al., by saying let’s do QE for the rest of us now.  But no, in their view, the rest of us have to continue to settle for austerity in government spending–i.e. cuts in food stamps, education, transport services, medicaid, etc. We have to pay higher taxes to finance Trump’s $4 trillion tax cuts for corporations, investors and the wealthy 1% households and for Trump’s annual $100 billion a year hikes in war spending.

QE, low rates, and tax cuts are for them; 6.8% for students and tax hikes are for us. And don’t dare ask for Medicare for All, green new deals, free tuition, student debt relief, etc. It’s too costly. It won’t work. It will wreck the system, according to Rubinstein-Singer.

But the policies of the Rubinsteins, Singers, and the Goldman-Sachers and Trump now running government policy—i.e. shadow bankers all–have cost too much. Haven’t worked. And have already ‘wrecked the system’.

What they want is to continue the annual $trillion dollar plus distribution of income to their class via stock buybacks and dividend payouts ($1.3 trillion in 2018 and projected $1.4 trillion this year). Tax cuts and cheap money (QMT/QE) have enabled that historic income redistribution via stock, bond, and other capital gains markets.

Medicare for All and expanding social security retirement by raising the ‘cap’ on social security plus taxing capital incomes; bailing out students with a financial transaction tax, funding a green new deal by reversing 40 years of tax cutting for the rich and their corporations–all will mean taking back some of their $1.3 trillion firehose of income redistribution since 2008. Rubinstein & friends know that. And they don’t want that.

So Rubinstein and his buddies are now touring the country attacking proposals that would do that, and socialism in general, by distorting, misrepresenting, and outright lying about what these programs mean. Using the various techniques of playing with language to change the original meanings. To arm their class with the ‘talking points’ to carry on the attack locally as well. To establish the ‘messages’ for their media to carry via various channels daily thereafter. To get naive economist-apologists to parrot and legitimize the economic ideology as economic science in their journal articles.

The fundamental message of their ideological offensive is: Socialism for the rich: good; socialism for the rest of us: bad.  Tax cuts for the rich and their corporations: good; tax cuts for the rest: bad. Subsidy checks to profitable corporations: good; subsidizing of health care or education: bad. Free money from the Fed (QE) for them: good; free money from the Fed (MMT) for us: bad.

But that’s always been how ideology in economic policy works. Only the targeted themes have changed today. The methodology of language manipulation is the same. So too are the direct beneficiaries.  Just pour the new wine into the old bottles and ‘waterboard’ it, if necessary, down our throats through repetitive messaging from the institutions that deliver the ideological messaging.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, September 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

“It made no difference which Palestinians we killed… They either were terrorists or would become terrorists or they gave birth to terrorists.”  – former IDF commander, Rafael “ Raful” Eitan.

Spies,  Femme fatale, deadly plots, killings, bombs, knives, guns, and an array of unique murderous weaponry that would make James Bond and “Q” envious. All this, combined with dozens of unapologetic and brutal cloak and dagger assassinations in foreign locales worldwide? Sounds like the makings of a great spy thriller.

Indeed. But, despite decades of Israeli denial… this story is true.

Ronen Bergman’s book, “Rise and Kill First,” was released in late 2018 to what, considering the inflammatory subject, was relatively little fanfare. While this might seem surprising, on reading this important chronological documentary of the inception and development of Israel’s worldwide assassination program it becomes clear that this book does provide a unique, very detailed and accurate history of Israel’s hundreds of extrajudicial killings over the past fifty plus years.

However, when read with just the right eyes, other far more important and separate timelines of history appear within the book to the reader already wary of the definition and rise of modern Zionism. Of these other unmentioned chronologies within the 530 pages, the author fails miserably in connecting these dots of his own excellent, but thus too superficial, presentation of fact.

What this book does more importantly reveal is a multi-faceted unmasking of Israel’s steady descent from the moral to the immoral tactics of war; the myth that it’s past Prime Ministers were not also barbaric terrorists and sacrosanct;  the ongoing descent of other world leaders willing to give up their own conscience into the same mental abyss; the ever-increasing control of Israel over the minds of the American military, the CIA , its media and its politicians; and that Israel has never truly embraced peace as a foreign policy, preferring war and genocide instead.

Worse, “Rise and Kill First” reveals the true mind of the modern Israeli that has been infected by the rise of orthodox Jewish Likud party: An aberration of conscience that has no value for non-Jewish life worldwide whatsoever in its pursuit of its singular goal: Greater Israel.

                                                                        ***                           

“If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first!” – The Babylonian Talmud.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” has been embraced in the routine alternative to turning the other cheek by Israel as foreign policy since its inception. This implies violent retaliation and retribution. But this book, when taken in totality, more accurately redefines this age-old Israeli mantra to its current Zionist definition, “Rise-up and kill first!”

The author’s failures in connecting the dots of his own excellently researched chronology are what makes this book a must-read. For observers of Israeli / Zionist hegemony of territory- and of mind- what Ronen omits are the many other chronologies that well illustrate, by his own documentation, why Israeli Zionism is indeed a threat that must be vanquished. These connections are obvious, yet omitted.

We need not wonder why.

In documenting Israel’s unknown – and always denied- program of targeted killings, Ronen’s work appears exceptional. What he presents is the result of seven years of his ongoing interviews of the scores of military and later political players who were the controllers of this seventy-five-year history of Israeli military development of domination and increased hegemony by assassination. The chronology begins with the killing of Tom Wilkin as far back as 1944 because of his role in very effectively infiltrating and disrupting the Jewish underground in Palestine as it forced the way for eventual Israel. At that time long ago before Zionism prevailed in establishing for the first time a Jewish nation, the assassination was not yet a sanctified national military program. That would change.

While the reader must take the details as presented since independent corroboration from these witnesses is nigh on impossible, the book is extensively footnoted and on very few occasions does Ronen fail to directly identify the names of his sources which he professionally cross-references against each other for validity. The credibility of the facts he presents seems evident.

His prima facie chronology of a book is a rollicking ride. Ronen is a good storyteller and he takes the reader through the details of the book from killing after killing and the planning and execution of each orchestrated plot. Loaded with salacious details aplenty, the author uses dozens of case studies from past Israeli hits to show the ongoing development and inception of the many new Israeli military and intelligence services, ongoing improvement in the tactics of the kill and the year-by-year increase in the willingness of Israel and its leaders to kill beyond their own borders while ever descending from the existing human conscience. His subject well in hand, Ronen treats the reader to a real page-turner of a spy novel.

The book picks up the modern era of Zionist expansion and assassination as WWII draws to a close with the Nuremberg trials and the flight of Nazi war criminals to other countries. Retribution is the key to these many stories as Israeli operatives systematically track down and arrest or kill those they accuse, such as Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

As is the case with most books from Israeli authors on the subject of Israel, Ronen falls too conveniently upon the hyperbole of the Holocaust as reason for this initial killing and rendition program, but without proper examination. These killings first occur during the inception of the post-war development of Israel, the fact of which Ronen is far too brief and equally serving of the Israeli narratives since the historical slaughter and expropriation of Palestinians is glossed over.

As the author proceeds with his chronology, the reader is treated to a very fine and detailed description of many such major world events like the Munich Olympics kidnappings of 1972, the raid on Entebbe, Uganda and many, many more. Ronen does a very good job of cross-referencing the details of these many events with a plethora of interviews and quotes from the operatives directly involved at the time. What he reveals each time is quite likely the best examination of these events so far provided in print. Regarding Munich, he delves in great detail into the full rescue effort that includes the involvement of the German government which was at loggerheads with the Israelis and the IDF in the attempted and failed rescue.

Ronen’s effectiveness and credibility are challenged, however, by his almost constant insistence – by reference- that the Israeli actions he presents are invariably only retaliatory for a specific act of aggression by pro-Palestinian factions against Israelis. Ronen too routinely demonizes the Palestinian and Arab players’ actions and uses them too often as a fait a compli for their own eventual demise while rarely looking at the Israeli atrocity that preceded a Palestinian attack which led to yet another Israeli targeted killing.

During this period of the book, Ronen does a very good job documenting the change in the policy of the Israeli assassinations from executions only within Palestinian territories to the eventual decision to perform these assassinations globally.  Ronen, although predominantly showing successful operations, does not shy away from Israel’s many failures as well.

He presents as almost comical the Manchurian Candidate-like attempt to brainwash, month after month, a Palestinian prisoner code-named “Fatkhi,” who is deemed to be mentally susceptible to these techniques and who, it was intended, would next be sent back to Palestine to assassinate PLO president Yasser Arafat. The results of this humorous vignette, after month’s of careful mental revision of the test subject assassin, are that the prisoner is finally freed on Dec. 19, 1969, by allowing him to cross the Jordan river. Due to equally poor planning, is swept down river and left clinging to a mid-river rock. When finally making it to shore Fatkhi immediately runs to the PLO police headquarters and then informs Arafat of all that he had endured at Israeli hands during his nine months of obviously unsuccessful programming.

When it comes to Arafat, the book shows the absolute hatred of Israel towards him personally due to his effectiveness as PLO chairman, a hatred that grows almost maniacally in the hearts of every Prime Minister and IDF commander as Arafat, again and again, evades their seemingly well planned and very numerous attempts to bump him off. This hatred is only made worse by the rising worldwide respect for Arafat and the PLO cause after each failed attempt.

It is at this stage in the book that beyond the demand for Arafat’s blood Israel crosses the mental Rubicon from respect for human life- other than the target- to allowing for and condoning the innocent to also be killed as a matter of convenience to each plot. The assassinations of a foreign scientist involved in the burgeoning nuclear programs in Iraq, Iran and Egypt began this slope downward.

Although Ronen fails to bring this point to the reader’s attention, he unwittingly documents in exceptional detail this change in conscience and therefore terror tactics which he best illustrates in the example of the Ashkelon murders.

                                                                            ***

“I do not remember an event of similar gravity in the history of the state of Israel” – Yehudit Karp, Israeli Deputy Attorney General for special duties

In understanding the change of the Israeli military and political mind towards that of proactive and routine utilization of terror by assassination, the Ashkelon affair is a seminal point in the book. This connection should not have been overlooked by Ronen; for what this case actually meant to subsequent Israeli war tactics was a complete change in morals of its leaders and that this change would devolve within leaders in other countries as well, particularly America.

On April 12, 1984, four Palestinian youths, three of whom were teenagers- the other twenty years of age- hijacked a bus heading en route from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon with forty Israelis aboard. Taking the passengers hostage with one knife and a fake bomb made of an old suitcase with wires dangling out from its seams for effect, they intended to get the bus to Palestine and next negotiate the release of 500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

When IDF troops eventually disabled the bus a stand-off ensues and negotiations for surrender begin with optimism for a peaceful resolution since, as future PM, Ehud Barak, who was on scene at the time assessed, “the hijackers would [likely] agree to let the hostages go in exchange for a few sandwiches.” But at 4:43 AM Sayeret Matkal (one of the many Israeli military factions) soldiers open fire killing two of the hijackers immediately and an Israeli woman instead.

Apprehended, the two remaining Palestinians are taken by Shin Bet (Israeli Intelligence Service similar to the American CIA) operatives under direction of the infamous Avraham (Avrum) Shalom, the longtime head of Shin Bet who, as Ronen showcases during previous killings, is a man predisposed of secretly sanctioned powers to kill with impunity and without authorization. As Ronen quotes Yuval Diskin, an eventual Shin Bet chief, “ We feared him… He was a strong man, brutal, clever, very stubborn, uncompromising, a real ass kicker.”

And so, since Shalom was not in favor of live terrorists being tried in court, hours later after first ordering the two Palestinians moved away from witnesses to a dank Shin Bet interrogation basement cell, next he allows/orders the soldiers transporting them to stop by the roadside en route and bludgeon them to death with rocks and iron bars to make it look like Israeli settlers had performed a different vendetta.

Then Shalom relaxes, safe in the knowledge that his personal barbarity was sanctioned from the top all the way to then PM Yitzhak Shamir, who had formerly been in charge of the same killing unit when so many innocent foreign scientist were put to death-secretly- at his whim as well. This was confirmed by Carmi Gillon, head of Shin Bet in the ’90s who assessed, “…he [Shalom] felt as if he could do whatever he wanted to do.” Within this subject, Ronen exposes the secret killing program know as “Weights” that was created by Shalom. Assesses the author:

“They were officially sanctioned extrajudicial killings, proposed to the head of Shin Bet by his senior commanders, approved by him and then the Prime Minister, first Rabin and then Begin and Shamir.”

What next transpires is what Ronen very accurately refers to as a “coup.”  This was Shalom’s government-sanctioned barbarity vs. existing military and civil law: Laws that at that time favoured a proper conscience of man in wartime and therefore respect for human life. When the dust would settle several years later, the rule of law and its strictures would no longer functionally exist. And the mind of the modern Zionist would instead be set free to roam the earth.

Shalom would have, as so many times before escaped scrutiny, except for fate, a very inconvenient camera and that three senior Shit Bet officers would not lower their own moral values in kind.

Israeli press photographer Alex Levac had taken pictures of the arrest of the two remaining live Palestinians and managed to stash the film before being searched by a Birds soldier (another IDF special ops sub-set) for doing so.

When Levac’s final few shots disproved the IDF narrative that all four Palestinians had been killed at the scene of the bus incident, his editor’s at Hadashot tried to go with the story but were hit by  IDF censors. However, someone leaked the story to Stern and the NYT along with the photo. When the story blew up, then PM Shamir and Shalom did all they could to stop the subsequent formal inquiry in its tracks.

In preparation for this coup, ten of Shalom’s men and co-conspirators meet in a distant orange grove under the direction of Gen. Yossi Ginosser, to ironically avoid Shin Bet listening devices and surveillance. Here they effect their plan which includes taking down their comrade, Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai, a man of impeccable reputation-and a personal friend of Ginnoser- who had commanded the troops at the scene of the bus- as the patsy. 

When next Ginosser, with the full knowledge of Shalom, weaves a web of deceit designed to thwart the inquiry, they also seek to shift their crime to Mordechai by testifying that, due to their observations that day it was Mordechai who had given the order to kill the Palestinians. The court conveniently certifies their plot by clearing Shalom and company and next Mordechai is charged with manslaughter in their stead.

But fate then smiles on Mordechai when a military advocate, Menahem Finkelstein, who was on the first inquiry panel subsequently is involved in the decision on whether Mordechai is to be indicted for manslaughter, notices many inconsistencies in testimony and facts. Despite this, Shin Bet and the Justice Ministry insist- for obvious reasons- that Mordechai be prosecuted. Thanks to Finkelstein, however, Mordechai is, after being indicted, finally acquitted.

If this had been the end of the story it would have been relatively insignificant. But, during this lengthy saga three senior Shit Bet officials including Reuven Hazak,(Ronen does not name the other two) who was already tapped as Shalom’s successor to head the IDF, were having trouble sleeping. They concluded that justice would only be served by the collective resignations of all the conspirators including Shalom.

Shalom refuses and Hazak next goes directly to then PM Shimon Peres, who had replaced Shamir a year before. What Hazak does not know is that Shalom had already launched a preemptive strike of his own with Perez, who, after placating Hazak, next allows Shalom to sack all three whistleblowers. As the author notes:

“They departed in disgrace from the service they had given their lives to, estranged from their colleagues, who were given to believe that they were traitors.”

However, the three are undaunted, collectively showing up unannounced in the dead of night to the office of Israel’s Attorney General, Yitzhak Zamir, whom himself has previously signed off on many an Israeli hit. After spilling their guts for many hours about the true story of the Palestinians of Ashkelon and the frame-up of Mordechai,  Deputy attorney general Yehudit Karp years later recalled to Ronen:

“ I felt as if the sky had fallen. It is not possible to exaggerate what happened there. It was a gross undermining of the rule of law and corruption of all the systems. I do not remember an event of similar gravity in the history of the State of Israel.”

When Attorney General Zamir immediately calls for a new inquiry and Israel police launched a second concurrent investigation, Shalom refuses to yield. He and his other Shit Bet conspirators next begin direct intimidation of their own against Israel Judicial officials that was so extreme that Attorney General Zamir and others within the prosecution were assigned 24-hour police protection. From Shin Bet!

Shalom and company now appear to be cornered on all sides with the power of the full Justice Ministry now steaming directly at them. But Shalom has one last card to play. A trump card as it turned out.

Shalom, Ginosser and the others involved produce what Ginosser termed, The Skulls Dossier: A list of the secret and never revealed skeletons in the closet of not only the Shit Bet and  Weights but, worse, of the former leaders who became Israeli Prime Ministers themselves afterwards. Ronen sums up:

“ In reality, it was pure blackmail, an implicit threat that if Shalom and his allies were indicted, they would take others with them, including Prime Ministers.”

The denouement of this end to the power of the civilian Israel courts over the military came quickly in a final move by former PM Shamir (who had full knowledge of the plot ), then current PM Shimon Peres (who had approved Shalom’s plot) and future PM Yitzhak Rabin who was at the time defense minister. They convince then Israeli president  Chaim Herzog to hand down “all-encompassing pardons to the implicated Shit bet personnel, covering all proceedings against them. Eleven men were thus exonerated before they’d even been indicted.”

When challenged by the media about his own complicity in covering up the Ashkelon affair and covert operations Herzog was unabashed, stating,  “That way [a trial] perhaps sixty to eighty affairs from the past would have emerged. Would that have been good for the country?”

As of this last day of the Ashkelon affair, Israeli respect for law, morality and the proper conscience of man would begin its steady descent towards the gates of hell where the souls of men like Shalom, Shamir, Begin and Netanyahu and their other Zionist ilk still seek mental refuge today.

                                                                         ***

“The attacks on 9/11 gave our own war international legitimacy. We were able to completely untie the ropes that had bound us.”– Shin Bet chief, Yuval Diskin.

While the aforementioned brief synopsis of the Ashkelon Affair does not do justice to Ronen’s much better and very detailed and footnoted portrayal, it is this parable that shows the inherent value of “Rise and Kill First” that is not garnered at the hands of the author. For, to the  Ziologist- those predisposed to understanding the post-1967 worldwide threat of Israeli inspired Zionism- this one parable should ring true as a much too close parallel to what we see in today’s Israel and it’s American vassal.

Few observers of current American foreign policy would argue against the premise that its operations are today controlled by the Zionist elements on the rise in Israel due to a directly proportional rise of the Jewish orthodox influenced Likud Party. What is also important to note is that the Ashkelon affair took place more than thirty-five years ago: Before America eventually followed this example in lock-step.

It would, thus, be easy to substitute the names Bolton, Pompeo or Abrams for that of Shalom, or that of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange or William Binney for the three Shin Bet officers who also took a moral stand that was brutally put down by a Zionist mentality revolted by inconvenient truth and the demands of correct conscience. It would also be easy to substitute the CIA for Shin Bet as the likely leaders of American extrajudicial killings currently sanctioned worldwide by an administration whose cajones are obviously in the fists of a Zionist controlled cadre transplanted into Langley, VA.

But should the reader of this review not yet see the value of this book as the narration of a chronology and history of the ongoing and increasing control over foreign and American governments alike, perhaps Ronen’s documentation of Israel’s “Red Pages” might help with one’s proper epiphany.

Red Pages are the death sentences for extrajudicial killings, once signed by Israeli Prime Ministers prior to the assassination of the victim. This began more than fifty years ago. Readers capable of objective historical understanding of the Obama administration should well know that is was during this time in American history that America followed the Israeli model and began the Tuesday Morning Briefings where, under America’s Nubian president in black-face, American foreign policy succumbed to CIA pressure and to the Zionist military business model wholesale and began allowing the extrajudicial killings of anyone offered up weekly for sacrifice by the CIA, including the innocent… and American citizens as well. 

Within the book we follow these many Red Pages- named for the color of the document- as they morph from close civilian scrutiny within established law, to Israel changing the law for convenience in John Woo fashion under Bush II and eventually signing the equivalent Red Pages each week in secret in Washington and without concern whatsoever for Law or conscience. Or US judicial oversight.

The use of Red Pages by Israel began under Golda Meir who had already approved many assassinations and was predisposed to do the same to Black September leader Mahmoud Hamshari. Meir, however, was uncomfortable shouldering full responsibility and instead convened a panel of civilian leaders to formally approve the Red Page. At this time in history, the early ’70s, Israel had just begun assassinations outside of Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, but was not willing to hurt the innocent in the crossfire. As Meir told Mike Harari, former Mossad boss, before approving the hit, which would see Hamshari taken out in France, “be sure not a hair falls from the head of a French citizen.”

But by 1977, Israel under PM Menachem Begin saw him merely signing off all Red Page requests without reservation or committee and upon request and “ Begin signed off on operations face-to-face, without a stenographer and without his military aid.”

In 1983 Israel next began approving targeted killings of foreign diplomats. First to go down was  Iranian ambassador to Syria,  Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur. At this point, targeted killing was routinely justified to stop likely future terrorist acts or as the Israelis called it, “negative treatment.” Still, these had to be approved at the highest level, but this proved far too restrictive to developing Israeli tactics. The next step was to re-brand the killings as an “interception” which conveniently no longer required authorization from the PM. As Ronen quotes a Northern Command officer,

“ …a precedent was created by which an assassination operation was called something else… in order to enable a lower echelon to approve it. Killing a man no longer required the prime minister’s approval.”

A different precedent was also created at the same time: that of killing retroactively as well as proactively.

By the time the US began using drones for its own targeted killings Israel- the first to use drones for this purpose had been doing so for years with a precursor drone program of its own. Here the Red Page definition for approval was further lowered. Using the new term, “illegal combatant” the forerunner of Donald Rumsfeld infamous, “enemy combatant,” after protracted debate the Israeli judiciary sided with the military in broadening the right to kill the innocent. As Ronen points out after laying out the details:

“The term allowed [killing]anyone active in a terrorist organization; even if his activity was marginal… he could be considered as a combatant-even when asleep in his bed-unlike a soldier on leave who had taken off his uniform.”   

The culmination of this step-by-step decline in the value for human life was best exemplified in Ronen’s description of the killing of Hamas political leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar.  He was not considered to be an imminent threat and was, as described by Israeli General Giora Eiland ” an elderly, pitiable, half-blind cripple in a wheelchair.” Further advanced planning predicted that the operation to kill al-Zahar ” would have implications as far as hurting uninvolved persons…”

Ariel Sharon, who as detailed repeatedly in the book is the embodiment of the barbaric tactics within the  modern Zionist soul, approves the killing in an operation titled, ” Picking Anemones.”

The result is that al- Zahar dies from a hell Fire missile fired through his apartment window and many men women and children in the building join him in the rubble of what is left of Israel’s former allusion of adherence to humanity.

                                                                       ***

As Ronen takes the reader through the decades, what becomes clear, besides Israel’s descent from conscience, is the effect this full chronology has had on the world, particularly America. A single footnote on page 702 reveals the tight editorial control that likely allowed for the publishing of his book only by deliberate omission of the obvious connections, but also unwelcome facts. Following an interview with General Giora Eiland who assessed correctly, “The American approach to targeted killings has changed from one end to the other,” he follows up by quoting former US Home Land Security boss Michael Chertoff, who adds, regarding American targeted  killings worldwide, ” I think they are very much better than non-targeted killings.”

But the many connections missed by Ronen but showcased non-the-less in his book go beyond his detailed story of the ongoing military take over of Israel judiciary and political institutions and the ever-changing definitions of Red Pages and therefore the value of human life.

For the Ziologist interested in adding Ronen’s history to his memory texts, one will also find within a similar descent of other world leaders and the United Nations; the rise of the Likud party under the influence of Jewish orthodoxy as spearhead to these changes; the rolling over of the media against examining Israeli atrocities; the steady insertion of ” dual loyalty” Zionists into the intelligence services of America, Britain, France and Europe; and Israel’s eventual utter disregard for world opinion and outrage primarily because of its infection into the aforementioned facet of world society.

Although Ronen fails, again and again, to make these connections, his excellent research, interviews and cross-referencing within the scores of assassinations he documents make these connections, however, irrefutable. This leaves the Ziologist -or the casually concerned reader of Israeli modern history- to draw one encompassing conclusion: Israeli Zionism is the singular cancer that has been forcefully injected into the minds of world leaders across the globe; a cancer that these similarly affected leaders would wantonly force upon what little remains of the moral, civilized and correct conscience of man.

Ronen failed to make any of these many and all too obvious connections. If he had, the book would have been a bombshell.

His failures are also why the reader has not likely heard of his book, and… why it managed to be published at all. 

                                                                  

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive.

On June 27, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) attacked positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Qasabiyeh and Qiratah near the administrative border between Hama and Idlib provinces.

According to pro-government sources, the SAA eliminated at least 3 units of military equipment, including a battle tank, belonging to militants. In own turn, the NFL targeted a van carrying troops and a truck armed with a 57mm gun near Tell Huwash with anti-tank guided missiles. The Turkish-backed group also used rocket launchers to shell SAA positions in northern Hama.

Meanwhile, a Turkish observation post near the town of Shir Mughar came under artillery shelling. The shelling reportedly took place as a convoy of reinforcements was preparing to depart the post on its way back to Turkey. The June 27 incident became the fifth shelling that targeted the Shir Mughar outpost in the last two months.

While formally the Idlib de-escalation zone agreement and the ceasefire regime are designed to separate the so-called moderate opposition from terrorists, Turkish-backed groups continue to cooperate with terrorist organizations like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in their battle against the SAA. This Turkish behavior endangers Turkish troops deployed near the contact line because militants use Turkish observation posts as safe areas where they can hide after attacks on SAA positions.

2 ISIS members attacked a position of the Syrian Democratic Forces near the town of Hajin in the Euphrates Valley. According to pro-Kurdish media outlets, the terrorists infiltrated the area from the SAA-controlled territory.

ISIS confirmed the fact of the attack through its news agency Amaq, but said that one militant only was involved and 10 SDF members were killed. This not realistic claim may indicate that the terrorist group just attempted to use these reports to spread own propaganda.

Despite this, the security situation on the eastern bank of the Euphrates remains complicated. The SDF-held area appears to be infiltrated by multiple ISIS cells that carry out attacks on civilian and SDF targets on a constant basis.

A peace conference without participation of warring sides is an affront to what the process is supposed to be all about.

Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century peace plan was partly introduced at the so-called June 25-26 “Peace to Prosperity Workshop” in Bahrain.

A fascist dictatorship was appropriately chosen to host a scheme Palestinians, the Arab street, and activists for peace, equity, and justice categorically reject.

The common theme of participating nations was their abhorrence of rule of law principles and democratic values. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Oman and Morocco attended.

So did reinvented war criminal Tony Blair, along with US officials, others from the predatory World Bank and IMF, business interests as well showing up.

Palestinians boycotted the conference. Israel didn’t attend because of their absence. Nor Iraq and Lebanon.

Many participating representatives were mid-level officials, indicating lack of enthusiasm for the Trump regime’s dog and pony PR show — a scheme going nowhere.

Deceptively billed as “a vision to empower the Palestinian people to build a prosperous and vibrant Palestinian society,” the plan is all about serving privileged US/Israeli interests at their expense.

It has nothing to do with peace, equity and justice for long-suffering Palestinians, nothing to do with resolving irreconcilable Israeli/Palestinian differences, nothing to do with fundamental Palestinian rights affirmed under international law.

The economic portion of the plan discussed is all about serving US-led Western and Israeli monied interests, neoliberal harshness intended for Palestinians – how ordinary people are mistreated throughout the West and for the majority of Israeli Jews.

UK-based Palestinian academic Kamel Hawwash said holding the workshop without Palestinian participation showed its true goal — exploiting, not helping them, adding:

Palestinian self-determination and other rights affirmed under international law are fundamental.

Without achieving them, the peace process is stillborn — the way it’s been for the past half-century, the greatest hoax in modern times, along with the US global war OF terror, not on it.

Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century ignores fundamental final status issues, including Palestinian self-determination, illegal Israeli occupation, settlements, borders, air and water rights, other resources, the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homeland, and East Jerusalem as exclusive Palestinian capital.

The plan ignores US/UK responsibility for over a century of harshness imposed on Palestinians, over 70 years of Israeli viciousness, and over half a century of militarized occupation — their land stolen, their fundamental rights denied.

Longstanding Israeli land theft is fundamental, what the Trump regime supports, including Jewish state annexation of West Bank settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

The plan treats Palestinians as “customers,” not afforded the right to be citizens of their own country, free from oppressive occupation.

The scheme involves securing a $50 billion investment fund for infrastructure and business projects. It’s unclear where most of the money is coming from and under what terms — whether it’s a gift, a loan, or combination of both, and what return on investment donors/lenders expect.

Without resolving key political issues, the economic proposal is meaningless. Who’ll invest billions of dollars for development in a de facto war zone?

Undeclared Israeli war on Palestinians remains ongoing throughout the Territories, no end of it in prospect.

The Trump regime showed contempt for their rights by illegally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital, moving the US embassy there, and cutting off all funding for millions Palestinian refugees considered nonpeople.

Over $200 million in US aid for the West Bank and Gaza was “redirected” elsewhere “to ensure these funds are spent in accordance with US national interests (sic) and provide value to the US taxpayer (sic).”

The Trump regime’s vision of “a new reality in the Middle East” is old wine in new bottles — Palestinians still denied their right to live in peace on their own land in their own country, Israel’s repressive boot no longer stomping on them.

The bottom line of what went on in Bahrain and may follow is that Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century peace plan was dead before arrival — leaving oppressive Israeli apartheid rule in place.

 

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

In February 2003, protest organizers estimated that nearly 2 million people took to the streets of London in opposition to going to war against Iraq. United States president George W. Bush came across as dismissive of the protestors, likening them to a “focus group.” [1] The number of protestors did not deter Bush and United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair from their path.

The aftermath was that the US, UK, and other allies initiated a lopsided war based on “intelligence and facts [that] were being fixed around the policy” of military action. [2] Iraq did not possess weapons-of-mass destruction; it was as United Nations weapons inspector had warned beforehand that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed.” What transpired was an act of aggression — which the Nuremberg Tribunal described thusly:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Furthermore, the US-led debacle against a sanctions-weakened Iraq is compellingly argued, by lawyers Abdul Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani, as an act of genocide by the US, UK, allies, and the UN Security Council. [3]

Two Million Demonstrators Take to the Streets of Hong Kong

On 27 June, the Hong Kong Free Press reported about 200 people protesting outside secretary for justice Teresa Cheng’s office. On the following day, a counter demonstration of around 200 people made the rounds of 19 foreign consulates demanding that foreign countries not interfere in the internal affairs of Hong Kong

Just days earlier, however, crowds estimated at one and two million people took to the streets to protest in Hong Kong. Protest against what?

Fingers point to a gruesome incident that occurred between a Hong Kong couple while on vacation in Taiwan. A young, pregnant woman was murdered, allegedly by her boyfriend. The boyfriend was jailed for the theft of her money and personal effects, but a trial for the killing outside of Hong Kong’s jurisdiction is prevented. And there is no extradition agreement between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The possibility of a release as early as October of 2019 has been provided as a reason for the expedited passing of an extradition bill.

What was unexpected was that so many Hong Kongers would oppose it.

The protests have been effective in first having amendments made to the bill, and subsequently sidelining the bill, but it may be resurrected for a vote at a later date. The Hong Kong government amended the extradition law to serious criminal offenses only, those carrying a minimum sentence of 7 years’ jail time, for those who committed a crime elsewhere and returned to Hong Kong. A person who commits an offense in Hong Kong would not be extradited to mainland China.

The Boogeyman of Fear

Why the hullabaloo over an extradition bill when Hong Kong already has extradition agreements with 20 countries, including the UK and US?

Why should an extradition agreement with other countries cause such a ruckus? If one peruses the corporate-state media, a clear answer emerges: fear; it is a perceived fear of what China may do to a person extradited to the mainland. Is this a rational or justifiable fear?

The South China Morning Post states, “[C]ritics fear Beijing may abuse the new arrangement to target political activists.”

Germany’s DW cites critics who say China “has a poor legal and human rights record.”

“Protests have been raging in Hong Kong against a controversial extradition bill, which, if approved, would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial.”

Al Jazeera writes that people in Hong Kong fear China’s encroachment on their rights.

The Guardian highlights a Hong Konger who was “waving a large Union Jack flag, a tribute to the British colonial era before the city was handed back to China’s rule, and implicit attack on Beijing.”

The Guardian article claims, “The alarm over the bill underscores many Hong Kong residents’ rising anxiety and frustration over the erosion of civil liberties that have set the city apart from the rest of China.”

The New York Times downplayed Chinese sovereignty over the semi-autonomous Hong Kong by pointing to a large, white banner which read, “This is Hong Kong, not China.”

The Financial Times writes, “Critics fear the law would allow Beijing to seize anyone it likes who sets foot in the territory — from a normal resident to the chief executive of a multinational in transit — and whisk them off to mainland China on trumped up charges.”

What about Edward Snowden?

Back in 2013, ex-CIA employee Edward Snowden left the US for Hong Kong with a thumb-drive stash of secret NSA documents, which he turned over to some hand-picked journalists. Snowden was not beyond the reach of the US in Hong Kong, and the American government sought his extradition. Snowden, however, was allowed to depart Hong Kong for Moscow. Apparently, the Americans “had mucked up the legal paperwork.”

Hong Kong had no choice but to let the 30-year-old leave for “a third country through a lawful and normal channel.”

Those refugees in Hong Kong who helped Snowden elude apprehension have not fared as well as Snowden. Human-rights lawyer Robert Tibbo described the situation bluntly: “Refugees are marginalized to such an extent, that they are Hong Kong’s own version of Untouchables.”

Yet, despite what is transpiring in their own backyard, Hong Kongers are in the streets saying they fear what might happen to those who might be extradited to mainland China.

What about Julian Assange?

Hong Kongers and the state-corporate media are expressing fear about what China may do. But what about two countries that Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with — the US and the UK? One only need point to the current egregious abuses meted out to Julian Assange to dispel any notion of justice. And why is Assange’s extradition being sought? For exposing US war crimes!

Relations with Mainland China

China’s chairman Xi Jinping is unremitting in his battle against corruption, but also his political platform includes “promot[ing] social fairness and justice as core values.” [4] Is this something to fear?

There is the case of the disappearance of Hong Kong booksellers. There is also concern about the arrest of human rights lawyers in China. I am not about to state that the application of the law in China is perfect. But where is justice perfect? China does practice censorship, but freedom to speak has limits. One instance of when censorship is justified: to prevent the dissemination and spread of disinformation. Consider the image at left, while the actual size of the demonstrations were massive, the image was “heavily edited — cropped and mirrored — to multiply the size of the crowd.” It has gone viral with subsequent republications failing to mention the editing and cropping.

Then there is the omission of information, such as the purported funding of the protests in Hong Kong by the US government and a notorious CIA-affiliated NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy. This is backed by various western governments expressing sympathy for the Hong Kong protestors.

The often bandied-about criticisms concerning China are of authoritarianism, lack of democracy, and lack of freedom.

Is China authoritarian? China, through the Communist Party of China, defines itself as a state practicing socialism with Chinese characteristics. It promotes as its core values: prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendliness. China practices utilitarianism aiming its policies at what best benefits the majority of its citizens. China promotes peace and harmony; it emphasizes diplomacy and avoidance of war.

To allay fears, Xi said in a speech in Berlin:

As China continues to grow, some people start to worry. Some take a dark view of China and assume that it will inevitably become a threat as it develops further. They even portray China as being the terrifying Mephisto who will someday suck the soul of the world. Such absurdity couldn’t be more ridiculous, yet some people, regrettably, never tire of preaching it. This shows prejudice is indeed hard to overcome….

The pursuit of peace, amity and harmony is an integral part of the Chinese character which runs deep in the blood of the Chinese people. This can be evidenced by axioms from ancient China such as: “A warlike state, however big it may be, will eventually perish.” [5]

Democracy? Wei Ling Chua in his book, Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China, sought to compare and contrast the effectiveness of western and Chinese political systems scientifically. The assumption is that the well-being of the citizenry is the raison d’être of a government. To determine this, Chua gauged government responsiveness to the needs of the people during a disaster. The response of the Australian and American governments compared unfavorably with the Chinese government’s response to disasters. Chua writes this is because “… the culture and beliefs of the Communist Party in China is more people-oriented than those of the capitalist elites in the West.” [6] Besides, what democracy did Hong Kong enjoy under British until the time of a handover approached? Is not the imposition of colonial status through war to facilitate opium exports a total abnegation of democracy and freedom? [7]

I have lived in China for a number of years, and I feel just as free here as anywhere. Of course, I wouldn’t stand on a soapbox with a megaphone and shout anti-China slogans, but I wouldn’t do that anywhere about that country’s government. The right to peaceful protest, however, should be respected. The Chinese people around me do not complain of feeling unfree. As already stated, there is censorship. Very few people here are aware of the protests taking place in Hong Kong. But freedom is not just about speech. What about freedom from poverty? One in five Hong Kongers live in poverty, a number that is on the increase in Hong Kong. Contrariwise, the year 2020 is targeted as the year that poverty is eliminated in China.

Etiology

Charles Chow (pseudonym for an American who lives on and off in Hong Kong) gave his perspective:

The big issue isn’t the [extradition] bill at all or even the relative lack of democracy in Hong Kong…. It’s two fundamental issues that have existed since the colonial era, but worsened since the handover: a growing wealth gap and the lack of affordable housing. The government hasn’t done much to resolve them and neither has China. Their failure to tackle these problems has made Hong Kongers less trustful of them and more irritable overall. Therefore, even small controversies will point back to these bigger issues.

I agree with Chow’s identification of two fundamental issues. However, I fail to see why in a one country, two systems situation that Beijing should be held responsible for the resolution of problems associated with the Hong Kong system of governance. Moreover, the yawning chasm in the percentage of those living in poverty under the system in Hong Kong versus the system in mainland China (under 1%, for a much larger territory with a huge population, therefore, posing greater challenges for effective governance) suggests the Hong Kong system is majorly flawed in at least one important aspect.

Now it’s 22 years after the handover–an entire generation has passed. The legacy of colonialism will linger for a while, but the current government has had two decades to resolve any problem the British left behind. Hong Kong’s economy is still robust, but its gains have been unequally distributed. [8]

Chow continues:

Its housing prices are just obscene–especially given the size and build quality of the properties they represent. Neither problem shows any sign of abating and both are, in fact, getting worse. Thus, even some Hong Kongers who are pro-Beijing have expressed concern over both problems because they know neither discriminates by political affiliation. Where they differ from the pro-democracy crowd is how to resolve them.

The pro-democracy folks believe giving more people a say in how Hong Kong operates (in other words, more democracy) is the solution. The pro-Beijing folks think the current government, along with China, should be able to do something. But this government, beholden as it is to the tycoons and China (such an odd couple), isn’t going to tackle these problems. Because it won’t, it has created a growing body of restless Hong Kongers, many of whom were once apolitical and probably even opposed Occupy in 2014.

It didn’t have to be this way. In a fairer world, Hong Kong would have a manageable wealth gap and be able to provide affordable housing for most of its people. In such a scenario, even most people who aren’t crazy about China would accept its sovereignty and foreign attempts to get them to protest Chinese rule would go nowhere.

Even if an extradition bill were proposed, there’d be fewer people showing a concern over it.

Epilogue

Imagine if a country were to invade and occupy Hawai’i for the next century, [9] after which Hawai’i would be semi-liberated from occupation. Would Hawaiians wish to rejoin the US? Might not new systems, cultures, and languages have been injected during the occupation/colonization have affected the mindset of the later generations?

The roots of the opposition that many Hong Kongers feel toward the extradition bill arguably lies further back in history. Clear-minded logic leads to the realization that if Britain had not started the Opium Wars (a crime of aggression) and occupied Hong Kong, thus severing Hong Kong from Beijing’s rule, there never would have been a need for the difficulties that arise from the one country, two systems currently in place. A de factocity-state would never have been able to become a haven for fugitives from the central government. Hong Kong would have remained a part of China. The same logic holds true in the case of Taiwan. If Japan had not occupied Taiwan, and if the US had not intervened to protect the Guomindang remnants that fled across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan would likeliest have remained a part of China to this day.

The source of the current tensions in Hong Kong did not originate in Beijing (unless one blames Beijing for being too militarily weak to protect its territorial integrity and prevent its citizens from being transformed into drug addicts).

This is missing from much of the western corporate-state media news. While China seeks to safeguard sovereignty over its landmass, Britain holds fast to its enclave in Northern Ireland. It ignores justice and maintains an ethnic cleansing that it and the US imposed on the people of the Chagos archipelago. The US itself is a nation erected through the denationalization of Indigenous nations. [10]

How is it then that western nations and their western media have a moral leg to stand on when criticizing other nations, such as China, for fear of criminality that pale in comparison to those crimes that the western nations have committed?

Can two million marchers be wrong? They are not wrong about the right to march or the right to protest. Are they wrong to oppose the extradition of persons for serious offenses to China? Are they wrong to fear China? Do they genuinely fear China? This fear of mainland China is seemingly so negligible that 6.9 million of the 7.4 million Hong Kongers hold a Homeland Return Permit to ease travel to and from China. Is it sensible for people to travel to a jurisdiction that they fear?

The comparison is stark.

Compare protesting the launching of a war wherein upwards of 600,000 people were killed [11] (now being killed that is something that most people fear) to protesting the upholding of law to ensure murderers should face justice. If, indeed, China is governed by a scofflaw government, then there is a justification for having fear. But before casting final judgement, western countries ought to look deeply into the mirror, the mirror that reflects the not-so-long-ago devastations of Palestine, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other lands. China’s last battles were with India and Viet Nam many decades ago. The Communist Party of China (CPC) states an abhorrence of wars and promotes peaceful resolution of differences. [5]

The CPC acknowledges that it is dependent on the support of the people; without it the party will fall. The CPC’s raison d’être is the well-being of the people, what is called the Chinese Dream.

It would be foolish and contradictory for Beijing to upset Hong Kongers. Harmony is, after all, a core value of socialism. The one country, two systems is due to expire in 2047. Likewise, Hong Kong has nothing to gain from irritating Beijing. However, should Hong Kong integrate into the economic system of China, it stands to see the elimination of poverty in the former British colony.

Kim Petersen lives in China and isis a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Notes

1. Said Bush, “First of all, you know, size of protests–it’s like deciding, `Well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.’ The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon, in this case, the security of the people.” 
2. As revealed in the Downing Street Memo. The website, however, no longer is accessible. The page reads: This Account has been suspended. The memo is available at this pdf. 
3. See Abdul Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani, Genocide in Iraq: The Case Against the UN Security Council and Member States. Review. 
4. “We should address the people’s proper and lawful demands on matters affecting their interests, and improve the institutions that are important for safeguarding their vital interests.” Xi Jinping, The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014): 35%. 
5. Xi Jinping, “China’s Commitment to Peaceful Development” in The Governance of China: 35%. 
6. Wei Ling Chua, Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China (2013): location 1214. Review. 
7. See Samuel Merwin, Drugging a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse (Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Co, 1908. 
8. The income distribution in Hong Kong has become extraordinarily high. — KP 
9. Never mind that this is what happened so that the US mainland could depose the Hawaiian monarchy. 
10. See Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2015). Review. 
11. Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, and Roberts L, “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey,” Lancet: 368(9545), 21 October 2006: 1421-8.

It’s a battle cry inspired by the dire climate crisis that has been sung by many for years yet still hasn’t been resolutely taken up by the world as a whole. So the question remains: what ultimately is more important: Water or Oil? The Human World is starved for both. But which of the two will ensure the ultimate survival of life on this tiny orb called the Blue Planet? The dilemma of modern human civilization and plight of the planet are one and the same. The lack of water eventually will kill both, while the abundance of oil eventually will also kill them both.

There’s a very real, simple reason why every aspect of the planet’s corporate world order – and especially its corporate mainstream press, government’s and political parties – refuse to fully and truthfully air the real ramifications that underlie why there exists a climate crisis in the first place, and what actually would have to immediately be done – not by the year 2025, 2030, 2040, 2050 or 2100 – but Now – Today – to lower pollution emissions that are inexorably producing ever-greater planetary climate change imbalances to all the air and water. The reason is simple. No truthful dialogue is occurring to come up with immediate, workable solutions for the planet because it would require a complete and utter re-definition, re-calibration and re-tooling of modern human civilization’s entire raison d’etre. It won’t ever happen until what eventually will happen, finally happens. Until then humanity’s modern civilization will continue to whistle in the dark while applying whatever band aids to wherever the hurt is greatest while paying lip service to all the rest.

As a result, a fatal disconnect exists in Canada, as indeed it does everywhere else in the world, between an avowed desire to protect and care for Planet Earth’s natural world, its finite resources and the opposing reality of mankind’s greedy, desperate, burgeoning political-corporate-societal needs for ever more copious amounts of oil and fossil fuels needed to continue: to run all of its vehicles, planes, trains and ships; grow all its food crops for an ever-exploding population, while; operate a slew of every oil and petroleum starved man-made thing in the modern world that keeps humans gainfully employed and the whole business of life running smoothly, however greedy, unbalanced and suicidal that business may be.

This is why countries like the United States and Australia still refuse to fully and openly discuss the climate crisis issue and ongoing degradation of their nation’s pristine habitats and finite natural resources, even though in places like Australia’s New South Wales a recent report revealed that the destruction of its natural habitats, forests and woodlands have increased five fold from what the crisis was a few years ago; while in the United States, ever since its horrifically-monstrous debacle of the Dakota Access Pipeline occurred the need to alarmingly expand the amount of barrels of petroleum in that pipeline needed continues to increase with no end in sight. One can only call what is going on everywhere in the world nothing more nor less than a form of sheer madness coupled with unparalleled greed.

Yet to keep mankind’s world running as it is means that ever greater amounts of the planet’s pure, precious, finite waters must, knowingly and willingly, continue to be consumed, polluted and destroyed to perpetuate human civilization’s hopelessly-addicted fossil-fueled way of life hell bent on its own self-destruction and that of all life on our exquisitely beautiful Blue Planet. It’s a cliché to say the time has long since past the critical tipping point when humanity can’t have it both ways. Every human must, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever side is chosen.

One prime example of the decision to continue to choose the fatal addiction to oil and fossil fuels is Canada’s recent approval to continue the building of its Trans Mountain pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia that will increase the flow of dirty, toxic bitumen – one of the dirtiest of all substances known to exist – to a world hopelessly hooked on yet its next fix of the black stuff. Canada’s in–between a rock and a hard place decision flies in the face of whatever constantly re-adjusted Paris Accord Agreement or proposed grandiose Green Environmental Plan designed to help humanity once and for all kick its fatal attraction to what some call “The Black Death”. It boils down to a falsehood of perpetually trying to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

It’s always a curious fact to note that oil is what remains as a by-product of one of Earth’s most primitive epoch’s in its evolutionary journey yet also is perhaps the main cause of what scientists now refer to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history that is in the process of repeating yet the sixth great extinction of all of life on earth.

It’s by-products like bitumen that are fueling this epoch extinction and literally every aspect of the human world’s modern civilization. We must keep reminding ourselves of the fact that such decisions are bringing about, if not speeding up, this geologic epoch that, in order to do so, must knowingly and willingly continue to consume and destroy ever-larger amounts of the earth’s precious, finite natural sources of water; water that, literally and figuratively, is the very essence of life that, in the long run, is the only thing that sustains all of earth’s living things as we travel safely through time and space together on our tiny, resilient blue orb through an incredibly harsh, unforgiving, hostile universe. Therefore, no matter how else one may put it: Water is the Most Sacred Substance of all that Protect’s the Journey we’re on Together.

This should be the single mantra that the people of Canada and everywhere else in the world repeat to themselves as they awaken each morning to greet the new day. It’s a mantra to be repeated, as well, on the full moon of each month when we can especially feel the waters in our bodies, mystically, being pulled this way and that or watch as the currents and tides cause the planet’s own waters to ebb and flow. It’s a mantra to be repeated everytime we turn on a tap to fill up a glass of water to quench our thirst and then pause for a moment to give thanks and ponder the whole story of the earth’s endless journey through time and space and its ability to quench the thirst of every one of its lifeforms with the same waters that literally and figuratively always was since the beginning of time and always will be to its final end.

Such awareness should give one cause to pause for just a moment longer before quenching one’s thirst to consider how wondrous this precious, finite substance is that already has been in the bodies of so many famous or infamous humans or taken such an eons-long circuitous journey through ourselves and still other innumerable living creatures and lifeforms going all the way back to the ancient dinosaurs and beyond and continues to enrich our lives as it did their’s. It’s a mantra especially to be repeated, too, before Canadians and the peoples of the world decide to give any further support whatsoever to the corporate world order that continues to pursue a destructive fossil-fuelled way of life that, daily, through the primitive, brutal mining and extraction of countless dirty, toxic ores and minerals poisons and destroys forever colossal amounts of this precious, finite substance that without it the Earth no longer would be blue but instead become just another brown, shrivelled-up, lifeless hulk hurtling through empty space.

In a National Observer opinion article (“The Juggernaut of corporate oil must be stopped” June 18^th 2019), Guujaaw, an Hereditary Chief Gidansta of the Haida Nation, who also is an advisor to British Columbia’s Coastal First Nations, spoke out in response to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to approve the extension of the controversial TransMountain Pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia and beyond.

Guujaaw’s words, amplified here, is one exceptionally inspirational First Nation version of “The Battle Cry of the Blue Planet”, that is a modern version of a centuries old cry that has been sounded in every corner of the earth, many times over, in as many ways as there are a multitude of fine orators who have ever come and gone upon our earth. It should be taken as a renewed living retort to all those Canadian politicans-indian leaders-energy CEO’s and voters alike who consider themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to be part of the corporate world order as they willingly and knowingly continue to support the sacrifice of the earth’s precious finite resources that instead of being bequeathed as a legacy to future generations, instead continues to be misused to satiate whatever humanity’s immediate selfish needs.

Guujaaw/Chief Gidansta seeks to call to all our minds what those basic responsibilities are that we of this living time in the evolution of the earth now must do, when he reminds us that:

Through the years of legal battles and a very measured examination of Aboriginal issues, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has given well-considered definition to Rights and Aboriginal Title in the context of Canada in the modern world.

Aboriginal Rights are a far-reaching right of the collective, held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. The rights also include an economic component coupled with a very deliberate and appropriate “inherent limit,” which requires that the land “not be used in a way that is irreconcilable with the attachment an Aboriginal group has with the land” nor shall it be encumbered in ways “that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” This is, in fact, a limit that, if applied to all, could go a long way in looking after the earth.

In difficult times, our people stood to look after our land and restore our rights leaving us a solid legal base from which we can uphold our responsibilities. This changed the legal and political dynamic requiring governments and industries not only to consult, but to make accommodations, while the Supreme Court also called out for “reconciliation.”

And so it began: out of the sacrifice and efforts of our champions to look after the lands came the attention of Corporate Oil, with the tried solution of simply buying its way.

Regardless of owner or name, a pipeline and all that comes with it crosses the “inherent limit” and certainly does not carry any Aboriginal Rights. There is none amongst us of any colour or creed that can claim a right to disregard the neighbour downstream, or who can claim a right to neglect life. There is none amongst us with the right to harm the great killer whale or the little barnacle.

An Indian pipeline would be a business venture as any other and is not “reconciliation”; rather, an infringement and a threat.

Be certain that the apparatus killing this planet is a nasty one and it seems intent on finishing the dirty deed. It gains strength through violence with the jack-booted obedient servants at its beck and call. It is commanding enough to recruit our cousins if not you and me. Though it is tough as hell, it’s not that smart.

Left to its devices this Juggernaut will continue killing our planet, and without intervention our fate is sealed and we may as well prepare a dignified exit, but that would be irresponsible.

While it must be stopped, don’t wait for the Indigenous people to lead. The Indians are few in number, battle-weary, and, along with the multitudes, distracted by the ballgames and trying to pay the bills. We are too easy to imprison, too easy to kill, and as you see, as fallible as any.

Be assured, however, that on the front lines the Indigenous people are already standing up for the health of the planet, already standing for basic clean air and water. Most of us love this planet and respect life before money.

Children all over the world are calling out for us to stop this careless behaviour and fix this disorder. The grown-ups still ignore the symptoms and avoid the cure.

Reach out across the chasms to your fellow earthlings and devote some time to figuring this thing out. In each of us is some measure of good and understanding of truth, and somewhere in there is the solution. There is no need to put anyone in harm’s way.

We, the multitudes, allowed it to come to this. We, the creators of the Juggernaut, have got to fix it together.

So with this amplification of Guujaaw’s wise words, there’s nothing more left to be said other than for each human being in Canada and every other country to now do what their individual conscience and morality directs them to do to stop all the dirty deeds of the nasty Juggernaut and its jack-boots in the world that daily are steadily killing all our lives and that of our crystalline Blue Planet.

Each human being must now open up and speak truth to power in the face of the next wave of all the propaganda that will continue to be unleashed to try to convince us all that what is being done to reduce the world’s climate crisis by pumping yet more bitumen throughout the world is right and just for British Columbia, Canada and everyone else.

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Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer who, for decades, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has sought to call attention to problems of sustainability caused by excessive mega-developments, the resulting horrors of traffic gridlock, loss of single family neighbourhoods and a host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues and concerns that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Immediately after Dr Mohammed Morsi’s death on the 17^th of June 2019, a number of organisations and individuals had called for a thorough, independent investigation into the cause of his death while on trial in a Cairo court for espionage charges. The United Nations was one of the organisations that demanded an independent investigation. There is no indication that any attempt is being made currently through the UN or any other independent international outfit to ensure that the truth about Morsi’s death is established.

It is imperative that a credible inquiry is conducted at once under the aegis of the UN. Because it is alleged that when he collapsed in court, no medical attention was accorded to Morsi for about 20 minutes, various quarters including his family have accused the authorities in Egypt of conspiring to murder him. In fact the President of Turkey, Recep Erdogan has been emphatic about describing Morsi’s demise as “murder.”  Under international humanitarian law any sudden death in custody must be followed by an independent investigation.

Besides, Morsi who was incarcerated for six years, often in solitary confinement, had various ailments which could have impacted upon his death. He was suffering from diabetes and had liver and kidney problems.  International human rights groups have maintained all along that Morsi was denied adequate medical attention — in spite of numerous requests from Morsi  and his family. 

His prison conditions were harsh and inhumane. He had only three family visits for brief periods during his entire incarceration. Visits from his lawyers were also severely restricted.

Morsi’s mistreatment in prison was all the more unacceptable because the charges against him were politically motivated. A wide range of commentators and human rights advocates had made this observation. Some of them had pleaded with the Egyptian authorities to grant Morsi the standard rights due to a prisoner.

The authorities not only deprived him of his basic rights. It appears that they were determined to erase his role and his contribution to society. They did not want Egyptians especially the younger generation to show any appreciation of the fact that Morsi was the first democratically elected president of Egypt. 

Surely, the manner in which the first democratically elected president of Egypt died in custody deserves to be investigated in an honest and transparent manner 

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

Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals.  Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced in 2013, was the high water mark in an experiment of glacial cruelty: to treat refugee arrivals – those specifically taking the sea route to Australia – as a security, if not military threat. That these people were merely availing themselves of human rights acknowledged in international humanitarian law was given the thickest of glossing overs.

A veil of impenetrable secrecy was imposed on the number of boat arrivals, the number of operations, and the entire operational nature of the exercise.  To enforce the effort, Prime Minister Tony Abbott created a force outfitted with the sort of dark kit that would have made the goose-steppers swoon and old military orders sigh.  The Australian Border Protection Force would be given a separate, higher standing than other agencies, with the slightest fascist lite appeal of uniforms, badges and insignia.  (Those cheeky disorderly refugees need only the best the business of repelling can buy.)

By 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald noted that some “20 per cent of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s senior executive ranks are now uniformed, with the majority working within the Australian Border Force.”  And such thuggish authority will come with its host of ironies: those figures of sound authoritarian reassurance had donned uniforms made “almost entirely in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China.”

While the likes of former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott might have been brimming with excitement and pride at the creation of one of the world’s most ruthless gulag-enforced systems to counter “illegals” (this concept is, as with much in the refugee world, anathema and arbitrary), the model remains hard to export.  For one, it involes exorbitant, costly measures – the Australian program costs billions, an imposition of cruelty at cost.  In another sense, it also furnishes the public with an illusion that borders are secure.  The problem is merely deferred and deflected to other states (very neighbourly is Australia on that score).  Nor does this halt those seeking aerial routes.

Trump, as he tends to, mines vaults of images for effect.  He wanted a particular quarry after the discovery of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, found drowned in the Rio Grande on Monday.  “The image,” the New York Times suggested, “represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.”

An appreciation for poignancy and good grace are not the standout features of the US President.  Since being in office, he has conflated the immigration issue with the search for asylum.  “The United States will not be a migrant camp,” he promised in June 2018, “and it will not be a refugee holding facility”.  Criminalisation has been a strong theme.  Parents have been separated from their children.  The process for seeking asylum has become one of crawling rather than pacing.

According to Senator Bernie Sanders, “Trump’s policy of making it harder to seek asylum – and separating families who do – is cruel, inhumane and leads to tragedies like this.”  Trump’s retort was uncomplicated: the Democrats were preventing him from plugging holes in Fortress USA.  “If they fixed the laws you wouldn’t have that.  People are coming up, they’re running through the Rio Grande.”

Having scoured a few examples of Australian border force material, he tweeted how, “These flyers depict Australia’s policy on IIlegal Immigration.  Much can be learned!”

The flyers were of the standard, blaring variety, with the border authorities condemning anybody daring to make the journey of danger.  “No way you will make Australia home,” screams a headline, followed by the boastful assertion that,  “The Australian Government has introduced the toughest border protection measures ever.”  Another promises that any attempt to journey to Australia by boat will not result in settlement in the country itself.

Much of the gathered material was drawn from a 2014 campaign rich in agitprop, a vulgar compilation of images and text topped by a graphic novel depicting asylum seekers mouldering in despair in an offshore detention centre.  The then immigration minister Scott Morrison gave it a certain advertising coarseness, a point he replicated during his election campaign last month for the Australian prime ministership.

Trump’s tweet serves as a statement of endorsement to add to a now vast compendium of admiration from Budapest to Washington; the Australians, we are told, got it right. The Refugee Council of Australia offers a different interpretation.  In theassessment of its communications director Kelly Nicholls, “Australia’s harsh policies have come at a terrible cost: 12 people have died; women, men, and children have endured enormous mental and physical harm; Australia’s reputation has been tarnished and all this has cost us more than $5 billion.”

Another assessment, however, is in order.  The displaced person enrages rather than encourages empathy.  They are, to use that expression Hannah Arendt made famous, the heimatlosen, stateless, deracinated souls plunged into legal purgatory.  It was Arendt who urged, in response to the post-Nazi era peppered by death factories and human displacement, the need for “a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity at this time must comprehend the whole of humanity while its power must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly defined territorial entities.”

Such entities of control and compassion have yet to be established.  We are left with traditional ones dedicated to brute force cemented by a distinct disregard for the dignity of the human subject.  The rootless remain objects of disdain and, for politicians, a golden currency for re-election.

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

Justin was an outstanding author, antiwar activist, an inspiration to all of us. I first met Justin in Kuala Lumpur at the very outset of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War. He had been invited by Dr.  Mahathir Mohamad, who is currently the prime minister of Malaysia. Justin Raimondo‘s contributions and analysis will live. “Justin was one of a kind. He will be missed, both here at Antiwar.com and by the wider world.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 28, 2019)

To consult Justin Raimundo’s articles on Global Research click here

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Justin Raimondo, former editorial director and co-founder of Antiwar.com, is dead at 67. He died at his home in Sebastopol, California, with his husband, Yoshinori Abe, by his side. He had been diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer in October 2017.

Justin co-founded Antiwar.com with Eric Garris in 1995. Under their leadership, Antiwar.com became a leading force against U.S. wars and foreign intervention, providing daily and often hourly updates and comprehensive news, analysis, and opinion on war and peace. Inspired by Justin’s spirit, vision, and energy, Antiwar.com will go on.

Justin (born Dennis Raimondo, November 18, 1951) grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York and, as a teenager, became a libertarian. He was a fierce advocate of peace who hated war, and an early advocate of gay liberation. He wrote frequently for many different publications and authored several books. He was also politically active in both the Libertarian and Republican parties.

The Young Rebel

When Justin was six, he was, in his own words, “a wild child.” This will surprise no one who knows him. In “Cold War Comfort,” which he wrote for Chronicles Magazine, he tells how he dashed out of his first-grade class with his teacher chasing him. Because this was a daily occurrence, he writes, he was sent to a prominent New York psychiatrist named Dr. Robert Soblen. Just this decade, Justin got his hands on Soblen’s notes on his case and learned that Soblen had concluded that Justin was schizophrenic. Soblen’s reason? Justin was Catholic, claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary, and believed in miracles. Soblen recommended locking up young Justin in a state mental institution. The one Soblen had in mind was Rockland State Hospital, which, according to Justin, was the backdrop for the movie The Snake Pit.

Soblen was not just a psychiatrist. He was also a top Soviet spy and friend of Stalin who was tasked with infiltrating the American Trotskyist movement. He was ultimately convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1961. Ultimately, in 1962, Soblen committed suicide after jumping bail, fleeing to Israel, and seeking asylum in the UK.

When Justin was 14 years old, he wrote an article on Objectivism, Ayn Rand’s philosophy, for a local New York newspaper. Rand’s lawyer, Henry Holzer, responded by sending him a “cease and desist” letter. Not long after, Justin went to a lecture at the Nathaniel Branden Institute and stood in line to get a book signed. He was identified, pulled out of line, and escorted to a private room. Soon Nathaniel Branden came in and gave Justin a resounding lecture. Shortly after this, Ayn Rand herself entered the room with her entourage. According to Justin, she seemed surprised that he was so young. When Justin told her that the editors of his piece had edited it and changed some of his meaning. Rand warmed up and said, “So you want to be a writer.”

As an Objectivist and budding libertarian, Justin participated in the student strike at his progressive high school, Cherrylawn, in 1968. Although exuberantly popular with students and quite a real-life experiment in anarcho-libertarianism, the school ultimately reverted to its more traditional mode of, among other things, decision making. No more collective morning meetings of students to decide what they would or would not study that day, and whose classes they would attend!

Shortly after graduating from high school, Justin made the leap to San Francisco. Here Justin found a place he made his own and remained for nearly 40 years.

The Activist

Justin was very active politically from an early age. In the mid to late 1970s, he worked to get the Libertarian Party to accept gay rights and was a participant in the gay liberation movement in San Francisco. Justin was one of the activists who spoke out strongly against the Dan White verdict. White was found guilty of manslaughter and given a 7-year prison sentence for killing San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, two prominent gay rights advocates. Justin thought that White should have been found guilty of first-degree murder. His powerful booklet about the case, In Praise of Outlaws, was published by the Students for a Libertarian Society.

Justin CO-founded the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (LPRC) in late 1978. Economist Murray Rothbard joined a few months later. Around the same time, Justin became one of the first employees of the newly formed Students for a Libertarian Society. Shortly after Democratic US Senator Sam Nunn and other members of Congress moved to reinstate the military draft and draft registration, Justin helped organize a number of anti-draft rallies that were held around the country on May 1, 1979. The LPRC disbanded in 1983.

Charles Koch in a heated discussion with Justin, circa 1979

Known for gay rights activism and radicalizing the Libertarian Party, Justin nevertheless did not for the most part identify with the left. He found more intellectual inspiration in the Old Right, people like John T. Flynn, Albert J. Nock, Frank Chodorov, Isabel Paterson, and other mid-20th century figures who defended the vision of a constitutional republic and protested the progressive leviathan’s despotic powers at home and abroad. Justin was especially influenced by novelist Garet Garrett, who saw Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency as a revolutionary development that gutted American freedom while leaving the superficial form of the Constitution intact, and who was perhaps “even harsher” in opposing Truman’s Cold War imperialism. Justin regarded the irreconcilable conflict between interventionists and traditionalists as the defining struggle over the heart and soul of American conservatism.

Justin long hoped that electoral politics could restore anti-imperialism on the right. In 1987, Justin and his friends Eric Garris, Colin Hunter, and Alexia Gilmore started the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee within the Republican Party. It was a predecessor to the Libertarian Republican faction within the Republican Party that was led by then-Congressman Ron Paul.

Not content just to write and organize, in 1996, Justin ran as a Republican against powerful Bay Area Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. In his campaign, he emphasized his opposition to her vote in favor of the Clinton Administration’s military intervention in Bosnia.

Because of his strong antiwar views, Justin also supported Pat Buchanan three times in his run for President of the United States: 1992, 1996, and 2000. In 2000, Justin gave the nominating speech for Pat Buchanan at the Reform Party convention in Long Beach. It can be seen here from 1:19:00 to 1:32:02.

A Writer to the End

Ayn Rand correctly intuited Justin’s path. Although at times a dedicated activist, he primarily fought the power through writing. Justin wrote regularly for the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and the American Conservative. He also wrote for Reason, Mises Review, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Libertarian Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Spectator, Real Clear Politics, and Mother Jones. For several years, he also had a monthly column for Chronicles Magazine.

His two most important books were his 1993 Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, published by the Center for Libertarian Studies and reissued in 2008 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute with a Foreword by Pat Buchanan and an introduction by George W. Carey, and his 2000 biography, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, published by Prometheus Books.

Of course, his most prolific writing was for Antiwar.com. He, along with managing editor Eric Garris, helped set up Antiwar.com in 1995 and he was writing a column 7 days a week by 1999, when Antiwar.com became a major force on the World Wide Web, going viral when it led nationwide opposition to the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. Justin was the guiding light of Antiwar.com and over those 20 years wrote about 3,000 articles.

Largely due to Justin’s columns, Antiwar.com continued to grow in focus and influence after September 11, 2001, and established itself as a leader of opposition to the new wars of the 21^st Century. Justin led the charge in stressing the need for libertarians, peace activists, and all Americans to resist the war machine, starting with the Afghanistan intervention. His writing on Antiwar.com got him on cable news during the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq: he appeared multiple times on Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC. His outspoken views made him a target of various pro-war intellectuals, notably Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. As the nation went to war and throughout the years of conflict, Justin did not tire in his opposition. No writer more relentlessly and meticulously documented the crimes of the war party.

Pursuing the American Dream

Justin fondly quoted poet Robinson Jeffers, who described America as a “perishing republic.” But Justin never gave up on the country he loved, and in his later years he found his own piece of the American dream. In 2007 Justin moved from San Francisco up north to Sonoma County, where he embraced life as a curmudgeonly semi-gentleman-farmer. He took immense pleasure in cutting his lawn, chatting with the neighbors, and surveying the horse pastures beyond the wooden fences across the road, all the while assiduously following political and cultural events, largely via the internet.

Justin and his husband Yoshi

Although early on he was skeptical of gay marriage, Justin defended the right of gays to marry, and married his longtime companion, Yoshinori Abe, in 2017.

When Justin was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in October 2017, he was told he had at most 6 months to live. But he was an early user of Keytruda, which likely increased his lifespan by over one year.

One of the last pleasures Justin had as part of his Antiwar.com activities was seeing, on June 12, three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in 18-15416 Dennis Raimondo v. FBI, roundly rebuke the pathetic Department of Justice lawyer who claimed that the court should have no say in how the FBI held on to evidence when it was clear that no crime was committed.

On Thursday, June 27, Justin finally succumbed to his cancer. He is survived by his two sisters, Dale and Diane, and his husband Yoshi.

Justin was one of a kind. He will be missed, both here at Antiwar.com and by the wider world.

New research on fracking health impacts, combined with unusually high rates of pediatric cancer, sound alarm bells in Pennsylvania

FracTracker isn’t the only one digging deeper into the health impacts of fracking in the past few months. Last week, the Better Path Coalition organized a meeting at the Capitol Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to share new research with government officials, the press, and the public. These groundbreaking reports highlight the increasing body of evidence showing fracking’s adverse health and climate impacts.

Following the presentations on emerging research, Ned Ketyer, M.D., F.A.A.P, discussed the highly concerning proliferation of rare pediatric cancer cases in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Dr. Ketyer drew data from a report released last month by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, which uncovered an unusually high number of childhood cancer diagnoses in southwestern Pennsylvania over the last decade. In just four counties (Washington, Greene, Fayette and Westmoreland), there were 27 people diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, between 2008 and 2018. Six of the 27 people diagnosed were from the Canon-McMillan School District in Washington County, where there are currently 10 students district-wide with other types of cancers.

The expected number of Ewing sarcoma diagnoses over this time period and for the population count of southwestern Pennsylvania would be 0.75 cases per year, or roughly eight cases over the course of a decade. Concerned at the high cancer rate in this region, health experts who convened in Harrisburg recommend eliminating likely causes until we have definitive answers.

Cancer in the Marcellus

The Pennsylvania Department of Health investigated three of these cases in Washington County and found that they did not meet the criteria definition of a cancer cluster. Still, the unusually high number of rare cancers over a small geography is cause for alarm and reason to suspect an environmental cause.

This four-county area has a legacy of environmental health hazards associated with coal mining activities and is home to a 40-year old uranium disposal site that sits in close proximity to the Canon-McMillan High School. But with the increase in cancer diagnoses over the past decade, many are looking towards fracking in the Marcellus Shale, the more recent environmental hazard to develop in the region, as a contributing cause.

Southwestern Pennsylvania is a hot spot for fracking activity. In these four counties, there are 3,169 active, producing unconventional gas wells. There are also the infrastructure and activity associated with unconventional development: compressor stations, processing stations (including Pennsylvania’s largest cryogenic plant), disposal sites for radioactive waste, and heavy truck traffic.

The environmental and health risks of these facilities were the focus of the presentations and discussions with Pennsylvania leaders last week.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

Call for action

At the culmination of the Harrisburg meeting, participants delivered a letter to Governor Wolf’s office, calling for an investigation into the causes of these childhood cancer cases. Signed by over 900 environmental organizations and individuals, the letter also asks for a suspension of new shale gas permitting until the Department of Health can determine that there is no link between drilling and the cancer outcomes.

Governor Wolf’s response to Karen Feridun, the organizer of this campaign, was a disappointing dismissal of this public health crisis. Stating that the environmental regulations his office has implemented “protect Pennsylvanians from negative environmental and health impacts,” Governor Wolf went on to say that his office “will continue to monitor and study cancer incidents in this area, especially as more data becomes available,” but did not agree to suspend new permitting.

Wolf’s decision to continue with status quo permitting while waiting for more data to become available is unacceptable, and will lead to more Pennsylvanians suffering from the industry’s health impacts.

The Governor’s response is even more disheartening as it follows his recent support for a full ban on fracking activity in the Delaware River Basin (including eastern Pennsylvania). The Governor’s support for the ban is an acknowledgement of the industry’s risks, and leaves us frustrated that the southwestern part of the state is not receiving equal protection.

When is enough evidence enough?

The continued permitting of unconventional wells disregards the scientific evidence of drilling’s harms discussed in Harrisburg.

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D, of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, discussed the results of the sixth edition of “The Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking.” The Compendium outlines the health risks of fracking infrastructure from almost 1,500 peer-reviewed studies and governmental reports. Notably, the report outlines the inherent dangers of fracking and finds that regulations are incapable of protecting public health from the industry.

Erica Jackson discussed FracTracker Alliance’s recently published Categorical Review of Health Reports. This literature review analyzed 142 publications and reports on the health impacts of fracking, and found that 89% contained evidence of an adverse health outcome or health risk associated with proximity to unconventional oil and gas development.

Brian Schwartz, M.D., M.S., the Director of Geisinger Health Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, presented epidemiological studies linking unconventional development to increased radon concentrations on homes and health impacts including adverse birth outcomes, mental health disorders, and asthma exacerbations.

Lorne Stockman, Senior Research Analyst with Oil Change International, discussed  “Burning the Gas ‘Bridge Fuel’ Myth,” a new report that further solidifies the irrationality of continued oil and gas development based on its climate impacts. The report shows that greenhouse gas emissions from fracking exceed climate goals, and how perpetuating the myth of natural gas as a “bridge” to renewables locks in emissions for decades.

A welcome ray of hope, this report also proves that renewables are an economically viable replacement to coal and gas, costing less than fossil fuels to build and operate in most markets. Furthermore, renewables combined with increasingly competitive battery storage ensures grid reliability.

“Burden of proof always belongs to the industry”

Among the inundation of data, statistics, and studies, Dr. Steingraber offered a sobering reminder of the purpose behind the meeting:

“Public health is about real people. When we collect data on public health problems, behind every data point, behind every black dot floating on a white mathematical space on a graph captured in a study, there are human lives behind those data points. And when those points each represent the life of a child or a teenager, what the dots represent is terror, unimaginable suffering, followed by death, or terror, unimaginable suffering, followed by a life of trauma, pathology reports, bone scans, medical bills, side effects, and uncertainty that all together are known as cancer survival.”

An adolescent cancer survivor herself, Dr. Steingraber clearly articulated the ethical responsibility our elected officials have to hold industry accountable for its impacts:

“Burden of proof always belongs to the industry, and benefit of the doubt always belongs to the child. It’s wrong to treat children like lab rats and experiment on them until the body count becomes so high that it reaches all the levels of statistical significance that tells you that we have a real problem here.”

The evidence is in – we know enough to justify an end to fracking based on its health and climate impacts. It’s time for Pennsylvania’s industry and leaders to stop experimenting with residents’ health and take immediate action to prevent more suffering.

Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist, FracTracker Alliance

July 4 should be a day of mourning.  The rights our ancestors fought for have been taken away.

Over the course of my lifetime there has been a fundamental shift in the attitude of the judiciary toward Constitutional rights.  I remember when guarding against any diminishing of constitutional rights was considered more important than convicting another criminal. There were cases in which the evidence needed in order to convict a person could not be collected, or used if collected, because it violated constitutional rights.  There are many instances of criminals walking free because police, prosecutors, and trials violated their rights.  Much of the unthinking public would be enraged, because judges let a criminal off.  The public were unable to understand that the judges were protecting their rights as well as the criminal’s.

This is an age old problem.  In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, is criticized for refusing to bend the law in order to better pursue criminals. Sir Thomas asks his critic, if I cut down the law in order to pursue devils, what happens to the innocent when authority turns on them?  This question formerly had a powerful presence in the courtroom.

Over the course of my lifetime, the emphasis shifted from protecting constitutional rights to seeing them as obstacles to law enforcement. In order to convict a single individual or class of individuals, precedents were established that set aside constitutional rights that protected everyone.  The judiciary began stripping away constitutional protections of the entire population in order that one more guilty person could be more easily convicted.

Larry Stratton and I have written about how law was transformed from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.  The “war on crime,” the “war on drugs,” the “war on child abuse,” the “war on terror” have destroyed the US Constitution by the death of a thousand cuts.

Hardly anyone wants a criminal to go free, but sometimes letting criminals go is the only way to protect our constitutional rights.  Formerly, it was clearly understood that protecting liberty was more important than punishing every criminal.  Almost every day John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute provides another example of our disappearing rights.

Courts have used endless exceptions and special circumstances to chop down the protections provided by the Bill of Rights.  I would wager that most Americans see no problem in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling upholding the conviction of drunk driving in the case Whitehead discusses.  Indeed, if they knew about the case, they would be fulminating against the 4 justices who rose to the defense of the 4th Amendment as “liberal judges who want to turn criminals lose on society.”

Sir Thomas More’s warning in A Man of All Seasons has gone unheeded. Today the principle purpose of the US criminal justice (sic) system is to cut down our rights in order to secure convictions.  The practice has been so corrupting that today the US government routinely violates law, both its own and international, in pursuit of material interests. It is inconceivable to the neoconservatives that mere law should stand in the way of American hegemony or in the way of torture that can produce a false confession that serves some government purpose.  It is no longer possible to speak of American diplomacy as Washington relies entirely on threats, coercion, and controlled explanations.

The America that is romanticized in 4th of July celebrations no longer exists.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

June 28, 1918, one hundred years ago…

(An excerpt from Jacques R. Pauwels, The Great Class War 1914-1919, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2016)

On June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the infamous assassination in Sarajevo, the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles officially terminates the Great War. In reality, this treaty merely inaugurates a long truce that will expire in 1939, when worldwide warfare will resume, lasting until 1945. Many historians now indeed consider the First and Second World Wars as parts one and two of one single conflict, as a kind of twentieth-century edition of the disastrous “Thirty Years’ War” of the 1600s, with the years from 1918 to 1939 constituting a long intermission . . .

On a dark night toward the middle of November 1918, a ship bound for the United States encountered an oncoming vessel with all lights blazing, which was unheard of in view of the state of war and the danger represented by submarines. Via light signals, it was asked if perhaps the war was finished. The answer was: “No, it is only an armistice.” And indeed, an armistice such as the one signed by military officials at Rethondes did not put an end to the state of war. The state of war officially continued after November 11, 1918, to be terminated only when statesmen would reach an agreement and sign a peace treaty. In the meantime, allied troops entered Germany as conquerors, the Royal Navy continued its blockade of Germany, and in many regions of Eastern Europe fighting continued between withdrawing German troops, the Bolshevik revolutionaries, Polish and Lithuanian nationalists, etc. In France the state of siege, associated with the war, would be lifted only on October 12, 1919.

The peace negotiations took place in Paris. They started on January 18, 1919 and resulted in a treaty signed on June 28 of that same year in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. The French had decided on that venue in order to obtain some symbolic revenge for the fact that it was from that same room that the German Reich had been proclaimed in January 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war between Germany and the Allies, except for the United States and China, which would sign separate peace treaties with Germany. With the Ottoman Empire and the successor states of the Habsburg Empire, Austria and Hungary, peace treaties would be signed with the former at Sèvres in 1920 and with the latter at Lausanne in 1923. The main points of the Versailles Treaty demonstrated all too clearly that the war had not been about freedom, justice, democracy, the defence of small countries such as Belgium, or to put an end to warfare and similar concocted rationales; this type of discourse was, and remains even today, only vulgar propaganda. It was all about consolidating and increasing the power and privileges of the elite. At Versailles the elite was admittedly unable, at least for the time being, to undo the unpleasant social outcome of the war, the revolution in Russia and major democratic political and social reforms that had been introduced in order to defuse revolutionary situations in Britain, France, Belgium, and elsewhere.

On the other hand, the elite had also unleashed the Great War in order to achieve imperialist objectives for the benefit of banks and corporations, and in this respect the war had produced considerable gains (for the winners, of course), which were enshrined at Versailles. The French, British, Japanese, and even the Belgians were confirmed in the possession of Germany’s former colonies in Africa and elsewhere, and of the oil-rich parts of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire. Nobody considered the possibility of independence for any of these regions, except under some undemocratic regime that could be counted on to do the bidding of the British or some other Western power, as in the case of Saudi Arabia. There was no question of independence for India, China was not allowed to provide any meaningful input during the Paris talks, and not a single foreign power contemplated giving up its mini-colonies (called “concessions”) in that country. The socialist English poet W.N. Ewer provided the following sarcastic comment on this kind of imperialist gluttony and on the hypocrisy of the statesmen who made the decisions at Versailles in a poem entitled “No Annexations”:

“No annexations?” We agree!

We did not draw the sword for gain,

But to keep little nations free;

And surely, surely, it is plain

That land and loot we must disdain,

Who only fight for liberty

. . . . . . . . . .

Of course it happens — as we know —

That ‘German East’ has fertile soil

Where corn and cotton crops will grow,

That Togoland is rich in oil,

That natives can be made to toil

For wages white men count too low,

That many a wealthy diamond mine

Makes South-West Africa a prize,

That river-dam and railway line

  (A profitable enterprise)

May make a paying paradise

Of Baghdad and of Palestine.

However, this is by the way;

We do not fight for things like these

But to destroy a despot’s sway,

To guard our ancient liberties:

We cannot help it if it please

The Gods to make the process pay.

We cannot help it if our

Fate Decree that war in Freedom’s name

Shall handsomely remunerate

Our ruling classes. ‘T was the same

In earlier days — we always came

Not to annex, but liberate.

With the Treaty of Versailles, the “ruling classes” were indeed “handsomely remunerated”; at least, those of the powers that emerged victoriously from the war and dictated the terms of the peace. The armistice of November 11, 1918 had not put an end to the war, and the peace treaty signed at Versailles, as well as the other treaties mentioned here, did not produce a genuine peace. On the side of the losers — and even of the winners — there were those who longed for a revanche while the ink on the documents was not yet dry. In fact, nobody was entirely satisfied with any of these treaties, but the least satisfied of all were to be found in Germany, where the once so powerful and ambitious elite had lost many of its feathers, but unfortunately not enough of them to abandon any hope for a military comeback and a revanchist war. On the side of the winners, too, the desire for revenge and the cupidity of the imperialists, reflected in the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, gave many people the nasty feeling that some of them had already experienced during the war itself, namely that even in case of victory over the German “Huns” there would be no question of real peace, but that a new Great War was likely to erupt again soon between the imperialist powers. In 1915 already, in his poem “War,” the writer Joseph Leftwich (or Lefkowitz) had accurately predicted the following:

And if we win and crush the Huns,

In twenty years

We must fight their sons,

Who will rise against

Our victory,

Their fathers’, their own

Ignominy.

And if their Kaiser

We dethrone,

They will his son restore,

or some other one,

If we win by war,

War is force,

And others to war

Will have recourse.

And through the world

Will rage new war.

Earth, sea and sky

Will wince at his roar.

He will trample down

At every tread,

Millions of men,

Millions of dead.

The armistice of November 1918, which ended the hostilities, did not inaugurate peace, and the peace officially proclaimed at Versailles in 1919 really amounted to a mere armistice, a truce predestined to expire sooner or later with the resumption of open hostilities and the official return of the state of war. That moment would come in 1939, when a new Great War would break out.

The Great War of 1914-1918 had been a conflict in which two blocs of imperialist powers massacred millions of human beings in order to lay their greedy hands on territories in Europe, Africa, and Asia that could provide their industrial and financial elites with desiderata such as raw materials, markets for finished products, opportunities for investment capital, and cheap labour. At the same time, within each belligerent country, the war also amounted to a class conflict, in which the elite, still a “symbiosis” of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie (or “upper middle class”) fought the plebeians of the lower class. The formal result of this imperialist Armageddon was a victory for the French-British duo, a nasty defeat for Germany, and an inglorious demise for the Austrian-Hungarian and Russian empires of the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, respectively. In reality, however, the outcome of the conflict was unclear, confusing and satisfied nobody.

Great Britain and France were the victors, but were exhausted by the enormous demographic, material, financial and other sacrifices that had been required. They were no longer the superpowers they had still been in 1914. Germany, on the other hand, distressed by war and defeat and severely punished at Versailles, lost not only its colonies but also a major part of its own territory, and it was left with only a Lilliputian army. However, it remained an industrial giant and a major power that could be expected to try again to achieve the imperialist ambitions for which it gone to war in 1914. Furthermore, the war had proved to be an opportunity for two non-European powers to reveal imperialist aspirations, namely Japan and the |US. The struggle for supremacy within the restricted circle of imperialist powers, which is what 1914-1918 had been, thus remained undecided. Making the situation even more complex, was the fact that other than Austria-Hungary, yet another major imperialist actor had vanished from the stage, namely Russia. However, its place had been taken by the Soviet-Union. This avowedly anti-capitalist state revealed itself to be a major thorn in the side of all imperialist states, of imperialism tout court. The reason: it was a source of inspiration, guidance, and support for revolutionary and radical-democratic movements within each imperialist power as well as for anti-imperialist movements worldwide. The existence of the Soviet-Union thus also constituted a threat to the imperialist powers’ fat portfolio of  colonial assets. Under those circumstances, Europe and the entire world continued to experience great tensions, conflicts, and aggressions. They would yield a second world war or, as many historians see it, the second act of the murderous “Thirty Years’ War” of the twentieth century.

Feature Image: William Orpen: The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles (Wikimedia Commons)

The President and the Prime Minister are divided over whether local elections should take place as originally scheduled this Sunday, with the former attempting to postpone them until October after the opposition promised to boycott the polls while the latter insists on holding them anyhow and ordered his parliamentary allies to initiate impeachment proceedings against the head of state in response.

Albania’s local elections have sparked an explosive political crisis in the West Balkan country after the opposition’s promise to boycott the polls pitted the President against the Prime Minister in an ever-worsening feud that threatens to turn violent this weekend. The Democratic Party withdrew from parliament in February to protest the ruling Socialist Party’s alleged corruption and ties to organized crime, and their leader Lulzim Basha is convinced that the upcoming local elections will be stolen in order to entrench Prime Minister Edi Rama’s power nationwide.

Without the Democrats’ participation, this Sunday’s elections lose their international legitimacy, which is why the Council of Europe recently announced that it’s withdrawing its monitoring mission. Whether a coincidence or not, Germany refused to advance Albania’s EU membership bid earlier this month too. Keeping in mind the deteriorating domestic political context in which these elections would prospectively be held, President Ilir Meta attempted to cancel them and postpone the vote until October in the hopes that the crisis could be resolved by then with the opposition’s return to parliament and their participation in the polls.

This effort was shot down by the parliament even though the President said that only the Constitutional Court has the authority to decide on his decrees, which prompted Rama to order his legislative allies to begin impeachment proceedings against Meta for trying to stop the elections. In turn, Meta reminded Rama that it’s he who’s the country’s supreme commander, hinting that he might resort to using the military to resolve this crisis. There might not be any choice either since the Democrats declared that they’ll actively prevent this Sunday’s vote from taking place, which raises fears of a violent scenario transpiring.

As Albania lurches towards what might eventually turn into a civil conflict, the rest of the region can’t help but feel alarmed. The concept of so-called “Greater Albania” is a myth to preserve the country’s unity and create a common cause around which to rally its distinct Gheg and Tosk people, and seeing as how Rama has a history of exploiting this ultra-nationalist sentiment from time to time in order to distract from domestic problems, it can’t be ruled out that his supporters might stage provocations in the neighboring countries of Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and/or Montenegro for the purpose of rallying all Albanians to their side in this dispute.

Even if that speculated scheme succeeds, it might not be enough to win over the international community on which the practical legitimacy of Albania’s government depends. The chief advisor of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union recently spoke out against the country’s “mafia government” after his national media leaked tapes purporting to prove that Rama’s party was engaged in vote-buying and voter intimidation, signaling that the EU’s de-facto leader is tacitly siding with the opposition and believes that the Socialists need to make concessions in order to avoid a full-blown crisis. 

It’ll ultimately depend which side the US decides to back, however, since Washington is the real power broker in Tirana, but there are indications that it might follow in the EU’s footsteps. The US Embassy released a generic statement earlier this week that could be interpreted as playing it safe and not taking any side at this point, which is important in and of itself because it shows that the Socialists don’t have the full support of the Trump Administration, possibly also due to Rama’s connections to the President’s hated foe George Soros. As such, should violence break out on Sunday like the Embassy predicts, then the US might decisively turn against him.

What’s most important to the US is Albania’s political stability, which can only be assured through a free and fair electoral process following the success of the opposition’s enormous grassroots campaign in finally pressing this issue and forcing Washington to pay attention to the people’s demands. Albania’s possible descent into civil conflict couldn’t come at a more strategically inconvenient time for the US since it’s presently trying to implement “geopolitical reform” in the Balkans by pressuring Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s “independence”, but Vucic might walk back his gradual progress in this respect if his country’s neighbor slides into a sudden crisis.

Therefore, it’s not unforeseeable that the US might pull its support for Rama under certain scenarios in order to salvage the “larger prize” of reshaping the “New Balkans”. Albania is the lynchpin of this regional vision, but its pursuit of the shared goal of “Greater Albania” must be done in an systematic fashion, not through the type of risky ad-hoc provocations that Rama might resort to for the short-term interest of emerging victorious in the latest political crisis. Although he was an important asset for assisting the US’ strategic designs in the region over the years, he’s nowadays turning into a liability, thus raising the prospects of his patrons turning on him.

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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.

This incisive article was first published in May 2018

Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which has set the stage for another Iran crisis, has opened a new round of domestic political struggle, as Democrats in Congress, the anti-Trump television networks, and the tattered remains of the old anti-war movement try to push back.

But that effort has a fatal weakness at its core. It concedes to Trump and opponents of the Iran deal an effective argument: that the Iranians have been lying when they say they’ve never had a covert nuclear weapons program. The theme of Iran’s duplicity has been the emotional core of the assault on the JCPOA. It is no accident that the title and consistent theme of Benjamin Netanyahu’s melodramatic YouTube slideshow was “Iran lied.”

As I detail in my investigative history of the Iran nuclear issue, the Obama administration itself fell for a false narrative about a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program allegedly in operation from 2001 to 2003. After Netanyahu’s April 30 show, former secretary of state John Kerry tweeted:

“Every detail PM Netanyahu presented yesterday was every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement—because the threat was real and had to be stopped.”

But a far more effective counter would have been the truth—that the long-accepted accusation about Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program is the product of an elaborate disinformation operation based on documents forged by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

In mid-2004, the CIA acquired a massive set of documents that were said to have come from a secret Iranian nuclear weapons research program. Bush administration officials leaked a sensational story to selected news outlets about the intelligence find, describing to the New York Times what that newspaper described as Iranian drawings “trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile.” The same story of Iran mating a nuclear weapon to its longer-range ballistic missile was given to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

But both the real provenance of the apparently incriminating documents and specific details about the documents themselves indicate that they are fraudulent. A major clue about the papers’ true origins was made public in November 2004, when Karsten Voigt, the coordinator for German-North American cooperation in the German Foreign Office, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal warning that the documents had been provided by “an Iranian dissident group,” and that the United States and Europe “shouldn’t let their Iran policy be influenced by single-source headlines.”

Voigt was clearly suggesting that the mysterious documents had come from the Iranian regime-hating MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq)—not from someone in the purported Iranian arms program. But no one in the corporate media universe followed up with Voigt, and it was not until 2013, three years after he’d retired from the Foreign Office, that he agreed to give this writer the story behind his warning.

Voigt recalled how senior officials of the Bundesnachtrichtendienst, or BND, the German foreign intelligence agency, had told him just days before the Wall Street Journal interview that they were upset Secretary of State Colin Powell had referred publicly to “evidence” that Iran had tried to design a new missile to carry a nuclear weapon. Voigt explained that the documents to which Powell was alluding had been turned over to the BND by an Iranian who had been a sometime source—but not a BND spy, contrary to later accounts in the Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel.

In fact, he said, the BND did not regard the source as trustworthy, because they knew he was a member of the MEK, the exiled armed Iranian opposition group. The MEK is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization because of its assassination of U.S. officers during the Shah’s regime and its bombings of public events after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The MEK also carried out “special operations” for Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq against domestic opposition during the Iran-Iraq war, and after that had been used by Israel’s Mossad to “launder” information that it wanted to make public but didn’t want attributed to Israel, according to two Israeli journalists. The MEK had pinpointed the location of Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility in August 2002. But it had gotten the satellite intelligence from Mossad, as Seymour Hersh reported in his 2005 book Chain of Command.

Two years before Voigt’s conversation with BND officials, then-BND director August Hanning personally warned CIA director George Tenet to be cautious about using the testimony of the infamous Iraq “Curveball” source regarding Iraqi bioweapons because it could not be independently confirmed. Other BND analysts said that “Curveball” was unreliable. Powell had nevertheless used the information in his infamous United Nations speech justifying the coming invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Two years later, BND officials were afraid history was about to be repeated in Iran. Germany had just joined France and Britain in reaching an accord with Tehran, which was aimed at averting a U.S. move to take the Iran file out of the IAEA and create a new crisis at the UN Security Council over the issue of the nuclear program.

But it wasn’t just the provenance of the MEK documents that was suspect. Their authenticity was never clearly established by the CIA, which could not rule out the possibility of falsification, according to the Washington Post. Mohamed ElBaradei, then director-general of the IAEA, was put under heavy political pressure by a U.S.-led coalition to publish a report endorsing those documents as evidence against Iran. But Elbaradei responded to the pressure by declaring in an October 2009 interview,

“The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponization studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents.”

Benjamin Netanyahu gave the public its first view of the documents on which the Bush administration had heavily relied to sway Elbaradei, showing in his slideshow a surprisingly crude schematic drawing of a Shahab-3 missile reentry vehicle with a circle representing a nuclear weapon. What is important to note about that image is that the shape of the reentry vehicle is the “dunce cap” shape of the original missile that Iran had acquired from North Korea in the mid-1990s. As early as 2000, the CIA’s national intelligence officer on Iranian missiles testified that Iran had already begun redesigning the Shahab-3 missile for better performance. But the outside world was in the dark about what the redesign would look like until the new missile was given its first test flight in August 2004. That test revealed that the redesigned reentry vehicle had a “tri-conic” or “baby bottle” shape.

However, the 36-page document of which the image shown by Netanyahu was a part, called “Implementation of Mass Properties of Shahab-3 Missile Warhead with New Payload,” was dated March-April 2003—long after the redesign of the reentry vehicle had taken place—as the IAEA’s May 2008 report shows on page two of its annex. The inescapable conclusion is that the authors of those drawings were not working for a project of the Iranian Defense Ministry but for a foreign intelligence agency, which guessed wrongly that the shape of Iran’s missile would not change fundamentally.

Lastly,* we have “Project 5,” another alleged project listed in the Iranian weapons program documents, supposedly involving uranium ore mining and conversion of uranium ore for enrichment. One of the sub-projects, designated “Project 5.15”, was for “ore concentration.” But when the IAEA accessed the original documents from Iran in response to its questions, it found that the contract for a “Project 5.15” for ore concentration had been signed not by a secret nuclear weapons project but by the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which was in fact responsible for all activities relating to Iranian uranium ore mines.  Furthermore, the IAEA found that the project document had been signed in August 1999—two years before the start date of the alleged secret nuclear weapons research project.  When this writer confronted former IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen about the contradiction, he admitted that he could not explain it.

The Israeli role in the creation of evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions didn’t end with the papers delivered by the MEK. In 2008-09, Israel turned over more alleged Iranian documents to the IAEA, including a report on experiments with “multi-point initiation” of a nuclear explosion, which Netanyahu emphasized in his recent YouTube presentation. The IAEA and the U.S.-led coalition of states that dominated it of course refused to identify the member state that had provided those documents, but ElBaradei revealed in his memoirs that the state was indeed Israel. 

The historical impact of the Israelis getting U.S. national security, political, and media elites to accept that these fabrications represented genuine evidence of Iran’s nuclear duplicity can hardly be understated. It has unquestionably been one of history’s most successful—and longest running—disinformation campaigns. But it worked without a hitch, because of the readiness of those elites to believe without question anything that was consistent with their perceived interests in continued enmity toward Iran.

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*Note 5/14: The story was republished with additional information by the author.

Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to TAC. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter.

The Orthodox world is facing a total rearrangement. The balance of powers and the distribution of influence between 14 mutually recognized Local Orthodox Churches is shifting as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, historically first among equal autocephalous Churches, has completely lost its weight.

This is happening against the background of an unfolding crisis, which Orthodoxy hasn’t witnessed since the Great Schism of 1054. The threat of a new schism emerged because of Patriarch Bartholomew’s ambitions who claims he is the leader of the Orthodox world. The division affects nearly all of the autocephalous Churches, repartitioning the margins of some Churches and breaking up the unity of the other.

Becoming a puppet out of greed, interfering in the other Church’s affairs, the “Green” Patriarch Bartholomew put the future of all Orthodox Christianity at stake. Bartholomew and his followers ignore all warnings of caring Orthodox hierarchs, clergy and laity including respected theologians. Having let himself involved in US geopolitical intrigues and pretending to be “caring” for the Ukrainian faithful, the Ecumenical Patriarchate keeps steering the Orthodox world towards a catastrophe.

Constantinople’s hierarchs have spoken a lot about the unity of Ukrainian believers (which allegedly is facing a “threat” – the presence of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate led by Metropolitan Onufry). It took less than a year for the Phanar to establish a new Church structure and recognize its independence. However, the Patriarchate of Constantinople forgot to secure the very unity promised by its hierarchs: now the two leaders of the new “Church” (Epiphanius and Filaret) are struggling for power, to say nothing of the unity for the Orthodox faithful across whole Ukraine.

Greek and Russian theologians have paid attention to the Phanar’s numerous mistakes: the most important requirement for granting autocephaly wasn’t adhered, millions of Ukrainian believers were “outlawed”, the absence of apostolic succession of the hierarchs admitted by Constantinople without repentance is deliberately silenced.

Why has Bartholomew suddenly decided to satisfy the request of Ukrainian schismatics ignoring the Holy Canons and the tradition of the Holy Fathers (for example, the works of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite)? No one really tries to conceal the answer: the reason is the political situation in Ukraine and the world. The Phanar’s finances leave much to be desired, “the leader of the Orthodox Church” barely makes both ends meet, and the desire of Ukrainian nationalists was in line with the desire of American masterminds who set in Ukraine the puppet regime of Poroshenko ready for anything to preserve his power. Moreover, the USA uses military, economic and diplomatic leverages to put pressure on many Local Churches and promised to help the Phanar with lobbying its interests in the Orthodox world.

Nevertheless, no Local Church except the Patriarchate of Constantinople has recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). This is not what Constantinople expected and its hierarchs are trying to convince the other Churches. Everyone understands though that the OCU is an example of fragrant violation of Church Canons, and unlike Patriarch Bartholomew hierarchs don’t want to betray the Church of Christ for the sake of American interests.

Meanwhile, things are going bad for Bartholomew. The Orthodox world is deliberating on his anathematization. Its reasonableness isn’t questioned since Bartholomew’s canonical violations are obvious. Just for not denying the schismatic actions and the “two independent self-sufficing families of Local Orthodox Churches” heresy of Filaret, according to Apostolic Canon 45, Patriarch Bartholomew must be defrocked.

The Patriarch recognized the sacraments of anathematized heretic Filaret and Makariy (Maletich) who must be excommunicated, recognized the clergy concelebrating with Filaret, for which according to Apostolic Canons 45 and 46, he must be defrocked and according to the Apostolic Canon 10 anathematized.

Bartholomew also recognized the ordination of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) schismatics, so per Apostolic Canon 45 he must be defrocked and per the 10^th Canon excommunicated.

Moreover, as mentioned in the letter of 12 Athonite monks to the Holy Kinot (the supreme body of Holy Mount Athos), the Synod of one Church cannot cancel the excommunication imposed by another Church. Those who violate this rule, as did Patriarch Bartholomew with the Ukrainian schismatics, which were anathematized by the Russian Orthodox Church and can be let in communion only by it, are excommunicated.

Along with this Constantinople cannot satisfyingly justify its authority and actions to defend from the criticism and instead is sinking in more and more its own lies, concealment and manipulations.

Greek hierarchs see this too, though autocephaly supporters are playing the card of “national solidarity” hinting at the Greek origin of Dimitrios Arhondonis (Patriarch Bartholomew), a Turkish-born citizen. They are simply tired of humiliating attitude towards them similar to the one which Archbishop Ieronymos, the Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church, has experienced at the celebrations of Bartholomew’s names day caused by Epiphanius Dumenko’s “surprising” presence.

As Charalambos Vouroudzidis writes in his article “The Great Schism in Orthodoxy and its Consequences”, “no matter how many pages the Phanar filled with their “patriarchal arguments”, the Great Schism has happened and led to terrible repercussions for the spiritually ecumenical status of the organization which united the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”.

That is why Patriarch John X of Antioch suggested that a Pan-Orthodox Synaxis must be held to discuss the situation. He was supported by the primates of the Churches of Cyprus, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Albania, who decided to act as mediators. They hope to correct the mistakes made by Bartholomew and bring back peace between Orthodox Churches (and they have achieved some results in it by launching the settlement of the conflict between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem which had been ignored by the Phanar).

First Constantinople tried to kill the clock and claimed that according to Apostolic Canon 34 the Pan-Orthodox Council cannot be convened without Patriarch of Constantinople as the “first hierarch”. And later Bartholomew decided: no Council is needed as everything is alright in Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarchate experiences no issues in communication with Local Churches; only Churches that are against him express discontent, so the improvement of relations depends only on them.

In his turn, Greek theologian Pavlos Trakados claims that such an interpretation is completely wrong and the Patriarch of Constantinople is afraid of the Council because he understands that the odds are not in his favor. Bartholomew does remember the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) which denounced and excommunicated Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680/681) condemned the monothelite Pope Honorius I, Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and his successors Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter postmortem. However, it seems that His All-Holiness Bartholomew is concerned about his personal ambitions and not the future of the Orthodox Church, so he keeps playing his dark game…

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Sophia Iliadi is a freelance blogger from Athens, currently based in the US. She’s written a couple of articles for Veterans Today, voreini.gr, exapsalmos.gr.

Featured image is from the author

The New Deal and World War II are reminders of past transformative times, reverberating in current severe hardships and extreme dangers. Emergencies can bring clarity and reason about what to do, though at the opposite end, crises can elicit the worst outcomes, such as outlined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. There are historical precedents for rational and responsible responses to emergencies, yet a range of measures that could immediately cut emissions, including non-tradable rationing of de-commodified energy and moratoriums on specific high-emitting sectors, are largely ignored in climate policy, including the Green New Deal and other climate justice platforms.

Is it accurate to call climate change an ‘emergency’? Fascism was seen as an emergency requiring urgent systemic changes, and it is arguable that climate change, caused and driven by capitalism (and its elaboration under neoliberalism), threatens far more lives than fascism. The careful research of historians Jason Moore, Andreas Malm, and others, show that modernity could have taken a very different path in terms of social organization and sources of energy.

Is it clarifying to understand global capitalism as a totalitarian organization in which the ‘full spectrum’ of Earth and its atmosphere are privatized, in which reductionistic science characterizes humans as genetically capitalistic and incapable of socially responsible behavior, and in which public knowledge about the unprecedented perils to human beings is systemically blocked?

The following article first focuses on the climate and on the underestimations of the magnitude of climate change mechanisms and its human impacts. Rationing and moratoriums are then discussed as strategies for immediate substantial reductions of greenhouse gases (GHG). The last section focuses on political action and implementation.

Human Fatalities

Typically, addressing the environmental and social crises is posed primarily as a problem of how to provide a liveable economy instead of a problem in addressing the loss of human life. This contributes, intentionally or inadvertently, to not understanding the extremity of the human situation brought about by the intersection of the climate system and the capitalist economy. The exact point of political possibility and knowledge in 1990, with the end of the Cold War and the certainty of anthropogenic climate change, engendered the “great acceleration” of all high-emitting economic sectors and ever-amplifying climate feedbacks, now rapidly driving the climate to a runaway state in which it will be too late for human interventions to alter the physics, biology, and biochemistry of the climate system.

Current reports are awakening an urgent climate movement, but the questions raised in this article are what replaces capitalism, how to urgently eliminate GHG emissions, and whether the new green plans, though a remarkable advance, are dangerously inadequate in scope.

Climate

What does ‘urgency’ mean – what are the effects of delaying greenhouse gas (GHG) elimination? The following selection of reports convey how climate is a complex interactive system that is already irreversibly altered by the incoming energy from the sun.

The October 2018 IPCC report warns that we have only 12 remaining years to cap temperature rise at 1.5C. Many scientists point out the very conservative nature of IPCC projections, partly due to data omissions in some climate models (e.g., omitting the extent of Arctic sea ice melt). Paleoclimate research, based on analysis of ice cores and ocean sediments, shows correlations between global surface temperature, sea level rise, and concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly, correlations exist of CO2 levels and temperature with past mass extinction events when the climate at times shifted precipitously and suddenly. In the paleoclimate record, levels of GHG equal to current values led to the disappearance of all Earth’s ice.

Is 1.5C a safe level? By the time of the 2009 Copenhagen climate meetings, eminent climate scientist James Hansen warned that 1C and 350 parts per milliom (ppm) represented the uppermost level to avert catastrophic changes. In 2009, the UN Environment Program predicted a 3.5C increase by 2100 at the 2009 rate of emissions, warning that such an increase would “remove habitat for human beings on this planet, as nearly all the plankton in the oceans would disappear.” In October 2009, the Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research suggested a 4C temperature increase by 2060. In November 2013, the International Energy Agency predicted a 3.5C increase by 2035.

The following paragraph may seem confusing, because it is. In December 2018, with reference to the carbon budget consistent with a 2C rise in temperature, the IPCC increased the allowable amount of CO2 emissions to 1170 Gt CO2 from the earlier budget of 1070 Gt CO2. In February 2019, the IPCC reported that “… increased action would need to achieve net zero CO2 emissions in less than 15 years to keep temperature to 1.5C.”

The idea of a carbon “budget” is itself erroneous, as it ignores the climate system dynamics of amplifying feedbacks and deteriorating carbon sinks, natural systems that absorb and store carbon dioxide. It is not possible to identify and anticipate all the amplifying feedbacks, such as when the shorter winter season led to pine beetles devouring huge swaths of Canadian boreal forest,– decimating the forest carbon sink and turning it into a source of CO2 emissions. What we see presently is the magnitude of change due to a global temperature increase less than 1C, and CO2 concentrations much lower than the current high reading of 417ppm due to delays in the climate system. “After the Scripps monitoring station atop Hawaii’s towering Mauna Loa went online in 1959, CO2 rose around just 0.7ppm per year. Then, in the 1990s, the rate increased to 1.5ppm per year. The last decade has averaged 2.2ppm. Yet, in the last year [2018], there was a 3.5ppm gain.”

The extent of recent accelerated change can be minimized by shifting the baseline of temperature measurement from the beginnings of the industrial revolution (1780) to 1950 or 1990. The methane threat can also be minimized by describing its heat-trapping potential as 25 times that of CO2 when averaged over a 100-year period. However, methane is 84 times more potent than CO2 in the short term, which is what counts in this emergency situation. In 2013, an international research group led by Oxford University scientists found evidence from Siberian caves that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could cause permanently frozen ground to thaw over a large area of Siberia and could release over 1000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating global warming.

Around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades and at an unprecedented rate in human history. It is now also known that the loss of one species can lead to other species disappearance in a process known as co-extinction, and possibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden shift or total collapse.

Forest fires are more frequent and increasingly intense and long lasting, and the forecast is that the resultant warming soils will emit the immense stores of carbon dioxide that they contain.

There was an unexpected 50% jump in methane emissions from the tropics between 2013 and 2018 compared with the period between 2007 and2012. Methane is also released from wetlands, fracking, livestock (cows), melting permafrost.

The tar sands extraction is another catastrophic factor. Climate scientist James Hansen said that the tar sands meant “game over for the planet,” and it was just reported that tar sands GHG emissions contribute 64% more emissions than previously estimated.

Antarctica is far more sensitive to climate change than originally predicted and is losing ice mass at a rate six times greater than in the 1950s. Current losses are doubling every decade, setting new records for Ocean Heat Content (OHC). The world’s largest ice shelf in Antarctica is melting 10 times faster than the overall average rate of melt.

Oceans Melting Greenland reports that warmer Arctic air and ocean temperatures are increasing the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. On June 18, record-setting ice melt and sea ice loss occurred several weeks early resulting in “Greenland losing 2 billion tons of ice or about 45% of the surface in just one day.”

The decreasing temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator has already altered the jet stream. The Gulf of Mexico is much warmer than usual and is causing more evaporation, which is carried northward by wind currents where it meets hot dry air from the Rockies and cold dry air from the jet stream. This results in a region of increased tornadoes that is now shifting north and east from the traditional “tornado alley.” Over 500 observed tornados were reported this last May in the American Midwest; previously, only four periods in the official database ever exceeded 500 observed tornadoes in 30 days: 2003, 2004, 2008, and 2011.”

Oceans absorb both heat and CO2, and this is causing a decline in phytoplankton, a major source of Earth’s oxygen.

The oceans are also warming about 40% faster than previous estimates, contributing to more powerful storms, more rapid sea level rise, and changes in ocean currents. The proportion of fresh to salt water causes shifts in stratification and decreased circulation of nutrients and oxygen, as is already evident in the rising sea level that is causing salt water incursion into the major food-producing Nile and Mekong deltas where such a loss is critical.

The reporting of human impacts of climate change is highly influenced by politics and social attitudes. At the time of the Pakistan floods in 2009 when 20 million people were displaced, a prominent climate scientist advised students to count monarch butterflies to convince them of climate change. Meanwhile, barely any news has been reported about the failed monsoon in India, affecting 43% of the country.

“The country has seen widespread drought every year since 2015, with the exception of 2017. About 20,000 villages in the state of Maharashtra are grappling with a severe drinking water crisis, with no water left in 35 major dams. In 1,000 smaller dams, water levels are below 8%. The rivers that feed the dams have been transformed into barren, cracked earth. Groundwater, the source of 40% of India’s water needs, is depleting at an unsustainable rate… Twenty-one Indian cities – including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad – are expected to run out of groundwater by 2020, and 40% of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, the report said.”

While there is little representation of the devastating effects on people’s lives, NATO and the US military designate climate as a “threat multiplier.” The Quadrennial Defense Review, issued in 2014, defines climate-related threats: “These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” The 2003 Pentagon Report projects “‘no-regret (military) strategies’ for worst case, global warming-induced eventualities.”¹

“No regret,” as defined by the Rand Corporation, means that the military must be well prepared for threats so that outcomes will not lead to regrets. Note the recent history of UN forces providing security: in Haiti where UN Peacekeepers caused 9500 deaths from cholera, in the Central African Republic where UN Peacekeepers were involved in sexual exploitation and abuse, in Nepal where UN peacekeepers caused 9000 cholera deaths. There are many non-military solutions to providing security.

Causes of actual human fatalities related to climate change include extreme weather, high temperatures that are not survivable, food and water shortages, the spread of disease pathogens, and the militarization of climate “security” and of borders. Monbiot reported 15,000 child fatalities due to the burning of Indonesian tropical forests for biofuel plantations (ironically, often earning carbon credits). Fatalities in California wildfires were compounded by class-based inequalities in zoning, austerity-based public defunding of fire departments and the exploitation of prisoners as firefighters. Nevertheless, it is only recently that the IPCC formed a working group on the human situation. In 2009, the Global Humanitarian Forum was already reporting the loss of 300,000 people per year due to climate change

Innumerable everyday examples could be cited of how the lived reality of the human situation and the sense of connection to other people are minimized by media and political interests.le. For example, while people are starving due to the confluence of drought and Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi, and survivors can wait four hours for a bag of maize meal, the New York Times climate report featured, of all things, the food editor: “The climate is changing. And a lot of home cooks have been left paralyzed at the stove or in the marketplace as a result, choosing between the farmed salmon and the pasture-raised chicken, the organic tofu, the fair-trade coffee, the heritage carrots.” These tragedies in Africa should not be a surprise and were anticipated. In 2009, lead G77 negotiator Lumumba Di-aping, with tears rolling down his face, declared that delegates “have been asked to sign a suicide pact that would cause certain death for Africa, …a type of ‘climate fascism’ imposed on Africa by high carbon emitters.” In 2011, Nigerian climate delegate Nnimmo Bassey said that official climate inaction was a death sentence for Africa, and he linked the extraction of slave energy with the extraction of oil: “We thought it was oil/But it was blood.”²

The human side is abstracted even by the language used when we hear about the loss of the “planet” and of “organized civilization,” and of polar bears (In early childhood, attachment to soft furry animals precedes the capacity to have a constant sense of another person). The enclosure of the commons or the privatization of natural resources, has evolved into monetizing humans and ecosystem services and conferring personhood status to corporations: economist Sir Nicholas Stern defended the expansion of aviation because lengthier waits at airports for the business class leads to a greater economic loss than the climate-caused death of an impoverished person; and Larry Summers wrote that “dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage countries” made great economic sense.³ Military budgets price what is priceless – human life.

Rationing

As detailed in examples below, solutions to climate change proffered since the 1960s have not worked. An implicit illogic allows for the constant expansion of destructively high greenhouse gas emitters until they can shift to renewables. Virtually ignored are three high-emitting sectors that are exempt under the Kyoto Accord, all slated for vast expansion in the coming decades and all three not convertible to renewables: the military, international aviation and shipping. Other high-emitters rooted in the economic growth model include the agro-industrial complex; biofuels; extraction of minerals, metals, oil and gas; production of plastic; and the construction industry with its use of energy-intensive steel and cement. Logically, these sectors need to be stringently curtailed or eliminated, first of all, until the basic needs of the world population are prioritized and met without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, secondly, until GHG concentration is drawn down to a safe level, and finally, until these sectors are actually fueled by renewables while fully accounting for externalities and life cycle analysis.

Among the range of solutions, negligible consideration is given to rationing and moratoriums even though these options could substantially cut emissions immediately without requiring new technologies. Since the 1960s, the focus has been on transitioning to renewables, with far less attention to the actual uses of energy and possible areas of elimination or moratoriums.

The rationality of rationing is readily apparent in times of extreme life threats. There are historical precedents to examine that can be helpful in preventing inequitable implementation and ensuring efficacy.

In his book Late Victorian Holocaust, Mike Davis describes life-saving rations used during the 1743-44 famine in the north China plain that devastated the winter wheat crop. When farmers died in their fields due to heat stroke, mass mortality was averted by the skilled Confucian administration of Fang Guancheng, the agriculture and hydraulic expert who directed relief operations. The renowned ‘ever-normal granaries’ in each county immediately began to issue rations (without any labour test) to peasants in the officially designated disaster counties. Local gentry had already organized soup kitchens to ensure the survival of the poorest residents until state distributions began. When local supplies proved insufficient, Guancheng shifted millet and rice from the great store of tribute grain and moved vast quantities from the south. Two million peasants were maintained for 8 months until the return of the monsoon made farming possible again. In comparison, no contemporary European society guaranteed subsistence as a human right to its peasantry nor could any emulate ‘the perfect timing of [Guancheng’s] operations. Guancheng “tended to give top priority to investments in infrastructure” and to “principles of disaster planning and relief management.”⁴ Contemporary Europeans were dying in the millions from famine and hunger-related diseases following Arctic winters and summer droughts. This compares with a conservative estimate of 50 million deaths in China under British control during the droughts of 1876-79 and 1896-1900, and in 1958-61, under Mao’s “monstrous mishandling” of agriculture during the Great Leap Forward [An unfortunate historical amnesia is the naming of Canada’s progressive climate movement “The Leap”).

In contrast, even before the US entered WWII to fight against the threat of fascism, the public was prepared for possible rationing. First rationed were rubber tires. Soon after, a moratorium was imposed on car manufacturing. A national speed limit of 35 miles per hour (56 km/h) was imposed to save fuel, and gas was distributed on the basis of need, prioritizing essential services. “As of 1 March 1942, dog food could no longer be sold in tin cans, and manufacturers switched to dehydrated versions. As of 1 April 1942, anyone wishing to purchase a new toothpaste tube, then made from metal, had to turn in an empty one. By June 1942 companies also stopped manufacturing metal office furniture, radios, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and sewing machines for civilians.”

Stan Cox provides a particularly helpful analysis of rationing in the UK and US from WWII to the present. Rationing by quantity, combined with price controls, was broadly supported by the public, finding these the better way of ensuring that true needs are met when there is a situation of broad inequality. “As the United States shifted from a Depression mind-set into world war gear, a large slice of the population remained poor, and the equal shares aspect of rationing together with controls on prices and the rapid creation of well-paying wartime jobs, tended to boost the real incomes of working class Americans.”⁵ He wrote that people are more receptive to rationing when it is a response to a crisis. In fact, in August 1942, “when only a limited number of items were being rationed, a poll found 70% of respondents feeling they had not been asked to sacrifice enough,” and a later poll indicated that the majority of people felt that the government should have acted faster in rationing scarce goods. Support for continued price controls remained strong after the war. In Britain, demand swelled for “all around rationing.” In both the UK and US, the day-to-day management of rationing systems was handled at the local level. “The block leader, always a woman, would be responsible for discussing nutritional information and sometimes rationing procedures and scrap drives with all residents of her city block.”

Rationing was also adaptable to special needs, such as those of pregnant women and children who received extra shares of milk and of foods high in vitamins, while farmworkers and others who did not have access to workplace canteens at lunchtime received extra cheese rations. The government response changed based on what people demanded. Cox quotes Fred Magdoff, co-author with John Bellamy Foster of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism, who predicts that rationing will very likely be necessary in any future economy that takes the global ecological crisis seriously. Rationing by quantity rather than ability to pay “makes sense if you want to allocate fairly. It’s something that will have to be faced down the line. I don’t see any way to achieve substantive equality without some form of rationing… [but] there’s a problem with using that terminology. There are certain ‘naughty’ words you don’t use. ‘Rationing’ is not considered as naughty as ‘socialism,’ but it’s still equivalent to a four-letter word” (p. 64).

Rationing can be authoritarian, as in Israel’s strangulation of all supplies going into Gaza, to the point of even regulating caloric intake! In contrast, the work of Stan Cox describes highly participatory and community-based rationing. One precondition of rationing and moratoriums could require free, prior and informed consent, modelled on the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

Moratoriums

Ecosocialist Ian Angus provides a brilliant example of the utility of both rationing and moratoriums: Ira Rennert, a criminally neglectful magnate from the high-emitting extraction sector is obscene in his consumer life style, but as a capitalist, his mines cause 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe; 99% of children tested in proximity to his Peruvian mine had blood-lead levels that vastly exceeded WHO limits.⁶ Real climate action would entail rationing his personal energy use. Non-tradable rationing would allow him to heat or cool one bedroom and one bathroom out of the 25 of each in his primary estate. A moratorium would shut down the mines: mining destroys the soil and forest carbon sinks, and degrades water. Under a just transition, his other properties could be re-distributed to people in need of housing under a humane application of eminent domain.⁷ Lennart’s life style clearly reflects the reasons that the current housing crisis is severe and global and is a product of both climate-caused disasters and the far-reach of the invisible hand of capitalism.

High-emitting sectors continue to expand despite extensive legal challenges, strategic alliances, persistent community activism, political promises, scientific corroboration and international support. Power and wealth overrode opposition at Standing Rock, the Trans Mountain pipeline, and the Narmada Dam in India. The Nation (04/01/19) and Guardian Weekly recently reported an extensive study by the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) about petroleum companies’ $65-billion investment in plastics production, involving ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation. More than 333 petrochemical projects are underway or newly completed in the US. The CIEL report indicates that the entrenchment of fossil fuels in the plastic production process will be hard to overcome by renewables. The waste will be sent to developing countries. Small US communities were not informed about takeovers and have no say about the new industrial zones that are polluting water and air with a range of toxic compounds. Externalities include 20 to 25 million gallons of water per day required by the “‘cracker’, a facility that uses heat and pressure to crack apart molecules of ethane gas…”

Greenwash abounds. These same corporations announced the Alliance to End Plastic Waste with an initial commitment of $1-billion. In England, the environment secretary announced a phase-out of plastic straws by 2020 to “ensure we leave our environment in a better state for future generations.” Greenwashers literally grasp at straws. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau just announced a phase-out of single-use plastic by 2021, while at the same time, approving the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. Stopping the production of plastic straws and single-use plastics is not enough. Plastic at the ocean’s surface releases methane and other greenhouse gases, and these emissions increase as the plastic breaks down further. “Microplastic in the oceans may also interfere with the ocean’s capacity to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide.”

The highly touted levies by British Columbia and Australia of a carbon tax deflected attention from the simultaneous expansion of coal mining for shipping to China for manufacturing steel, much of it exported. Again, carbon taxes are not enough. High-emitting coal, shipping and steel manufacturing rationally require moratoriums.

Instead of a moratorium on car manufacturing and investment in free public transit and in reorganizing densely populated areas so that food and other essential goods are nearby, one of the highly acclaimed recent solutions is the electric car. Externalities and life-cycle analysis of electric vehicles includes large amounts of plastic in the car’s body, mined materials (and ruined ecosystems, usually in least developed countries), data centre emissions, water required in the manufacturing process, the source of energy for charging batteries, plus the car infrastructure of streets and roadways that pave over a great deal of fertile agricultural land. Another important fact to keep in mind is the cost when the majority world population cannot even afford indoor toilets.

After the calamities of two world wars in the 20th century, the extant nations agreed to “end the scourge of war,” but now, at the most dangerous time in human history, dismantling the military, or even placing a moratorium on the military-industrial-financialization complex, seems risible and is still not addressed in any climate discourse. The military is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, and it is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Estimates of military emissions are based mainly on battle machinery and infrastructure – its aircraft and aircraft carriers, its domestic and foreign military bases. It is difficult to know if calculations also include life-cycle analysis of the manufacturing process itself and the procuring and processing of materials. Emissions could also include the enormous energy requirements of the military’s data centres as well as its wholesale defoliation of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and North Korea. The military, like so many high emitting sectors, continues to expand in globalized walled militarized borders. Security in densely populated areas is modelled on Israel’s battle-tested strategies, weaponry, and surveillance technology. The Chinese Belt and Road project, together with emerging Middle East alignments, crisscross Eurasia and parts of Africa with military installations along the enormous coal/oil/gas infrastructure.

US-NATO wars are fought for oil and dominance. The US Department of the Navy released a 36-page document in 2009 called Navy Arctic Roadmap. “The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include missile defense and early warning, deployment of sea and air navigation, and overflight.” They also comprise secure US sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain. “What the practical implementation of this policy means is the expanded penetration of the Arctic Circle by the US Navy’s submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) third of the American nuclear triad… and the extension of plans for a US-NATO Asian-NATO worldwide interceptor missile system already being put into place near Russia’s western, southern and eastern borders. US and NATO radar submarine and missile deployments in the so-called High North will complete the encirclement.”⁸

Proposed moratoriums on other large GHG emitters have not been implemented: on fracking, hydroelectric dams, biofuels. Several years ago, George Monbiot reported that up to 15,000 children in Indonesia died as a result of the burning down of tropical forests to make room for biofuel plantations. Meanwhile, the biofuel alternative to fossil fuels was a major cause of high food prices in the 2008 economic crisis: “On July 3, 2008, the Guardian came out with an expose on a secret report made by a World Bank economist that claimed that US and EU agrofuels policies were responsible for three-quarters of the 140 percent increase in food prices between 2002 and February 2008.”⁹

Changing the System

The US Green New Deal aims for a 40% to 60% reduction by 2030 below the 2010 baseline when GHG concentration was 386.6ppm. The Kyoto agreement called for (voluntary) cuts of approximately 6% below the 1990 baseline level when GHG concentration was 354.29ppm. At the current rate, 12 years will add 36ppm, bringing concentration to 453ppm – and with feedbacks, a great deal higher. 350ppm CO2 is considered the safe level, and the current reading is 417ppm. The pace of additions continues to increase because of feedbacks and because of the vast expansion of fossil fuel use. Global CO2 emissions rose 60% between 1990 and 2013, increasing from 22.4 billion metric tons in 1990 to 35.8 billion in 2013.

To paraphrase Yeats, all must change, change utterly. It is unlikely that what is required will be implemented unless people truly comprehend that collapse is inevitable under the current system, that collapse means massive loss of human life in a world in which public services have been dismantled under austerity regimes, and a world in which untold numbers of people are prevented from crossing borders. What was significant in WWII was the rapidity of radical transformation of the use of energy and the distribution of basic goods. The WWII economy shifted manufacturing to the war industries. The task is obviously the opposite at this point as the military, the capitalist system, and the life cycle and externalities of industrialization are destroying the habitable environment.

It is hard to see how things can utterly change if people are treated as if they are unable to know, much less to plan together. What is required here is radical system change. What is unique is that it requires the complete and immediate elimination of the core source of energy on which the capitalist system depends. There are two polarities for conceptualizing how to attack this system. First, across the world people are fighting against institutions one-by-one: the corporations, banks, international financial institutions, pension-fund boards, the complicit legal apparatus, trade agreements, corporate-dominated higher education, major media, the military/industrial complex, and closed borders. This includes a significant shift to thinking in terms of the commons, as reflected in the demands for free public transit and free internet access. A second revolutionary path involves workers taking over the means of production and setting up a radically different system based on de-monetizing energy and managing energy as a commons. It is workers who know how the energy system functions – who mine and extract, who turn off valves, who fix equipment, who know how to program and distribute energy. All these actions are supported by laws and norms, including the “necessity defense” and the UN Declaration on civil, political, social and economic rights.

Past and present, people act responsibly and against all odds when they organize: military mutinies,¹⁰ dockworkers who refuse to unload military weapons, the Gaza Great March of Return, prison strikes, protesting against dams, protesting against plastics in Cancer Alley and Chemical Valley. There is a long history of communities deciding how to ration the resources of the commons to meet needs.

All sources of GHG emissions require transformation and the hard work of analysis and collaboration. A comprehensive article in Jacobin Magazine on food and agriculture reviews American farm policy from the first New Deal to the present Green New Deal. It concludes:

“Better living through farming can’t happen without canny political alliance-building, stitching together a bloc that addresses hunger, poverty, malnutrition, and inequities in wealth and wages, both in the countryside and city. The logic of building a counter-hegemonic bloc demands a militant rural presence.”

The Left would do well to follow the path of Meyer Brownstone in directly meeting with people. He was an advisor to Tommy Douglas, former Chair of Oxfam Canada, and specialized in agroecology. He met with rural farmers all over Saskatchewan to hear their views on farming, land distribution, and government. It is crucial at this time of unimaginable threats to the world food supply to not repeat the agriculture practices of the late Victorian holocaust, of Mao, Stalin, Borlaug’s green revolution, and the US agro-industrial complex.

The 21st century is at this point a Tale of Two Extreme Worlds, where eight men hold as much wealth as half the world population. “If we measure poverty by the more accurate $5/day line, the total poverty headcount rises to 4.3 billion people, more than 60 percent of humanity. That’s 370 million more people than in 1990.” Two billion people still do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines. Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. In least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service. The urgent work is to provide housing, ecosystem restoration, fossil fuel-free agriculture (which will require up to four times more human labour than the current agro-industrial system),¹¹ and the work of uniting and organizing global opposition to the hegemonic power and ideology that is leading to the “end of history.”

The Greens have a mixed history, including Malthusians, displacement of large indigenous populations to make way for pristine retreats, and the Canadian Boreal Initiative negotiated by big forestry and ENGOs without any indigenous participation. Canada’s Green Party platform promises to “use only Canadian fossil fuels,” including upgrades to “turn Canadian solid bitumen into gas, diesel, and other products providing jobs in Alberta.” [!] The Green New Deal, Extinction Rebellion and the Leap are far-reaching in their integrating social-economic justice with recognition of the climate emergency and their not compromising on carbon-based fuels. Yet much remains within the frame of “transitioning” – without clear, immediate, mandatory deadlines for GHG reductions and elimination in all sectors. And while there is a focus on publicly subsidized housing, transportation and healthcare, the crux of this crisis is energy and the opening at this time, indeed the necessity, of demonetizing it.

Quoting Filipino delegate Yeb Sano’s plea at the 2013 COP as Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines: “Stop this madness!”

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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Dave Webb, “Thinking the Worst: The Pentagon Report,” p 68. in David Cromwell and Mark Levene. Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe. Pluto Press 2007.
2. Nnimmo Bassey. To Cook a Continent: Destructive extraction and the climate crisis in Africa. Pambazuka Press 2012.
3. Eric Toussaint. The World Bank: A critical primer. Pluto Press 2006. p 183.
4. Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the third world. Verso 2002. p. 280-283.
5. Stan Cox. Any Way You Slice It: The past, present, and future of rationing, The New Press 2013. p 71-75. Also see the chapter by Aubrey Meyer, “The Case for Contraction and Convergence” in David Cromwell and Mark Levene, p 29.
6. Ian Angus and Simon Butler. Too Many People? Population, immigration and the environmental crisis. Haymarket 2012. p 166-69.
7. Loka Ashwood. For-Profit Democracy. Yale University Press 2018.
8. Emily Gilbert. “Climate Change and the Military,” p 30-33. Canadian Dimension Magazine, Nov/Dec 2014.
9. Walden Bello and Mara Baviera. “Food Wars” p. 36. In Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal. Monthly Review Press 2010.
10. Mike Gonzalez and Houman Barekat. Arms and the People: Popular movements and the military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring, Pluto Press 2013.
11. David Pimentel. “Reducing Energy Inputs in the Agricultural Production System” in Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal. Monthly Review 2010, p 251-52.

All images in this article are from The Bullet

United States Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams has publicly welcomed Venezuela’s ex-intelligence chief to the country after he deserted and joined efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who served as chief of the Bolivarian Intelligence Services (SEBIN) from October 2018 to April 2019, arrived to the US on Monday.

He has recently been sacked and expelled from the Venezuelan armed forces following his participation in the failed putsch led by self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido on April 30, authorising the release of Guaido’s ally Leopoldo Lopez, who was under house arrest for his role in the violent 2014 street protests.

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Abrams, who is known for his leading role in the Iran-Contra scandal and advising George W. Bush in the lead up to the Iraq war, explained that he was “happy” with Cristopher Figuera’s arrival as it “makes it easier to talk to him,” adding that he “has many interesting things to say about Maduro.”

He also alleged that US authorities had no role in bringing him to the country. Cristopher Figuera claims to have been in hiding under the protection of the Colombia government in Bogota since his desertion. The US sanctions against him were also lifted in May following his assistance to Guaido’s efforts.

While the ex-SEBIN chief is yet to make any public comment from the United States, a recent interview done in Bogota was published on Monday by the Washington Post, in which Cristopher Figuera claims to have a “treasure trove” of information for US authorities about the inner workings of the Venezuelan government.

According to the Washington Post, Cristopher Figuera claimed to have knowledge of government corruption schemes, Hezbollah and ELN activities in the country, Cuban influence on Maduro, attempts by ministers to form private armies and that Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno were party to the April 30 putsch. He goes on to explain how he was convinced by a Guaido envoy to join the events of that day.

While Cristopher Figuera alleges to hold evidence to back up these accusations, both Padrino Lopez and Moreno have publicly rejected his claims, suggesting at the time that Figuera had been “bought” by US authorities.

“I’m proud of what I did (…) I thought I would be able to make Maduro see sense. I couldn’t,” the ex-intelligence chief told the Washington Post. “I quickly realized that Maduro is the head of a criminal enterprise, with his own family involved,” he continued.

Abrams also took the opportunity to downplay rumours that US President Donald Trump is losing interest in efforts to oust the Maduro government, pointing to a recent meeting between Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during which the issue was discussed, as well as the recent launch of the US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort to South America.

“The notion that there is at the highest levels of the government a diminution of interest [in removing Maduro] is just simply false,” he told press, before adding that the number of countries which recognise Guaido would soon increase, but without offering any further details.

The Washington Post reported last week that Trump was “losing patience and interest in Venezuela” following successive defeats for opposition leader Guaido, quoting an anonymous former government official. The report also claimed that Trump believed that his team “got played” by Guaido regarding the situation on the ground and real prospects of seizing power.

Abrams’ comments also came on the heels of a corruption scandal engulfing the Venezuelan opposition which many analysts claim has affected Guaido’s credibility. The scandal centers on the embezzlement of humanitarian “aid” funds by his team, and has led Venezuelan prosecutors to open an investigation against the opposition leader.

Venezuelan armed forces demand respect

Abrams’ comments coincided with a public statement from the head of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB), Vladimir Padrino Lopez, calling for respect from foreign leaders betting on a rupture in the institution.

The kickback came after Colombian President Ivan Duque called on the FANB to “rupture” and to back Juan Guaido.

In an interview with Europa Press over the weekend, Duque reaffirmed that, in his opinion, the overthrow of Maduro should not be democratically done but rather brought about by the armed forces.

“I have been very clear, beyond a foreign military solution, what is needed today is to secure the rupture of the Venezuelan military forces, and that these military forces place themselves on the side of the [National] Assembly and of President Guaido, that they are protagonists in saving their country,” Duque commented, before adding that in his opinion “The military forces in Venezuela are totally fractured.”

In response, the FANB statement called on Duque to show respect and “not waste his time trying to fragment our unity, discipline, morality or loyalty.”

“What would be the reaction of the Colombian government if someone suggested that the military forces of their country broke up and stopped recognising him as president?” the communique asks.

Regarding accusations that the FANB is “fragmented,” the Venezuelan military responded that “This is typical of those who are blind and desperate, who refuse to understand the failure of every effort to break up the nation.”

Opposition leaders and US officials have repeatedly called on the Venezuelan armed forces to break the chain of command and support Guaido’s efforts in ousting the Maduro government, with promises of “amnesty” and lifting personal sanctions.

The armed forces have, however, repeatedly reiterated their commitment to the Venezuelan constitution, including by not allowing right wing forces to violate the country’s border on February 23 as well as following April 30’s failed putsch, when Maduro led exercises in several military bases.

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Iran has summoned  the United Arab Emirates’ chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest that the UAE allowed the US to use its Al-Dhafra base in UAE to launch the Global Hawk surveillance drone (worth some $130 million) that was downed on the 20^thof June by the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) air defence missile system. The Iranian message was clear: this is not a diplomatic gesture and complaint but a straight warning that any country hosting a US military base which allows a hostile military action against Iran will be considered under attack, along with the US base it is accommodating.

Iran is informing Arab countries that any US attack starting from any neighbouring or Middle Eastern country will be considered an act of war by the country itself, in the words of a high ranking IRGC officer. The IRGC – recently designated a terrorist organisation by the US State Department – is the force in charge of protecting the Strait of Hormuz, and is coordinating on a varying scale with the regular Army intending to stand against the US in case of war.

The Pentagon recently announced that it is sending a squadron  of US F-15E Strike Eagles to the region, in response to the attack on two oil tankers  earlier this month in the Gulf of Oman. In response to the non-downing of the P-8 on June 20, Trump announced the imposition of what he called “significant additional sanctions” against the Leader of the Revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei and pre-announced that the Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif will also be included, closing the path to diplomacy between the US and Iran.

Moreover, the US claim it has conducted a cyber-attack on Iranian weapon systems on Thursday, an act of cyber-warfare that apparently disabled the Iranian computer systems that control its missile launchers.

The IRGC source said the tension “is far from being over, on the contrary, it might just be starting. Trump is increasing the sanctions and we shall increase the tensions. Let us see where all this will lead the US. One thing is certain: if we don’t export our oil, no country will.”

The Leader of the revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei told the political and military leaders, during a private meeting, that “the enemy and our friends, even those among our allies with soft trembling hearts (afraid of the US), should know that we are not seekers of war but that Iran has no fear to go to the battlefield. People should know that we and our allies are strong and we have many surprises to hit our enemies with. In Lebanon 2006, a small group (Hezbollah) was victorious over a much larger entity because Israel ignored the capability of the resistance. The US seems to be ignorant of our military capabilities- but, it seems that, like us, Trump doesn’t want the war. Nevertheless, if war takes place, for every hit Iran receives, we shall launch ten hits in retaliation”.

The Middle East is sitting on some kind of a barrel of gunpowder, with fire encroaching from all sides. It is a matter of time before the fire is extinguished or it provokes a significant conflagration.

The US is trying to bring Iran to its knees but has so far succeeded only in uniting its various political parties and people under one cause, significantly when the US drone was downed. Iran showed it doesn’t fear the US, is not trying to avoid a military confrontation if one is necessary, and treats the US threat like that from any other country, notwithstanding the USA’s superpower status. By challenging the US military and its spy drone, Iran boosted the unity of its population and armed forces. Before the latest severe sanctions imposed by the USA, Iranian society complained about the billions Iran was investing in allies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) around the Middle East. Iranians were grumbling about the leadership’s decision to move large sums away from the country at a time when Iran was under sanctions. However, recent tensions have confirmed the benefit to Iran of its network of alliances around the Middle East. Faced with Trump’s threats of war, Iranians are glad not to be isolated. The US President is aware of Iran’s allies and the fact that any future conflict will expand outside Iranian territory and involve Iran’s many partners.

In the case of Syria, the US offered the country to Iran on a golden platter. Iran’s success in supporting the Syrian government against the Jihadists encouraged by the US (ISIS and AQ) has created an unprecedented and robust bond with President Bashar al-Assad and the local population.

Moreover, for 40 years Iran has managed to support, finance, train and consolidate a unique ally in Lebanon that emerged following the US supported Israeli invasion in 1982. Hezbollah has become one of the strongest irregular-organised armies in the Middle East.

Iran can count on these allies and will keep supporting them because the tension is only beginning. If sanctions are not lifted or the signatories don’t find a way out, Iran will make sure that any US attack on Iran will drag the entire Middle East into war. Such a war can only result from miscalculation since both sides are trying to avoid it.

Indeed, Iran decided not to down a US P-8 Poseidon spy plane with 38 personnel onboard on the same morning of the 20^thof June because its leadership didn’t want to corner Trump and leave him no choice but war. It looks like Tehran would like to allow Trump the opportunity to be first in opening fire against Iran so that it can retaliate proportionally. Iran is showing no fear of the US menace, an indication that this crisis will not end any time soon.

Trump seems unaware of the price his predecessors paid for confronting Iran. It is justifiable to be confused. However, history does repeat itself. Trump is walking the path of US President Jimmy Carter, who failed to be re-elected following his confrontation with Iran.

The Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei has reminded Iranian officials of what Imam Khomeini said during the US-Iran crisis in the 80s. He said:

“The behaviour of the US can be compared to the story of a lion in Persian stories. Carter most probably didn’t know about this story. Although it pains me to compare Carter to a lion, the story fits him perfectly. When a Lion faces his enemy, it roars and breaks wind to scare his enemy. The lion ends by shaking his tail, hoping for a mediator. Today the US is mimicking the lion’s behaviour: the shouting and the threats (roaring) don’t scare us, and the US’s continual announcement of new sanctions is to us just like the lion breaking wind”.

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There are monsters among us. Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela. Or even Russia or China, both of whom are seen as “threats” even though American soldiers, sailors and marines sit on their borders and not vice versa. The United States is perhaps unique in the history of the world in that it sees threats everywhere even though it is not, in fact, threatened by anyone.

Just as often, one learns about a new atrocity by Israelis inflicted on the defenseless Arabs just because they have the power to do so. Last Friday in Gaza the Israeli army shot and killed four unarmed demonstrators and injured 300 more while the Jewish state’s police invaded a Palestinian orphanage school in occupied Jerusalem and shut it down because the students were celebrating a “Yes to peace, no to war” poetry festival. Peace is not in the Israeli authorized curriculum.

And then there are the Saudis, publicly chopping the heads off of 37 “dissidents” in a mass display of barbarity, and also murdering and dismembering a hapless journalist. And let’s not forget the bombing and deliberate starving of hundreds of thousands innocent civilians in Yemen.

It is truly a troika of evil, an expression favored by US National Security Advisor John Bolton, though he was applying it to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, all “socialist” nations currently on Washington’s “hit list.” Americans, Saudis and Israelis have become monsters in the eyes of the rest of the world even if in their own minds they are endowed with special privilege due to their being “Exceptional,” “Chosen by God” or “Guardians of Mecca and Medina.” All three countries share a dishonest sense of entitlement that supports the fiction that their oppressive and often illegal behavior is somehow perfectly legitimate.

To be sure not all Americans, Saudis or Israelis are individually monsters. Many are decent people who are appalled by what their respective governments are doing. Saudi citizens live under a despotism and have little to say about their government, but there is a formidable though fragmented peace movement in slightly less totalitarian Israel and in the United States there is growing anti-war sentiment. The discomfort in America is driven by a sense that the post 9/11 conflicts have only embroiled the country more deeply in wars that have no exit and no end. Unfortunately, the peace movement in Israel will never have any real power while the anti-war activists in America are leaderless and disorganized, waiting for someone to step up and take charge.

The current foreign policy debate centers around what Washington’s next moves in the Middle East might be. The decision-making will inevitably involve the US and its “close allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia, which should not surprise anyone. While it is clear that President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran before canceling the action at the last minute, exactly how that played out continues to be unclear. One theory, promoted by the president himself, is that the attack would have been disproportionate, killing possibly hundreds of Iranian military personnel in exchange for one admittedly very expensive surveillance drone. Killing the Iranians would have guaranteed an immediate escalation by Iran, which has both the will and the capability to hit high value targets in and around the Persian Gulf region, a factor that may also have figured into the presidential calculus.

Trump’s cancelation of the attack immediately produced cries of rage from the usual neoconservative chickenhawk crowd in Washington as well as a more subdued reiteration of the Israeli and Saudi demands that Iran be punished, though both are also concerned that a massive Iranian retaliation would hit them hard. They are both hoping that Washington’s immensely powerful strategic armaments will succeed in knocking Iran out quickly and decisively, but they have also both learned not to completely trust the White House.

To assuage the beast, the president has initiated a package of “major” new sanctions on Iran which will no doubt hurt the Iranian people while not changing government decision making one iota. There has also been a leak of a story relating to US cyber-attacks on Iranian military and infrastructure targets, yet another attempt to act aggressive to mitigate the sounds being emitted by the neocon chorus.

To understand the stop-and-go behavior by Trump requires application of the Occam’s Razor principle, i.e. that the simplest explanation is most likely correct. For some odd reason, Donald Trump wants to be reelected president in 2020 in spite of the fact that he appears to be uncomfortable in office. A quick, successful war would enhance his chances for a second term, which is probably what Pompeo promised, but any military action that is not immediately decisive would hurt his prospects, quite possibly inflicting fatal damage. Trump apparently had an intercession by Fox news analyst Tucker Carlson, who may have explained that reality to him shortly before he decided to cancel the attack. Tucker is, for what it’s worth, a highly respected critic coming from the political right who is skeptical of wars of choice, democracy building and the global liberal order.

The truth is that all of American foreign policy during the upcoming year will be designed to pander to certain constituencies that will be crucial to the 2020 presidential election. One can bank on even more concessions being granted to Israel and its murderous thug prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring in Jewish votes and, more importantly, money. John Bolton was already in Israel getting his marching orders from Netanyahu on the weekend and Pence was effusive in his praise of Israel when he spoke at the meeting in Orlando earlier in the week launching the Trump 2020 campaign, so the game is already afoot. It is an interesting process to observe how Jewish oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson contribute tens of millions of dollars to the politicians who then in turn give the Jewish state taxpayer generated tens of billions of dollars in return. Bribing corrupt politicians is one of the best investments that one can make in today’s America.

Trump will also go easy on Saudi Arabia because he wants to sell them billions of dollars’ worth of weapons which will make the key constituency of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) happy. And he will continue to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran and Venezuela to show how tough he can be for his Make America Great audience, though avoiding war if he possibly can just in case any of the hapless victims tries to fight back and embarrass him.

So, there it is folks. War with Iran is for the moment on hold, but tune in again next week as the collective White House memory span runs to only three or four days. By next week we Americans might be at war with Mongolia.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

One Turkish soldier was killed and 5 others were injured during clashes with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the region of Afrin, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced on June 26. According to the Defense Ministry, the clashes erupted following an attack on Turkish military positions.

The YPG-affiliated Afrin Liberation Forces (ALF) claimed responsibility for the attack saying that they had engaged Turkish forces in the village of Gilbara in the district of Sherawa. The ALF employed at least 2 anti-tank guided missiles against Turkish positions.

Since the occupation of Afrin by Turkey in early 2018, the ALF and the YPG, with assistance from the PKK, have killed and injured dozens of Turkish troops and pro-Turkish militants with ATGM, IED, sniper attacks and ambushes. This situation, as well as regular clashes between members of pro-Turkish groups, demonstrate Ankara’s inability to establish proper security in the occupied region.

One of the key problems is the essence of pro-Turkish “rebel factions”, which are mostly infiltrated by terrorist ideologies and involved in organized crime activities.

Militants killed 18 soldiers and officers of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in an attack on the town of Atshan in northern Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on June 25. According to the SOHR, militants lost 6 fighters.

The “Wa Harid al-Muminin” operations room, a coalition of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, claimed responsibility for the attack. The coalition is led by Horas al-Din. It is known for being a close ally of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda).

The June 25 incident became the biggest clash between the SAA and militants in northern Hama since the start of the Russia-Turkey-brokered ceasefire there last week.

According to local sources, the sides used this time to reinforce their positions and prepare for further battles. It remains unlikely that a political solution of the situation in Idlib can be found while the zone is primarily controlled by al-Qaeda-style terrorist groups.

Armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) launched by militants attacked the Russian Hmeimim airbase in the province of Lattakia in the early hours of June 26. Local sources revealed that Russian air defense systems intercepted the UAVs, which were approaching the base. Later, the Russian military confirmed this saying that 2 UAVs were eliminated. No damage or casualties were inflicted by the attack.

Ferhat Abdi Sahin, Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that Syria would be a “failed state” without the northeastern region, which is controlled by the US-backed group. The Kurdish commander made the remarks during a meeting of the administration controlling the occupied region.

Sahin claimed that Syria must fully recognize the SDF-controlled administration in northeastern Syria and the SDF as a legitimate armed force fully responsible for the area if it wants to settle the situation via a political agreement. The Kurdish commander stressed that the SDF is stronger than ever, and claimed that ISIS is not posing a serious threat to the northeastern region.

This kind of demand, which would mean a de-facto recognition of the split of Syria and would officially put an end to its territorial integrity, is not likely to be accepted by the Damascus government. SDF leaders and political representatives, who once wanted to negotiate with Damascus, returned to such demands once it appeared that US troops are not going to withdraw from Syria despite Trump’s public declarations.

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