Global Research

Over this weekend, China’s Yuan currency broke out of its band and devalued to more than 7 to $1. At the same time China announced it would not purchase more US agricultural goods. The Trump-US Neocon trade strategy has just imploded. As this writer has been predicting, the threshold has now been passed, from a tariff-trade war to a broader economic war between the US and China where other tactics and measures are now being implemented.

Trump will no doubt declare that China is manipulating its currency. A devaluation of the Yuan has the effect of negating Trump tariffs imposed on China. But China isn’t manipulating its currency. Manipulation is defined as entering global money markets to buy and/or sell one’s currency in exchange for dollars (the global trading currency) in order to influence the price (exchange rate) of one’s currency in relation to the dollar. But China is not doing that, so it’s not manipulating. What’s happening is the US dollar is rising in value (or expected to) and that rise in effect lowers the value of the Yuan. The same is happening to other currencies as well,as the dollar rises. Why is the dollar then rising? There’s a global stampede to safety and that means buying US Treasuries–which are now in freefall in terms of interest rates (and escalating in terms of price). Prices from one year or even less, to 10 and 30 year Treasuries are accelerating. But to buy Treasuries, foreign investors must sell their currencies and buy dollars before buying Treasuries. That escalating demand for dollars is what drives up the value of the dollar, which in turn drives down the value–i.e. devalues-the Yuan in relation to the dollar.

In other words, the slowing global economy which is being driven by the Trump trade wars is what is causing the flight to the dollar and to the safe haven of US Treasuries. Trump’s policies are at the heart of the global slowdown (already in progress due to fundamental forces stalling investment and growth). That slowdown is what’s driving the dollar and in turn lowering the Yuan. Trump policies are ‘manipulating’ the Yuan.

China is of course allowing the devaluation to occur. Previously, it was entering money markets to buy Yuan in order to keep it from devaluing. Now it’s just allowing the process to occur. This is China’s response to Trump’s imposing an additional 10% tariffs on $300 billion of China imports last week. It signals that the ‘trade’ war (now becoming an economic war) has moved beyond tariffs.

With Trump’s recent actions, and China’s now response, the potential for a trade agreement in 2019 looks even more unlikely than before.

What will Trump now do? If he remains true to his past behavior when bargaining partners stand up to him, he’ll try to find a way to ‘up the ante’ as they say, and take additional action. He could step up his attack on Huawei and on other China corporations’ partnerships and investments in the US. China will in turn impose restrictions on US corporations doing business in China (i.e. more licensing, more customs inspections, and imposing more non-tariff barriers). It could unleash an anti-American goods boycott in China. It could reduce the export supply of critical ‘rare earths’ it has. It could suspend its previous decision to allow US corporations doing business in China to have a 51% ownership of those operations. And then it has its ‘nuclear options’, as they say: to cut back sharply or cease purchasing US Treasuries and thus recycling US dollars back to the US. Should that happen, the US government would have to borrow more from other sources to offset its annual budget deficit. That would raise the national debt annually even faster than it has been growing–now more than $22 trillion and projected now to rise more than $1 trillion this year. Should recession occur, the deficits and debt could rise as much as $1.7 trillion, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, CBO, research arm.

But with demand for dollars to buy Treasuries surging, the US Treasury and Fed would have more difficulty selling Treasuries, equal to China’s decline of purchases, given that Treasury prices are escalating and interest rates falling.

In short, the US-China trade war, the slowing global economy (now about to spill over to the US economy), the US budget deficit, and Fed interest rates are all inter-related. Trump policies are creating economic havoc on all these fronts.

What are some of the likely responses therefore to the China responses to Trump’s hardball strategy-driven by US neocons since May?

The neocons will have attained their goal, which has always been to scuttle negotiations with China unless the latter capitulated on the technology issue. Behind the tariffs, behind the trade war, has always been the war over next generation technologies (cybersecurity, 5G, and AI). It’s now clear that China will not capitulate, so no trade deal is possible so long as the US neocons remain in control of the trade negotiations which, at this point, they still do. The neocons will now use China’s strong response to Trump’s latest tariffs to convince Trump to take an even harder line against China corporations in the US and abroad with obsequious US allies like the UK and Canada.

Trump’s campaign re-election staff will see this as an opportunity to start blaming China for the slowing US economy. Themes of ‘China the currency manipulator’ and ‘China the source of US opioids’ may become the mantra from the White House.

US big business and multinational corporations will be further motivated to put pressure on Trump to go back to the negotiating table and settle. To date, however, they’ve been largely unsuccessful with influencing Trump and the trade negotiations. The Pentagon, military industrial complex, and US war industries have Trump’s ear and they’re shouting ‘technology capitulation’ or no deal’.

The US Farm sector will be in dire straits now. It’s almost certain that within the next six months Trump will have to provide them a third bailout, costing $20 billion or more. That will mean a total of $50 billion cost in farm subsidies due to the China-US trade war.

Globally, emerging market economies are likely to be big losers from the worsening trade relations between Trump and China. Their currencies will decline like the Yuan. But they have far fewer resources than China has to weather the crisis. Declining currency values in emerging market economies (EMEs) will mean more capital flight from their economies, seeking ‘safe haven’ in US Treasuries, in other currencies (Japan’s Yen as ‘carrying trade’), or in gold. That capital flight will slow their domestic investment. Their central banks will then raise interest rates to slow the flight, but that will slow their domestic economies further. The declining currencies will also mean rising import goods inflation and drive their domestic inflation levels higher, as their economies simultaneously slow. EMEs will face both more recession amidst rising inflation.

The China-US trade deterioration will also likely exacerbate inter-capitalist conflicts, as is already beginning to appear in the current South Korea-Japan trade dispute.

The worsening US-China situation will also have a negative effect on Europe’s economy, already about to slip into recession soon. More dependent on exports, especially Germany, the deterioration of global trade will accelerate Europe’s slowdown. The growing likelihood of a ‘hard’ Brexit coming at the same time in October, will almost certainly plunge Europe into another major recession as well, even before the US.

As the global economy slows and contracts, financial markets–already declining sharply from record highs–can be expected to become increasingly unstable. High on the list of ‘fragile’ financial markets are the non-performing bank loans in Europe, Japan, and especially in India. India’s ‘shadow banks’ are especially unstable. Corporate dollar based bond markets in Latin America are another locus of fragility. And in the US, junk bond, triple B investment grade corporate bonds (also junk), and leveraged loans (i.e. junk loans) are candidates for financial instability events following the next US recession.

In short, Trump has been making a mess of US economic policy. And the Fed and monetary policy of lower interest rates cannot ‘save’ him. Recent (and future) cuts in interest rates will have virtually no effect on the real US economy in coming months as it slows. And Trump has essentially negated fiscal policy as a source of stimulus. His massive 2018 tax cuts ($4 trillion over the next decade) has played a primary role in the US annual $1 trillion budget deficits now baked into the US economy every year for another decade. US national debt will go to $34 trillion and, according to the CBO, interest on the debt alone will rise to $900 billion a year by 2027. So fiscal policy as tax policy is now painted into a corner along with central bank interest rate policy. And massive deficits and debt mitigate against political action to increase government spending as a way out of Trump’s crisis.

For the past decade or more, US policy has been to use both monetary policy and tax policy to subsidize capital incomes to the tune of trillions of dollars a year, every year. It used to be that monetary (Fed) and fiscal policy were used to ‘stabilize’ the economy in the event of recession or inflation. No longer. A decade and more of using these policies to subsidize capital incomes has led to the negation of the effectiveness of these policies for purposes of economic stabilization.

The US is now headed for a major recession, with neither ‘monetary ammunition’ nor fiscal ammunition at its disposal with which to try to stimulate the economy as it enters recession. This has never happened before. But its consequences could be enormous–for the depth and duration of any recession to come.

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

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, September 30, 2019. Dr. Rasmus blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is kyklosproductions.com. His twitter handle @drjackrasmus. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

When Trump said he was considering a blockade of Venezuela yesterday, it was possible to dismiss it as a meaningless statement that would have no policy implications. Unfortunately, Trump seems to have meant what he said:

Donald Trump is serious about a possible U.S. blockade of Venezuela, a senior administration official said Friday, saying that the country’s president Nicolas Maduro has a short window to voluntarily leave power.

It sounds like the Trump administration is moving towards military intervention against Venezuela after all. Ever since the failed would-be coup at the end of April, it seemed as if Trump had written off Venezuela and had turned his attention elsewhere. Now it appears that the U.S. could begin imposing a military blockade of the country in the coming months. The humanitarian implications of a blockade alone make it completely unjustifiable. Set aside for a moment the fact that blockading Venezuela serves no U.S. interests and would have no international legitimacy or support, and just consider that it would speed up and exacerbate a likely famine that our government’s sanctions have already hastened. Blockading a country suffering from a major economic and humanitarian crisis would be criminal, and it would inflict even more misery and death on tens of millions of innocent people.

The article adds:

But the official said Trump’s statement should be taken seriously and is the direction U.S. policy is headed with regard to Venezuela. The official asked not to be identified as a condition of participation in a briefing for reporters.

It was just a little over six months ago that the U.S. recklessly took sides in Venezuela’s internal political crisis. Since the start of the regime change policy, the U.S. has imposed cruel sanctions that inflict collective punishment on the population, and it is now heading towards unjustified and illegal military action. This is where misguided meddling in the internal affairs of other countries usually leads, and this is why the U.S. should stay out of the political disputes of other countries.

Congress and the public must oppose any attempt at a blockade by the Trump administration. A blockade of Venezuela won’t make the U.S. or the region more secure, and it is a stepping stone on the path to launching attacks on the Venezuelan government and possible invasion. For the sake of the people of Venezuela, regional stability, and our own interests, we must reject a blockade of Venezuela.

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On this week’s episode of 9/11 Free Fall, host Andy Steele is joined by Franklin Square Fire Commissioner Christopher Gioia to discuss his fire district’s recent passage of a historic resolution supporting a new investigation into events of 9/11.

We invite you to listen on YouTube or to read the interview below.

“On July 24, 2019, the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which oversees a volunteer fire department that serves a hamlet of 30,000 residents, just outside of Queens, New York, made history by unanimously passing a resolution that supports a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, becoming the first legislative body in the country to do so.”

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Transcript

Andrew Steele: On July 24, 2019, the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which oversees a volunteer fire department that serves a hamlet of 30,000 residents, just outside of Queens, New York, made history by unanimously passing a resolution that supports a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, becoming the first legislative body in the country to do so.

Today, we’re joined by the man who introduced that resolution, Christopher Gioia. He’s a former firefighter and chief of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department, and now a commissioner that oversees that department. Mr. Gioia, welcome to the show.

Christopher Gioia: Thank you very much, Mr. Steele.

Steele: Before we get into the big news that everybody is talking about in the movement, and all throughout alternative media, we want to get to know you a little bit more, so please tell us about yourself and your career.

Gioia: Well, let’s see. I am presently in the construction industry. Franklin Square Fire Department is a volunteer fire department. We’re comprised of people from all walks and all trades. I’ve been in Franklin Square, I guess, for most of my life. I grew up maybe a block away from the firehouse, so when I was growing up, I used to sit on the curb and watch the firetrucks go by. I always wanted to be a fireman.

In the meantime, I completed high school, and I had joined the Marine Corps. When I had gotten out of the Marine Corps, I came back to town, and I wanted to continue my service, because the fire department is a paramilitary organization, so I went to the fire department, and I joined the local fire department. I’ve been with the Franklin Square/Munson Fire Department now for 32 years. I rose through the ranks, lieutenant and captain. I went through the chief’s office. We have three chiefs, second assistant, first assistant, and then you become chief of department. Those are two-year terms.

Then some years went by. We also have the fire district, which is comprised of five fire commissioners, who are responsible for the buildings and the grounds, the maintenance of the equipment, uniforms, and such. Pretty much, it’s administrative, and you pay the bills, but it is an elected position, and you have to submit a petition and run for office, and there are other people out there that you have to run against, so you actually have to mount a campaign. Then whatever monies, because it’s public money, everything has to be done according to state law. Everything has to be voted on, and there’s policies and procedures, and everything has to be on the up and up and above board.

We are audited by the state. We have our own internal auditors. Every penny is accounted for, and we do run a tight ship over here. I’ve been a commissioner now for about, I guess, three years. They’re five-year terms, so I’m probably about halfway through. You lose track of time. When you get older, things have a tendency to blur a little bit.

Steele: Is it just one term that you have or are allowed, or are you allowed to run again, when the five years are up?

Gioia: You can run again for another five-year term. You could actually stay in office. The other four commissioners have been in office 10, 15, maybe 20 years, so I’m pretty much the new kid on the block. The other members… We have another ex-chief, who’s sitting on the board, as well. He was chief of the department back in the late ’80s or the early ’90s. That would actually be Commissioner Malloy. Then you have Commissioner Saltzman, who is a member of Engine Company Number Three. You have Commissioner Lyons, who is a member of Engine Company Number Two. Commissioner Joseph Torregrossa, he’s the chairman, and he’s also a member of Engine Company Number Two.

You can run again. Five-year terms is a long time, but if you’re in there, and you like what you’re doing, it’s pretty procedural after… For me, personally, after being chief and being commissioner, coming into the district, it’s actually a less hectic pace. When you’re chief, you respond to every call, and you’re out there on the front lines. Pretty much, the commissioners are the ones in the background, just paying all the bills. It’s a lot less hectic. It’s more relaxed. When you get a little older, you want to be a little bit more relaxed.

Steele: I understand that myself, as I’m getting older. Believe me. Now, please tell us about your 9/11 story. Where were you on the day of September 11th, and how did you first hear the news?

Gioia: On 9/11, I was working… As I said, I do construction for a living. I’m a construction surveyor. I work for a large construction company. I was working on new construction of a small power plant on the river, the East River in Brooklyn, just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. I was working with a gentleman, who works in Upstate New York. We were working. We’re less than two miles from the Trade Center, and you have a spectacular view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the river.

We heard this explosion, me and my partner, and he remarked something like, “Is somebody blasting around here?” Because he knew what the sound was. It didn’t register, so we looked around, and somebody said, “Hey, look! The Trade Center, the Twin Towers, is on fire.” We were looking at it, and we’re like… We pretty much knew right away. We’re like, okay, a plane hit it or a helicopter hit it. It was up high, and there was enough smoke and fire that we could see.

Then somebody ran out of one of the trailers and said that a plane had hit the North Tower. It was a spectacularly beautiful day. It was just this beautiful blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and it was this perfect day. I’m thinking to myself, I’m like, this guy, whoever was flying the plane, how could you hit the building? It’s just absolutely perfect flying weather.

I have survey equipment, which is pretty much like a telescope, so we focused the instruments on the North Tower, and I could see the imprint of the plane. I could actually see everything. Just looking at it, it was registering that we all thought it was maybe a small propeller plane, like a Piper Cub or something like that, but just from looking at the damage, it was like you knew that it was something larger.

In the meantime, then, the person… People were running around, scurrying, and they didn’t know what was going on, and then all of a sudden, we were watching. Then from our vantage point, we couldn’t see the plane coming from the other side, because the second plane that hit the South Tower came from the Statue of Liberty side, which is the New Jersey side, and the building exploded, and it blew out on the side, and then all hell broke loose. We were like, we’re under attack, you know?

People just wanted to leave the job. Me and my partner, we were transfixed on what we were seeing, because we had the instruments set up, and people wanted to see what was going on. We actually could see people waving for help. I could see people waving their clothes from the windows. I actually saw the lady who was perched at the bottom of the impact hole in the North Tower. I believe she was identified, and she ultimately wound up being killed, but I saw her.

Then it got even worse, because then you saw people jumping out of the building, and then that was it. I couldn’t watch it anymore, and I had to get home to my wife and my kids. My son was just about a year old. I told my boss. I said, “Listen, I’m out of here,” so I jumped in my truck, and we’re about… From Brooklyn to my house is probably about 20 miles, and it’s about maybe five or six miles to get to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

When I had driven about five miles to get on the expressway, when I got up to the expressway, I looked in the rear view mirror, and the whole sky of Manhattan down by the Trade Centers was just blacked out by this cloud. I guess the North Tower had collapsed, but I didn’t know it yet. People had just stopped on the highway, and everybody was just staring. I turned on the radio, and then all kinds of reports were coming in. I just, I flew home, and I made it home in record time. It must’ve taken me 15-20 minutes, because I was literally doing 90 miles an hour down the highway to get home.

I got home, and I threw open the door. My wife looked at me, and she goes, the South Tower just collapsed. I couldn’t understand. I said to her, I go, “What do you mean the South Tower just collapsed?” I go, “What happened to the North Tower?” She said, “That one collapsed 15 minutes ago.” I just sat back down on the couch with my wife, and we just sat there, and we watched TV. We were just in shock, because it was just too much to take in. We just sat there, and we just watched, watched the TV, and we just watched everything, as it unfolded.

Steele: It was horrible enough to watch it on television from Florida, where I was at the time. I can’t imagine standing there watching what you just described through your equipment that day, and seeing that. I know for New Yorkers, it had, of course, a more profound impact, because they actually lived it, people in New York and in the surrounding areas. It happened right in front of them. I understand that you had friends that died on September 11th. Do you want to tell us about them, and the lives that they lived?

Gioia: Yes, that’s correct, Andrew. I lost three of my friends, who were city firemen. One of them, Thomas Hetzel, was in the department here in Franklin Square. The other two lived in Franklin Square, and I was friends with them. I grew up with firefighter, Robert Evans. We used to pretty much hang out, maybe down at the park. He was a friend from school. Then the other firefighter, Michael Kiefer, he was one of these kids who used to come around the firehouse on his bicycle, and he was a… We’d call him a buff. He would have his scanner, and he would follow the trucks around. He grew up, and he joined the fire department.

He went into the towers. He responded. They never found him. I think they found little bits and pieces of Bobby. I was speaking to his sister the other day. They actually recovered some more parts or bone fragments. Tom they found in a stairwell. He was on his way out of the building. I was really good friends with Tom. I pretty much grew up with him. I went to his wedding. We did things together, and he was a good friend. They were all good people.

Steele: September 11th happened. You obviously have a personal connection to the event through your friends that died, through the fire department. How did you come to be exposed to the World Trade Center evidence that AE911Truth puts forth?

Gioia: After 9/11, the town really pulled together, the town of Franklin Square. We opened up the firehouse, and people were asked to drop off donations, whatever they could donate in the way of maybe food, water, clothing, whatever supplies that they could think of, that we packed onto a truck, and we actually brought down to Ground Zero to give out to the rescue workers. One of my friends in the fire department is a retired airline pilot. He was an FAA instructor. He flew every kind of aircraft, and he was totally familiar with jet planes and everything like that.

One of the stories that struck us odd, right from the get-go, and he even said this, was that they mentioned that the hijackers had turned off the system on the plane, and that stopped the air traffic controllers from seeing them. He was like, “Well, if they turn that off, that doesn’t erase the radar signature.” That always struck me as odd, and even struck him as odd, because they were saying, well, they couldn’t track the plane, but that’s not true.

That always stuck in my brain, and then years went by, and didn’t think anything of it. Pretty much, we were trying to get our lives back on track, I’d say, for the first year, went to numerous wakes and funerals for a solid year, of just firemen and cops and civilians who were killed. It wasn’t a pleasant time. It was actually a time that I really don’t care to remember too much. I guess I’ve repressed the memories, and it’s kind of hazy, but I do remember enough.

Then we gradually built our lives back, and life pretty much got back to normal, even though you have the wars going on, and you have… All kinds of things were going on, but people accepted it, and we had to move on. We had to carry on, and we did.

Being in the construction industry, I speak with a lot of people. I was talking with some people, and we were talking about building construction, and we got onto talking about how the towers had collapsed. Then one of the guys that I was talking with said, “You know about Building 7?”

I was like, “Well, what about Building 7? What is it? What was it?” I really didn’t know too much about it. I knew that a third building had come down, but at the time you’re watching this, I guess I really started watching the news a couple of days after 9/11, when Franklin Square was called into the city, and we had to do standby duty at a city firehouse. We were all glued around the TV, and they kept showing Building 7 from uptown, like around the Empire State Building, so you could see the building come down. At the time, nobody really cared about Building 7, because everybody was more fixated on the Twin Towers.

Then this person that I was speaking with, another one of the construction workers, he’s like, “Yeah,” he goes, “that building came down. It wasn’t hit by a plane, and I have some real good photos/videos of it close up.” He started showing me that, and then on one of the videos, you could actually see the windows blowing out, and the windows blew out on multiple floors, all at the same time, and then the building buckled on both ends, and then the roof… The roof had initially caved in, but then the whole building came down symmetrically.

I just stood there, and I looked at him. I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Where did you get that?”

He’s like, “It’s on the web. You could go online, and you could bring up pictures of all of this.”

That’s what spurred my curiosity, so I went online, and I started researching pictures of the collapses. I’m looking at the collapses, and then I’m hitting different websites. There’s a lot of crap out there, and there’s a lot of people who are off the wall with all kinds of different theories about everything, but I wasn’t interested in that. I was more interested in the dynamics of the collapse.

I looked at Building 7 in the closeup, and then somebody had stitched together, I guess, some pictures of a controlled demolition, and they put it side by side, next to Building 7. Then I was looking at… I was going through the interviews, and then I was looking at the news reports. There was a report from Dan Rather, and he said he was watching Building 7, and how it reminded him of a controlled demolition.

I’m looking at that building, and now, from a construction point of view, and then from being a fireman, and I’m like, “There’s something literally wrong with this picture, because fire doesn’t act like that.” If the building wasn’t hit by a plane… They said there were raging fires, and there were no raging fires in Building 7. There was fires on a few floors, and by the time of the collapse, they had pretty much gone out. There was damage when the North Tower collapse. Okay, I get that, but the building would’ve collapsed on the damaged side, and it would’ve been an asymmetrical collapse. It wouldn’t have been a symmetrical collapse.

Even if you look at the video of the building coming down, it doesn’t collapse from the top. You see the roof coming down, but it starts to collapse from the bottom. All the core columns, I know from construction, all the core columns had to have been severed at the same time, for a uniform, symmetrical collapse like that. There’s no two ways about it, never going to have a steel frame building collapse in that fashion without something else going on.

That spurred me on even further, and I started looking into more videos. Then I was interested in what eyewitnesses had to say, because I don’t… I’m not going on hearsay, and I’m not going on theories. I want to know what people saw. There’s a lot of testimony there from the firemen and police, first responders, as to what they saw and they heard. I believe about 200 or so mention explosions. They saw red flashes. There was a lot of popping, explosions, and everybody had pretty much… There was a common theme. They all said they thought it was… It almost looked like a controlled demolition. The people actually said that.

Then I’m like, all right, but you know, I’m going through. I’m surfing the web, and then I hit Architects and Engineers website, and this website had it all together, and it presented it in a logical fashion, yeah, all right, this is what happened. Then they back it up with professional people, and they… backed up by eyewitness testimony and how certain things are just not possible. You can’t suspend the laws of physics. Gravity only operates downward. It doesn’t operate from outward. The laws of science most certainly do apply. The laws of the building, the way the buildings were constructed, that applies. If you put theories to the test, which they have, then you prove that it’s not really a theory anymore, or you eliminate things that just are impossible to happen.

That coalesced in my mind. Then after, I would say, two or three years of doing research and digging, digging through testimony, and looking at pictures, and hitting various websites, it pretty much was obvious that the official government narrative is not really what happened that day. It’s absolutely far from the truth, and it’s not a good thing.

What was done, it was something… It was terrible, and it was perpetrated on the American public by, I’m just going to say, a rogue group, and there was an agenda. There definitely was an agenda. There was a lot going on, and a lot of good people got killed. That’s something that this country cannot tolerate, because it just goes against everything that we stand for. People were murdered for that, and that’s something that… You know what? That really disturbs me, and I know it disturbs a lot of other people, too.

Steele: Absolutely, and I think you really lay out the evidence very well, from your own research and perspective. When you woke up to this, through your slow process of deep research, like so many of us, did you speak to other people about this, other firefighters? What were their reactions? I’d also like to know, what did this do to your world view?

Gioia: When I first started talking to people about it, they just kind of laughed it off, and they were like, you’re crazy, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. They just kind of blew it off. Then I would say, “Well, wait a minute. Look at these pictures with me.” You could see, if you look at the Twin Towers exploding, and really look below the collapse, at the beginning, you could actually see floors blowing out in a pattern coming down. Then the debris from the collapsing floors covers it up, but you can actually see the floors blowing out. There’s some really good pictures of that.

I would try to tell people that maybe it’s not all as it seems, and that there’s definitely something else here that we need to look at. Initially, people didn’t want to know, and it is definitely a sensitive issues, because we’re pretty much right on top of it, but I’m persistent. I brought it up to a few people, and I showed them a few things to spur their curiosity. I don’t think it changed my world view. I think that, if anything, I always knew that the other world was a crazy place.

Steele: What first gave you the idea to pursue this resolution, and how difficult was the decision for you to go ahead and broach this subject with your colleagues?

Gioia: I have been putting it out there for a couple years now in the fire department. Being commissioner, I do go to meetings with other fire districts, and being an ex-chief, I do go to meetings for chiefs, The Chiefs Association in Nassau County. I brought it up at a fire district meeting. I actually read the petition. I saw the petition. I agreed with the need to have another investigation, because a lot of evidence has surfaced in the past 18 years that needs to look at. A lot of it has been uncovered by Architects and Engineers. It’s been uncovered by a lot of people, who have taken the time to analyze, and to render a professional opinion on what the evidence shows. That, to me, was very important.

I started telling people about the petition. I said that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York actually has this petition to get a grand jury investigation going. I said, “That’s where we need to go.” I said, “My feelings on the matter don’t mean anything.” I said, “We’re not engaging in conspiracy theories at all. Let’s look at the evidence, and let the evidence guide us on the direction that we need to go.” That is so important. I think that the American people, I think that any rational person, would agree with that, that you discount everything else. You can’t go on hearsay. Let’s take a hard look at what’s there, and let that just guide us. We owe it to the people who were murdered on 9/11 and the countless thousands, or tens of thousands of people who were killed in these wars overseas, in the name of fighting terrorism or whatever you want to call it, and get to the heart of the matter, and get to the truth.

If the evidence takes us in that direction, and we do find out that there are other people responsible, and they’re in the government, or if they’re in the Pentagon, or they’re in the business sector, then these people need to be held to account. They need to be brought to justice. We need to get this country back on track.

Steele: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. So much was affected by September 11th. We’re still living the ramifications of it to this day. That’s why so many people are dedicated, and I can tell, probably one of the reasons why you’re so dedicated, too. I’m curious about the interactions in discussing this resolution. What was some of the feedback and discussion that took place before you guys actually met and passed this thing?

Gioia: I approached the other commissioners, and I said, “Listen, I want to sponsor a resolution in support of the petition at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.” The other commissioners were receptive. They’ve been in the fire service for many years. We’ve been intimately involved with everything with 9/11, and they know where I’m coming from. They know that I don’t get myself involved in anything unless I believe in it 100%. They looked. They listened to what I had to say. I said, “I’d like to do, introduce, a resolution.” I said, “I looked it up, and a resolution, a legal resolution is… It’s not really binding. It’s pretty much mostly symbolic, but it is a statement from a legislative group, and where elected official is a statement that we recognize certain things, and that we support the investigation. Coming from a fire department, that would lend some weight to the movement to get the U.S. Attorney’s Office to present the petition,” which I understand they’re not talking, and they’ve had it for about year.

That was the impetus on getting the resolution going. That was just to add some weight, and to add some considerable support to the movement that’s out there. I think we accomplished that.

The Franklin Square and Munson Fire District commissioners: Philip F. Malloy, Jr. (left); Dennis G. Lyons (second from left); Joseph M. Torregrossa (center); Christopher L. Gioia (second from right); Les Saltzman (right).

Steele: You absolutely did. Now, I understand from the article, that AE911Truth has posted and sent out to all of our supporters that you had family members of the fallen at this meeting. Can you talk about that?

Gioia: I invited Tommy Hetzel’s parents, his widow, his sister; and I invited my friend, Bobby Evans… His mom and his sister were there. We had them sit there up front. The family of Michael Kiefer, they really took the hit, because Mike was their shining star, and I don’t think they ever fully recovered from losing Michael. He had a couple of sisters and whatnot. I think he was the only son. His was a real big loss over there. I know that the Evans family definitely took the hit. I know his mom. His mom was devastated.

I just couldn’t say enough about the Hetzel family, because they’ve been through so much. There’s been other tragedy in the family. His mom and his dad and his brother and his sister, his remaining siblings, have been so strong throughout everything, and I just can’t imagine the strength that it takes for them to continue, but they do. Yes, they were there for the vote on the resolution.

The Franklin Square and Munson Fire District commissioners greet the families of fallen firefighters Thomas J. Hetzel and Robert Evans, both Franklin Square natives.

Steele: Obviously, you’re aware of how significant this was. Again, it’s the first legislative body in the country to put forth such a resolution. Were other commissioners in this body aware of the historic significance of this resolution?

Gioia: I don’t think they realized the full impact of what we were doing until after it was done. They knew it was significant, though, because I told them. Everything is transparent with the fire district. One commissioner doesn’t do anything without letting the other commissioners… We don’t operate independently, and we do have a district council, which oversees everything that we do, and they guide us, and they give legal advice on everything.

The resolution was drafted. The commissioners, we all, had a chance to look at it. It was run by counsel to make sure that the T’s were crossed, and the I’s were dotted, and that it was presented in a legal fashion. Whether or not they knew the full impact of what the resolution was going to do, I don’t think any of us did. I think we had a narrow focus, and that was just to support the resolution, and then to have this thing literally… It got big real fast, and I think that that took everybody, including myself, by surprise, but no. They knew it was going to have an impact, but I don’t think we all realized the tremendous impact that it was going to have.

Steele: Us veterans in the movement are fully aware that, many times, those who don’t want discussion of the evidence, who don’t want to talk about this issue, that want to stifle any questions about September 11th, will oftentimes try to invoke the firefighters and the emotional impact of that day on them, to try to shut down the discussion. What is your reaction to those kinds of methods to try to stifle discussion of the evidence?

Gioia: I think it’s a diversionary tactic. I think that the psychological implications of 9/11 were definitely discussed and implemented, that 9/11 was a very sophisticated attack and plot, that it was very well planned, and they covered all the bases. To me, it’s like psychological warfare, so if you constantly shift the focus from the facts to the dramatic effect, then you’ve been successful, because now you’ve taken the focus off where you need it to be.

I’d just tell people, listen, I’ve always said that 9/11 needs to be viewed from a clinical standpoint, where you just disassociate yourself from all emotion, and you just look at the facts, and that’s it. You don’t get involved in the drama. You don’t get involved in the emotion, the feelings, any of that. That’s a non sequitur. That just has no bearing on what we’re trying to do.

I tell people bluntly, listen. You know what? This is a crime. This was a mass murder. That’s what this was, okay? That’s all it was. It was a mass murder; 3,000 people were murdered in cold blood, on TV, or in front of your eyes, okay? Buildings collapsed, and planes crashed into this, and all kinds of things happened. We need to look at it, and we have to put literally everything under the microscope. Everything has to be looked at and analyzed. It has to be analyzed from a scientific point of view, and there’s no emotion to it. It’s this, and it’s that.

If it’s this, then we need to go there. If it’s that, we need to go there. If you look at the evidence, and you look at the testimony, any reasonable person would say there’s plenty of reasonable doubt there, and you know what? You can’t violate the laws of physics, and you can’t say that steel frame buildings just collapse for no reason at free fall. You just can’t make these statements the way the government’s throwing out these statements. They didn’t even want to entertain some of the evidence. What they didn’t want to look at, they didn’t look at.

To give you an example, in the case of Building 7, they asked the gentleman, who was giving the report… Actually, he came out and said, he goes, “Oh, there was no evidence of explosives found.” Then they asked him, “Well, did you look for explosives?” He said, “No, we didn’t look for explosives.” How disingenuous is that, that we didn’t find explosives because we didn’t look for explosives? There’s a lot of doublespeak going on.

Steele: Now, you’ve passed this resolution. You’re getting a lot of attention on the Internet from alternative media, and I think the corporate media is probably aware of this, whether or not they choose to report it. We all know the situation with them, but do you think that other firemen, who may hear about this, particularly in New York City, in the surrounding areas, do you think they’re ready to hear out this issue with an open mind, or do you think the emotion of that day still carries 18 years later?

Gioia: I think, Andrew, it cuts both ways. I think you have firemen out there, who actually are embracing this, because they know that something’s not right. I know that for a fact, because from the meetings that I’ve attended with the chiefs, the ex-chiefs, fire district commissioners from the other towns around Nassau County, that there are people out there, who do not accept the official narrative. They know that something is wrong, and they’re absolutely willing to look at the evidence, and they do want to see some movement. They want to see another investigation, because they know that things just don’t add up.

You have some people, who, they’re pretty much in denial, and they don’t want to go down that road anymore, because they’ve been affected so much that… We’ve been destroyed up here in New York. We have. We took the hit. People, they just… You mention 9/11, and they go right into the shell. They go right into a defensive posture.

Now that time has elapsed a little bit, you have a younger crowd that wasn’t really as much on top of it, and they are willing to embrace the evidence, and they’re willing to embrace people who are talking about it, because if you stick to the facts, and that’s all we need to do is just stick to the facts and say, listen, these are the facts, and this is the evidence, and we need to look at this, then nobody’s going to argue with that. All right, we need another investigation. Let’s talk about things. Let’s talk about this. We’re all adults. We all have a stake in this.

There’s no rational person out there that’s going to tell me, as a firemen, “You know what? Oh, we can’t talk about that,” because I’d be the first one to tell them, “You know what? No. You know what? I’m going to talk about it. My friends were murdered. They were murdered right in front of me. You know what? I want to get to the bottom of it, so what are you telling me? You going to tell me, no, you don’t want an investigation? What’s up with that?”

It’s beyond belief that there are people out there that would not embrace a new investigation, so we could get to the truth, and we could look at evidence that hasn’t been looked at and is mandated by Congress that they have to show this evidence, and it’s mandated by law that the U.S. Attorney has to present this to a grand jury. That’s the rule of law, and that’s what this country is all about. That’s what makes this country what it is. That’s what sets this country apart from other countries in the world, is that we have respect for law and order. There is the rule of law, and that has been violated. It’s been grossly violated, and we need to get back to that, because if we do not get back to the rule of law, then this country, the ideals, everything that this country has been built on is going to take the hit.

You know what? I don’t think you’re going to let it happen. I know damn sure I’m not going to let it happen.

Steele: Those are powerful words, and I know that there are other firemen out there, all over America, who have gotten wind of what happened in the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, and are maybe even listening to this interview, wanting to meet the man who proposed that resolution. They may be inspired, but they may be holding back for various reasons. They may want to do the same thing in their fire districts, maybe other fire commissioners with that authority. What would you say to them, as they’re considering this? What would you say to them, in terms of why it’s so important, and why they should pursue the same action that your district did?

Gioia: Andrew, I would say this to the other firefighters, to the police officers, to anybody, any other person out there, any American, that you know what? We’re all Americans here, and we believe in ideals which make our country great. There comes a point in everyone’s life when you have to make a stand, and that’s a really tough thing to do for people. You make a decision that, you know what? You’re going to stand up for something.

Now, a lot of people talk tough, and a lot of people, they just… That’s it. They’re just talk, and they don’t really act, and back it up with actions, but it’s incumbent on especially firemen. We’ve taken the extra step. We’ve gone the extra mile. We’re out there protecting lives and saving property, and we’re on the forefront of all of this.

I would say to anybody who believes in this country that it’s time to make a stand, because 3,000 people were murdered, and you can’t let this go. You’re not going to let it go, because if they’re going to murder 3,000 people, what are they going to do next? I’m not going to have my kids jeopardized. I don’t really like how the country has been guided down this dark path. We need to get back on track, and it’s up to the people in this country, the good people.

Americans, to me, aren’t afraid to stand up for what they believe in. We’ve been so beaten down that, you know what? You’re afraid to speak, because, God forbid, they’re going to say, “Oh, you’re a hater,” or, “You’re a racist,” or, “You’re a truther,” or something like that. You know what? I’m not afraid to get out there and speak my mind. You know, you speak intelligently, and you speak armed with the facts, but you know what? You have to speak. People really need to make a stand on this one, because if we don’t, if we don’t, then something else even worse is going to happen, because it only emboldens things like this to happen.

I think there’s a quote. It says, “For evil to triumph, good people need not do anything.” That is so true, so it depends on the person. I would just encourage people out there, listen, if you feel strongly about this, then do something about it. Don’t sit there. Get up and do something about it, because there’s a lot of people out there that will help you, that’ll embrace this. Like you said, there’s a movement out there of people who just, for whatever reason, they just don’t believe what we’ve been told.

The more you look at it, you could see the truth. I tell people, listen. I’m not going to tell you how to think, okay? I’m not going to tell you one way or the other about what happened on 9/11. You do that yourself. You look at it. You research it. You come to your own conclusions, all right? Then, maybe a few months or a year down the road, we could meet up again, and we could talk about it, and see if your position has changed. We need to get behind the investigation. People need to get behind this, and get the investigation going, and let the wheels of justice do their job.

Steele: Something I always commonly mention, or I have been doing for the past year or so is we’re here 18 years after this event took place. If the post-9/11 world were a person, it would be old enough to vote at this point, or I guess it would be this September, so it’s been a long time. Some people say, why do you keep at this? It was so long ago. Maybe it was a controlled demolition. Maybe it wasn’t, but all those people, or most of them, are out of office now. Why can’t we just move forward? Why do we have to focus on the negative? I mean, this is an attitude that exists out there among the rank and file of America. I hear it often. What’s your response to that? What do you have to say to those sentiments?

Gioia: I hear the same thing, Andrew. I hear it. It’s 18 years later. Why are you bothering? I say to these people, because these people were our friends. They were our neighbors. They were sons. They were daughters. They were husbands. They were wives. They had lives. These were Americans, who went to work. They just were going about their business, and they died horrible deaths.

These were my friends, and I’m not going to forget that. I’m not satisfied with the way they’ve been treated. Like I said, reinvestigate. I get choked up. I get emotional. I would get emotional with people and just say, listen, unless you’ve lost somebody, and I always say, listen, if somebody murdered somebody in your family, and there was evidence that came about after, that pointed at somebody else, or it took you in a different direction, wouldn’t you want to pursue that? There’s no statute of limitation on murder, and these people were murdered.

That’s why, after 18 years, I’m still looking for justice for my friends, because I know that there are people out there who need to be held to account. I’m not going to let go. I’m not going to let go. If I spend the rest of my life pursuing this, pursuing justice for my friends, I’m going to do that.

Now, with regards to that, being a fireman, and being a firefighter… This is for all of the firemen out there. You know it’s a brotherhood, and we’ve been trained that when you fight the fire, you go in. You don’t go in alone. You go in with your brother or your sister. You go in together, and if something happens, you come out together. You don’t leave that person behind, so I would say this.

We’re not leaving our brothers behind. We’re not leaving these people behind. These were Americans. These were firefighters, cops, EMS, and they were just ordinary people who went about their business that day. We’re not leaving them behind. We’re not forgetting about them. They deserve justice, and we’re going to see that justice is done.

Steele: Yes, we are, through efforts like yours, through efforts like the ones being put forth by AE911Truth, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. Nobody will be left behind, especially the victims, who we do this work in pursuit of justice for.

Christopher Gioia, I want to thank you for what you got started out there in your district and what I think you’re getting started in the rest of America and the wider world. Of course, thank you so much for coming on 9/11 Free Fall today.

Gioia: All right, thank you very much, Mr. Steele.

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No politician from either of the Two Party/One Party imbroglio will ever mention anything about this Absentee Landlord disgrace. Sadly, absentee landlords have been with us since time in memoriam. These people were even mentioned in the story of Jesus in the New Testament. It seems everybody just accepts that people have a right to own property and rent it out to others who are in need of shelter. Making a profit on someone else’s critical want of a place to live is what ‘Makes Amerika Great Again’, right? No, wrong!

This writer, before finally being able to afford my own home at the age of 45, always lived under the thumb of a landlord. For God’s sake, even the term Landlord comes straight out of Feudalism! The lord of the manor rented out parcels of his land to house the serfs who worked his property, or in some cases his coal mine (See the great 1993 Claude Berri film Germinal). In the fine 1987 John Sayles’ film Matawan, practically the whole town of Matawan WV was owned by the coal company, and the miners all lived in cheaply built rental housing owned by the company. To add insult to this economic injury, they were logistically forced to shop at company stores using company script to purchase necessities at too high prices. Such is how feudalism operated, always, in the case of Matawan, under the guise of a ‘free market’ for labor. Horseshit!

At my first marriage, we rented the ‘walk in’ apartment of a two family house owned by an absentee landlord. This was in Brooklyn N.Y. and our illustrious landlord lived in New Jersey. As shared in a previous column of mine, one day my wife told me that while she was giving a bath to our baby boy, there were giant bugs coming out of the drain. I immediately called Frank, the landlord (a fellow Italian-American, but ethnic ties mean squat to landlords) and told him of this problem. He was reassuring by telling me that he would come by over the weekend and put some Chlordane down the drain to solve the problem.

Chlordane is a chemical compound and also part of a similarly named pesticide mixture resulting from synthesis (main components- heptachlor, chlordane, and nonachlor). These highly chlorinated cyclodienes were classified as organic pollutants hazardous for human health.

After we hung up, I made a few calls to friends who knew more than me about these things. I was told that Chlordane was banned for use in the state of New York, but not yet in New Jersey. I called Frank back and told him this fact. He laughed. “Well kid, I use it here in all my properties. No big deal.” Well, to me it was a big deal. “You got kids Frank? Use it in the bathtub they use, not in my tub!”

Years later my new wife and I rented an apartment from an absentee landlord who owned 19 such properties in the New Hyde Park, Long Island area. This was an old, I mean old house that at one time was a one family home. It was made into two apartments, and we rented the larger one, which was upstairs. The rent then, in 1992, was around $1000 a month. It was an 800 square feet place, advertised as a ‘Three bedroom’. Well, my stepdaughter’s room was so tiny that the door would not close, as it banged into her bed. The bathtub had tiles chipping off the wall and into the tub. The refrigerator was so old and inadequate that I joked about it, saying it had arthritis. The stairway to our apartment had no banister, so my aging parents could not visit me. The landlord expected me to shovel snow. After the first major snowfall, I called him up. I asked him what he was going to do about the foot of snow outside. He told me it was my responsibility. I told him that I had a bad back and could not do it, and if he refused to do so, I was going to call the town’s code enforcement office and put in a complaint. His son appeared within the hour with a snow blower.

We finally left N.Y. and moved to Indianapolis, so my son could attend college and we could finally afford a home. We decided to rent for a year to see how we liked things. An ad took us to this giant rental property with hundreds of units. The model apartment looked fabulous! The buildings all looked freshly painted and clean. We signed a one year lease in late November. About two weeks later, my wife was at the kitchen sink when the faucet just exploded apart, and water was streaming out! A day later there was this really big rainstorm. We were sitting in the living room watching television and the ceiling just began to fall onto the floor, as the rain water poured down on us! The same thing happened in our bedroom, with the water soaking up the wall to wall carpet. I was really pissed! After I had the site manager come down from Chicago to check things out (Yes, the corporation that owned this and other rental properties was not even from Indiana), I told him we were ‘Out of there’ and he needed to waive the lease restriction. This is after I told him I was going to the newspapers, my city councilman, the state Attorney General, the radio stations… by then he waived the lease and asked how soon we could leave. The sad reality is that this Chicago corporation had just purchased the site, which I found out had been an old and dilapidated one. They cleaned it up with fresh paint and new but really inferior kitchen and bathroom fixtures, and Wallah!!! Of course the roofs were from the old days, and thus heavy rains and snow would do what was done to our apartment.

Today, 2019, we see a resurgence of more and more absentee landlords nationwide. With the ‘new’ rise of home prices after the abyss of the 2008 Subprime crash (of which both the government and Wall Street predators helped exacerbate) it seems everyone and his brother seem to want to be investors… on other people’s basic need for shelter. Mega corporations like the Blackstone Group have been buying up cheapened properties, many of them in foreclosure, ever since the bubble burst in 2008. They then convert them into rental properties… many times renting to the very folks who were evicted. As told in a previous column, I had a friend who got a job working for his friend’s dad. He related this to me: “His dad had investors who formed a partnership to buy up foreclosed and abandoned homes, mostly in poor areas of big cities like Detroit. They then put an ad on Craig’s List, and keep a sign in the yard saying ‘Rent to buy’. They hired me to take the phone calls. I would rattle off the conditions which were A) needing the prospective renter to have a verified job, B) putting up $ 1000 and agreeing to move in ‘As Is’. All repairs and renovations were left to the renter to choose to do… and of course pay for. The rent was usually whatever other similar home renters were paying in that area; C) There was a monthly 8% charge on top of the rent charge; D) After 20 years the renter then owned the house.”

Postscript- I called my friend a year later and he told me what his friend’s dad’s company was doing with those rented homes. “Oh, they bundled the agreements and sold them to Wall Street for investment.”

And the hits just keep on coming!

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

Featured image is from Flickr

In case you had not noticed, there is an existential crisis going on within both the MSM and Democratic party that has been on full display during the June and July DNC sponsored presidential debates – and today the DNC and its media sycophants are lock-step in panic mode.

In the aftermath of the July debate when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi) shined a light on her campaign and took Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cal) to task for her misleading record on criminal justice as California Attorney General, the MSM and its Democratic flunkies have pummeled Gabbard about an unplanned meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 just as they have done since Gabbard first announced her candidacy.

Let’s be clear: Is the MSM accusing Gabbard of treason? If they are suggesting that a Major in the US Army National Guard and a combat veteran who served in a medical unit in Iraq for one year committed a treasonous act, they need to make the facts immediately available to the Pentagon and make their factual case to the American public.

If they do not present any facts to support their allegation, then they have once again proven to be no more than vengeful ideological toadies who march to the Deep State’s agenda of sabotaging Gabbard’s campaign.

Immediately after announcing her candidacy, Gabbard and her anti-regime change war message have been systematically dismissed as a Russian/Putin/Assad apologist and delegitimized by both the DNC and MSM.  Given limitations to media access that other candidates have been afforded, she has been forced to deal with hostility and disrespect rather than speak to the issue of peace.   To her credit, Gabbard has learned to push back and stand her ground as the debate platform has provided a perfect setting for her to standout.

As long as Gabbard made few waves with her foreign policy pronouncements and continued to poll at 1%, she represented no threat to anyone.  Now that Gabbard has rocked the debate stage a second time as the top trending candidate on Google with her challenge to Rep. Tim Ryan and now to Sen. Kamala Harris with her disputed record as a ‘progressive prosecutor,” the powers that be have sharpened their knives to question Gabbard’s patriotism and destroy her credibility.

With a growing self confidence that the American public is responding to her agenda, Gabbard, who has been overly-cautious about stepping outside her signature issue, is spreading her wings to show a depth and strength as she easily qualified for the September debate.

Immediately after the debate, Harris had no factual rebuttal to Gabbard’s points as she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

“This is going to sound immodest but I am obviously a top tier candidate so I did expect  to take the hits tonight because a lot of them are trying to make the stage for the next debate.”

Adding his support, Cooper added “for a lot of them, it’s do or die” as Harris continued

“…coming from someone who has been an apologist for an individual Assad who has murdered the people of his country like cock-a-roaches, she who has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously.  I’m prepared to move on.”

Is Sen Harris accusing a Major in the Army National Guard of treason?  If so, let’s hear her facts and if not, Harris needs to clean up her act.  It is an old political trick: when you don’t have the facts, bring out the personal attack and then ‘move on’.

It was those early media kerfuffles with pro-war, pro-establishmentarians that tempered Gabbard to stay focused and maintain her cool as in her interview with former CIA intern Cooper who now masquerades as a CNN ‘journalist.’  In a post debate interview, Cooper was persistent, if not relentlessly dogged, in his pursuit by displaying a new aggressive media strategy as no other candidate is experiencing.

Tulsi: “I’ve seen the cost of war first hand.  In Iraq, serving in a medical unit.  I would never apologize for doing all that I can to fight counter productive regime change wars. If that means meeting with a dictator or meeting with an adversary, absolutely.  I  would do it.” 

Cooper: Do you consider him (Assad) a torturer or a murderer?

Tulsi: That’s not what this is about.  I don’t defend or apologize or have anything to do with what he has done to his people.

Cooper: But if you’re president of the United States, there’s traditionally a role for a US President to call out human abuses overseas..

Tulsi: Here’s the way I look at it, an example of the kind of leadership that I follow is one where Kennedy met with and worked with Khrushchev to forge a deal to keep the American people safe, Reagan met with Gorbachev, Roosevelt met with Stalin, worked with Stalin, Nixon met with Mao; these are the kinds of leaders who think about things that are very practical and real level about how to keep our country and people safe.

Cooper: …but Stalin killed 20 million people

Tulsi: That’s my point exactly.  Roosevelt not only met with him but allied with him to bring about an end to that war.

Cooper: ..but I’m sure Roosevelt would have acknowledged Stalin murdered millions of people, but you don’t want to…

Tulsi: I don’t dispute that..

Cooper: …but you won’t say anything about Bashar Al-assad.

Tulsi: I’ve been very outspoken about this before.  These are things that are being used to distract from the central issue which is that we are still waging a regime change war in Syria, we still have troops in Syria, troops who are dying, that’s why I’m running, to bring about this sea change…”

Cooper: “Just on a factual basis, Assad is a murderer and a torturer, do you not agree with that?

Tulsi: “I don’t dispute that.”

It is apparent that Cooper had his marching orders to entrap Gabbard at all cost, to use his weasel words to wear her down, drain her concentration and energy as he manipulated her into agreeing to something that could later be used against her.  One wonders how Cooper might have dealt with the news that it could be claimed that the last three US presidents would qualify as murderers, torturers and war criminals.

The morning after the debate, MSNBC anchor Yasmin Vossoughian of Iranian ethnicity went on the attack in another display of the new antagonistic media strategy on how to handle Gabbard.  One can assume that Vossoughian was hoping to increase her ratings and impress the higher ups at MSN with her raw aggressiveness as she consistently interrupted Gabbard (nine times) and persisted beyond the point of how a professional journalist conducts an interview.  Gabbard pushed back, demanding to be heard without interruption and calling out MSNBC:

“I want to break this down to what we are talking about.. You’re talking about a meeting that took place three years ago and every time I come back here on MSNBC you have got to talk to me about these issues…every single time for three years?  This is where the propaganda comes in because I have talked about this A LOT for the last three years.”

Vossoughian’s interruptions continued declaring that a meeting with Assad is ‘very controversial meeting to take’ has no understanding that there should be nothing controversial about meeting with any foreign leader:  it is called diplomacy.

Was Vossoughian implying that Gabbard as an officer in the US Army National Guard has conducted treason?  If so, she needs to ‘put up or shut up.’  Gabbard’s response:

“I will not apologize to you or to anyone, let me finish, let me finish, for doing all that I can to, all that I can to prevent our country from continuing to make these perpetual wrong decisions, I will continue to do all that I can to make sure that we end these wasteful regime change wars that have taken such a toll on all of us and made our country less safe.   And if that means having a meeting with a dictator, if that means trying to meet with Kim Jong-un in North Korea to de-escalate tensions and remove this nuclear threat from our country and our people whatever the crisis is , we’ve got to have a leader with the courage to do the right thing for the American people, putting their interests ahead of everything else.  That is what I am focused on and that is at the center of my foreign policy..:.”

With that, Vossoughian ended the interview.

Obviously, there is a distinct difference between diplomacy and treason as the MSM and its partisan rubes can be expected to continue to badger and persecute Gabbard without regard to the truth, honesty or professionalism.

It is worth noting that being a network ‘anchor’ or a television personality with a multi million dollar salary in no way implies that one has ‘felt’ the egalitarian calling to be a journalist.

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

European food safety regulators have found there is no safe level of exposure for a brain-damaging pesticide President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency recently refused to ban.

The European Food Safety Authority said today that chlorpyrifos, widely used on fruits and vegetables in the U.S. and worldwide, “does not meet the criteria” for approval of its use in the 28-nation European Union, citing concerns over the pesticide’s risks to children. The announcement indicates that the EU is likely to ban chlorpyrifos, whose main manufacturer is Dow Chemical Company, when its license expires in January.

“The EU is doing what the science demands: putting public health ahead of the narrow interests of the pesticide industry,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Tragically for American kids and their parents, the Trump administration is kowtowing to chemical agribusiness and allowing a dangerous pesticide to be sprayed on foods children eat every day.”

A robust body of scientific evidence shows that even small doses of chlorpyrifos can damage parts of the brain that control language, memory, behavior and emotion. Multiple independent studies have found that exposure to chlorpyrifos impairs children’s IQs.

EPA scientists assessed those studies and concluded that the levels of the pesticide currently found on food and in drinking water are unsafe. The scientists estimate that typical exposures for babies are five times greater than the agency’s proposed “safe” intake, and 11 to 15 times higher for toddlers and older children. A typical exposure for a pregnant woman is five times higher than it ought to be to protect her developing fetus.

The most recent data from the U.S. Geological Survey show an estimated 5 million pounds of the weedkiller was sprayed on U.S. cropland in 2016.

The EPA was poised to ban chlorpyrifos early in 2017. But after the 2016 election, Dow launched an aggressive campaign to block that decision. Dow donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration festivities, and its CEO met privately with then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Soon after, Pruitt ignored his agency’s own scientists and aborted the scheduled ban.

Last August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Pruitt’s decision violated federal law and ordered the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos within 60 days. But Pruitt’s replacement, Andrew Wheeler, fought the ruling and refused to obey the court’s order.

The Justice Department filed a petition on behalf of the agency, calling on the court to overturn its earlier ruling and leave chlorpyrifos legal. In April, the court ordered Wheeler and the EPA to make a decision within 90 days on whether to ban the pesticide.

Last month, with the court deadline looming, Wheeler announced his decision to allow chlorpyrifos to continue to be used on conventionally grown food crops, like peaches, cherries, apples, oranges and corn.

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The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it will end long-running safeguards meant to protect children from harmful pesticide ingredients used in bug sprays, pet shampoos and on fruits and vegetables.

After receiving data from the pesticide industry – and ignoring contradictory evidence from peer-reviewed studies – the EPA says it will triple the amount of exposure to pyrethroids considered safe for children.

Studies have shown that repeated exposure to pyrethroid insecticides can cause learning deficiencies and neurodegenerative effects associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, among others.

Today’s decision will make it easier for the pesticide industry to get new uses of these pesticides approved, including those previously off limits. For example, it could result in higher levels of the pesticides being used on fruits and vegetables and for flea treatment of pets.

“Make no mistake, the Trump administration is selling out the health of America’s children in order to boost the profits of pesticide companies,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s disgusting and absolutely repugnant.”

One of the roles of the EPA is to establish what it considers to be safe levels for adult exposures to pesticides – and then it is supposed to set a more protective level for young children.

Under the Food Quality Protection Act, unless they have research supporting a less-restrictive level of protection, EPA officials must apply a standard safety factor of “10x,” meaning 10 times more protective for children than adults. The goal is to ensure that children – who are often at increased risk of harm from pesticides – are adequately protected.

For pyrethroids, the “10x” protections were replaced by “3x” protections in 2010. Under today’s EPA proposal, the 3x level of protection will be eliminated. This means that the EPA has greenlighted exposing children under the age of 6 to three times more of the toxic pesticide than is currently considered safe.

The EPA’s decision to reduce the safeguard for children is based on studies and a model developed by a group called CAPHRA, a working group of pesticide companies that sell pyrethroids. That model estimated how quickly pyrethroids would be metabolized by adults and children under the age of 6. It concluded that there were no significant differences.

The industry group finding conflicts with previous peer-reviewed studies showing that children are more sensitive to pyrethroids than adults.

Epidemiological data has also revealed higher incidences of autism spectrum disorders and developmental delay among children whose mothers were living within 1.5 kilometers of sites of pyrethroid applications during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Pyrethroids are also highly toxic to honey bees and highly to very highly toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates.

“Just as they did with the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos, Trump’s EPA is putting pesticide industry profits ahead of children’s health,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center. “The fact that they released the decision to eliminate protections for kids from these neurotoxins less than two weeks after they decided to continue allowing use of chlorpyrifos makes clear exactly who they are interested in protecting.”

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International law is clear. Blockades are undeclared acts of war.

No nation may legally use this tactic against another state unilaterally or with coalition partners.

UN Charter provisions are binding international law. Article 39 authorizes the Security Council alone to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Under Article 41, Security Council members have exclusive authority to “decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.”

Member states may not legally take these actions, or attack another nation, without Security Council authorization — permitted only in self-defense, never preemptively for any reasons.

If Article 41 measures fail, the Security Council may authorize further actions, “includ(ing) demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.”

If the Trump regime on its own or with coalition partners takes any of the above actions against Iran, Venezuela, or any other nations, it will constitute a flagrant breach of international and constitutional law.

It’s what the US has done time and again against nations threatening no one throughout the post-WW II era, part of its permanent war on humanity, accountability never forthcoming.

Does the Trump regime plan preemptive hostile actions against Venezuela and Iran — no matter their illegality?

The so-called Lima Group is a Trump regime cobbled together “coalition” of 12 Latin American anti-Bolivarian social democracy countries plus Canada.

They’re allied with the US plot to replace Venezuela’s legitimate government with pro-Western fascist tyranny, along with giving the US control over the country’s vast oil reserves, the world’s largest.

Months earlier, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted the following:

“What we have said since the creation of this group of governments joined against Venezuela (formed in August 2017), to which the US, in theory, does not belong: they meet to receive orders from @realDonaldTrump through @SecPompeo. What a humiliating display of subordination.”

Their ruling regimes are largely puppets controlled by puppet master Washington, opposing democratic governance they pretend to support — backing the White House coup plot against Venezuela.

On August 6, representatives of the group’s member states will meet for the 15th time in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A separate report said Lima, Peru.

A late July press statement “(r)enew(ed) their support for” Trump regime-designated puppet/usurper in waiting Guaido, a figure with no legitimacy, a traitor to his nation and population.

Bolton and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will attend the session — to give their member states White House marching orders.

Reportedly the meeting is all about consolidating support for isolating, weakening, and blockading, or imposing a quarantine on Venezuela, stepping up efforts to topple President Maduro.

On Friday, Bolton tweeted:

“The US won’t stand by while Maduro attacks Venezuela’s last remaining democratic institution (sic).”

Months earlier, Bolton explained what the Trump regime’s power grab in Venezuela is all about, saying:

“We’re in conversation with major American companies now…It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Its revenues are heavily earmarked for social benefits. If controlled by Big Oil, they’ll be largely or entirely eliminated, the US and its oil giants benefitting at the expense of the Venezuelan people.

The coup attempt also aims to eliminate the hemisphere’s leading social democracy, a notion the US tolerates nowhere, especially not at home.

Last week, Trump admitted he’s considering a “blockade or quarantine” of Venezuela. Maduro denounced what’s clearly illegal, stressing that the Bolivarian Republic will remain “free and independent.”

Does the Trump regime have the same thing in mind for Iran? Is that what the Pentagon’s Operation Sentinel is all about?

The US seeks NATO, regional, and other coalition partners as part of its “maximum pressure” on Iran.

The scheme has nothing to do with “ensur(ing) safe passage, and de-escalat(ing) tensions in international waters throughout the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb strait ,and the Gulf of Oman” — according to a CENTCOM statement.

It’s unrelated to US war secretary Esper saying

“if we think a US ship may be under some type of threat (sic) — being stopped or being seized (sic) — we would want to make sure we have the capacity to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

It has all the earmarks of seeking partners to impose a maritime blockade along Iran’s 1,200 mile Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea coastline.

No NATO countries agreed to ally with the Trump regime’s scheme so far — after weeks of pressure by Bolton, Pompeo and their henchmen.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said

“(p)articipation in the US strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ is ruled out for us.”

Japan and India refused to be part of the scheme. So did Kuwait. Perhaps the US will be a coalition of one — with token support from Israel, the Saudis and UAE alone.

Britain intends a separate Persian Gulf operation with a minimal number of vessels.

On August 2, Politico said “so far, Donald Trump’s coalition to protect oil tankers from alleged Iranian aggression (sic) appears to have just one member — the United States,” adding:

“The British have demurred, the French are noncommittal and the Germans on Wednesday flat out said no.”

European and other nations are concerned about being dragged into a Trump regime war on nonbelligerent Iran by allying with its Operation Sentinel they apparently want no part of — nor an illegal scheme to blockade the country.

According to advisor to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Nathalie Tocci,

“a military operation in the Gulf would increase exponentially the potential triggers for a confrontation with Iran,” adding:

“So long as (Brussels) see(s) a chance of freedom of navigation being secured through dialogue and diplomacy with Iran, they will opt for this route.”

Middle East analyst Jon Alterman said world community nations “aren’t sure where the US is trying to take them. They think that aligning with the (White House scheme) incurs risk without providing security.”

Trump regime policy toward Venezuela and Iran is all about regime change, wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing their sovereign independence.

It’s no coincidence that both nations are oil rich. Longstanding US policy calls for gaining control over world supplies as a way of controlling other countries.

War and other forms of brute force are the favored strategies of both right wings of its war party.

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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.

They happen with disturbing regularity, two over the weekend. More on them below.

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Gun Violence Archive maintains a database of reported shootings in the US, information gotten from law enforcement, media, and government sources.

In 2019, it reported 33,028 gun violence incidents through August 3, causing 8,732 deaths and 17,296 injuries, around 3,000 children and teens affected.

According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 40,000 Americans were killed by gun violence in 2017.

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence reported the following:

• 100 Americans are killed by gun violence daily, around 36,000 annually

• 100,000 Americans are shot and injured each year

• In 2017, gun deaths reached their highest level in at least 40 years, 39,773 deaths reported

• Gun deaths increased by 16% from 2014 to 2017.

The above data is from US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The US is a gun society, more firearms owned by civilians than in any other nations worldwide — including deadly, high-capacity, military-style semi-automatic weapons readily available to anyone able to afford them.

Guns in America can almost be be bought as easily as toothpaste. Ownership lowers the threshold between anger and homicide. Proliferation leaves everyone vulnerable.

The right to own, carry, conceal and use guns is a disturbing American tradition, unjustifiably justified by the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

It’s the most misinterpreted and abused constitutional and statute law, the influential gun lobby bearing much of the blame, politicians bought to go along.

The nation’s framers had no intention of creating a gun-toting society. In 2010, the Supreme Court, in a 5 – 4 ruling, struck down state and local laws banning concealed weapons as unconstitutional.

While people, not guns, kill, regulatory laxity makes it easier. According to a 2018 global Small Arms Survey conducted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, there are more guns in the US than people — an estimated 120.5 guns for every 100 residents, double the rate of the next highest ownership-level nation, Yemen.

Proliferation of guns in America and ease of obtaining them correlates directly with the national homicide rate.

It’s the highest by far among developed countries and most others — public passion for gun ownership, promoted by the gun lobby, a significant part of the problem.

US culture breeds violence at home and abroad. Children are exposed to it multiple times daily in movie theaters, films shown on television, violent video games, even music with violent lyrics.

Endless gun related incidents are symptomatic of the US culture of violence ingrained into the public mind to seem natural.

Earlier studies showed the average US child watches around 200,000 acts of violence on television before age-18, including thousands of murders.

Years after television arrived in the late 1940s, US homicide rates doubled. Violent behavior multiplied. Inner city school performance declined. Illicit drug and tobacco use along with promiscuous sexual activity increased.

Studies show a consistent correlation between witnessed violence and aggressive behavior.

Committing murder with impunity in the US is as simple as becoming a cop, wearing a badge, and carrying a firearm.

US inner city minority communities are virtual war zones. Police alone kill over 1,000 victims annually, mostly Black and Latino male youths — called “justifiable homicides,” a euphemism most often for cold-blooded murder.

Two mass shooting incidents occurred in the US over the weekend.

In El Paso, Texas, at least 20 people were lethally shot, over two dozen others injured by a gunman at a Walmart store, the deadliest 2019 US gun violence incident — so far.

A reported lone gunman was apprehended by police, identified as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, an alt-right Trump supporter, based on his social media content — an easily obtained semi-automatic assault rifle his weapon of choice.

CCTV footage showed him entering the store, likely capturing the entire incident on tape.

The shooter reportedly posted a manifesto online, declaring his racist views toward the area’s large Hispanic population, showing hatred toward non-whites.

Attributing the material to him has yet to be confirmed. It appeared online shortly before the incident. The shooter is from Allen, TX, over 650 miles east of El Paso, north of Dallas.

It’s unexplained why he was in El Paso. The published manifesto says:

“…I support the Christchurch (New Zealand) shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Overnight Sunday at around 1:00AM, a second mass shooting weekend incident occurred in Dayton, Ohio’s downtown Oregon Historic District.

Reportedly a lone unnamed gunman killed 10, wounding at least 16 others at the entrance of Ned Peppers bar before being lethally shot by police.

Police Lt. Col. Matt Carper said the weapon used was a “long gun,” adding:

“We’re trying to identify the motivation behind this.”

According to Montgomery County Emergency Services public information officer Deb Decker, the alleged shooter wore body armor.

Both incidents are developing stories. Many questions about them remain unanswered, including how the alleged Dayton gunman was lethally shot, protected by a bulletproof vest, likely requiring a head shot to kill.

Based on reports from both cities, at least 29 mass-shooting gun-related deaths occurred over the weekend, over 40 others wounded.

Virtually any US urban or rural community can go from normal activities to free-fire zones in moments.

US streets, shopping malls, and other locations can be hazardous to the lives and safety of nonviolent Americans.

A personal note. Weeks earlier during an early morning walk for exercise along my normal route, I entered a crime scene adjacent to a city park on one side of the street and Northwestern University Law School on the other.

Shootings occurred an hour or so before I passed the scene of the crime. Police were roping if off, Chicago CBS television there covering it.

Asked if I’d comment on what happened by a reporter on the scene, I was eager to express my views.

The taped interview lasted 3 or 4 minutes. I stressed my concern about the US culture of violence at home and abroad.

When aired later the same day, my most important remarks were edited out — unsurprisingly.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Twitter

The trade war and technological competition with China are symptomatic of a much larger issue: a dangerous gridlock in US-China relations that may become permanent, with dire consequences not just for the two countries’ economies but also for the global economy and quite possibly East Asia’s and international security. Martin Wolf, Financial Times columnist, is right to conclude: “Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies.”¹ The fact that this conflict has occurred at a time of trade, investment, and security disputes between the US and its major allies, US-Russia tensions, and US military interventions across the Middle East and Central Asia, heightens global instability.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan charged that Japan “is stealing our future” “by counterfeiting or copying of American products.”² Now the president’s target is China, with the anti-China chorus including not only leaders of Trump’s national security team but also his former senior adviser and arch cold warrior, Stephen Bannon, and a range of national security, economic and Asia specialists across the political spectrum.³ In 2011 Trump the businessman was decrying China’s unfair trade and technology practices, calling China an enemy, and saying that if he were president, he would be able to force China to back down because it needs us more than we need it.⁴ Today China looms so much larger—central to US and global trade and investment, but also a partner in critical relationships with many other countries, including major US allies such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the European Union.⁵

We argue that to make China the number-one threat to US national security, as Trump would have it,⁶ is not merely an exaggeration and misunderstanding of China’s ambitions and capabilities. It is a dangerous basis for US foreign policy, one that is inseparable from the Trump administration’s broader agenda that includes embrace of useful dictators, disregard for human rights and international law, diplomacy reliant on threats and sanctions, and overturning or weakening of international treaty commitments.

The Rising Tide of Anti-China Sentiment

Washington politicians in both parties are as one in talking up the China threat and how to counter it. A bipartisan consensus in Congress seems to have concluded that the era of engaging China is over. More surprising is an emerging consensus among public intellectuals, including China specialists as well as many in both the conservative and liberal media, who embrace the view of Trump’s intelligence community that China is the principal threat to US national security.⁷ The New York Times, for instance, editorialized on July 21 that “President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China.” And while the Washington Post has called for a return to engaging China, it nevertheless found that “Mr. Xi’s regime has shattered the hopeful vision” that China would be “a responsible global player.”⁸ In fact, a hard line on China seems to be the single policy on which liberals and conservatives are in general agreement with one another and with President Trump.⁹ American public opinion has followed, with a significant shift toward seeing rivalry as the appropriate motif of US-China relations.¹⁰

Financial markets around the world fell on Friday as a result of the shock wave from US President Trump’s surprise announcement Thursday that he intended to impose a 10 percent tariff from September 1 on a further $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The announcement has added to concerns that the escalation of the US trade war against China will exacerbate the downward trend in global economic growth. The result was a rush to security in the financial markets, lifting the price of government bonds and sending bond yields down.

This movement was most pronounced in Germany, where the yield on 30-year government bonds went into negative territory for the first time in history. For a brief period, yields across the entire market were below zero.

There was a continued sell-off on US markets, with the S&P 500 stock index recording a fall for the week of 3.1 percent. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond continued at below 2 percent.

Since the launching of the trade war more than a year ago, Trump has continued to escalate US attacks while negotiations with the Chinese have assumed an on-again, off-again character. This latest measure, however, coming after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a truce at the end of June and the resumption of talks, could mean a complete breakdown.

Further discussions were scheduled for next month in Washington following talks between the two sides in Shanghai this week. But there are growing doubts as to whether they will proceed.

Figures released by the Commerce Department Friday show the significant impact of the conflict so far. US imports from China fell 12 percent in the first six months of 2019 compared to a year earlier, while US exports to China dropped by 18 percent. The total bilateral trade in the first quarter of the year fell below the levels with Canada and Mexico—the first time that has happened in more than a decade.

Responding to Trump’s latest move, China’s commerce ministry said it would “have to take necessary countermeasures” if the tariffs went ahead. It added that Trump’s announcement “seriously violates” the agreement reached between the US president and Xi.

No decision has been made on whether China will attend the September talks, but the issue is clearly under active consideration. Asked about whether the current plan would go ahead, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said,

“We believe the ball is currently in the United States’ court. At this time the United States must demonstrate sincerity.”

In its analysis of the latest turn in the trade war, the South China Morning Post said China was facing a make-or-break decision over the next month: either to walk away from the negotiations or make major concessions to the US side.

The chief economist for Citigroup Capital Markets Asia, Li-Gang Liu, cast doubt on whether the September talks would go ahead.

“When negotiations collapsed in May, [Vice-Premier] Liu He still flew to Washington to talk. It’s hard to imagine that China would do it again if Trump is determined to raise tariffs,” he told the newspaper.

Speaking yesterday, Trump gave every indication he is determined to go ahead.

“China has to do a lot of things to turn it around,” he said. “Frankly, if they don’t do it I could always increase it very substantially.”

The latest escalation against China, coming just one day after the holding of talks described by the US side as “constructive,” takes place amid indications of a broader shift in the economic agenda of the White House in the direction of currency warfare.

This was indicated by Trump’s response to the decision of the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday. Trump had railed against the Fed for not cutting rates, claiming that Wall Street’s Dow Industrials stock index would be 10,000 points higher but for the Fed’s policies.

However, there now appears to be a shift of emphasis.

“What the market wanted to hear from [Fed Chair] Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve was that this was the beginning of a lengthy and aggressive rate-cutting cycle which would keep pace with China, the European Union and other countries around the world,” Trump said after the Fed’s latest decision.

Trump was referring to the moves towards easier monetary policies internationally—especially by the European Central Bank, which is expected to move significantly because of lower euro zone growth. Such policies tend to push up the value of the dollar. The effect of the increased valuation is to make it more difficult for the US to compete in global export markets while lessening the impact of US-imposed tariff measures.

A further sign of a turn in the direction of White House policy was provided in an interview on the business channel CNBC with Judy Shelton, a Trump nominee to fill one of two vacant positions on the board of the Federal Reserve.

Shelton said central banks in Europe. China and Japan were all devaluing their currencies through their monetary policies and the US should do the same. The official policy of the US is that it favours a strong dollar and the position of all governments and central banks is that monetary policy must not be used to target the currency. But, as with the use of tariffs, the prohibition on this form of economic warfare is being undermined.

“I don’t think that we should make it harder for our own manufacturers to compete domestically against imports from other countries where they have resorted to cheating really, through currency devaluation, to make it look like they’re offering the same thing at a better price,” she said.

In a warning of where international economic relations are heading, Shelton likened the present situation to the “beggar thy neighbour” policies of the 1930s. The outcome of that economic conflict was the eruption of the Second World War in 1939.

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Don’t get me wrong.  I am not foul-mouthed or in any way vulgar, having been trained in the niceties of academic discretionary writing and research.  I apologize for the title and even for using the personal pronoun “I.”  As “one” knows, to write as if you are a person with values and beliefs is very crude in the academy from which so many of our finest national priorities, like perpetual war-making and economic exploitation, emanate.  

In this case, however, I must use certain language that may be offensive to some sensitive folks in order to explain my thesis in the hope that it will encourage others to grasp why so many of our compatriots of every sex and gender dispensation imaginable have become such suckers.  I hope you will grant the importance of such an endeavor and excuse the means used to achieve its ends.

Let me say this at the outset.  To say something sucks has always confused me.  I have asked many people how something – let’s say a pizza – could suck, and they have just rolled their eyes.  I know a vacuum cleaner can suck and a sump pump can suck or is it pump, but after that, I’m lost.  How can a movie suck?  Spaghetti?  You can suck it but can it suck?  You see my point?

Perhaps you have heard the saying that “there is a sucker born every minute.”  That seems to me to be so off statistically. Do you agree? What’s your estimate for the birth rate of suckers:  a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand a minute?  I don’t know, but my theory or thesis, if you will, is not statistically based. And let’s not get into that ridiculous debate about nature versus nurture.  We both no doubt agree that suckers are both born and bred in the USA at a feverish rate.

I am a social theorist, not a statistician, so please just consider my theory.  I can assure you that there is no conspiracy involved in it, since all the variables I note are well-known, if forgotten, by the general public.

In this article I will touch on a few, for if I went on too long you might think this article sucked, despite the incongruity of your lingo. Indeed, there is an enormous amount of academic research to support my thesis, but this is not the place for footnotes or references.  Trust me, as you do CNN or The New York Times.

It was in the early 1990s when I first noticed that many people were saying things “sucked” an awful lot.  I would have thought that after the great American TV victory in the Gulf War and the election of the fresh-faced, forthright young governor from Arkansas to lead the ship of state, the sucking lingo would die down.  No way!  The pace picked up quite dramatically throughout the nineties.  Movies sucked, the party sucked, the concert sucked – so much was starting to suck it frightened me, and I’m not easily frightened, having been toughened up in the academy with its fierce in-fighting over trivia and its short vacations.

There wasn’t a “ton” of such sucking in those early days, but this way of talking struck me anyway.  “Ton” wasn’t cool yet. The heaviness of our new social reality hadn’t fully sunk in yet; the massive growth in depression was just getting started.  It was just “it sucks”/”that sucks” that was hot in those years. I started to wonder if this little phrase was a harbinger of things to come, the unconscious canary in the national mine shaft, the lack of breathable air shortening people’s verbal responses to a growing unreality.

One day I was in the checkout line in a supermarket when a very elderly woman got into an argument with the checkout girl.  The girl had charged the old woman twice for her National Enquirer, or so the old one said. The girl denied it and showed the old woman the receipt, which failed to mollify her. She stormed away, shouting, “That sucks.  You suck.”  I couldn’t help laughing, so incongruous was the scene.  But I took note as a good academic should, and started to collect the variables that would eventually result in my present argument, one that has involved almost thirty years of diligent thinking and research, so I hope you will appreciate its significance.  I would hate to think my years of toiling in the academy were for naught.

After the loud sound of all things sucking came the fear of being dehydrated, as if everyone, even people walking through Central Park in New York City, were lost in the Sahara Desert and were afraid they might collapse into a sere heap without constant water intake. I guess you can never be too careful. Everywhere you looked, there were people sucking on those plastic water bottles that sprung up like locusts.  To be without one was then akin to being without one’s cell phone today.  Mr. Death seemed to be stalking the bottleless ones, those not sucking.  But to be more precise, people didn’t exactly suck on the bottles until the sports tops were added.  I heard there was a very creative entrepreneur who tried introducing water bottles with baby bottle rubber nipples, but that was too suggestive then, since adults were just starting to dress like kids and the kidification of adults had to be somewhat disguised in those early days.

Come on, can you imagine if you saw a forty-five-year-old man in a Yankee jersey and hat, walking around sucking on a plastic water bottle with a baby nipple.  That would be too much, too fast, even if you were a Yankee fan.  You could say the Red Sox sucked, but you couldn’t be seen to be so obviously sucking yourself.

Then there was that cool cat, Bill Clinton. Whenever you turned on the TV or glanced at a newspaper, there he was out jogging or walking with a huge soda or something, sucking away on the straw. Or blowing on that horn on Saturday Night Live.  It almost seemed like the poor guy had an oral complex or something.  On the golf course where he was often pictured, he and his pals had big cigars they sucked on, making cigar sucking very popular.  The magazine, Cigar Afionado, born in the fall of 1992 when Bill and Hill so sincerely refuted those Paula Jones sexual allegations and won the White House, would soon publish covers with famous actresses fondling cigars in a not so subtle come-on.  Stores everywhere had humidors hawking them. Sucking on quart sized drinks and cigars took the country by storm, and please, I am not alluding to Stormy Daniels and her lurid tales, which come later.  I am just listing some of the many variables that I have spent my academic career gathering in preparation for the release of my upcoming book that I hope will be my crowning achievement: Sucking and Suckers: A Qualitative Study.

This cigar craze got so wild that one day I walked into my local liquor store and the owner showed me his new humidor.  He said, “Jack, you should try one on me.”  I said I didn’t smoke, to which he replied, “But you really should just try one, they make you feel powerful, like a big man.”

I told him I felt big, capacious, and enormous already, sort of like Walt Whitman, who said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”  He just rolled his eyes and lit up.

I was reminded of a quote from Wilhelm Reich’s book, Listen, Little Man, a long-forgotten book that is perfect for today:

A great man knows and in what way he is a little man.  A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know.  He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else’s strength and greatness.

And behind his cigar and bluster.

Then came Monica and Bill.  I guess the cigars weren’t enough, or the occupancy of the big White House, or eight years of continual bombing of Iraq and sanctions that killed well over 500,000 Iraqi children, or making all those sexed-up welfare queens with all their babies scream when he did away with welfare as we know it, or his sadistic bombing of Serbia and the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.  It seems as though nothing is sufficient to make war criminals feel big enough.

Excuse the politics.  I’m getting carried away from my theme, which sucks.  Okay, there was Monica.  But I will leave it to your imagination, if you dare.  Sorry for being crude.

Variable number four or five are those pacifier necklaces, as if eight years of Bill hadn’t been pacifier enough.  Do you remember them?  Did their wearers suck on them, or was a message being sent? Then came the oral sex craze among the young, serendipitously connected to Bill and Monica.  Stuff happens.

Perhaps for me, in my academic life, my eureka moment came one day in the early 2000s when I was teaching a class on the growing cleavage between the rich and the poor.  Bush Jr. had the country pacified and simultaneously whipped into a war frenzy after the attacks of 9/11.  He was lying his way to the invasion of Iraq after having been “accidentally” rescued from a disastrous economy by those nineteen Arab terrorists with boxcutters.  I was explaining to the students, mostly college juniors and seniors, how the percentage of the very wealthy had been increasing for years and the poor and middle-class were suffering, when I looked down to see a pretty female student in the front row.  Bingo!  Instant insight, or was it outsight?  I was about to say something wise about the economic gap but my voice cracked. Right at my feet was an example of a different form of cleavage that had my eyes quickly popping up to look straight ahead as if I didn’t see what I saw.  Right there was a culminating variable that I was able to notice for many years to come.  Call it the cleavage phenomenon, but it was real, and it could be seen throughout the classrooms and byways of America ever since.  I will let you take it from there.

Over the following years, I continued to collect my evidence for the phenomenon I call “suck.”  But I also noticed that under Bush Jr, as under Poppi Bush and Clinton, people were increasingly being taken for suckers by the authorities with their lies about Iraq, 9/11, the anthrax attacks, the economy, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war on terror, etc. It’s true, I know, that the same happened under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, but he was generally considered an acting president and life in the 1980s a feel-good movie.  Everyone was happy then, and suck was just a bad word that could spoil the fun of “Morning in America.”

When in 2008 Bush Jr. returned to the ranch and full-time brush cutting, in rode Obama. Slicker than Slick Willy, he really sucker-punched liberals, who were desperate for some classy speech in the White House, someone who could correctly pronounce “nuclear” while promising to spend a trillion dollars on making a new generation of them. They got conned (I guess) when he immediately bailed out the banks and the Wall St. crooks, sent more troops to Afghanistan, cracked down on whistle-blowers, launched killer drones, increased surveillance, destroyed Libya and Syria, sent special forces throughout Africa, etc., smiling as he went marauding.

The power of the Obama propaganda was overwhelming, and so many were sucked in, as they still are. I started to wonder if my years of cultural research on the significance of suck, sucking, and suckers was a waste of my life. Maybe I had missed the bigger issues, having made diversity and sexuality my focus of teaching and research, since they had become the rage in academia.

Then Trump shocked the world with his election and Stormy Daniels burst forth and the rich got richer and the poor poorer and the wars continued and the little-big man tweeted out his foul rantings about immigrants and so many others while the country further descended into a cesspool of insanity as he threatened North Korea and Iran with nuclear annihilation and his buddy Robert Kraft got his quick suck and the fascist Israeli government got his approval to continue slaughtering Palestinians and the deluded citizenry fixated on the 2020 election and the next con-artist who will promise to make things suck no longer.

But I have seen the light.  While my thesis still seems valid to me, and the variables I have mentioned here (a fraction of the whole) demonstrate that there’s more to the seemingly trivial than meets the eye, I have concluded that the only thing I can conclude is that the American people are suckers and will continue to be so.

And I, too, have been a sucker for thinking that a simple, popular phrase wasn’t profoundly true from the start.  I began as a hopeful young professor, thinking that I would debunk the crassness of our society and make a name for myself.  I thought I was so smart.

Now, however, I have to admit that I was wrong from the beginning: things do suck. The canaries were right.  Or to be more precise: the political elites who run the country suck.  And the presidents suck big time.

That’s just the way it is.

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Jack Tucker is the pseudonym of a writer who claims to be a former professor of sexuality and diversity studies.

At this point, everyone on the planet with the exception of United States President Donald Trump and his own, perverse, neocon circle, must see that the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been an unmitigated disaster. Let us broadly review the situation:

• In 2015, Iran, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union signed the JCPOA, limiting Iran’s nuclear development program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. This agreement was praised across the globe by nearly every world leader, with the Zionist entity (also known as Israel) and Saudi Arabia being the two major objectors. The JCPOA went into effect, and trade with Iran and the world increased greatly, to the benefit of everyone.
• President Barack Obama was in office when the JCPOA was agreed to and signed. In January of 2017, the erratic and unstable Trump, who harbors an irrational hatred of his predecessor, became president, and has attempted to undo all of Obama’s accomplishments. He has worked tirelessly to deprive 21,000,000 U.S. citizens of health care, which has not been easy, and is yet to be accomplished (if such a disgraceful action can be called an ‘accomplishment’). It wasn’t so difficult for him to withdraw from the JCPOA, thus voiding that agreement.
• The other signatories to the JCPOA begged Trump not to withdraw; he did so anyway, reinstated sanctions against Iran, and threatened the other parties to the agreement with sanctions if they continued to trade with Iran. Bowing to U.S. pressure, each nation, except Russia and China, ceased all such trade.
• Trump demands that Iran renegotiate the agreement, which Iran’s leaders have, legitimately, refused to do. Had Trump maintained the JCPOA, and expressed to Iran’s leaders that he would like to reconsider some of its provisions, his request might have been favorably received. But as Iran’s leaders have accurately pointed out, sanctions are economic terrorism and, like the U.S., Iran will not negotiate with terrorists.
• Iran, demonstrating remarkably good faith, maintained its commitments to the JCPOA for over a year after the U.S. and the European nations violated it, giving the European parties sufficient time to decide how to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions. When they were unable to do so, Iran slowly began enriching uranium at a rate higher than allowed by the agreement. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and the UK all responded with horror. How could Iran do such a thing? They knew its leaders couldn’t be trusted! This is an internationally-approved agreement that Iran is violating!

For some bizarre reason, they were not quite so astounded and shocked when the U.S. violated the agreement, and seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that they had done so, too, long before Iran did. It is completely counter to reason and logic to expect an agreement between eight (8) parties to remain effective when five (5) of them (the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and the UE) have all violated it. Before those nations point the finger of accusation at Iran, they need to clean up their own houses of government.

As a result of U.S. actions, tensions in the Persian Gulf have been growing, and reached a dangerous level when a U.S. drone flew into Iranian airspace and was shot down. A few weeks later, Trump reported that the U.S. had shot down an Iranian drone that flew too close to a U.S. ship (which was in the Gulf where it had no legitimate business to be).  However, Iranian officials reported that all of their drones had returned safely, and Trump & Co. haven’t bothered to show any evidence whatsoever that the U.S. did, in fact, shoot down an Iranian drone.

Based on what has been revealed about the Trump White House, how his closest aides discreetly remove from his desk papers that they don’t want him to see, how they brief him with the briefest of information due to his limited interest and attention span, and his own narcissistic personality, it’s likely that, enraged that Iran dared shoot out of the sky a drone of the mighty U.S., he ordered that the U.S. retaliate in like manner. Some aide with a brain in his or her head, recognizing that shooting down an Iranian drone in Iranian airspace could easily be seen as an act of war, probably invented the fairy tale that a drone had been shut down, advised Trump, thereby satisfying his lust for revenge.

The military went along with it, realizing, perhaps, that a war against Iran would be a worldwide disaster. So Trump has been told what he wanted to hear (he appears to have no ability to discern truth from fiction; he recently announced that he was a first responder on September 11!), a war has been averted at least for now, and the U.S. continues to be the laughing stock of the world, since everyone except Trump seems to know that no Iranian drone was shot down.

What will be next? Will the U.S. invade Iran? Surely, there are some people in U.S. government circles who are not willing to shove the world into that deadly abyss, and are in a position to prevent it.

Will Israel get tired of waiting for the U.S. to invade, and do so itself, knowing that the U.S. will come to its aid? One thinks Israeli officials would need some pretext for doing so, but they can certainly draw on the U.S.’s many examples of creating some false flag to start a war.

Will the European signatories to the JCPOA finally create some way to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions, or will they simply develop some strength of character and advise the U.S. that it can’t tell them how they will run their countries?

With the U.S. democratic farce of a presidential election just over a year away, Trump may do anything, however deadly and irrational, to try to gain another four-year term. Should he not war with Iran before then, his successor (one desperately hopes the Democrats don’t do anything sufficiently stupid to ensure another four years in the White House for Trump, as they did in 2016), will, one hopes, re-embrace the JCPOA.

But the next presidential inauguration isn’t until January of 2020; seventeen months is a long time for someone as unpredictable and unhinged as Trump to have his finger on the war button. We can only hope and pray that he doesn’t decide to push it.

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President Trump, wandering further afield of his noninterventionist election campaign promise, may soon impose an illegal military blockade on Venezuela.

According to an unnamed Trump administration official, the blockade will continue until Nicolas Maduro abdicates and Juan Guaido becomes the neoliberal recognized leader. 

In response, Maduro said he’s “ready for battle,” whatever that means. 

Maduro repudiates #Trump's quarantine threat, says #Venezuela ready for battle https://t.co/7I6N4QPyQj pic.twitter.com/uKv0fK3PYK

— Press TV (@PressTV) August 3, 2019

“The draconian US sanctions on Venezuela have come in two phases,” writes Jeffrey D. Sachs of Asia Times. 

The first, beginning in August 2017, was mainly directed at the state oil company PDVSA, the country’s main earner of foreign exchange; the second round of sanctions, imposed in January this year, was more comprehensive, targeting the Venezuelan government. A recent detailed analysis of the first round of sanctions shows their devastating impact. The US sanctions gravely exacerbated previous economic mismanagement, contributing to a catastrophic fall in oil production, hyperinflation, economic collapse (output is down by half since 2016), hunger, and rising mortality.

In short, the latest imperial president will kill an unknown number of Venezuelans in order to get the preferred government installed in Caracas. 

Military blockades are recognized as acts of war under the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909. The neocons and neolibs don’t do international law unless it works in favor of empire. Congress, naturally, is left out of the equation, having long ago waived its responsibility under the Constitution. 

In 1863, when President Lincoln imposed a blockade on the Confederacy during the War of Secession, the Supreme Court ruled it a crime in “The Prize Cases.”

The power of declaring war is the highest sovereign power, and is limited to the representative of the full sovereignty of the nation. It is limited in the United States to its Congress exclusively; and the authority of the President to be the Commander-in-Chief….to take that the law be faithfully executed, is to be taken in connection with the exclusive power given to Congress to declare war, and does not enable the President to (do it) or to introduce, without Act of Congress, War or any of its legal disabilities or liabilities, on any citizen of the United States.

Violations of the Constitution, its articles and amendments, are now routine, so much so, especially following the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the Bretton Woods neoliberal scheme, that the founding document is little more than a quaint tourist attraction at the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom (sic) in DC. 

Thankfully, a few Americans are standing up and resisting ongoing economic warfare against Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. 

Because the US government refuses dialogue with Venezuela’s elected government and US corporate media acts as an arm of Washington’s brutal regime change policy, it’s our duty to break the blockade. @MaxBlumenthal addresses media at Miraflores palace https://t.co/NHzcA4GjkL

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) August 2, 2019

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The First Gulf War (1990-1991)

How did U.S. military intervention in Iraq—the wealthiest Arab country in the 1970s—begin? The First Gulf War started in August 1990, when Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s army occupied neighboring Kuwait. The Iraqi dictator invaded Kuwait City after first consulting with U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad April Glaspie who assured him that Washington would stay neutral in the incipient Iraq-Kuwait conflict. Baghdad had long accused the Kuwaitis of illegally pumping and stealing crude oil from Iraq’s underground oil wells located just across their common border. Less than a year later, a large international coalition of troops, led by U.S. military forces, were dispatched by President George H.W. Bush to expel the Iraqis from occupied Kuwait. But “liberating Kuwait” was just the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi military confrontation. Armed hostilities resumed in March 2003 after 12 years of comprehensive economic sanctions and a protracted campaign of U.S. air and missile strikes against Iraqi targets.

The Second Gulf War (2003-2011)

Speaking before a nonacademic audience, the late American historian Howard Zinn (a WWII bomber pilot and author of the landmark People’s History of the United States) said,

“If you study history, what you learn is that wars are always accompanied by lies, wars are always accompanied by deceptions, wars are always accompanied by falsehoods like ‘We are going to war to fight for democracy, we are going to war to fight for freedom.’ Behind all the lies and deceptions that accompany all these wars was one basic motive that was behind all war—expansion, power, economics, business” (Howard Zinn: You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train, a First Run Features film by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller, 2004).

That is why Deputy Nazi leader and German Air Force commander (Luftwaffe Reichsmarschall) Hermann Goering was emphatic when explaining to American prison psychologist Gustave Gilbert:

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country” (a 1946 interview with Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trial).

These revealing comments of Hermann Goering in Nuremberg about how people are easily duped into going to war are fully applicable to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003-2011. Iraq was an easy target: its military had been all but destroyed in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the First Gulf War, while its oil-producing economy and civilian population had been decimated by the most comprehensive and punishing international sanctions ever imposed on a nation. When asked about a 1995 report of U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the international sanctions, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Lesley Stahl that “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it” (60 Minutes, May 12, 1996).

The George W. Bush Administration used lies and deceptions on a massive scale to justify its war of choice against Iraq, once a friend and an ally against the anti-American government in Tehran. In fact, the Reagan Administration had been an enthusiastic supporter of Saddam Hussein during his long war with Iran, providing him with generous financial loans and military-technical assistance, including helping him develop the nerve gas he used against the Iranians and their Kurdish allies. Through his presidential envoy to Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld, President Reagan had even sent Saddam Hussein a pair of golden cowboy spurs signed “A personal gift from Ronald Reagan” (later U.S. Marines retrieved that infamous signed gift from one of Saddam’s abandoned palaces).

The march to war

The Bush White House charged that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a clandestine program to develop nuclear arms and other WMD (weapons of mass destruction, later to be dubbed by the news media as Bush’s “weapons of mass deception”). In a 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vice President Dick Cheney brazenly lied,

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us” (Mother Jones, April 26, 2019).

Top Administration officials also accused Iraq of secretly collaborating with al-Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist group which carried out the September 11, 2001 terror attacks—an accusation which even U.S. intelligence believed to be false. The charge of secret ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda was patently absurd because Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had been mortal enemies ever since the Reagan Administration helped create, with Saudi help, al-Qaeda to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden had been a little-known construction business millionaire when he was plucked out of total obscurity in Saudi Arabia and provided with training, money, weapons, ammunition, and secret operational bases in Pakistan to form and lead al-Qaeda in battling the “godless” Red Army in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Saddam Hussein’s regime promptly hanged as a “terrorist” any al-Qaeda operative that they had captured inside Iraq.

The equally dubious charge that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear arsenal in secret was based on what later turned out to be fake reports that Baghdad was trying to clandestinely import from Africa nuclear-weapons components like aluminum tubes and the now infamous “yellow-cake” (a uranium concentrate powder). U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson had been secretly dispatched to Niger to investigate these allegations but found no evidence to confirm them. He openly refuted the whole story as a fabrication in an op-ed article entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” (NYT, July 6, 2003) after President Bush had kept repeating in public these false allegations, including in his 2002 State of the Union address. The right-wing attack machine, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, branded Ambassador Wilson “unpatriotic” and a “liar” while the White House illegally revealed to the pro-GOP media the secret identity of his wife, CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame, who consequently lost her job as a globe-trotting spy on nuclear proliferation (see Ambassador Wilson’s 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity, A Diplomat’s Memoir and Valerie Plame’s own 2007 memoir Fair Game).

The Clinton Administration had also lied about Baghdad having WMD to justify their policy of regime change through subversion, economic sanctions, and frequent bombing campaigns. So did leading congressional Democrats like Sen. Joe Biden, the bellicose chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Jim Bronke, “How Biden’s Secret 2002 Meetings Led to War in Iraq,” Truthout, July 28, 2019). But this absurdity was contradicted by none other than Swedish-born Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector in charge of disarming Iraq at that time, who personally assured the Bush Administration on the eve of the Iraqi invasion that his inspectorate had carried out “about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find any weapons of mass destruction.” And his personal assurances were fully backed by the top inspector on Blix’s own staff, U.S. Marine Captain Scott Ritter (a registered Republican). Embarrassed but far from deterred, the Bush Administration still ordered Captain Ritter and all the other U.N. weapons inspectors immediately to leave Iraq just a few days before the “Shock and Awe” invasion began. Obviously, the White House was completely uninterested in any U.N. inspections or, for that matter, in Iraq’s WMD disarmament.

Throughout 2002 and into early 2003, White House officials persisted in trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public, warning darkly of some “clear and present danger” supposedly posed by Iraq’s alleged “nuclear ambitions” even as they presented absolutely no proof for all their ominous accusations. When pressed on a TV news show to produce such evidence, all that Bush’s national security adviser Condi Rice could say was that she did not want the “proof” to be in the form of a “mushroom cloud” over Washington, D.C. (even though she knew very well that Baghdad had no long-range missiles capable of hitting North America). Defense Secretary Donnie Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (CEO of oil giant Halliburton) even proclaimed that Saddam Hussein had already developed a nuclear bomb. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Americans that ordinary Iraqis would welcome our troops as “liberators” with “flowers and cheers in the streets.” He and his boss Rumsfeld insisted that Iraq’s occupation would last no more than “a couple of months” and would cost “only” between $50 and $60 billion—to be fully paid for out of conquered Iraq’s oil revenues. But according to Dr. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes’s article “The True Cost of the Iraq War: $3 Trillion and Beyond” (Washington Post, September 5, 2010), the Iraq War had cost American tax-payers in toto well over $3 trillion.

“Weapons of Mass Deception”

What were the real reasons for Bush’s controversial Iraq war? One reason often mentioned was that after the First Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had tried to punish Washington by refusing to accept what he called “worthless” U.S. paper money as payment for Iraqi exports of crude oil. He preferred instead to take the EU’s euro, even though it is, like the U.S. dollar, a “fiat” paper currency that is not backed either by gold or by anything else that is of value. The Iraq war was also a shot over the bow meant to warn Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi who had proposed minting a new Third-World currency, the gold-backed African dinar, to replace both the U.S. “petrodollar” and the euro as payment for OPEC’s oil exports. The so-called “neo-conservatives”—pro-defense hard-liners in the Bush Administration like Wolfowitz, Defense Department hawks Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, and other hawkish architects of the Iraq War—wanted to remove every anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli regime throughout the Middle East and remake the entire region to their liking. Another possible explanation is suggested by Prof. Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights, whose article “The New American Idol: Should America Rule the World?” (Aljazeera, January 18, 2014) argues that our foreign-policy establishment in Washington, D.C. aspires to act as a “world government” (thereby negating the “Realist” assumptions about “state sovereignty” and the “anarchic state” of international relations). But the most likely reason may have been the seething anger felt by America’s closest ally, Israel, over Saddam Hussein’s payments of $25,000 to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber who blew himself up attacking Israelis in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories.

As we know, President Bush’s own weapons inspectors found absolutely no WMD in occupied Iraq. The final outcome of the Second Gulf War was replacing Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime with a Shia-dominated government which is very closely allied with neighboring Iran and which refused to allow the continued presence of any American troops on Iraqi territory after 2011. Another result was a vicious Shia-Sunni civil war which eventually led to the rise of ISIS. Among the other known casualties from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” were close to 5,000 U.S.-led coalition military deaths (this figure excludes the many dead among military contractors and hired non-military personnel) and nearly 40,000 wounded and maimed, as well as over a million Iraqis killed, wounded, or missing (according to the prestigious British medical journal Lancet). Discussing the final toll from the Iraq misadventure reminds one of a bitter but memorable verse written by Britain’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature—the previously gung-ho “pro-Empire” poet and novelist Joseph Rudyard Kipling—ruefully mourning his son who was killed in action in WWI: “If any question why we died / tell them, because our fathers lied.” Of course, absolutely none of the Bush Administration’s top officials who had instigated and lied about that war ever sent a son or a daughter to fight on Iraq’s battlefields.

In remembrance of things past

Outrages like the Iraq War have been happening long before 2003. Our “George of Arabia” was not the first U.S. president to use lies and deceptions to dupe reluctant Americans into going to war. Abraham Lincoln, a freshman congressman from Illinois, accused President James K. Polk of using falsehoods and deceptions to launch a war of conquest to annex Mexico and extend slavery to its territory. Lincoln challenged President Polk to produce any evidence proving his public accusation that “Mexicans shed American blood on American soil,” when it was illegal American “settlers” who had violently occupied the Mexican province of Texas in 1836 and had been fighting their way into other Mexican border provinces. Union Army General (and later U.S. President) Ulysses Grant believed that the “most wicked” and “pro-slavery” American-Mexican War (1846-1848) was based on the White House’s lies and deceptions, and even claimed that our Civil War was punishment from God for having seized by force more than half of Mexico’s territory. Grant is quoted as saying that

“I was bitterly opposed to the measure (the declaration of war), and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation” (quoted in William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography, Norton, 1981, pp. 31, 37).

On February 15, 1898, a suspicious explosion sank the USS Maine along with 266 of its crew in the harbor of Spanish-ruled Havana, Cuba. By 1974, U.S. Admiral Hyman George Rickover and his naval staff established conclusively that the massive explosion had been caused by careless mishandling of the ship’s stored munitions. But back in 1898 President William McKinley and media magnate William Randolph Hearst‘s scandal-mongering “Yellow Press” blamed Spain, paving the way for the predatory Spanish-American War, in which the McKinley Administration conquered and turned into colonies Cuba (briefly), the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and other Spanish territories—all under the jingoistic battle-cry of “Remember the Maine!” McKinley even used the Spanish-American War as a pretext to annex the heretofore independent kingdom of Hawaii.

Having run as the “peace candidate” in the November 1916 presidential election, President Woodrow Wilson entered WWI as early as April 1917 with a bombastic promise:

“This is a war to end all wars…to make the world safe for democracy.” (David Lloyd George, Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, pretended—tongue in cheek—to agree with him: “This is, like all the next wars, a war to end all war.”)

“Peace” President Wilson used what he knew was a British forgery—the infamous “Zimmerman Telegram”—to convince isolationist-minded Americans of the need to enter the “Great War.” (Unlike another notorious British forgery—the so-called “Zinoviev Letter” of 1924—London has still not owned up to having falsified the Zimmerman Telegram, perhaps due to its potential to embarrass the Brits and hurt their image in America). Wilson then hired some 75,000 propagandists to fan rabidly anti-German hysteria across the nation, claiming German “atrocities” in Europe, and threw in prison everyone who “opposed the war effort” (speaking against the war or against President Wilson even in private brought an automatic 10-year prison sentence).

And on August 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson took advantage of some unconfirmed Navy reports of North Vietnamese patrol boats firing on two U.S. destroyers on the high seas to engineer the enactment of the “deceptive” and “misleading” (in the words of then Democratic Senator and war critic J. William Fulbright) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in Congress, opening the floodgates to the ill-fated involvement of over 550,000 American troops in the disastrous Vietnam War (1964-1975).

Conclusion

The George W. Bush Administration hoodwinked the American people into supporting the totally unprovoked Iraq war, capitalizing not on their patriotism, but on their misguided fears about an invented “Iraqi threat” and their desire for blind revenge for September 11. The White House used lies and deceptions on a massive, perhaps unprecedented scale to convince many gullible Americans (who at that time still believed naively in the words of their President) that Iraq was supposedly behind the September 11th attacks and that Iraq was developing WMD or was even in possession of WMD.

There were massive antiwar demonstrations in many places—from NYC to San Francisco—with numerous protesters carrying slogans like “No to Bush’s War!” and “No Blood for Oil!” In the House of Representatives, 133 congressmen (6 of them Republicans) voted against the Iraq War resolution and 3 abstained. And in the Senate, 23 Senators, including Sen. Barack Obama, voted against it. But many congressmen and senators who had voted in favor of the war later recanted and turned against it, when they learned the ugly truth behind all the White House’s lies and deceptions. Also, many high-ranking national security personnel, top brass (including active-service generals), and foreign-service veterans were at the time adamantly opposed to the impending invasion (Wikipedia, “Opposition to the Iraq War”) and some of them resigned their posts in protest.

Is the Iraqi conflict finally over? First, there was the “Islamic State” near-disaster—many Iraqis believe that the Saudis, UAE, Turkey, Qatar and Israel were responsible for ISIS’s successful military offensive capturing Mosul and other Iraqi cities in 2014. As a result, the Pentagon has deployed an estimated 6,000 U.S. troops back to Iraq—ostensibly to train Iraqi forces and prevent the re-emergence of the Islamic State. Donald Trump has added another rationale: “I’m keeping troops in Iraq so I can watch Iran.” But our troops in Iraq seem to be potential targets of Iranian retaliation for any U.S. military action against Tehran. Last May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise visit to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abd al-Mahdi and President Barham Salih. He discussed with them threats against U.S. forces in Iraq, including the firing of a couple of Katyusha rockets by Iranian-aligned Shiite militias against the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad (where the sprawling American Embassy is located). This may be one of the reasons for President Trump’s last-minute cancellation of a military response to Iran’s shooting-down of an American drone earlier this summer. As glib people like to joke, nothing is over until it’s over….

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

Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

Several small bombs detonated across Bangkok on Friday, August 2, amid a meeting between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) the US, China, and Russia.

There were several injuries reported, but no deaths.

Despite a Western media deliberately feigning confusion over motives and possible suspects while attempting to depict the capital as “in chaos” and the current Thai government “humiliated” – its image “tarnished” – US-backed opposition groups are the prime suspects, their motives including growing desperation.

Also absent from Western media coverage was any genuine context surrounding Thailand’s ongoing political crisis as foreign-backed opposition groups attempt to  reverse the nation’s growing ties with China, Russia, and developing nations across Eurasia.

US-Backed Opposition Growing Desperate 

The US-backed opposition consists of former prime minister, billionaire fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra, his Pheu Thai Party (PTP), his violent street front – the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) better known as “red shirts,” and a number of new parties Thaksin created to hedge his bets in elections earlier this year.

The most prominent among these parties is Future Forward headed by billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.

Thanathorn faces multiple criminal charges including election law violations. His political future is nonexistent – a miniature Thaksin Shinawatra minus the initial success and popularity Thaksin once enjoyed when first coming to power in 2001.

Thaksin’s various proxy parties faired poorly in the last election, with Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) winning the popular vote and forming a larger coalition. PPRP is headed by military figures responsible for ousting Thaksin  in 2006 – and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra from power in 2014.

Having lost elections and lacking public support – with expensive and violent protests a now exhausted option – few options are left besides violence. Many hardcore Thaksin supporters are fond of repeating the quote, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

While they are by no means interested in any sort of principled revolution, they are most certainly fond of pursing violence.

US-Backed Opposition’s Verified History of Violence and Terrorism 

Thaksin – since his ouster in 2006 – has resorted to large scale violence in a bid to seize back power. This is in addition to his poor human rights record during his time in power which saw over 2,000 people extrajudicially executed during a 90 day “drug war.”

Should evidence tie Thaksin to the recent blasts – it wouldn’t be the first time he and his political allies would have targeted an important ASEAN summit hosted by Thailand.

The Guardian in its article, “Protesters storm Asian leaders’ summit in Thailand,” would admit that in 2009 during another large ASEAN meeting, Thaksin’s red shirts would storm the convention center forcing ASEAN representatives to flee by helicopter. During related protests, Thaksin’s red shirts would kill two shopkeepers while trying to loot their businesses.

In 2010, Thaksin would deploy between 300-500 heavily armed militants who – even according to Human Rights Watch – murdered soldiers, police, and civilians. Despite HRW admitting this, it and the Western media still depicts the violence as a “government crackdown” to this day.  Leading up to the protests, Thaksin’s militants threatened judges deciding on a court case over the seizure of $1.4 billion of his assets. This included grenade attacks on court buildings.

There were also other senseless grenade and bomb attacks carried out throughout Bangkok as a crude attempt to coerce the government to meet Thaksin’s demands in 2010.

In 2014 when protesters took to the street to oppose Thaksin Shinawatra’s sister – Yingluck Shinawtra – his militants would once again return, carrying out gun and grenade attacks leaving up to 20 dead including women and children. Violence continued until the military intervened, ousting Yingluck, and taking over as an interim government.

In fact, only Thaksin Shinawatra and his political supporters have a verified record of carrying out violence and terrorism in and around Bangkok – and for over a decade.

Southern Separatists? 

Three of Thailand’s southern-most provinces have faced a low-intensity insurgency since Thaksin took power in 2001 and violated a 20-year peace deal.

Claims that separatists in Thailand’s deep south might have been responsible for the recent blasts are dubious at best. Separatists have never attacked Bangkok.

Additionally, as revealed by Thailand’s HRW representative Sunai Phasuk in a Wikileaks cable – Thaksin maintains, “strong organization and funding” for activities in the deep south and could organize violence in Bangkok meant to scapegoat separatists.

This would fit Washington’s agenda as well – as separatists also happen to be ethnic Malay and Muslim. Washington has worked diligently in other nations throughout Southeast Asia to fuel inter-religious tensions and divisions – most notably in Myanmar where violence flaring up in Rakhaine state between Buddhists and Muslims just so happens to be threatening Chinese investments and infrastructure there – which helps provide insight into possible motivations behind the recent blasts in Bangkok.

Motives

On a petty domestic political level, Thaksin and his supporters have run out of options and have repeatedly ridiculed PPRP’s campaign promise to maintain peace and stability after winning elections. Of course, the only way the current PPRP-led government can fail to carry out its promise is if its opponents carry out violence and attempt to destabilize the country.

On a geopolitical level – Thaksin and his political forces are the preferred proxies of Washington, London, and Brussels. Thaksin faithfully served their interests between 2001-2006 for everything from privatizing Thailand’s natural resources to sending Thai troops to fight Washington’s wars.

By destabilizing the current government, Washington hopes – as it does in all other nations it is fostering destabilization and even violence in – to create the conditions within which regime change may become possible – or at the very least creation conditions suitable for coercing Bangkok into making concessions.

Among these concessions would be demands for Bangkok to distance itself from Beijing, Moscow and other US rivals whom Bangkok has been building steady ties with. China alone has helped Thailand update its aging US military equipment, including main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and even a submarine. Thailand has also bought several Russia military transport helicopters as well as hardware from Europe.

Bangkok is already building major infrastructure projects with China including a high-speed rail network that will connect Thai cities together, and Thailand to Laos and China.
This growing relationship significantly blunts US influence in both Thailand and the wider region.

Nothing “Absurd” About Implicating the US and its Proxies

The Western media and the US Embassy in Bangkok itself – after being suspected in the past of being behind terrorism in Thailand – attempt to portray the notion of the US carrying out or approving of deadly violence to achieve its political goals around the globe as “absurd.”

Yet it was the US which used extreme violence in 2003 to invade and topple the government in Iraq – predicated on a deliberate lie and leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis along with thousands of America’s own soldiers. To claim somehow the US is capable of that, but “above” using lesser violence to coerce other nations around the globe is in fact incredibly absurd.

The US destroys entire nations around the globe. It is not above sponsoring relatively minor terrorism to coerce a nation.

Investigations will begin, but Bangkok is unlikely to directly implicate Thaksin or his proxies, no less his sponsors. The goal of the string of bombings is to heighten tensions and deepen divisions between the Thai public and what remains of Thaksin’s support base. Time is on Bangkok’s side. As it rises alongside China and the rest of Eurasia, US influence wanes. While the US is still an incredibly dangerous and destructive force around the globe – its ability to influence the path of global development has atrophied.

As public awareness grows of Washington’s true intentions and methods – and more specifically its abuses and crimes, further violence carried out by it or its proxies will only accelerate global backlash against it and its “international order,” in favor of a multipolar world where cooperation and national sovereignty hold primacy over coercion and regime change.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Countless ceasefires throughout years of Obama’s war, now Trump’s, agreed to by US-supported terrorists, were breached straightaway — government forces falsely blamed for their actions.

This time is following the earlier pattern. Once again, jihadists violated the agreement, surprising no one knowing how they operate.

Controlled by the US and its imperial partners, they salute and obey orders to prevent conflict resolution.

Achieving it would defeat Washington’s aim to transform Syria into a US client state, eliminate an Israeli rival, and isolate Iran — the scheme supported by both right wings of the imperial state’s war party, the human toll of no consequence.

On Friday, AMN News reported that al-Nusra jihadists in Idlib province attacked eastern Latakia city, breaching the fantasy ceasefire straightaway, citing a Syrian military source.

At least one civilian was killed, three other injured, requiring hospitalization. Overnight Thursday, there were no Russian and Syrian aerial operations, what’s “likely to change in the coming hours,” said AMN News.

The agreed on ceasefire was jihadist subterfuge like earlier ones. The only solution is eliminating their presence by annihilation or surrender.

The US and jihadists it controls continue going all-out to topple Assad’s government, a statement by the group reported by SouthFront (likely written by their Pentagon or CIA handlers) said:

“The goals of overthrowing the (Damascus government), liberating prisoners and securing the return of refugees and displaced people to their villages and cities (sic) is at the core of the objectives of our revolution (sic), which we are working for and sacrificing for it, as we work and do what we can to protect our people and land by all legitimate political and military means (sic) within the teachings of our true religion (sic).”

“Any shelling or attack on the liberated cities and towns of the north will lead to the cancellation of the ceasefire on our part, and we will have the right to respond to it.”

Syrian and Russian forces agreed to observe the ceasefire as long as jihadists refrained from launching attacks and observed Sochi agreement terms.

It calls for terrorists and their heavy weapons to be withdrawn from Idlib’s 15 – 20 km-wide demilitarized zone along the Turkish border — through which the Erdogan regime, the US, and NATO resupply the jihadists.

On Friday, Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari denounced Turkey’s Erdogan for supporting jihadists in the country’s north — breaching Sochi agreement principles his regime agreed to observe, saying the following:

“We have made intensive talks with the Russian and Iranian guarantors and other meetings on the sidelines Astana meetings.”

“They were all important and left their positive impact on the final communique, which is considered the best for Syria throughout Astana track in terms of its political content and the way it approaches the situation in Syria.”

“We call for pairing beautiful ideas of the final communique with actions on ground, particularly by the Turkish regime.”

“Syria does not see an honest application by the Turkish regime to Astana understandings and Sochi agreement on Idlib, which stipulates for the withdrawal of the terrorist organizations to a depth of 20 km and the withdrawal of heavy and medium weapons.”

Along with Pentagon forces, Turkey’s military illegally occupies northern Syria in areas separate from where US soldiers are located.

Wannabe sultan Erdogan wants northern Syrian territory annexed, especially its oil-rich area controlled by the Pentagon, stealing Syrian oil.

Head of Russia’s Astana talks Alexander Lavrentiev stressed that (US-supported al-Nusra and other) terrorist(s) control” around 90% of Idlib province, the last major jihadist stronghold in the country, adding:

More US forces occupy northern Syrian territory than when Trump announced their withdrawal months earlier.

Fars News reported many times about convoys of US trucks delivering weapons, munitions, and other material support to jihadists in Syria, coming cross-border from neighboring countries.

Separately, Russia opposes the newly established UN Board of Inquiry — on the phony pretext of “investigat(ing) incidents…in northwest Syria since the signing of the Memorandum on Stabilization of the Situation in the Idlib De-escalation Area between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey on 17 September 2018.”

Moscow’s deputy UN envoy Dmitry Polyanskiy slammed the idea, saying the following:

“(W)e regret this step.” The so-called Board of Inquiry’s establishment followed “pressure on the secretary general from some countries that really do not want to bring peace to Syria.”

SG Antonio Guterres and other senior UN officials serve pro-Western/pro-Israeli interests, time and again blaming victims for crimes committed against them, or simply calling on all sides to show restraint, ignoring US-led aggression.

Polyanskiy explained that earlier UN, IAEA, and other biased “investigations” produced “fake news (and) fake situations… blaming Syria and Russia for the things that we do not do.”

“(T)he notorious White Helmets” are one of numerous examples. “(W)e exposed them several times. Well, it is like Alice in Nowhereland, you know,” adding:

“We suggest not to invent artificial reality, to judge by facts. We really cited facts and concrete information about what has and has not happened.”

“We think that the sources of such information should be trustworthy, located on the ground. It should not be people sitting somewhere far away.”

“There are a lot of forces that are not interested in peace in Syria, that just want to keep pressure on the legitimate Syrian government and want to undermine any settlement-aimed efforts.”

“We are afraid that (establishment of the so-called) UN “Board of Inquiry is) one of such attempts.”

Russia supports diplomatic efforts to restore peace and stability in Syria, including the elimination of US-supported terrorists in the country.

Both right wings of the US war party oppose this objective in Syria and other US war theaters.

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the US economy created 148,000 new private sector jobs during July.  The jobs number does not translate into employed people as increasingly Americans hold two or more jobs.  For example, the BLS reports that from June to July the number of multiple job holders rose by 233,000 which is 85,000 more than the 148,000 new private sector jobs.  What we are seeing is not more people employed, but more multiple job holders. Since May the number of multiple job holders has increased by 534,000. See this. 

The claim of a falling rate of unemployment over the past decade is inconsistent with the falling labor force participation rate. Normally, when employment prospects are good the labor force participation rate increases.  To explain away the inconsistency, economists claim that the decline in the labor force participation rate reflects the increased retirements of the baby boomer generation.  However, the  BLS reported that the labor force participation rate for older workers of retirement age surged to the highest level in 7 years.   

So, what is really going on?  The answer is that retired people, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s low to zero interest rate over the last decade, cannot live on their pensions and their savings.  They have to take part-time jobs to make ends meet.  Younger people, however, cannot form independent households on the basis of part-time jobs, and as they have no pension income to supplement the meager pay of a part-time job, have dropped out of the work force.  

The reason the reported unemployment rate is low is that the millions who have dropped out of the labor force because they cannot find life-sustainable employment are not counted as unemployed.  What do these people do?  They live with parents or grandparents and they work cash jobs house sitting, walking dogs, cutting grass, and various handiman jobs.

There are many problems with the payroll jobs report, and always are.  For example, the July report finds 16,000 new manufacturing jobs, but the manufacturing index weakened for the fourth consecutive month. How do manufacturing jobs rise when manufacturing activity declines?

Another anomality is the collapse of seven trucking companies this year.  if the economy is so good, why has demand declined for transportation to move goods from producers to warehouses and from warehouses to retail outlets?

Americans live in a world in which explanations are controlled. The facts are whatever serves the interests of the ruling elites. Identity Politics serves to keep Americans disunited.  We hear far more about “white supremacy” and “misogyny” than we hear about the agendas that control our existence.

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

The corporate media, reflecting the talking points of the establishment and the war party, keeps harping on Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard about Bashar al-Assad and gas attacks that never occurred. 

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.@TulsiGabbard Responding to Smears from Kamala Harris, NeoCons, & MSM:

"I will never apologize to anyone for doing all that I can to prevent more of my brothers & sisters in uniform from being sent into harms way to fight in these wasteful counterproductive regime-change wars." pic.twitter.com/B3JGAKVRbF

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) August 2, 2019

Is Assad really a brutal dictator? Is he any worse than Mohammed bin Salman, the princeling known to have his opponents drugged and then cut up into disposable pieces? Or how about Bibi Netanyahu and his Zionist ethnic cleansers blowing up apartment buildings and shooting journalists, medics, and children for protesting against occupation? 

No mention by this CNN windup of the fact the “civil war” (doublespeak for proxy war) in Syria was engineered by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan. The jihadi maniacs described as “rebels” by the corporate media were assisted by US Special Forces and also helped along a bloody path strewn with 600,000+ dead by Israel, the UK, and France. 

The liberal “humanitarian interventionist” warmongers and their neocon partners screech about oppressed minorities in Syria and ignore the indisputable fact al-Assad has protected Christians and other religious minorities, the people the Islamic State decapitates while destroying churches. 

Brutal dictator? Is that why al-Assad is the most popular Arab leader in the Middle East according to a CNN and Zogby poll? Is it possible this invented and imagined hatred of Assad is due to Syria’s GDP tripling from 2000 to 2010 and its debt falling from 152.09% to 30.02% of gross domestic product? 

The New York Times is now peddling anti-Assad propaganda and defending the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, but back before the US and its partners unleashed thousands of Wahhabi cutthroats on the country, the newspaper listed Syria as number 7 out of 31 top tourist destinations. In 2010, 8.5 million tourists visited the country. 

The real problem, of course, is Bashar al-Assad’s support for the Palestinians. This support is wholly unacceptable to the land-grabbing ethnic cleansers in Israel. 

This support is why Israel repeatedly and obsessively violates Syria’s national sovereignty and breaks international law by targeting Hezbollah, Iran (both invited by Syria to help fight the Salafists), and the Syrian Arab Army. Israel also protects and offers medical aid to al-Qaeda and its spinoffs. 

The lies and pure fabrication (most notoriously the fake news on chemical attacks) has not only provided dimwitted teleprompter readers with grist for the promotion of forever war, but neocons as well, including the screechy talk radio gasbag Mark Levin.

Gabbard meets with Assad but accuses Trump of supporting al-Qaeda.  Nuts. https://t.co/B0JKElOLAo

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) August 2, 2019

No, Mark. That’s Israel you’re confusing with Trump. The Donald merely repeats what his neocon and Israel-first handlers tell him. 

Mark pretends he’s “conservative” and a defender of the Constitution, except for Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, which of course is reviled by the Zionists and if followed to the letter would put the question of endless war to Congress.

But then the Zionist mind-meld has largely taken over Congress, and those who have reservations about the advisability of endless war remain silent, with the notable exception of the Gang of Four, aka the Squad. 

Rep. Ilhan Omar might be a clueless identity agenda pol, but when it comes to Israel she’s right over the target, and that’s why she will be removed from Congress by hook or crook. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author

“So, Canada, the Canadian people unfortunately are deprived of honest representation of provincial desires, provincial needs, by the fact that the financial sector, the banks, are pretty much running the country.”         – Michael Hudson

On the weekend of July 19-21st, 2019, the University of Manitoba became the venue for the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE). This annual event represents a gathering of Marxist economists from around the globe, and aims to utilize current understandings on the subject to analyze and study the world economy, reveal its laws of development, and offer policies to promote economic and social progress on national and global levels.

One of the keynote speakers at this event was Michael Hudson. He had presented on his most recent paper, detailing how the world could defend itself from U.S. economic warfare.

Michael Hudson is a prominent U.S. critical economist and President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET). A Wall Street Financial Analyst and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Dr. Hudson has acted as an economic adviser to governments worldwide, including Iceland, China, Latvia and Canada.

Dr. Hudson’s books include Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy (2015), J Is for Junk Economics – A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception (2017), and his seminal work – Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972), a critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through the IMF and World Bank.

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Global Research News Hour host Michael Welch, Professor Hudson explains how the Bretton Woods institutions came to be an instrument of the U.S. empire, the similarities and differences behind the paths to Chinese and US economic prosperity, the virtual impossibility of electing a genuine reformer to the White House, the case of Canada, and more.

Full transcript below:

Global Research: I wanted to dig down a little bit in some of the major developments you’ve seen on the international financial stage over the course of the last 75 years, but…I know that the United States economy has been quite pivotal in all of these developments, and you pointed out that these institutions of international financial order, the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF, the World Bank, there was a…ostensibly conceived to promote a more peaceful world order, but they’ve turned into instruments of extending U.S. nationalism, predatory rent extraction, and increased militarism.

So I guess I wanted to get some sense from you… What were the key ingredients that led in that direction? Were the seeds always planted for that development? Or were there key moments where we’ve seen that transition to this very much more asymmetric dynamic?

Michael Hudson: Well, every country and every class always represents its own interests as being that of civilization. Rome described the conquest of its empire as extending civilization, America does the same. In the case of the World Bank, the United States created a system where it would only make loans in dollars in foreign currency, not domestic currency at the countries, and instead of helping finance their development, it only would finance their dependency. To create… for instance their land was to be used to grow export crops, competing with each other, crops could not be grown in America’s latitude but tropical crops, they were not to grow grain or wheat or soybeans or anything that would compete with the American agricultural exports because agriculture has always been the bulwark of America’s trade balance, much more than industry.

The World Bank also, instead of making loans to develop transportation infrastructure for what you normally see with a city urbanization, domestic use, urban development; financed transportation almost exclusively to help the mining interests and the extractive interest, the raw materials interest. The World Bank would provide infrastructure to lower the cost to multinational corporations involved in mining, minerals, oil, and gas. So basically, it was all to support American investment abroad from the beginning.

The International Monetary Fund was the same. The guiding philosophy of the International Monetary Fund is they will make loans only at the supported currency in trouble. In trouble means when a currency was about to collapse in Latin America or elsewhere, the International Monetary Fund would help the oligarchs, the local wealthy people, transfer their money out of the local currency, pesos, escudos, out of the country at a supported high exchange rate for the dollar. Then they would let the exchange rate fall and the country would be left with debt, and the guiding philosophy of the International Monetary Fund was any country can pay any volume of debt without limit as long as it can impoverish the labor force by reducing wages and imposing austerity.

So the IMF promoted American prosperity, and at the cost of austerity, falling living standards, falling public investments in its client countries. That’s why when 2008 occurred, by that time, the last IMF client, Turkey, I think, had repaid foreign debt, and other countries said we never want the IMF in our country again.

Because the IMF would do what it calls stabilization programs. These were really destabilization programs. They would say, the country can pay the debt, you’ve already impoverished your workers to such a low level that you’re in a depression, there’s no internal market, you have to pay your debt by privatizing your public infrastructure. You have to sell off all of the natural monopolies that every country for hundreds of years has kept in the public domain.

Not only the mineral rights and oil rights that were in the public domain but the transportation system the electrical system, especially, the ports, the airports, everything that was public should be sold to pay back the IMF for the subsidy of the capital flight by the wealthy.

And most of this capital flight was into offshore banking enclaves that were set up by the U.S. government around, after 1964, when the Vietnam War was causing extreme balance of payment crisis. I was at the Chase Manhattan Bank at that time, and a State Department person came to me and said, the entire deficit of the Vietnam war is military. We have a problem. How are we going to pay for a military deficit all over the rest of the world? 800 military bases… They said there’s one liquid supply of capital throughout the world. There’s one class that has a higher savings rate than any other class. And that class is the criminal class. The drug dealers, organized crime, tax evaders, and corrupt government officials.

And so, they decided, they said, what we will do is create offshore banking enclaves, very much like Panama and Liberia for the oil sector, which was already set up, but we’re going to set them up throughout the Caribbean. England did the same thing. So America established Caribbean islands with no taxation, no questions asked, little Panamas, little Liberias. And in England’s case, you had the British Caribbean islands declare independence, and then they reversed their independence so they could be part of the English area, and so that they would be using sterling and be exempt from any foreign exchange, any currency devaluation.

So very quickly, the American Banks and the British Banks established branches in these islands that were very poor islands, and all of a sudden you had all these huge Bank branches there. So brokerage firms came to me and asked me to compute statistics. We would look at, you can look at the United States government and bank foreign liabilities too, like Anguilla and all of the other offshore banking enterprises

Foreign liabilities means these are the deposits we have there. And you’d have foreign liabilities to their own banks and so the criminals, the drug dealers, the cocaine cartel, all sorts of… And tax dictators would put their money in the islands, in the banks. The island branches of the New York banks would then take this money and lend it to the head office, and this money was exempt from reserve requirements because it was foreign, and so it was a source of very inexpensive capital at the American banks.  So it was really the United States that organized the world’s capital flight, offshore banking centers, and the IMF role was to support the dollar, to support the currency, and to support capital flight from other countries into the US dollar.

This was not really international at all. The World Bank, some years, I think on it’s 50th Anniversary, called a book celebrating its success Partners in Development. It actually should have been called Partners in Backwardness because the effect was to under-develop countries, to unbalance them, to make them export enclaves, while the IMF’s role was to keep down the price of labor and essentially carve up the public domain and privatize it, to do to Latin America, Africa, and the Near East what Margaret Thatcher had done to England.

GR: Now, you mentioned the developments springing from 1964, the Vietnam War, and it occurs to me it was only a few years into that war that you start to see that the gold standard has been exchanged for US treasury debt. Could you comment a little bit more on that decision and maybe the timing of the decision and its impact?

MH: Well, in the years from World War II up to 1950 when the Korean war was breaking out, the United States increased its supply of the world’s gold to 75%. It was by far the largest holder of official inter-governmental gold. When the war in Korea began, that started a long generation of deficits in the United States balance of payments.  In the 1950s and the 1960s, I have the charts in my book Super Imperialism, the private sector was just exactly in balance for the United States in the 1950s and 60s. The entire balance of payments deficit of the United States was for military spending abroad, not only the war in Vietnam but the spread into other countries the bases we had all over, the political bribery and influence over foreign countries.

So it used to be… by the mid-60s, again when I was Chase Manhattan Bank’s balance of payments economist, every Friday the Federal Reserve would publish, the papers would publish the US gold holdings and the currency. And at that time every physical U.S. dollar, the paper money, had to be backed 25% by gold. And we would see week by week as General De Gaulle, but also Germany, without being so vociferous, would, cash in the dollars from gold. Because Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were all part of French Indochina, the banks, they were all French, so the army had to use French banks to send these dollars spent by the military back to the head office in Paris and De Gaulle would then immediately cash in the dollar inflows into gold.

So we were forecasting exactly at what point the United States would have to close the gold window. The United States was selling gold on the London Gold Exchange to keep the price down to $35 an ounce because it had said the US dollar is as good as gold, and by keeping the US dollar tied to gold, that kept basically a hard money position. It prevented other countries from financing their own economies with their own money and tied them to, it limited their international spending to their access to dollars or to gold, and the United States feared losing this connection with gold because then it couldn’t create an artificial limit to other countries spending, and other countries might not be subject to poverty. And the objective was to impoverish as many of your trading partners as possible so that you could invest and take over their industry and other public domain.

GR: Yeah, we’ve seen of course the rise of China, the Chinese economy which is followed a very different path to its current status, so I wonder if you could maybe point to what the key ingredients there were there that enabled it to the point that it situated to perhaps overcome the United States as an economic power.

MH: I’m not sure what you mean I’m not when you say they followed a different path. China’s falling the identical path to the United States in the late 19th century.  After the Civil War, the Republican Party governed the United States, it was a protectionist party, it developed American infrastructure, public infrastructure, as what it called a fourth factor of production alongside land, labor, and capital, you had public infrastructure.

But the role of public government investment in railroads and transportation and public health and education was not to make a profit, unlike private investment. It was to lower the cost of living therefore lower the cost of doing business by lowering the break-even price of labor and enable American industrialists to employ a labor force that had its education paid for by the government.  That had the transportation provided freely or on a subsidized basis that was healthy, agriculture that had agricultural extensions services and support and government marketing services. So America became a mixed economy. Certainly not a socialist economy, but with a very active government support of the private sector to increase the profitability of the private sector by essentially taxing unearned income, taxing basically rentier and… rent and interest.

When the income tax was introduced to the United States in 1913 by Woodrow Wilson, only 1% of Americans had to pay the income tax. Only the wealthy Americans had to pay, and the wealthy Americans were the property owners who got almost, whose income consisted almost entirely of interest, dividends and land rent. And so, in effect, America was taxing the unproductive rentiers, the people, the classes that ruled Europe and avoided taxation in Europe, and its subsidized industry. And that’s why America was able to subsidize its industry to overtake that of England.

Well China is doing exactly the same thing. Except it’s doing it in a socialist way. It’s developing a public infrastructure, public transportation, free education, and because it provides its population with so many public services, it’s not necessary for employers to pay their employees enough to cover the cost of student debt. Their employees don’t have to earn enough to pay student debts. They don’t have to earn enough to pay… the average rental in Manhattan, I live in New York, is $4,500 a month. Well you can imagine that rents are much cheaper in China.

America is now de-industrialized by turning into a financialized economy run by the finance, insurance, and real estate FIRE sector. China has been able to avoid that primarily. So it’s been able to avoid the post industrialization policy of the United States by following the original industrialization policy, and obviously it works. It’s the antithesis of free trade, it’s the antithesis of neoliberalism, China is not… and the banking especially is in the public domain.

In the United States, if a corporation borrows money  to pay higher dividends, or borrows money to buy its own stock, or simply uses its earnings to buy its own stock and push up the price, instead of investing, will sooner or later this corporation’s going to go bankrupt. And in such cases, like Sears Roebuck for instance, the corporation’s bought out by a hedge fund that then loots it all the more and takes all the assets, spins them off, essentially at breakup cost, and leaves an empty financial shell.

Well China’s credit to corporations is provided by the Bank of China, and if a corporation can’t pay, China doesn’t say, well you’re going to have to fire all your employees, you’re going to have to downsize and sell off I guess to whoever wants to buy it, China will say okay we’re forgiving the debt. So China does not impose a debt peonage on either its population or on its corporate sector, because the government is the creditor, not the private banking systems.

That’s the big difference between China’s development. It is… It is free of the sort of financial suicide that the United States and Europe are imposing on themselves because the financial sector, the banks and their brokerage houses finance most of the election campaigns in the United States, and the U.S. Treasury here, the Foreign Office finances many of the election campaigns in Europe.  Presumably Canada too.

GR: Well speaking of Canada, Canada has a publicly-owned central bank, the Bank of Canada, which was in existence from the mid-30s to 19…it was being used to finance a lot of these same sorts of projects, public programs infrastructure and whatnot, and for whatever reason in the 1970s, they abandoned that use of the Bank of Canada,  embraced monetarism, and now we find ourselves in a situation where we’re borrowing from private banks at higher rates and interest, or have been, and we’ve seen the deficits skyrocketing.

You’ve been an advisor to the Canadian government in the 1970s. What insights do you have into why Canada pursued the path it did as opposed to the path we see China pursuing?

MH: It was a very clear path, and the reason for the changing of the Bank of England was the banking influence. When I was adviser to the government, I published… The government made a last-ditch effort to oppose the banking interests and published my pamphlet on Canada and the new monetary order.  That was done in 1978 and 79. At that time, since the Bank of Canada was not simply printing the money to enable the provinces such as Manitoba to … build their public infrastructure, they had to borrow. And the question is, who are they going to borrow from and at what interest rate?

Domestic Canadian interest rates were very high because there were, there’s a monopoly of banks here that controlled its interest rates, and it was maybe 5% or 6%, but the provinces were advised by the bank to borrow German marks and Swiss francs at only 2%, two and a half percent. And said, look, you can pay much lower interest on your borrowing even though the Canadian government isn’t printing the money so you can get it for free, at least you can get a low interest rate. Well, they…the banks made enormous underwriting fees in advising Manitoba and Ontario and other provinces, Alberta, to borrow abroad. To arrange Swiss and German loans.

Well, my point is, I went around Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal with the following argument. A province like Manitoba will borrow say a hundred million dollars from Germany, what happens? German investors will buy bonds for a hundred million marks. These marks will be put, sent to the Bank of Canada and translated into Canadian dollars because Manitoba and the other provinces spend, if they’re going to build infrastructure, they spend their money in Canadian dollars. They pay their labor in Canadian dollars, they pay for their raw materials in Canadian dollars, and so, the Bank of Canada will now have in its foreign reserves a hundred million dollars of foreign currency, German marks, and the Canadian provinces will have a debt of a hundred million dollars denominated in German marks.

Well there’s no… I said in either case the Canadian Central Bank has to simply print the money. It has to print the hundred million dollars in Canadian dollars for you to spend. Why do you need the Germans or the Swiss to lend you money if all the money is going to be printed by the Bank of Canada? Well, the bankers said, and they actually claimed this, they said we’re the honest broker. We know much more than the government because we’re the private sector, and as you all know, the government in Canada is thoroughly corrupt, especially the Liberal party at that time, and they said, we know that the government is so corrupt in Canada, and it’s so stupid that we pay very high prices to advisers to give good advice, and if the government prints the money it’s inflationary, but if we tell the government where to print the money, that it’s not inflationary. I said this is absolute nonsense, and in fact you’re taking a risk.

Well, at the time I wrote the book, I think the Canadian dollar was something like a $1.06 in U.S. terms, it began to plunge down to $0.80.  Now just imagine, if the Canadian dollar goes down to $0.80, it has to still pay back marks. The mark increases from, by… all of a sudden, 30%. So the actual interest rate that Canada ended up paying was 10 to 15% a year, and that doesn’t count the enormous fees that it paid the banks. So what they claimed was intelligent private advice was very bad advice, and I talked to the banks, and it was obvious they have one way to make sure that their claim that governments are stupid and private people are bad, and that is telling the government only appoint stupid people to the banking system.  Have people that are drawn from the banking sector, whose loyalty is to their head offices, and the Canadians realize that this private enterprise philosophy is simply a self-serving patter talk by the banks to try to get a candidate to follow a self-destructive policy that has impoverished the provinces and made them pay needless amounts. While the provinces have been impoverished, the banks made enormous underwriting fees in all of these bond issues.

The banks even called in a Jesuit priest who said if the government decides where to lend money to the provinces, that way leads to the gas chambers. He said, that’s Nazism – that’s fascism. And the bank said that’s right. To have a strong government that’s fascist, you need us, the private sector. What they didn’t realize is that Canada, before the Bank of Canada was closed down, was more or less decentralized.

In World War II, C.D. Howe centralized Canada and government in Ontario at the expense of its provinces, but Canada is now a centrally planned economy. The economy is planned by the banks and by the US state department, and the pretense is that if the planners are in the private sector, it’s not a planned economy. But that’s crazy! The banks lobby for the government, they pay for the election campaigns, they outright bribe the government, and if they don’t do the bribery because that’s illegal, they have the U.S. State Department and the US banks do the bribery. So I’ve been told by the U.S. Treasury officials.

So, Canada, the Canadian people unfortunately are deprived of honest representation of provincial desires, provincial needs, by the fact that the financial sector, the banks, are pretty much running the country.

GR: I wonder if that… is there some sort of a reflection of its former, its colonial status versus a British colony, and then effectively as a U.S. colony making them somewhat vulnerable to these financial, or these private bank snake oil salesmen as it were.

Getting to your talk about the major alignment that other countries can align with against this U.S. imposed financial aggression, I question…. What would you say to those individuals who might say, well, are you just…given that China is such a powerful country in its own right, that alignments with China might just be… Where China is potentially exploitative just as the United States is exploitative but maybe not as nasty an exploiter. Are we talking about a fundamentally different alignment to protect from…While we’re protecting from financial aggression in the United States, are we making themselves vulnerable to Chinese exploitation?

MH: The question isn’t really whether you’re going to follow America or China, but what kind of economy are you going to create? Are you going to create an American-style, European-style economy that is shrinking, that is struggling with debt, that the financial sector has driven the rest of the economy further and further into debt, and is essentially making your economy debt-ridden and unproductive and high cost of housing, or are you going to follow a policy that right now China is leading, that Canada was following before 1974, of having the government create the money, not borrowing the money from the private sector, that when the government creates the money, it’s for tangible public investment and useful investment, not simply to inflate housing prices or find corporate takeovers, or pay for a financialization?

The Canadian banks have lent increasing amounts of money to all the big Canadian corporations, especially the airlines, if you look at Canadian airlines, they’ve become increasingly debt-burdened and that’s increased their cost of doing business, and they’ve had to cut back their efficiency, cut back their spending, cut back costs, and are falling way below the quality that they had 40 years ago when I was going back and forth to Canada.

So it’s not China versus the US, it’s whether you want a Thatcherite, neoliberal policy that’s going to impoverish you and leave your corporations bankrupt, and let the United States exploit you again and again, and from the auto pact agreement in the 70s down through NAFTA, or are you going to act in your own economic self-interest?

You don’t have to join China to act in your economic self-interest. You don’t have to join China to return to a Bank of Canada like it used to be, to free yourself from the banks. You don’t have to join China to have a tax policy that lowers the price of housing by imposing a ground rent, a basic rent allocation, so that all of the rent won’t be paid to the banks as interest.

You can lower the cost of business by deleveraging the economy. So it’s just… They’re trying to frighten you when they’re trying to talk about the yellow peril dependency on China. What really it is, it is not a war of America against China. It’s a war of do you want feudalism and debt peonage or do you want economic survival.

GR: You know, there’s a state known as psychological projection in which you will… it’s a defense mechanism where you avoid… it’s an unconscious tendency to avoid certain qualities in yourself and you deny them in yourself and invoke them in others. I’m reminded of that syndrome when I hear U.S. entities saying that China’s wireless technologies and Huawei are using back doors and certain cybernetic mechanisms and that’s a way of dissuading customers from embracing that technology. Like Trump saying the Chinese are stealing your secrets or whatever…

MH: Well psychology, national psychology is certainly very important. Because the year after I wrote the report on Canada and the new monetary order, how it should create its own credit, they made me a consultant to the Department of State here, which is your education department, working on what kind of culture, cultural spending should Canada spend to make Canadians more self-sufficient and more immune from the neoliberalism and Thatcherism. So I worked for a year on a report, you know, I think you should subsidize your film industry much more, what kind of curriculum do you have  to have an alternative to that Thatcherism.

As you probably know, for your, in terms of the film industry, one of Canada’s major exports is comedians. Most American comedians have come from Canada. And the reason is pretty obvious. How else do you cope with the society that doesn’t work? I mean either do get angry and have a breakdown or you become a comedian, and that’s sort of a by-product of the mess that Canada’s in.

Well I didn’t… they gave me a landed immigrant status in Canada, but I never came up here because I realized the balance of forces, there was nothing that a single person such as myself could do when all of the billions of dollars of bank lobbying and political corruption was already in place, so I haven’t been back for many years, except for my friends in British Columbia where they are trying to have a land tax, they are trying to have a tax policy that will fund domestic urban and provincial development without the financialization, without the rentier overhead that you have in the rest of Canada.

GR: In the U.S., it seems as if they somewhat painted themselves into a corner. There’s no chance of them developing a kind of more industrial based economy as opposed to the financialization capital that we’ve seen. That being said, we do see movements within the United States that are trying to push for a more progressive focusing on, you might call it, New Deal type policies, even a Green New Deal. And they seem to be rallying around certain candidates. I mean Bernie Sanders in the last election is a very famous example, and it seems like we’re seeing it again with his next round of democratic candidates.

I know that you were an advisor to Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich about 15 years ago. Could you talk about lessons you learned from that campaign, what you saw what you heard that gives some sense of the pressures that the candidates are under and what is possible given the current political dynamics?

MH: Well, the problem is the American political system that’s very different from the parliamentary system of Canada and Europe. If this were Europe or Canada, the progressive forces in the United States could simply form a progressive party. They could call it the Socialist Party or whatever they wanted to, but they could form a party, and immediately you would have the mainstream of the Democratic Party, the Hillary Clinton-Obama right wing that is controlled by the donor class on Wall Street, that would fall to about 8%, which is a level to which the German Social Democratic party has fallen and other Social Democratic parties that are right-wing parties in Europe.

But the way the United States has been set up, there could only be two parties. Bernie Sanders ,for instance, was a socialist, thought of running as a third-party, but it was very clear, his lawyers made clear, that the difficulty of getting onto a ballot even to run for president is so difficult, especially since Ross Perot ran, tried to run as a third-party candidate, that it’s not possible to be elected and to have a congressional following to support the laws that you’d want to put through.

So the only access to policy and law making in the United States is either the Republican or the Democratic party. Even though the Democratic party is the right-wing party in the United States, its role is to essentially protect the Republicans from any left wing criticisms by sort of following it further and further and further to the right, claiming that, well, we’re not as far to the right as they are, we’re closer to the center, hoping to get the Centrist votes. Hillary Clinton called that triangulation, although it’s just really moving to the right.

The problem is, the only way that you can gain control of the democratic party is to make sure…. Is not to run a third-party candidate, but the equivalent is simply not to vote. There’s been a feeling on the left in the United States that you have to have the Democrats lose again and again and again to show them that they cannot win any election until you get rid of the Democratic National Committee which is a private, legally defined as a private club, under the American laws the Democratic National Committee, a smoke filled room that selects the president, does not have to follow the votes at all.

The primary votes where you vote in every state for who you would like to be president and other officials are only indicative in the United States. You don’t have to follow them, and they have a whole group of the main donors, the representatives of Wall Street, financial interests, the insurance industry, all outweighing the votes of the popular people. So they obviously, the left-wingers such as Bernie Sanders, want to run for president as a kind of educational campaign to make their policy clear to the people, but they know that there’s no way in which the ruling class will let them win.

It’s been very clear, if they did win, they would be assassinated very quickly. I’ve been told that by presidential candidates. The threat is, you’ll never be president, we have ways of keeping you out, and should you succeed, we will do to you what the Romans did to every advocate of democracy century after century, assassination.

So all that Bernie Sanders and his followers can do is outline a program and then expect their followers to stay home. So we’re going to have Donald Trump probably elected very strongly in the next election because the right wing of the Democratic Party is going to support a right-wing candidate that is almost as bad as Obama. It will be someone like, they would like to have Biden, who represents the state of Delaware. And in America, Delaware is a state where most corporations are located for legal reasons because the laws are so pro corporate and anti reform.

Or Kamala Harris, a Hillary backer, and a right-wing neoliberal such as Mayor Buttigieg who’s been pushed by the people who were financing Biden and the Wall Street interests. So you’re going to have a heavily financed Wall Street candidate against reform candidates, and the reformers certainly don’t have a chance in next year’s election. They probably won’t in 2024. We’re talking about decades of poverty, and the United States will probably remain in the Post Obama depression that it’s been in since 2008, where are all of the growth, the little growth that there has been in American GDP, all the growth has accrued to only the richest 5% of the population.

For 95% the American population, the GDP has been declining. And that is probably going to continue under Trump. He’s following policy of antagonizing the rest of the world. I would expect that he would probably win the Nobel Peace Prize somewhere around 2022 for integrating, driving the whole world together, integrating the whole world into a common front against American aggression. And that’s why foreign countries seem to be applauding him.

GR: It seems that both Democrats and Republicans have driven China and Russian together currently, so that’s a pretty significant step. Maybe my last question then is… Are we looking at an inevitable collapse as with Rome, an inevitable collapse of the U.S. system, with China and the other aligned countries just sort of taking off by default, or do you see any prospect, I mean this being the anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike, that popular movements within the United States and perhaps Canada could somehow soften the blow or redirect it in a more positive direction?

MH: I don’t see any popular movement yet. You can very easily see why collapse is inevitable. All you have to do is look at the rising debt, personal debt, the rising corporate debt, the rising provincial or state debt, and it’s growing exponentially. And exponential, every interest rate is a doubling time at a certain point. The rule of 72, you simply divide 72 by the interest rate and you get the number of years in which the debt is doubling.

Canada’s debt, personal debt, is doubling very fast. The government is keeping the debt in place in the U.S., Europe, and Canada by low interest rates, so the interest rate charges are very low, but the debt keeps rising and absorbing and diverting more and more income, so Canadians have less and less to buy goods and services that Canada produces after they pay their rising housing costs, after they pay their bank debt, after they pay their monthly nut to the utilities, everybody I’m sure knows from their own experience that they have less and less to pay for goods and services and that is going to continue to shrink the economy.

There’s no way of knowing when there will be a break in the chain of payment. Usually it’s a bankruptcy of a big company, very often by fraud, as the 2008 crisis was bank mortgage fraud. You don’t know when people will fight back. Often, surprisingly, they only fight back when things are getting better. But things still have a way to go to get much worse in Canada, much worse in the United States, so I don’t see any possibility of reform within the next 4 to 8 years.

GR: Well, Michael Hudson I really appreciate your sharing and availing us of your understanding, your unique understanding of these major developments in the international financial system. Thank you very much for your time.

MH: Glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Il segretario di stato Mike Pompeo ha annunciato ieri, dopo sei mesi di sospensione, il definitivo ritiro degli Stati uniti dal Trattato sulle Forze nucleari intermedie (Inf), accusando la Russia di averlo «deliberatamente violato, mettendo a rischio i supremi  interessi Usa». Alla notizia è stato dato in Italia scarsissimo rilievo politico e mediatico (l’Ansa le ha dedicato poche righe). Eppure siamo di fronte a una decisione che ha drammatiche implicazioni per l’Italia, esposta con altri paesi europei a fare da prima linea in un nuovo confronto nucleare Usa-Russia non meno pericoloso di quello della guerra fredda.

Il Trattato Inf,   firmato nel 1987 dai presidenti Gorbaciov e Reagan,  eliminò tutti i missili nucleari a gittata corta e intermedia (tra 500 e 5500 km) con base a terra, anzitutto i missili balistici Pershing 2, schierati dagli Stati uniti in Germania Occidentale, e quelli da crociera lanciati da terra, schierati dagli Stati uniti in Gran Bretagna, Italia, Germania Occidentale, Belgio e Olanda, e allo stesso tempo i missili balistici SS-20 schierati dall’Unione Sovietica sul proprio territorio. 

Nel 2014, l’amministrazione Obama accusava la Russia, senza portare alcuna prova, di aver sperimentato un missile da crociera (sigla 9M729) della categoria proibita dal Trattato e, nel 2015, annunciava che «di fronte alla violazione del Trattato Inf da parte della Russia, gli Stati uniti stanno considerando lo spiegamento in Europa di missili con base a terra». Il piano è stato confermato dalla amministrazione Trump: nel 2018 il Congresso ha autorizzato il finanziamento di «un programma di ricerca e sviluppo di un missile da crociera lanciato da terra da piattaforma mobile su strada». 

Da parte sua, Mosca negava che il suo missile da crociera violasse il Trattato e, a sua volta, accusava Washington di aver installato in Polonia e Romania rampe di lancio di missili intercettori (quelli dello «scudo»), che possono essere usate per lanciare missili da crociera a testata nucleare. In tale quadro va tenuto presente il fattore geografico: mentre un missile nucleare Usa a raggio intermedio, schierato in Europa, può colpire Mosca, un analogo missile schierato dalla Russia sul proprio territorio può colpire le capitali europee, ma non Washington. Rovesciando lo scenario, è come se la Russia schierasse missili nucleari a raggio intermedio in Messico.

«Gli Stati uniti – sottolinea Mike Pompeo nella dichiarazione – apprezzano grandemente la costante cooperazione e risolutezza degli alleati Nato nel rispondere alla violazione russa del Trattato». Apprezzamento meritato: gli alleati, Italia compresa, hanno dichiarato la Russia colpevole di aver violato il Trattato accettando a scatola chiusa l’accusa fatta dagli Usa senza alcuna prova reale.  

La cancellazione del Trattato Inf, sospeso anche dalla Russia il 3 luglio, si inserisce in una nuova corsa agli armamenti ormai, basata non tanto sulla quantità ma sulla qualità delle armi nucleari e dei loro vettori e sulla loro dislocazione. Fonti militari informano che gli Stati uniti stanno mettendo a punto nuovi missili nucleari a raggio intermedio con base a terra, sia da crociera che balistici (questi capaci di colpire gli obiettivi in 6-11 minuti dal lancio). La Russia ha avvertito che, se verranno schierati in Europa, punterà i suoi missili nucleari sui territori in cui saranno installati. 

L’affossamento del Trattato Inf ha un ulteriore scopo strategico. Lo ha rivelato lo stesso Pompeo, accusando la Cina di schierare (sul proprio territorio) missili nucleari a raggio intermedio con base a terra con i quali «minaccia gli Stati uniti e i loro alleati in Asia».  Il segretario di stato Pompeo avverte quindi: «Non c’è ragione che gli Stati uniti continuino a concedere questo cruciale vantaggio militare a potenze come la Cina». Gli Usa dunque si preparano a schierare nuovi missili nucleari a raggio intermedio non solo contro la Russia ma anche contro la Cina. Ambedue in grado di rispondere schierando nuove armi nucleari.

Significativa la posizione della Commissione Europea, che ieri ha dichiarato: «Incoraggiamo a preservare i risultati del Trattato Inf, dobbiamo stare attenti a non imboccare la strada di una nuova corsa agli armamenti che ridurrebbe i risultati significativi raggiunti dopo la fine della Guerra fredda». Ci vuole una bella faccia tosta per dichiarare questo, dopo che la stessa Ue ha contribuito all’affossamento del Trattato Inf: all’Assemblea Generale Onu (21 dicembre 2018), l’Unione europea compatta ha bocciato la risoluzione con cui la  Russia proponeva di preservare il Trattato stabilendo meccanismi di verifica e negoziati. L’Unione europea ha dato così di fatto luce verde alla installazione di nuovi missili nucleari Usa in Europa, Italia compresa. 

Manlio Dinucci

Bioweapons, specifically Lyme Disease and bioweaponized ticks, were in the news recently when US Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced Amendment 116-19 which was subsequently passed by the US House of Congress on July 11th, 2019. The US House ordered an investigation to determine whether the DoD (Department of Defense) experimented with ticks and other insects between 1950 and 1975 to create bioweapons (biological weapons). Smith, who has a long history of bringing awareness to Lyme Disease, said he was inspired to pursue the matter after reading a book by Kris Newby entitled Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons published this year. The fact of the matter is that the US Government and Military have a long history of experimentation with bioweapons, some of which has caused fatal consequences. It is time for the truth to come out.

What is Lyme Disease?

With nearly two dozen declared candidates competing for the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary field and the opportunity to run against Donald Trump in the general election, it’s no surprise that candidates are trying their best to “destroy” their opponents during the debates.

During yesterday’s second night of the second Democratic Debate, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, brought up California Senator Kamala Harris’s record as prosecutor. She said,

“I’m concerned about this record of Senator Harris. She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana”.

Gabbard also said

“She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor of the state of California,” and added “The bottom line is, Senator Harris, when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people’s lives, you did not,”. Gabbard ended with “The people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology.”

After the debate in Detroit, while talking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Harris resorted to name calling and belittling Gabbard by saying she was an “apologist” for Assad “who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.” She also said that because she is “obviously a top-tiered candidate” that she was prepared to take some hits especially from people who were polling at close to zero percent.

It’s interesting how the majority of the criticism that Gabbard faces is from her own party, whereas Republicans and progressives actually like her. She’s even sided with Republicans on the whole Russian collusion fiasco, some have even accused her of being hired by Russia to take down Kamala. Therefore, it’s no surprise that once #KamalaHarrisDestroyed started trending on Twitter people started accusing Russian bots and MAGA supporters of fueling it.

Let’s get back to why Gabbard is not an “Assad apologist.”

In January 2017, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard visited Syria on a fact-finding mission, and met with President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus, but few know that she met with the opposition as well, among others. She has said that she is willing to meet with any leader, “because the only alternative to having those meetings is war”.

Gabbard’s skepticism of how the media was portraying the Syrian president grew and the more openly she spoke about the need for proof before assigning blame for alleged chemical weapons attacks, the harsher the criticism against her became, from the media and her own party.

Gabbard has been accused of being an “Assad apologist” by many but the name calling doesn’t end there. The Washington Post called her “Assad’s Mouthpiece”, The Daily Beast said she was “Bashar Assad’s Favorite Democrat”.

What all of these people are missing is that she has on many occasions called Assad “a brutal dictator” or has folded under pressure like she did earlier this year on The View and the latest example is last night when Anderson Cooper badgered her repeatedly about whether she thinks Assad is a murderer, and yet again she caved.

Her weakness when faced with high pressure situations is a flaw that some of her supporters and critics have noticed and pointed out. It’s not a good look and some will try to defend it and say that it’s just “political talk” to get her elected, but folding and backtracking are signs of weakness and could cost her.

It also seems apparent that many are confusing her non-interventionist, anti-war views with being a supporter of “brutal dictators” and “regimes”.  Her opposition in 2013 to Obama’s proposed military strikes in Syria resulted in her introducing legislation to block CIA activities in Syria and military actions against Assad. In 2016 she was only one of three members of Congress that voted against House resolution 121, “Syria war bill” which condemned the Syrian government and other parties for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

She has opposed overthrowing the Syrian government under the false pretense of “humanitarianism”. That same year she even met with President Trump to try to convince him of her views. The following year she stated that the US’s “regime change” involvement in Syria caused the Syrian refugee crisis. That same year she visited Syria, met with President Assad and spoke with Syrian civilians. In 2017 she also supported the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. However, she also supports separatist Kurdish militia’s in Syria.

Gabbard has questioned whether or not Assad ordered chemical weapon attacks against Syrian civilians, she called for an investigation by the U.N. In 2018 she spoke during interviews about the US and their allies providing support to terrorist organizations like AlQaeda. Then, in 2019 while on The View she said there was no disputing the fact that (Assad) is a brutal dictator that has used chemical weapons against his people. Without any evidence, and while playing the role of judge and jury, she caved and said what the hosts wanted to hear.

Even after kowtowing mainstream media’s narrative about Assad being a “brutal dictator” and “murderer” who “uses chemical weapons on his own people”, Democrats insist Gabbard is sympathetic to Syria’s Assad.

Gabbard never was, nor is she now an Assad “apologist”. President Assad has the support of the majority of his people and has been fighting foreign and domestic terrorism in Syria for over eight years, he surely doesn’t need anyone to apologize for him.

Whoever wins the next US election should let Syrians determine their own fate and stay out of their internal political affairs. Ending “regime change” wars and bringing back US troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the rest of the world should be a top priority on their agenda.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Wild animals are turning to humans as they escape gas-chamber-like woods, with wildfires continuing to rage across almost 3 million hectares. 

Even the Arctic is on fire, with smoke blanketing an area larger than the European Union, and a state of emergency declared in several large areas of Siberia.

And a dire warning has been sounded about a major change in climate in Siberia.

Wildfire raging in Boguchany district, Krasnoyarsk region.

Maksim Yakovenko, head of the Russian Federal Service on Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said:

‘The key issue was forest firefighting, so I would like to say that the situation will be worsening each year because (of) climate change.

Temperatures in some Siberian regions had already exceeded average levels by 8 to 10 degrees Centigrade, he said.

‘It means that in the future we will be facing lasting heatwaves, drying soils, and so the temperatures will be rising, not exponentially, but at a significant pace, higher than on average across the world.

‘That is why, the climatic situation will deteriorate (in Siberia).’

Fox and bears that came to people to seek help. But the one, who came to the village of Zamzor, Irkutsk region (bottom), turned to be agressive and was shot.

While President Putin ordered Ministry of Defence to get army involved in extinguishing wildfires, there is no system in place to help wild animals.

All they can do is to flee and seek food elsewhere, with local residents trying to do all they can to help.

But they can also pose a threat to humans.

‘A small brown bear walked out of woods last night.

‘It was all skin and bones, with visible traces of burns and so exhausted that it wasn’t scared of people’, said resident of Angarsk Maya Fleishter.

‘My husband who is now in the Ust-Kut taiga gave the bear cookies and water.’

‘The bear growled at first, but then gulped water and took cookies, making all the watching – and who themselves spent last week suffocating from fumes – cry.’

Bear cub spotted near the town of Ust-Kut.

Panicking animals are reported to be seen east and west of Lake Baikal, including on the territory of vast Krasnoyarsk region and in Russia’s coldest region Yakutia which is also on fire.

A family of foxes, with the mother managing to take her young cubs out of the woods and moving them to live right next to a road, in full view of shift workers at Ichedinsky oil mine, said one report.

‘Don’t try to stand in their way’, warned Moscow biologist Sergey Naidenko of Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution.

‘Fleeing wild animals won’t seek conflict with humans, all you need to do if one of more of them got into your gated territory is to open doors and not scare them.

‘Much as we would all like to feed the wild animals I would still warn against doing it.

‘You might be like once feeding an exhausted bear, but there is never a guarantee that it won’t attack you next second’, Naidenko said.

‘The situation will be worsening each year because (of) climate change.’

Several days ago in Yakutia young brown bears invaded one the region’s remote villages, killing several dogs chained in yards.

Most of large animals like bears, deers, boars and wolves should be able to save themselves and run away from fire, the Russian biologist believes.

Mothers with young cubs – at this time of year this would include lynxes, foxes and hares – would be affected the most as there is little they can do to move their little ones.

Slow moving hedgehogs are ‘doomed’, said Naidenko, as well as most of smaller animals like mice whose strategy to avoid fire is to hide in holes.

‘For various types of mice everything will depend on how deep are their holes, and on how quick will the fire be above them. If they survive fire, next struggle would be to find food on burnt soil’, Naidenko explained.

A zoo park called Lesnaya Skazka from Barnaul offered its space to save at least some wild animals.

‘We can host up to 30 large animals on 7 hectares of our free land’, said zoo director Sergey Pisarev.

‘Yesterday we had visitors from Irkutsk, who said that it was mainly elks and deers seen running out of woods.’

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Featured image: All they can do is to flee and seek food elsewhere, with local residents trying to do all they can to help. All pictures were taken in Yakutia by photographer Natalia Negnyurova who said she aimed to attract attention to the threat that wildfires 

Wall Street and other monied interests love Trump for handing them a bonanza of riches. Weapons and munitions makers support him and bipartisan congressional war party members for waging endless wars of aggression.

Big Oil, Big Pharma, other corporate predators, and high-net worth individuals benefitted hugely from his service to the nation’s privileged class exclusively at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Apartheid Israel never had a better White House friend, siding with its persecution of Palestinians more than his predecessors, dismissive of their fundamental rights while pretending otherwise.

His hostile to peace, equity and justice policies define him best. Surrounded by neocon hardliners Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, and their henchmen in charge of his geopolitical agenda, he’s incapable of pursuing cooperative relations with other countries — allies and adversaries alike.

For over a year, he’s gone all-out to undermine Sino/US relations by waging trade war on the country.

Earlier he imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, a counterproductive policy he fails to understand — compounded on Thursday by escalating trade war.

He announced 10% tariffs on all other Chinese imports — worth around $300 billion, effective September 1.

Earlier he threatened up to 25% tariffs on all its exports to the US. An impartial observer might imagine that he’s going all-out to wreck bilateral relations.

Instead of responsibly stepping back from the brink, he made things much worse.

Reacting to his Thursday announcement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said

“(a)dding tariffs is definitely not a constructive way to solve the economic and trade frictions.”

Additional tariffs came after Wednesday bilateral talks in Shanghai left irreconcilable differences at impasse.

On Friday, Pompeo falsely said

“(f)or decades, China has taken advantage of trade (sic). It’s time for that to stop,” adding:

“China’s problems are home-grown, but President Trump’s confrontation of China’s unfair trade practices has helped shine a light on them (sic).”

Bilateral differences have little to do with trade, everything to do with China’s growing economic, financial, industrial, technological, and military development, what the US seeks to undermine, wanting no challengers to its rage for global dominance.

On August 2, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet slammed the Trump regime for “making troubles,” saying:

“US politicians just want to grab as much as they can. (T)hey have completely forgot(ten) their commitment to ‘restarting economic and trade consultation based on equality and mutual respect,’ in an attempt to intimidate their negotiation partner and force the latter to make concession,” adding:

They fail to understand that “China…has the capability and strength to deal with whatever comes to it, repeatedly resorting to the tactic of exerting pressure will not work at all.”

“China will never break its principles and make concession(s) (violating them), and it will resolutely safeguard its core interests and the fundamental interests of its people. The American politicians had better stop their unrealistic illusion.”

Trump’s MAGA agenda hasn’t and won’t work in dealings with China and many other countries — notably not with Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Perhaps its one-sidedness is giving most nations pause about how US aims harm their own. Ancient Chinese philosopher Meng Zi once said “arrogant and disdainful attitude and pretentious remarks would repel people.”

Imperial arrogance and disdain for evenhanded cooperative relations with other nations define how the US operates under both extremist right wings of its one-party rule.

Pressuring, bullying, and threatening China to bend to its will risks wrecking bilateral relations, what Trump doesn’t understand.

As long as unacceptable US tariffs remain on Chinese goods and its agenda calls for undermining the country’s development, resolution of major differences will remain unattainable, a wider breach between both sides the likely coming.

Separately on Thursday, Trump threatened to blockade Venezuela, an act of war if imposed under international and US law.

Past US presidents acknowledged it, notably Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy.

So did the US Supreme Court in Bas v. Tingy (1800), Little v. Barreme (1804), and the Prize Cases (1863) — the most definitive ruling on this issue.

The High Court ruled that a blockade is an act of war, legal only if congressionally authorized, Congress having exclusive authority to declare war, not the president.

The 19th century ruling way preceded establishment of the UN and its Security Council. The latter supersedes the power of Congress on warmaking, permitted only in self-defense if a nation is attacked or an attack is imminent — never preemptively for any reasons.

Asked by reporters on Thursday whether he’s considering a blockade of or quarantine on Venezuela, Trump said: “Yes, I am” — with no further elaboration.

Separately, White House envoy for ending Venezuela’s social democracy Elliott Abrams said the Trump and Canadian regimes aim to get European countries to be tougher on the Bolivarian Republic.

Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Barbara Harvey said Trudeau regime “officials discussed how Canada and the US can work with the broader international community to return democracy to the people of Venezuela (sic).”

They want pro-Western fascist tyranny replacing it. Since January, everything Trump regime hardliners and their imperial partners threw at Venezuela failed.

They continue going all-out to eliminate the hemisphere’s preeminent social democracy.

For the US, it’s also about getting control over Venezuela’s huge oil reserves, the world’s largest, wanting its revenues benefitting Big Oil, not the country’s ordinary people.

The same thing holds for Iran. The US wants to loot its hydrocarbon reserves, along with eliminating Israel’s main regional rival.

It has lots of partners against Venezuela, few against Iran, EU and other nations wanting no part of a possible Trump regime war on the country, their opposition the best chance to avoid it.

Nonetheless, US hostility toward China, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and other sovereign independent countries keeps global tensions at a fever pitch.

The risk of new wars on top of ongoing ones remains high. Straightaway in office, Trump showed he’s the latest in a long line of US warrior presidents.

Peacemakers in the White House and congressional leadership positions aren’t tolerated by dark forces running the US.

A state of permanent war exists to satisfy their insatiable rage — why endless conflicts continue with no prospect for resolution.

The absence of a nationwide peace movement like existed long ago leaves them free to pursue their destructive agenda unobstructed.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The US officially asked Europe, in particular the UK, France, Germany and Italy, to provide a naval force to patrol and protect ships sailing in the Straits of Hormuz, even if the command and control is handled by the Europeans and not the US. Washington wants to drag the old continent into the front line in case of a military confrontation with Iran. It is well known that the US is behind the existing tension in the Middle East today following its unlawful unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the nuclear deal. However, to the dismay of the US, Europe has up to now refused to follow the US path. The US would like to see Europe more involved. Although the Trump administration is not looking for war, despite the fact that Iran turned its missiles against the UK Royal Navy HMS Montrose and the US destroyers (when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps confiscated the British-flag tanker Stena Impero). This is the reason that the British command chose to avoid a military confrontation and decided against a military intervention to protect the tanker.

“I order you not to intervene in my operation. The tanker is under my control. Do not put your life in danger”. This is exactly what the Iranian IRGC naval officer told the commander of the Foxtrot 236 when Iranian special forces were about to board the tanker Stena Impero. But why would he warn the British Navy “not to risk their lives”?

The British Navy’s radar sweeps had discovered active mode missiles radar tracking them by means of their semi-radar homing from different launch platforms- main radars which could easily create a saturation attack designed to put the ship in a helpless position and eventually destroy it. The Iranian missiles were ready to firehad the commander of the UK vessel decided to engage with the Iranian fast boats.

Iranian missile platform launchers spread all along the Iranian coast overlooking the Straits of Hormuz had the four US vessels and the one UK naval ship in their sights, ready to engage. Other Iranian armed drones were in the air, also ready to engage, waiting for orders to dive on their selected targets. Iran has not revealed, to date, other more sophisticated missiles that it has manufactured and could put in service in case of war.

The UK commander of the Foxtrot 236 Royal Navy decided to let go of Stena Impero and allow the diplomacy of his government to take over, to avoid the potentially serious casualties inevitable in the case of a military confrontation.

However, the British government is insisting on saving face. It therefore has to reject any exchange of tankers. The Royal Navy had already confiscated an Iranian supertanker, Grace 1, in Gibraltar. London pushed even further the conflict with Iran when the Gibraltar court extended by one additional month the arrest of the Iranian supertanker following a US request.

The only plausible solution is for the Gibraltar court to refrain from adding more fuel to the ongoing crisis and to end the detention of Grace 1, once the period of one month is reached.This will enable Iran to release Stena Impero from Bandar Abbas harbour and end the crisis.

Why did the IRGC officer order the British commander to keep away even if the HMS Montrose was within a reachable distance, along with another four US frigates, well-armed and potentially ready to engage?

When the British authority decided to extend the arrest of “Grace 1”, it basically ended the initiative of Emanuel Bonne (the French presidential envoy) to obtain the release of the Iranian super tanker. The UK’s decision to undermine its European partner’s initiative and abide by US policy showed the vulnerability of Europe’s fragile unity. London agreed to be an instrument of Trump’s policy.

This is when the Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei ordered the commander of the IRGC Hussein Salameh to stop the first British ship and retaliate with a tit-for-tat. Following a meticulous overview of all ships navigating in the area, Salameh was informed about the Stena Impero, but also about the five western military ships in the vicinity. The IRGC commander informed Sayyed Khamenei who responded, according to a well-informed source: “Go with God’s blessing and have no fear. They will not dare to attack us”. 

This is how the decision was taken, at the highest level of the Iranian leadership where the spiritual, military and political leadership were involved under the flag of “protecting the national interest and security of the country.”

Notwithstanding the UK position, Europe will not accept the US trap and become a shield for a war Washington would like to impose on the continent. British oil companies are changing the registrations of their ships and removing the British flag so as to sail safely through the Straits of Hormuz. BP, the giant British oil company which was the first to follow this procedure, is avoiding sending ships to the region, relying instead on proxies. This is a flagrant manifestation of its lack of trust in its own government’s decision, which is not in the interests of the UK but instead reflects a servile devotion to Trump administration policy.

There is a war risk premium that tanker owners pay when navigating in the Persian Gulf. They now have to pay an additional $185,000 for supertankers, in the wake of the attacks of recent months.

The IRGC has sent many messages by shooting down a US drone, by sabotaging tankers and by capturing another. They come down to a single message: if Iran does not export its oil, no country will. The arrival of a new UK Royal Navy ship, the HMS Duncan, will change nothing: it will add to the bank of objectives and list of Iranian targets available in the Persian Gulf in case of war. The US decision to revoke the nuclear deal not only made the Middle East less safe, but also has brought Russia further into the warm waters of the region: Iran has announced a joint naval exercise with Russia in the next months. Iran is bringing the Russians into what used to be the US’s “water playground”. Obviously, Washington’s “maximum pressure” is failing to produce the results the Americans predicted.

As long as Trump is in power, the situation in the Middle East will not stabilise. Not many people in the world believed the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he said the US sanctions are crippling Iran by up to 95%, and that Iran’s Middle Eastern influence is seriously affected by the US measures.

Iran is defying US hegemony and is ready for war, openly challenging the US and the UK. Tehran is welcoming Chinese and Russian support and is developing its missile capability to compensate for its lack of superiority in the sea and the air.

Iran counts on its missiles to impose its Rules of Engagement and is challenging both the US superpower and the UK with its imperial tradition.

The US is no longer in a position to dictate to Iran and “cut its nails”. Tehran is developing further its missile technology and nuclear capability. It is ready for the next step, which involves further partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal despite France and Germany’s efforts to proclaim their distance from the US attitude. The world will continue to focus on this part of the world, watching with anxiety how the US-Iran confrontation will unfold.

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Featured image is a screenshot from Ytube via Citizen Truth

From July 25-28 the XXV Sao Paulo Forum took place in Caracas, Venezuela, with the participation of 190 organizations, political parties, social movements, workers’ movements, parliamentarians and intellectuals from Latin America, the Caribbean and several continents.

The date chosen for this historic meeting had a symbolic character to it. During those four days a number of coinciding historical events were celebrated such as the birth of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, the assault on the Moncada Barracks that marked the beginning of the Cuban revolution and the 65^th anniversary of the birth of Commander Hugo Chávez.

The Forum of Sao Paulo is the oldest continuing event of progressive unity in Latin America.  The first Forum was held in the city of Sao Paulo Brazil in 1990 as an initiative of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz and the then leader of the Workers’ Party of Brazil (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The two put out a call to political parties and organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss alternatives to neoliberal policies. Since then the Forum adopted the name of the city where it was born. Twenty-six countries from Latin America and the Caribbean make up the member countries of the Forum.

Today, the scenario of all Latin America is very different from previous forums. Of the two leaders who brought the idea of the Sao Paulo Forum to life, one is no longer physically present and the other one is serving an unjust sentence in a Brazilian prison for having had the audacity to lift 30 million Brazilians out of poverty. The triumph of the Bolivarian revolution in 1998, with the popular election of Hugo Chavez, opened the door to a new continental stage where progressive projects sprouted up in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador.  The current situation is very different than it was then.  The integration of Latin America is now in jeopardy, and a number of countries in the region are led by puppet governments subordinate to the designs of the U.S. government. Venezuela has held on but it is in the cross hairs of the empire to bring about regime change at all costs. This reality made the Forum to be held in Venezuela all that more important.  Never before in the 29 years since its inception, has the host country been more besieged and blockaded than Venezuela today and it is here where the destiny of the Great Homeland lays in the balance.

Despite the difficult situation in this South American nation, whose only crime in the eyes of US imperialism has been to divert their vast natural resources for the betterment of those who had been poor and dispossessed, approximately 700 people merged with hundreds of Venezuelans in this critical 4 day meeting to discuss the burning questions of Latin America and also to reinvigorate the same spirit of regional integration sown by those who founded the Forum. Overall those in attendance came to show the world that Venezuela is not alone.

Source: author

For those delegates coming from the United States they had to go through a series of added hurdles just to get there. After the suspension of diplomatic relations in January 2019 traveling to Venezuela has become more difficult with no direct flights from the US and no consulates to grant visas.  Nevertheless, activists were creative and found the way to be present including representatives of the Collective for the Protection of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC who occupied and protected the embassy for 37 days.

During the opening ceremony of the Forum, the First Vice-President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and president of the National Constituent Assembly, Diosdado Cabello set the tone when told the enthusiastic audience

“No one will be able to do it alone, it is the unity of the people that is necessary. The more they insist, the more we are going to solve our problems; here in Venezuela the right wing will not be able to govern. The right likes elections when they win, when the people win they don’t like it, the right doesn’t respect the process. They can’t, their nature doesn’t allow them. The right-wing is the same everywhere, we feel the support of the people but those people also need our support. We resisted and marched with the conviction that we are going to win. The people here don’t get depressed because with Chavez they learned to have a voice. We have even been threatened with everything including a military invasion, but we are willing to defend the Bolivarian revolution, which is a revolution for the peoples, not just for Venezuela. No one can do it alone.”

Other speakers included Monica Valente, of the Brazilian Workers’ Party, and the Executive Secretary of the Sao Paulo Forum and the Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to Cuba, Adan Chávez. Also Julio Muriente Pérez, member of the National Hostosian Independence Movement of Puerto Rico. Muriente talked about the popular victory that just took place in Puerto Rico.

“Thousands of Puerto Ricans raised the flag of dignity forcing the corrupt governor Ricardo Rosello to resign.” he said, as the audience stood up cheering, “It wasn’t that he resigned, the people took him out.”

It is important to note that this was not just a talking conference but a meeting of activists who on Saturday went out to the street along thousands of Venezuelans to call for the US hands off Venezuela and all of Latin America. In all meetings inside and the rally outside, participants expressed their support to the only president of Venezuela elected by popular will, Nicolas Maduro Moros.

During the last day of the Sao Paulo Forum, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro reiterated his gratitude to the members of the Protection Collective of Venezuela’s Embassy in Washington.

“Their performance reflects high morals for the defense of the dignity and sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” the president said.

He presented the activists with a replica of Simon Bolivar’s sword.

The closing ceremony took place after a walk to the Cuartel de la Montaña, in the 23 de Enero neighborhood, where the remains of Hugo Chávez rest. Present at the closing were Presidents Nicolas Maduro, President of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel, Diosdado Cabello, and Mónica Valente.

A Final Declaration of support for Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other progressive governments under attack by US imperialism, and a demand for the freedom of Lula and other left-wing leaders imprisoned for political reasons was issued.

What the XXV Sao Paulo Forum demonstrated most was the essential and immeasurable examples, inherited from Fidel, to guide the revolutionaries of Latin America and the Caribbean; that is the unity of the left progressive forces and the practice of internationalism.

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On August 1, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies continued their advance on militants’ positions in northern Hama liberated the villages of Mushairifah, Aziziah, Abu Raeida Gharbi and Abu Raeida.

According to local sources, SAA units also pushed towards al-Zaka and al-Arbaeen, but were not able to capture these strongpoints of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and its allies, especially Jaysh al-Izza, have reportedly suffered from heavy losses as a result of the recent clashes and intensified bombing campaign.

At least eleven militants of the Turkish-backed Suqour al-Sham Brigades were killed on August 1 when pro-government fighters raided their position near Ejaz in southeastern Idlib. The attackers reportedly used silenced weapons to kill everyone that was inside the position before withdrawing to the SAA positions near Abu Duhur airbase.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the raid was carried out by pro-government tribesmen from southeastern Idlib. However, the Military Media said that SAA’s Special Forces were employed.

Late on August 1, the Syrian state-run news agency SANA announced that the Damascus government had accepted a new ceasefire agreement in Greater Idlib despite the tactical success in northern Hama. The ceasefire entered into force on August 2.

A military source told the state-run agency that the ceasefire will be implemented as long as Idlib militants remain committed to the demilitarized zone agreement. The agreement reached in September 2018 says that radical militants and heavy weapons should be withdrawn from the demilitarized zone around Idlib. However, it was not implemented because militant groups just ignored it. Local sources say that it is unlikely that they will fulfill the agreement demands despite a new peaceful initiative.

On August 1, the Israeli military struck an SAA position at al-Buryqah hill in the province of al-Quneitra. Last week, a similar Israeli attack targeted military equipment of the army in the towns of Tell al-Harrah and Tell al-Ahmar.

Israeli and some Arab sources claim that the targeted positions hosted Hezbollah forces or even Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel. Nonetheless, no evidence was provided to confirm these claims.

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The Syrian population residing in Syria is suffering from having barely survived eight years of war.  They didn’t leave for camps in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon, or they are those who have returned to Syria from having been in camps.  They did not take a smuggler’s boat ride to Greece and did not end up in Germany with a free house, food, education, and job prospects.  For one reason, or another, they are the Syrians who stayed, had hope of the war ending, and they outnumber those who left the country.

They turn on the TV daily and are dictated to by Syrians speaking from Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Doha, Riyadh, and Istanbul.  The picturesque background image of each guest is breath-taking.  The Syrians watching are being told how they should think, behave, and what type of government they must demand in the future of Syria.  Strangers in the most luxurious and exotic place dictating what their future should be, and falsely claiming to be representing them.

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC) is a coalition of opposition groups, none living in Syria.  It was formed in 2012 in Doha, Qatar, and is recognized internationally as the “legitimate representative of the Syrian people”.  In 2013 in Istanbul, the SNC appointed Ghassan Hitto as Prime Minister of the interim Syrian government, even though he was unheard of inside Syria but well known in Texas.

He was born in Damascus, but left as a teenager and became a U.S. citizen.  He was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood; however, the Saudi supported faction in the SNC would not accept him, as he was supported by Qatar.  Saudi Arabia considers the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, but Qatar embraces the ideology. Because of Pres. Obama and the U.S. Congress support the SNC many felt Ghassan Hitto was the best man for the job since he was an American.  However, after a short period in office, he resigned.

The SNC has recently elected Anas al-Abdah as President.  He is affiliated with the Islamic Movement, and was born in Damascus, but studied in Jordan, and settled before 2006 in London, UK.  Syrians on the ground don’t know him.  The Prime Minister is Abdul Rahman Mustafa, who was born on the Turkish border and is ethnically a Turkmen, and has been living in Turkey for decades, and is unknown in Syria. The SNC claims to represent the Syrian people, yet their leadership is made up of men who have chosen to live outside of Syria for decades before the war, and have no connection to the Syrians on the ground.  However, very recently the SNC has opened an office in Azaz, north of Aleppo on the Turkish border.  The area is under occupation by the Free Syrian Army who are being supported by Turkey. The SNC is desperate to establish themselves inside Syria after 8 years of war.

 “The new SNC leadership will not bring about much change to the work of this opposition institution that has proved to be a failure since its formation in late 2012. One can hardly say that the SNC and the interim government represent the entire Syrian opposition, given that the Muslim Brotherhood are nearly totally controlling them,” said Ahmad Barhou, a media activist in Northern Syria.

4,380 Syrian refugees have been deported from Turkey to Syria through Bab al-Hawa crossing near Idlib since July 13.  Pres. Erdogan is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood; however, his domestic grip on power has been weakened and his opposition wants the Syrian refugees to go home.  He started a security campaign to ease domestic tensions by kicking out Syrian refugees, who are following the Muslim Brotherhood ideology.  The SNC did not comment on the deportations because their headquarters are in Istanbul, and they are guests benefiting from the generosity of Erdogan.

The international community stood by in support of the SNC, but not of the Syrian civilians on the ground inside Syria.  The humanitarian aid went to only those living outside of Syria in camps.  Only those going to Germany were given housing, food, education, and jobs.  Had the international community supported the Syrians suffering through war, they could have remained inside Syria, without having to risk drowning at sea, or human trafficking in Europe and Turkey.

Uprisings can start with a handful, but a revolution needs huge support on the ground to be successful.  The foreign planners, funders and their mercenaries used lost the war due to the miscalculation of support on the ground.  The vast majority of the Syrian territory is under government control, and normal life is resuming, but hampered by U.S. and EU sanctions which prevent rebuilding.  The Islamic State of Idlib presents a problem but is not insurmountable.

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As the world approaches the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), mothers and children continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen. The brutal conflict continues to cost the lives of civilians, with a mother and six newborns dying every two hours due to poor health care services, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said in a report.

In the country profoundly affected by a humanitarian crisis, one out of every 260 women dies during pregnancy and childbirth, and one out of 37 newborns dies in its first month of life, UNICEF said, revealing the lack of routine primary healthcare services, crucial for supporting mothers and childbirth. The report indicated that,

“One of the war’s repercussions that befell Yemen is the clear assault on motherhood and paternity,” noting that: “Only 51 percent of all health facilities are operating at full capacity. Thus, these facilities suffer from a severe shortage of medicines, equipment and personnel.” UNICEF also said, “The rate of births that take place at home is also increasing because Yemeni families are getting poorer every day.”

Yemeni civilians have also suffered from acute malnutrition, starvation and cholera epidemics since Yemen’s civil war began in earnest with the launch of the Saudi-led intervention. For several weeks at the end of 2017, the Saudi coalition imposed a blockade on Yemeni ports that it said was to prevent Houthis from importing weapons. This had a severe impact on Yemen, which traditionally imports 90 percent of its food.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is the former Saudi defense minister, and Saudi Arabia’s allies launched Operation Decisive Storm in March 2015. The ongoing war has resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with an estimated 24 million people, close to 80 percent of the population, in need of assistance and protection in Yemen, according to the U.N. The World Health Organization (WHO) says some 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition intervened in 2015, but rights groups state the death toll could be five times higher. Amid a series of international warnings, continuing military support from Western countries, which includes arms sales, for the Saudi-led coalition has prompted further fears of escalation in the humanitarian crisis in the country.

Many atrocities have been reported so far, which have revealed multiple violations of human rights. In April, the Saudi-led coalition bombed houses and a school in a residential area in the rebel-held capital Sanaa, killing 14 children and leaving 16 critically injured. UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Geert Cappelaere said the timing of the blast coincided with “lunchtime and students were in class.” “The critically injured children, many of whom are fighting for their lives, are now in hospitals in Sana’a. Most are under the age of 9. One girl succumbed to her injuries yesterday morning,” Cappelaere said, as reported by the German dpa news agency.

“It is hard to imagine the sheer horror that those children experienced – and the sheer horror and guilt parents may feel for having done what every parent aspires to: sending their children to school,” he added. “Killing and maiming children are grave violations of children’s rights.”

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The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), the only global organisation representing obstetricians and gynaecologists, wants glyphosate phased out worldwide.

A statement published by the Federation’s Reproductive and Developmental Environmental Health Committee says:

“Over the past fifteen years, an expanding body of evidence has implicated the role of environmental exposures on health.

“Whether scientists are reviewing increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, pregnancy outcomes, or birth defects, there is evidence to support the effect of chemical exposures on health. Chemicals in pregnant women can cross the placenta and, as with methyl mercury, can accumulate in the fetus and have long lasting sequelae.

“The… statement regarding glyphosate reflects a review of literature and a Precautionary Principle. This principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result. In some legal systems, such as the Law in the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement in some areas of law.”

Background

Glyphosate was patented in 1961 and is the most widely used herbicide worldwide. Six billion kilograms have been released globally in the last decade. It is applied in conjunction with other chemicals to enhance effectiveness.  It has been used in weed control, control of marijuana and coca crops, and on GM herbicide-tolerant crops. Glyphosate exposure can be direct because of application or indirect because of persistence in the food chain. It is found in food products and in water supplies because of runoff from agricultural use.

Global research is under way to understand the potential impact on human health. In 1985, glyphosate was categorized as a Class C carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Class C states there is suggestive evidence of causing cancer. In 1991 the EPA changed the classification to E, evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified it (2A) as probably carcinogenic to humans. IARC has a scientific review process that focuses on independence, access to data, and transparency with participation by IARC scientific committee and observation but not participation of many groups (industry and non-industry). IARC looked at animal research, DNA damage, and cancer.

In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority released a report that concluded glyphosate was unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and they proposed a new safety measure that will tighten the control of glyphosate residues in food. The most recent meta-analysis, published in 2019, states that there is a compelling link between non-Hodgkins lymphoma and glyphosate.

Also in 2015, in recognition of the need for a global federation to address the threat of toxic environmental chemicals to human reproductive and developmental health on the global stage, FIGO adopted its opinion, Reproductive Health Impacts of Exposure to Toxic Environmental Chemicals.

When this opinion on environmental exposures was released at the FIGO World Congress of 2015, FIGO also established a global Working Group on the topic of Reproductive and Developmental Environmental Health (RDEH). This working group set a global agenda on the impact of toxic exposures on women’s health. Due to the importance of this issue and the recognised impact on the health and well-being of women and newborn children worldwide, in 2018 the working group was designated a formal FIGO Committee.

Glyphosate will be up for renewal in 2022 in the European Union; and a panel of member states will review assessment. France has committed to stopping glyphosate use and is seeking safer alternatives. In 2019, HEAL, the Health and Environment Alliance, cited new studies that documented transgenerational effects of glyphosate and stated that if a pesticide shows harm that occurs generations down the line, it offers an opportunity for the European Commission to take precautionary measures to protect health. 1.3 million citizens signed an initiative to ban glyphosate.

FIGO, which for over 65 years has collaborated with the world’s top health bodies, including working in official relations with the World Health Organization and in a consultative role with the UN, points out an inherent problem with the production of many types of chemicals: that they are released into the environment and with current policy it is up to the public, scientists working for the public interest and physicians to prove harm before chemicals are removed from the market. FIGO says,

“Contrast this approach with the pharmaceutical industry, where they [industry] must prove safety before use by the public.”

FIGO adds,

“Our priorities should be in establishing safety, now and across generations, prior to exposure to chemical products.”

FIGO invokes the precautionary principle, as noted by the Wingspread Conference:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

In conclusion, FIGO says,

“Global health should be our guiding light. We recommend that glyphosate exposure to populations should end with a full global phase out.”

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The announcement that the UAE is in the process of a large-scale military drawdown in Yemen has been met with rapturous applause by the Ansar Allah’s supporters who believe that this unofficially acknowledges their victory in the conflict, but these celebrations are premature because the vast majority of the country’s territory still remains outside of the armed group’s grasp even if most of its people reside in their region, and the most politically realistic solution to the war entails the institutionalization of the state’s deep divisions via the implementation of a “federal” model that de-facto restores the Old Cold War-era independence of North and South Yemen. 

A Turning Point 

Decision makers the world over are talking about the implications of the large-scale military drawdown that the UAE recently announced is presently underway in Yemen, with the prevailing notion being that this unofficially acknowledges the Ansar Allah’s (“Houthis'”) victory in the conflict. It’s true that this development is very significant for the armed group because it all but precludes the commencement of any more offensives against the territory under its control, which could potentially lead to the stabilization of the front lines and the beginning of a global aid campaign to relieve the suffering that millions of people are experiencing in what has previously been recognized as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In fact, the UAE probably wouldn’t have done this had they and their Saudi allies succeeded in taking the strategic Ansar Allah-held port of Hodeidah, the failure of which set into motion the subsequent events that led to its decision to withdraw most of its forces from Yemen.

The Ansar Allah And The STC

The Ansar Allah might have begun as a rural peripheral rebellion among the religious minorities of Yemen’s northern mountainous region but it’s since evolved into a much more inclusive movement that convincingly has the trappings of a national liberation one, especially after allying with the Yemeni Army in seeking the expulsion of all foreign forces from the country. By comparison, the “internationally recognized” government of President Hadi enjoys close to no domestic support whatsoever and has basically functioned as little more than an excuse to justify the Saudi-led coalition’s military intervention against the Ansar Allah. The supposed bastion of its support, the southern port of Aden, is more under the control of the Southern Resistance Forces (SRF, the armed wing of the Southern Transitional Council [STC]) that want to restore the Old Cold War-era independence of South Yemen than it is Hadi’s, which in and of itself hints at the most politically realistic outcome of this conflict in the wake of the UAE’s withdrawal.

“Federalization”

With the Ansar Allah in control of the most demographically and economically significant portions of the former nation of North Yemen (officially the “Yemen Arab Republic” from 1962-1990) and the STC wielding UAE-backed sovereignty over South Yemen (officially the “People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen” from 1967-1990), the quickest way to end the war would be to institutionalize Yemen’s already existing military and political divisions via the implementation of a “federal” model that de-facto recognizes this state of affairs since neither side has the wherewithal to surmount the stalemate that’s set in. That scenario, however, is far from the “victory” that the Ansar Allah originally hoped to achieve even though it satisfies most of what the STC and its Emirati patron want, all of which would nevertheless further complicate Saudi Arabia’s security situation along its southern border if it turns out that the Kingdom doesn’t have anything to show for its costly campaign other than the Ansar Allah’s “autonomy” over North Yemen and its “little brother’s” (UAE) new proxy state in the south.

A “Compromised” Victory

Ending the kinetic (military) phase of this conflict could be considered a humanitarian victory but that doesn’t change the fact that no side apart from the STC will probably be able to claim a political one. Saudi Arabia and the UAE failed to destroy the Ansar Allah despite their technical military superiority and the devastating war of attrition that they waged, which speaks to the armed group’s tactical finesse and the support that they have from a significant share of the population in the areas under their control. The Ansar Allah, for its part, failed to take full control of the country, especially the former lands of South Yemen whose people have long resented what they claim is the North’s unfair dominance of their homeland after the 1990 unification and especially following the end of the brief 1994 civil war to reverse it. Even so, the vast majority of Yemen’s population resides in the areas that they administer, so it could be argued that they nevertheless succeeded in their quest to become the most important political actor in the country.

The Saudis’ “Short End Of The Stick”

This in turn has enabled the Ansar Allah to claim that they’re the ones who truly represent the Yemeni government and not Hadi, whose forces don’t even have much sway in the same city that they’re formally based in when compared to the STC’s much greater strength and grassroots popularity there. The Saudi-led war was launched to keep Yemen united under the authority of Riyadh’s proxy leader but ironically led to the country’s de-facto division along most of its pre-1990 Old Cold War-era borders without the Kingdom retaining any “sphere of influence” whatsoever over its territory, instead becoming strategically dependent on its “little brother” (whose leader, MBZ, curiously mentors Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader MBS) to remain relevant in South Yemen. Saudi Arabia certainly got the proverbial short end of the stick after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the war and receiving nothing in return for its “investment”, not even an enhanced security environment after the Ansar Allah’s military capabilities evolved and it now regularly bombs Saudi territory.

“Little Brother” Upstages “Big Brother” 

The UAE, however, at least has something to show for its involvement in this campaign after obtaining several strategic regional bases throughout the course of the conflict and emerging as a power broker in the Horn of Africa. Moreover, Abu Dhabi also gained priceless experience managing mercenary groups and training local forces while Riyadh’s contribution to the war remained largely relegated to the air and never really took any serious form on the ground. As such, it can be said that Saudi Arabia — either out of an “abundance of caution” to avoid casualties, incompetence, and/or an outright fear of the Ansar Allah — squandered what could have otherwise been a valuable opportunity” to train its military forces in the field while the UAE took full advantage of this and will likely apply what it learned in forthcoming conflicts (which will probably be waged indirectly through the many mercenary formations that it’s since assembled). Interestingly, the “little brother” has upstaged the “big brother” and their relationship with one another will probably never be the same again.

Concluding Thoughts

Bearing in mind all that was touched upon in this analysis, one can say that while every other participant in the war achieved some (Ansar Allah, UAE) or practically all (STC) of its objectives, the Saudis didn’t succeed with anything other than preventing the Ansar Allah’s full takeover of Yemen. The Kingdom’s security situation is worse than when the conflict began and it no longer has any direct influence in its neighbor, instead having to rely on its “little brother” to maintain its presence in parts of South Yemen. Without the UAE doing the “heavy lifting”, it’s all but inevitable that Saudi Arabia will scramble for a “face-saving” exit from the war as well since it’s proven itself unable to alter the dynamics in is favor on its own, especially when most of what it’s been doing is bombing Yemen and never really fighting on the ground and holding territory like its allies have. Even though the Ansar Allah can’t be said to have won the civil-international Yemeni War since it doesn’t control the entire country, it didn’t lose it either, with that ignoble distinction being the Saudis’ alone.

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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.

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In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public.

Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as “an important win for free speech.”

The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street. Judge Koeltl stated:

If WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents concerning the DNC’s political financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them ‘secret’ and trade secrets, then so could any newspaper or other media outlet. But that would impermissibly elevate a purely private privacy interest to override the First Amendment interest in the publication of matters of the highest public concern. The DNC’s published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election. This type of information is plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the First Amendment offers.

The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal prison on charges including espionage.

The plaintiff in the civil case—the Democratic Party—has also served as Assange’s chief prosecutor within the state apparatus for over a decade. During the Obama administration, Democratic Party Justice Department officials, as well as career Democratic holdovers under the Trump administration, prepared the criminal case against him.

The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies.

The judge labeled WikiLeaks an “international news organization” and said Assange is a “publisher,” exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: “In New York Times Co. v. United States, the landmark ‘Pentagon Papers’ case, the Supreme Court upheld the press’s right to publish information of public concern obtained from documents stolen by a third party.”

As a legal matter, by granting WikiLeaks’ motion to dismiss, the court ruled that the DNC had not put forward a “factually plausible” claim. At the motion to dismiss stage, a judge is required to accept all the facts alleged by the plaintiff as true. Here, the judge ruled that even if all the facts alleged by the DNC were true, no fact-finder could “draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”

Going a step further, the judge called the DNC’s arguments “threadbare,” adding: “At no point does the DNC allege any facts” showing that Assange or WikiLeaks “participated in the theft of the DNC’s information.”

Judge Koeltl said the DNC’s argument that Assange and WikiLeaks “conspired with the Russian Federation to steal and disseminate the DNC’s materials” is “entirely divorced from the facts.” The judge further ruled that the court “is not required to accept conclusory allegations asserted as facts.”

The judge further dismantled the DNC’s argument that WikiLeaks is guilty-by-association with Russia, calling the alleged connection between Assange and the Russian government “irrelevant,” because “a person is entitled to publish stolen documents that the publisher requested from a source so long as the publisher did not participate in the theft.”

Judge Koeltl also rejected the DNC’s claim “that WikiLeaks can be held liable for the theft as an after-the-fact coconspirator of the stolen documents.” Calling this argument “unpersuasive,” the judge wrote that it would “eviscerate” constitutional protections: “Such a rule would render any journalist who publishes an article based on stolen information a coconspirator in the theft.”

In its April 2018 complaint, the DNC put forward a series of claims that have now been exposed as brazen lies, including that Assange, Trump and Russia “undermined and distorted the DNC’s ability to communicate the party’s values and visions to the American electorate.”

The complaint also alleged:

“Russian intelligence services then disseminated the stolen, confidential materials through GRU Operative #1, as well as WikiLeaks and Assange, who were actively supported by the Trump Campaign and Trump Associates as they released and disclosed the information to the American public at a time and in a manner that served their common goals.”

At the time the DNC filed its complaint, the New York Times wrote that the document relies on “publicly-known facts” as well as “information that has been disclosed in news reports and subsequent court proceedings.” The lawsuit “comes amid a swirl of intensifying scrutiny of Mr. Trump, his associates and their interactions with Russia,” the Times wrote.

It is deeply ironic that Judge Koeltl cited the Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co. v. United States, in his ruling.

The DNC’s baseless complaint cited the New York Times eight times as “proof” of Assange and WikiLeaks’ ties to Russia, including articles by Times reporters Andrew Kramer, Michael Gordon, Niraj Chokshi, Sharon LaFraniere, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Eric Lichtblau, Noah Weiland, Alicia Parlapiano and Ashley Parker, as well as a July 26, 2016 article by Charlie Savage titled “Assange, avowed foe of Clinton, timed email release for Democratic Convention.”

The first of these articles was published just weeks after the New York Times hired James Bennet as its editorial page editor in March 2016. James Bennet’s brother, Michael Bennet, is a presidential candidate, a senator from Colorado and former chair of the DNC’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In 2018, Bennet signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence noting he was “extremely concerned” that Ecuador had not canceled asylum for Assange, who was then trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

“It is imperative,” the letter read, “that you raise US concerns with [Ecuadorian] President [Lenin] Moreno about Ecuador’s continued support for Mr. Assange at a time when WikiLeaks continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally.”

In April 2019, after the Trump administration announced charges against Assange, the New York Times editorial board, under James Bennet’s direction, wrote: “The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.” Two weeks later, Michael Bennet announced his presidential run and has since enjoyed favorable coverage in the Times editorial page.

“Additionally, the father of James and Michael Bennet, Douglas Bennet, headed the CIA-linked United States Agency for International Development in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”

On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25 under the headline, “DNC lawsuit against election is dismissed.” In its online edition, the Times prominently featured a link to its special page for the Mueller Report, which is based on the same DNC-instigated threadbare lies that Judge Koeltl kicked out of federal court.

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There is a venom in international refugee policy that refuses to go away: officials charged with their tasks, passing on their labours to those who might see the UN Refugee Convention as empty wording, rather than strict injunction carved upon stone.  They have all become manifest in the policy of deferral: humanitarian problems are for others to solve.  We will simply supply monetary assistance, the machinery, the means; the recipients, like time honoured servants, will do the rest.  

The European Union, and some of its members, have their own idea of a glorified servant minding their business in North Africa.  The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa is the pot of gold; the recipient is Libya, an important “transit country for migrants heading to Europe.”  Such a status makes Libya the main point of outsourced obligations associated with human traffic.  Using Libya supposedly achieves the objectives of the Joint Communication ‘Managing flows, saving lives’ (never pass up the chance to use weasel words) and the Malta Declaration.

In responding to the regional refugee crisis, the EU mires itself in the wording of bureaucracy, machine language meant to be inoffensive.  The first phase of the “Support to Integrated border and migration management in Libya” sounds like an allocation of mild tasks, a simple case of proper filing.  In summary,

it “aims to strengthen the capacity of relevant Libyan authorities in the areas of border and migration management, including border control and surveillance, addressing smuggling and trafficking of human beings, search and rescue at sea and in the desert.” 

A casual takeaway from this is that the EU is not merely being responsible but caring, assisting a country to, in turn assist migrants and refugees from making rash decisions, saving them when needed, and protecting them when required.  

According to its unconvincing brief,

“the EUTF for Africa pays particular attention to protection and assistance to migrants and their host communities in the country in order to increase their resilience.” 

In arid language, there is lip-service paid to “support a migrant management and asylum in Libya that is consistent with the main international standards and human rights.”

Such documents conceal the appallingly dire situation of Libya as the sponsored defender of Europe against irregular arrivals.  Money sent is not necessarily money well spent.  Detention centres have become concentrations of corrupted desperation, its residents exploited, tormented and kidnapped.   

Accounts of torture in such camps have made their way to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.  In July 2018, Human Rights Watch paid a visit to four detention centres in Tripoli, Misrata and Zuwara.  The organisation found “inhumane conditions that included severe overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, poor quality food and water that has led to malnutrition, lack of adequate healthcare, and disturbing accounts of violence by guards, including beatings, whippings, and the use of electric shocks.” 

The EUTF for Africa lacks human context; dull, bloodless policy accounts make little mention of cutthroat militias jousting for authority and the absence of coherent, stable governance.  In May, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Charlie Yaxley claimed that the

UNHCR was “in a race against time to urgently move refugees and migrants out of detention centres to safety, and we urge the international community to come forward with offers of evacuation.”  

Such races have tended to be lost, and rather badly at that.  The militias are on the move, and one war lord eager to make an impression is Khalifa Haftar.  On July 3, some fifty people perished in an airstrike when two missiles hit a detention centre in Tripoli hosting 610 individuals.  The finger pointing, even as the centre continued to burn, was quick, with blame duly allocated: Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini, and Libya’s UN-recognised and misnamed Government of National Accord (GNA) saw the hand of Haftar’s Libyan National Army.  The intended target, according to LNP general Khaled el-Mahjoub, had been the militia camp located in the Tajoura neighbourhood.   

Salvini, for good measure, also saw another culprit in the undergrowth of responsibility. While the rest of the EU could not shy away from this “criminal attack”, France would prove an exception, given their “economic and commercial reasons” for supporting “an attack on civilian targets.”  Salvini is right, up to a point: France has an interest in supporting Haftar, given its interest in the eastern Libyan oilfields which he controls.  The EU continues to speak in harshly different voices, none of them particularly humanitarian.   

The UN special envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salamé suggested that the strike “clearly could constitute a war crime” having killed people “whose dire conditions forced them to be in that shelter.”  The envoy’s formulation was striking: it was not the fault of GNA authorities who had detained migrants near a military depot; nor did the EU harbour any responsibility for having ensured the conditions of “managed” traffic flow that had led to the creation of detention centres.    

The debate that followed was all a matter of logistical semantics; the camps proved to be, yet again, areas of mortal danger and hardly up to the modest standards of the EU’s refugee policy. To add to the prospects of future butchery, 95 more people have been added to the Tajoura centre.  The cruel business has resumed. 

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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]

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Ever since Imran Khan became the 22^nd Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 2018, the winds have changed. While his predecessors, though generally leaning eastwards, have often wavered between the US and the China orbit, Khan is in the process of clearly defining his alliances with the east, in particular China. This is for the good of his country, for the good of the Middle East, and eventually for the good of the world.

A few days ago, RT reported that China, in addition to the expansion of the new port in Gwadar, Balochistan, has entered agreements with Pakistan to build a military/air base in Pakistan, a new Chinese city for some half a million people, as well as several road and railway improvement projects, including a highway connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore, reconstruction of the Karakoram Highway, linking Hasan Abdal to the Chinese border, as well as upgrading the Karachi-Peshwar main railway to be completed by the end of 2019, for trains to travel up to 160km / hour.

This rehabilitation of dilapidated Pakistani transportation infrastructure is not only expected to contribute between 2% and 3% of Pakistan’s future GDP, but it offers also another outlet for Iranian gas / hydrocarbons, other than through the Strait of Hurmuz – for example, by rail to the new port of Gwadar which, by the way, is also a new Chinese naval base. From Gwadar Iranian hydrocarbon cargos can be shipped everywhere, including to China, Africa and India. With the new China-built transportation infrastructure Iranian gas can also be shipped overland to China.

In fact, these infrastructure developments, plus several electric power production projects, still mostly fed by fossil fuel, to resolve Pakistani’s chronic energy shortage, are part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also, called the New Silk Road. They are a central part of the new so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which was first designed in 2015 during a visit by China’s President Xi Jinping, when some 51 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) worth then some US$ 46 billion were signed. Pakistan is definitely out of the US orbit.

Today, in the CPEC implementation phase, the projects planned or under construction are estimated at over US$ 60 billion. An estimated 80% are direct investments with considerable Pakistani participation and 20% Chinese concessionary debt. Clearly, Pakistan has become a staunch ally of China – and this to the detriment of the US role in the Middle East.

Washington’s wannabe hegemony over the Middle East is fading rapidly. See also Michel Chossudovsky’s detailed analysis “US Foreign Policy in Shambles: NATO and the Middle East. How Do You Wage War Without Allies?”.

A few days ago, Germany has refused Washington’s request to take part in a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz, under the pretext to secure hydrocarbon shipments through this Iran-controlled narrow water way. In reality it is more like a new weaponizing of waterways, by controlling who ships what to whom – and applying “sanctions” by blocking or outright pirating of tankers destined for western ‘enemy’ territories.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced last Wednesday in Warsaw, Poland, that there “cannot be a military solution” to the current crisis in the Persian Gulf and that Berlin will turn down Washington’s request to join the US, British and French operation “aimed at protecting sea traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and combating so-called “Iranian aggression.”

This idea of the Washington war hawks was conceived after Iran’s totally legal seizure of the British-flagged Stena Impero oil tanker, after it rammed an Iranian fishing boat a couple of weeks ago. However, nothing is said about the totally illegal and US-ordered British piracy of the Iranian super tanker Grace I off the coast of Gibraltar in Spanish waters (another infraction of international law), weeks earlier. While Grace I’s crew in the meantime has been released, the tanker is still under British capture, but western media remain silent about it, but lambast Iran for seizing a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

Germany remains committed to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), from which the United States unilaterally withdrew a year ago, and Germany will therefore not intervene on behalf of the US.

Add to this Turkey – a key NATO member both for her strategic location and NATO’s actual military might established in Turkey – moving ever closer to the east, and becoming a solid ally of Russia, after having ignored Washington’s warnings against Turkey’s purchasing of Russian S-400 cutting-edge air defense systems. For “sleeping with the enemy” – i.e. moving ever closer to Russia, the US has already punished Turkey’s economy by manipulating her currency to fall by about 40% since the beginning of 2018. Turkey is also a candidate to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and so is Iran.

Turkey has become a de facto lame duck as a NATO member and may soon officially exit NATO which would be a tremendous blow to the North Atlantic Alliance – and may tempt other European NATO nations to do likewise. Probably not overnight, but the idea of an ever more defunct NATO is planted.

All indications are that the future, economically and security wise – is in the East. Even Europe may eventually ‘dare’ making the jump towards better relations with primarily Russia and Central Asia and eventually with China.

And that especially if and when Brexit happens – which is by no means a sure thing. Just in case, the UK has already prepared bilateral trade relations with China, ready to be signed – if and when – the UK exits the EU.

Will the UK, another staunch US ally, jump ship? – Unlikely. But dancing on two weddings simultaneously is a customary Anglo-Saxon game plan. The Brits must have learned it from their masters in Washington, who in turn took the lessons from the Brits as colonial power for centuries, across the Atlantic.

Western, US-led war on Iran is therefore unlikely. There is too much at stake, and especially, there are no longer any reliable allies in the region. Remember, allies – shall we call them puppets or peons, are normally doing the dirty work for Washington.
So, threatening, warning and annoying provocations by the US with some of its lasting western allies may continue for a while. It makes for good propaganda. After all, packing up and going home is not exactly Uncle Sam’s forte. The western alliance is no longer what it used to be. In fact, it is in shambles. And Iran knows it.

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

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

This article was first crossposted on GR in July 2017.

Largely unbeknownst to the public, many media executives and top journalists of almost all major U.S. news outlets, political and business magazines, public broadcasters and press agencies have long been members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization, the CFR and its close to 5000 elite members  have for decades shaped U.S. foreign policy and public discourse about it. As one Council member famously explained, their goal has indeed been to establish an “empire”, albeit a “benevolent” one.

Based on official membership rosters, the following illustration for the first time depicts the extensive media network of the CFR and its two main international affiliate organizations: the Bilderberg Group (covering the U.S. and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission (covering North America, Europe and East Asia), both established by Council leaders to foster cooperation between international elites.

In a column titled “Ruling Class Journalists”, former Washington Post senior editor and ombudsman Richard Harwood once described the Council and its members as “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States”.

Harwood continued:

“The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves, is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class. They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it. () They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its values and world views.”

However, media personalities constitute only a small part of the comprehensive CFR network. As the following illustration shows, key members of the Council on Foreign Relations have included:

• several U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents of both parties;
• almost all Secretaries of State, Defense, and the Treasury;
• many high-ranking commanders of the military and NATO;
• almost all National Security Advisors, CIA Directors, Ambassadors to the U.N., Chairs of the Federal Reserve, Presidents of the World Bank, and Directors of the National Economic Council;
• some of the most influential Members of Congress (notably in foreign & security policy matters);
• several media and entertainment executives, top journalists, and Hollywood actors;
• many prominent academics, especially in key fields such as Economics, International Relations, Political Science, History and Journalism;
• many top executives of Wall Street, policy think tanks, universities, and NGOs;
• as well as the key members of both the 9/11 Commission and the Warren Commission (JFK)

In an article titled “The American Establishment”, political columnist Richard H. Rovere once wrote:

“The directors of the CFR make up a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation. () [I]t rarely fails to get one of its members, or at least one of its allies, into the White House. In fact, it generally is able to see to it that both nominees are men acceptable to it.”

Indeed, until recently this assessment seems to have been largely justified. Thus, in 1993 former CFR director George H.W. Bush was followed by CFR member Bill Clinton, who in turn was followed by CFR “family member” George W. Bush. In 2008, CFR member John McCain lost against CFR candidate of choice, Barack Obama, who received the names of his entire Cabinet already one month prior to his election by CFR Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman. Froman later negotiated the TTP and TTIP free trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.

It was not until the 2016 election that the Council couldn’t, apparently, prevail. At any rate, not yet.

Sources

1. Council on Foreign Relations:

• Membership rosters, 1922 to 2013 and 2016
• CFR members in U.S. Administrations, 1900 to 2014

2. Bilderberg conference: participant lists 1954 to 2014 and 2015-2017

3. Trilateral Commission: membership lists of 1973; 1978; 1985; 1995; 2010; and 2017

4. Laurence H. Shoup (2015): Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014, Monthly Review Press

5. Wikipedia pages about the CFR, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission

The Sao Paulo Forum (SPF) that took place in Caracas just ended on July 28 fittingly within the framework of remembering the 65^th anniversary of the birth of Hugo Chavez with a display of affection and respect for the late Comandante with fireworks and all. By all accounts the SPF has been a politically successful event that followed a significant meeting of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries (NAM) that concluded with a strong political declaration and support of 120 governments with the democratically elected Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro.

It is tiring to many to hear the corporate media dutifully repeat that 50 countries have recognized the unelected self-appointed Juan Guaidó. But they will never disclose publicly that, at least by the last count of the NAM meeting, 120 governments – almost two thirds of the United Nations member States – have recognized Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Not coincidentally, the wealthiest of those 50 countries have a long history of colonialism, imperialism and exploitation that is producing their wealth. The poorest of them have a history of being colonized, dominated and exploited with the assent from the local oligarchy.

When the SPF started, the words of the NAM delegate, Foreign Minister of Palestine, Riad Malki, were still echoing in Venezuela,

“today it is Venezuela that is under the siege of US imperialism, but tomorrow it will be Nicaragua, then Cuba and then all of us. I do not think they’ll stop at any time”.

The sabotage of the electric power system, likely a result of the Venezuelan rightwing violence that happened just before the beginning of the SPF, was also a “dark” (pun intended) reminder of the enemy within.

Despite that, the spirit of the Sao Paulo Forum was held high. The SPF was born in 1990 with two main purposes: on the one hand, to debate about the international state of affairs after the fall of the Berlin wall and the consequences of neoliberalism in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean; and, on the other hand, to lay the groundwork for the creation of a progressive alliance of ideas and schools of thought where people, experts and analysts could offer reflections and analyses, and help develop social policies, economic, political and military strategies for the region with the working class as the centre. In 2019 the geopolitical context is different but the challenges for the revolutionary movement remain the same.

Since Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1999, Latin America and the Caribbean have made huge social advances to the point that the US administration “took notice” and proceeded to attack every advance perceived to be contrary to the interests of its imperial hegemony. By its own declaration the US government has targeted Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua for regime change.

With this backdrop, the SPF declaration, unequivocally titled “Unity of the peoples against imperialism”, recognizes that

“the multifaceted reactionary offensive of US imperialism and the oligarchic rightwing allies has been deepened.” Therefore, “it is urgent to resume the [progressive] initiative more vigorously and effectively.” It further asserts, “Before the disintegrating plan of the right, let us counter with the integrating, sovereign and dignified plan of our peoples. In the face of free trade agreements, promoted by the United States, we strengthen sovereign integration projects such as CELAC, Alba-TCP, Mercosur and other popular and regional integration initiatives.”

Following that clear stand and goal for the region, the delegates at the SPF “Call for the promotion of the broadest global solidarity with the defense of the sovereignty and self-determination of the Venezuelan people and with their right to live in peace”, and “support the dialogue between the Bolivarian Government and the opposition promoted by the constitutional president Nicolás Maduro.”

Venezuela has given the exemplary step that unity is not only necessary, but it is possible.

Last July 19 ten political parties of the Venezuelan left – including the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela-PSUV) and the Communist Party of Venezuela – signed the “Caracas Manifesto for Peace, Sovereignty and the Prosperity of Our America”, an eight-page document that synthesized a consensus proposal to the revolutionary organizations at the SPF. Their main call to promote a unified plan to fight colonialism still active in Our America was accepted by the SPF delegates.  [The expression “Our America” comes from the title of an essay written by Cuban revolutionary José Martíin 1891. It refers to that part of the continent we call today Latin America]

Three factors are important to keep in mind in order to gauge the relevance of the declaration of the SPF. One obvious factor is the content of the document. This has to be taken home by the delegates as a working document to be promoted among their supporters and allies, and to be put into practice in their respective settings with their own political perspective but with a single-minded goal. This is a major task when most of those delegates come from countries whose governments are responsible for implementing neoliberal policies that the revolutionary left must struggle to fight back daily.

Colombia comes to mind where FARC militants and social activists are been killed in the hundreds by the government-supported military militia even at a time when they try to compromise with a peace accord rejected by Ivan Duque. However, we remain confident and optimistic that meetings like the SPF are a boost to the revolutionary spirit and will contribute to strengthening resistance to the empire. The next such meeting that surely will see a large concurrence has been announced to take place in Havana, Cuba, November 1-3 under the title “Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Meeting for Democracy and Against Neoliberalism.”

The second factor of relevance of the SPF is that its declaration already represents the consensus of more than 720 delegates in attendance from dozens of leftist parties and social movements from about 32 countries. All of those delegates converging in Venezuela recognized in each other a comrade in the same struggle. There is no battlefield that is less important than another when you have an enemy like the US empire ambushing, scheming, attacking and intervening in every corner of the world.

Finally, the third factor, maybe less tangible but no less important, is that all delegates would return to their countries, bringing back the solidarity that the Venezuelan people, through their government, have given them daily for the last twenty years of Chavismo with their inspiring example of anti-imperialist struggle, resistance and sacrifice, showing that it is possible to confront the US empire and its minions, and win. Solidarity must be mutual.

It was expressed in many different ways at the Sao Paulo Forum that defending Venezuela is defending Our America.

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

Featured image is from FAIR

According to the Turkish National Defense Ministry, receipt of the first batch of Russian S-400 missile defense systems was  completed on July 25^th. Besides making headlines all around the world and causing a harsh response from the US, the delivery demonstrated Turkey’s readiness to provide independent defense and foreign policies in its own interests despite all the difficulties that it may face on this path.

The Russian S-400 missile defense system, according to Stratfor, is the “best all-around.” It is approximately 30 years in the making, as development began in the late 1980s, and it was officially announced in 1993.

The first successful tests of the system were conducted in 1999 at Kapustin Yar in Astrakhan and the S-400 was scheduled for deployment by the Russian army in 2001. By 2003, the system was yet to be deployed to Russia. Following various setbacks it was finally cleared for service in 2007.

• The S-400 Triumph package consists of a 30K6E battle management system, six 98ZH6E SAM systems, 48N6E3 and (or) 48N6E2 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) ammunition load and 30TsE maintenance facilities. Use of the 48N6E SAM is possible.
• An S-400 Transporter Erector Launcher has four missile containers. Each container can house one 48N6E or four 9M96 surface-to-air missiles.
• The S-400 can be used with a semi-mobile package of towed trailer-mounted radars and missiles. Typically, it is towed by the Russian 6×6 truck BAZ-6402-015.
• It takes 5-10 minutes to set system assets from traveling position and about 3 more minutes to set it to ready from the deployed position.

The S-400 has a target detection range of approximately 600 km, while being able to simultaneously track around 300 targets. The maximum speed of the target may be up to 4,800 m/s, approximately Mach 14.

It can simultaneously engage approximately 36 targets, or 72 guided missiles. It can engage an aerodynamic target at a range of between 3 and 250 kilometers, while a ballistic target can be engaged at 60 kilometers.

• The Russian armed forces have several S-400, located at various positions, as well as plans to equip the Kirov-class battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov with the 48N6DMK anti-aircraft missile derived from the land-based S-400. By 2020 Russia plans to have 28 S-400 regiments, each comprising of two or three battalions. In turn, each battalion consists of at least eight launchers with 32 missiles and a mobile command post.
• Two S-400 systems are deployed in Syria for use in protection of Russian personnel.
• Since 2016, Belarus has two S-400 missile systems, both provided by Russia free of charge, as per a 2011 agreement.
• China received its first S-400 regiment in May 2018 and carried out successful tests in August 2018. There was an issue  where Russia had to send dozens of replacement missiles in early 2019 since a Russian cargo ship, reportedly carrying an export variant of the S-400’s most advanced interceptor, the 40N6E, was forced to return home as a result of damages sustained during a storm in the English Channel.  On July 25^th, 2019, Russia began the delivery of China’s second S-400 missile defense system regiment;.
• In October 2017, Saudi Arabia announced that it had finalized an agreement for the delivery of the S-400 missile defense system. Unsurprisingly, the US’ key ally in the Middle East wasn’t subject to sanctions and constant warnings over purchasing the S-400. In February 2019, the Kingdom and Russia held consultations on the S-400.
• The S-400 missile defense system is expected to enter into service in India in October 2020. The United States threatened India with sanctions over India’s decision to buy the S-400 missile defense system from Russia. So far, it’s proving as effective as the threats towards Turkey.
• As of January 2018, Qatar has allegedly been in advanced talks for the purchase of S-400, but no additional information has been provided since.
• There are various rumors and confirmations by officials from Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt for interest towards the S-400.

The US strongly opposes the purchase of S-400 by its allies, but mainly by Turkey, since Turkey was a key partner in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. According to US officials, there were constant fears that it could be used to steal the fighter jet’s secrets. Turkey has, for over a year now, maintained that the deal was done and there was nothing the US could do to dissuade it from purchasing despite threats of sanctions and other aggressive actions.

In a last ditch and quite absurd effort US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, allegedly on behalf of US President Donald Trump, suggested that the Turkish side may choose to “simply not turn on” their $2 billion system to avoid difficulties in the Turkish-US relations. This absurd proposal was later repeated by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

US media claim that negotiations on an offer by the US for Turkey to purchase a Raytheon Patriot missile system are still on-going despite the S-400 delivery. How that makes sense is unclear, but the new US Defense Secretary Mark Esper was, after all, a Raytheon lobbyist. Regardless, the cost of the proposed Patriot is $3.5 billion, compared to the $2 billion Russian system.

Another factor why the US military political leadership opposes deliveries of Russian state-of-the-art air defense missile systems to other states is that such deals contribute to the Russian development programmes in this field. Right now, the Russian military is developing and testing interceptors of the A-235 Nudol anti-ballistic missile system and anti-satellite weapon. The system is set to replace the current one defending Moscow and the surrounding region from nuclear attacks, the A-135 Amur.

According to reports, the Nudol will operate in three stages:

• Long-range, based on the 51T6 interceptor and capable of destroying targets at distances up to 1500 km and altitudes up to 800 km
• Medium-range, an update of the 58R6 interceptor, designed to hit targets at distances up to 1000 km, at altitudes up to 120 km
• Short-range (the 53T6M or 45T6 interceptor (based on the 53T6)), with an operating range of 350 km and a flight ceiling of 40-50 km

The main contractor for the project is Almaz-Antey, who created the S-300, S-400 and is working on the S-500. According to military experts, the future of the missile defense systems A-235 and S-500 will form the basis for the comprehensive, integrated aerospace defense system of Russia, which will include a variety of modern ground-based detection tools.

The additional experience and funds obtained by Almaz-Antey and Russian military experts during implementation of S-300 and S-400 deals around the world and their usage in the conflict zones such Syria will allow Russia to make its aerospace defense systems even more sophisticated and effective.

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Memes create perceptions, and perceptions are everything.

Memes and slogans are empty and vacuous, but they fabricate consent from broad-based populations.

Evidence is not required.

One persistent “perception” that governing agencies have been implanting in the collective mindset is “You fight them (the terrorists) over there so they don’t come here.”

The perception creates Fear of terrorism, which is a perfect building block for ramping up funding for the fraudulent “War on Terror”.

People believe that we are fighting terrorists in Syria. They believe that if we do not do so, the terrorists will come here uninvited.

White Helmet(1) terrorists ARE here. But they were invited. They are special guests. Our governments and their agencies support them. They are not the enemy.

The fake perception that there is a war on ISIS and al Qaeda masks the evidence-based reality that the war is against Syria, not against the very terrorists who are (also) waging war against Syria. The terrorists are Western proxies.

Other effective but equally false memes that governing agencies have implanted into the collective consciousness include the mantra that President Assad is a “brutal dictator” and that he “gasses his own people”, and “kills his own people”, or that the “regime” attacks its own hospitals and schools and otherwise tries to destroy itself. The fabricated perceptions are false. They are war propaganda, criminal.

The Western-supported terrorists are the brutal dictators, they are the ones gassing “Assad’s” people, and killing “Assad’s own people”, and destroying schools and hospitals and the entire fabric and identity of Syria itself. They are the sectarian, mass-slaughtering, Christian (and Muslim)-slaying monsters, not Assad.

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

Note

(1) Mark Taliano, “Video: Who Are the White Helmets? Fake News and Staged Rescues.” Global Research, 26 December, 2018.
(https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-who-are-the-white-helmets-fake-news-and-staged-rescues/5663906) Accessed 01 August, 2019.

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

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Author: Mark Taliano

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With the CIA’s Dirty War in South Sudan winding down its time to take a brief but comprehensive look at the origins and history of this most secret of Pax Americana crimes in Africa.

It is in the national interests of the USA to deprive China of access to African energy resources, with the Sudanese oil fields being the only Chinese owned and operated in Africa. It was no coincidence that one of the first targets of the “rebellion” in South Sudan was the Chinese oil fields. It has been US vs China in South Sudan from the start.

To begin this history we must go back to the origins of the South Sudan peace process that developed in 2004. This new breakthrough came about following the East Sudan uprising and subsequent intervention in Sudan by the Eritrean military in support of the Beja and Rashida peoples movement in 2003. Eritrean commandos cut the Port Sudan-Khartoum highway, the lifeline for 25 million residents of Sudans capital. For two weeks the Sudanese army counterattacked and ended up utterly defeated by the Eritrean special forces.

Facing critical food and fuel shortages the Sudanese officer core that was then the base of support for the recently deposed Omar Al Bashir capitulated and as part of the peace deal agreed to begin good faith negotiations with the various Sudanese resistance groups, both east, south and even, supposedly, in the west.

This resulted in John Garang, head of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement and the President of Sudan Omar Al Bashir sitting down together to sign a comprehensive peace deal in Asmara, Eritrea late in 2004.

In December of 2004 we flew into Asmara, Eritrea and checked into the old Imperial Hotel, the Emboisoira, and found ourselves sharing breakfast with senior leaders of the SPLM. We had a satellite dish back in the US with EritreanTV so we had seen our breakfast mates on the news covering the recently signed peace deal in Asmara. They were all in high spirits, still excited about the prospect for peace in Sudan.

Later, after returning home to the USA in 2015 we heard of a new peace deal, this time being signed in Navaisha in Kenya. And this time the deal was brokered by the USA. The only real difference between the 2004 Asmara agreement and the 2005 Kenya deal was the inclusion of a clause calling for a referendum on independence for South Sudan.

The USA forced Bashir and Garang to accept this independence referendum after forcing a new peace “negotiation” and eventual, deal, in Kenya, away from Eritrean mediation efforts. Carrot and the stick, inducements and threats by the worlds superpower forced Garang and Bashir to accept the dismemberment of Sudan and created the conditions for one of the most brutal civil wars in African history. This was the doings of the USA from the get go.

After signing the peace deal John Garang, as head of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), held his first public rally in Khartoum and drew a million people or more, three times the largest crowd Bashir had ever had. There he made a fateful speech.

John Garang made it clear that he was strongly AGAINST independence for South Sudan, instead calling on his fellow Sudanese in the North to help elect him president to build a new Sudan based on equal rights and justice for all Sudanese.

Garang stated his intent to be politically independent from the western powers instead looking to China, already in the oil business in Sudan, to develop Sudans economy. Sudan, as a whole, is the largest and potentially richest country in Africa and for the USA to lose Sudan to China wasn’t acceptable to Pax Americana.

John Garang was dead two weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash and with him died a unified Sudan.

With in a few years a referendum was held for “independence” for South Sudan and voila it was a done deal. The irony is that John Garang, who was vehemently against independence for South Sudan, is now proclaimed “The Father” of the South Sudanese independent state.

In 2009 my old friend Alexander Cockburn contacted me asking for a story about what was going on vis a vis Sudan/South Sudan. I had been living next door in Eritrea for the past few years and I responded with “Storm Clouds Over South Sudan” which Alex and Jeffrey St. Claire published on their website “Counterpunch” where I predicted the upcoming holocaust in the worlds newest “independent” country.

I only wish my words had not come true.

I was repeatedly forced to continue exposing the CIA’s dirty war in South Sudan over the next few years with titles like “US vs China in South Sudan”, “The CIA’s DIrty War in South Sudan” amongst others in an attempt to shine the light of day on this most dirty, and secret, CIA covert war.

I am not exaggerating when I call the civil war in South Sudan the most secret major covert military operation by the CIA in the Agency’s history. The proof of this is the fact that not a single writer other than myself has made this charge. This might be explained by the lengths prominent western journalists have attempted to point the blame away from the Agency and instead at the South Sudanese peoples themselves.

It’s been horrific first hand stories by award winning progressive journalists that painted this dirty war as black on black, African tribal violence at its worst.

When I pointed out to one of the more prominent journalists that the rebels were being paid $300 a month salaries, they denied the accuracy of my claim. In an exchange on Twitter he said that the rebels were making maybe $300 a year if that, so no need to explain the $6 million a month it would take to pay 20,000 rebel combatants salaries?

The problem with this assertion is that former South Sudanese rebel fighters have confirmed being paid $300 a month when they were under arms. In South Sudan young men join the army because it’s the only way to get enough money to feed your family, not out of patriotic zeal. When the money periodically dried up, usually stolen by the rebel generals, the soldiers start to leave, as my sources had experienced.

Do the math, 20,000 rebels paid $300 a month times 6 years plus food, fuel and ammo and you come out with over $500 million and counting? Honestly now, who has a history of coming up with that amount of cash, entirely secret for that long but the CIA? Must we be reminded of the CIA’s dirty wars in Angola and Mozambique in support of South African Apartheid back in the 1970’s and 80’s?

Show me the money, right? How come no one in the international media has ever asked this question? The rebels have no visible means of support, where could they be getting their funds from?

This story remains the best kept secret “dirty war” the CIA has ever operated. Until the Chinese brought in a couple thousand armed “peacekeepers” to protect their oil fields this CIA operation was successful, shutting down, temporarily Chinese oil production in South Sudan. But more importantly, it pretty much shut down Chinese expansion in South Sudan. That is what this dirty war was all about, preventing China from gaining a major foothold in Africa’s oil fields.

Show me the money? Show me the ONLY party that benefits from this war? Thats right, the ONLY party to benefit from this brutal, foreign funded African holocaust has been Pax Americana, the U.S. of A, by shutting down Chinese oil production and expansion in South Sudan.

Today peace has broken out in South Sudan, shaky as it may be. The CIA had been using the former regime in power in Ethiopia, the TPLF, to funnel their filthy lucre to the rebel armies in South Sudan but with the “Peaceful Revolution” breaking out in Ethiopia this avenue to the rebels was cut off. The rebel leadership had no choice but to cut a deal with South Sudan President Salva Kiir for cash so they could pay their troops salaries. No money, no honey, you get what you pay for and without hard CIA cash to pay their troops it became “Give peace a chance”. Of course corruption remains rife and stolen salaries for various ethnically based military departments have continued to cause revolts and instability.

Yet so far the peace deal signed, sealed and delivered in Asmara in 2018 has been holding. The CIA are now almost completely out of the picture in South Sudan though one should never underestimate the Agency’s capacity for evil. Its in the US national interest to deny China access to African oil so it will always continue to be US vs China in South Sudan, as part of Pax Americana’s designs for Africa as a whole.

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So declared Cuban President Díaz-Canel in his July 28 speech at the Foro de São Paolo in Caracas. It is not the first time that Cuba, through its leaders and revolutionary press, has made such an affirmation. Furthermore, in a modest and unassuming way, so has Venezuela. No doubt similar declarations will be made in the future. The fate of Venezuela is still being played out, even though the Bolivarian Revolution and its President, Nicolas Maduro, have defeated every single attempt by the U.S. and by Venezuela’s external and internal enemies to overthrow the government.

Some supporters in Caracas of both the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution questioned whether Cuba should also be honoured for standing in that first trench.

The writer of these lines believes that the answer is “yes and no.” Since 1959, Cuba has solidly positioned itself – and likewise been designated by the world anti-imperialist movement – as proudly standing upright in that first trench as far as Latin America is concerned. Moreover, the international left consensus continuously and correctly reminds us that the Cuban Revolution has primarily been holding that banner courageously aloft on its very own.

Even though other important breakthroughs have occurred, nothing compares to the rise of Hugo Chávez and the fledgling Bolivarian Revolution through the December 1998 elections.

And in the wake of this watershed in Latin American history arose the development of regional integration, which would not have been possible without Chávez together with that other Latin American giant, Fidel Castro. Thus, one can say that both Cuba and Venezuela occupied that coveted (but not sought-after) first trench standing on the same footing.

However, as a result of the first coup attempt against the Maduro government on January 23, 2019, everything changed. The ripple effect not only hit Latin America but also, to a large extent, the world.

Never before in decades on this planet have we witnessed such a U.S.-led international, sustained, vicious and coordinated economic, political and diplomatic media disinformation/lying campaign against a government and its leader – in this case, President Maduro – as we have seen over the last six months (and ongoing).

To put this in context by taking definite time frames, one can recall the “Black Spring” media war against Cuba in 2003 over the arrest of mercenaries, the so-called “dissidents.” However, this was nothing compared with Venezuela in 2019. After a relatively short period of time, the controversy over Cuba fizzled out on its own.

As far as personalizing a media war by targeting an individual leader, what comes to mind is the “blitzkrieg” in much of the international media against the persona of Fidel Castro after his passing on November 25, 2016, as the term employed to describe that disinformation in my latest book.

Like starving sharks sensing blood, much of the mainstream media carried out a virtual non-stop, 10-day campaign. It centred around the theme that the “dictator” had passed away and so finally Cuba could come to its senses and liberate itself from socialism, its political system, and make concessions to the U.S. in order to “be deserving of” better relations.

However, it lasted only while the Cuban people laid their leader to rest. It soon became clear that Cuba would remain on the same path it had chosen to take since 1959. The time span was not more than about two weeks. It was, thereafter, business as usual.

These and other examples are relatively minor compared with the current 2019 anti-Maduro campaign.

Cuba defeated the mercenary U.S.-backed military invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 at a time when the Revolution was already solidly in power and did not share any political or economic power with pro-U.S. forces. Close to 60 years after the Bay of Pigs, the U.S. is still licking its wounds. It knows that it cannot – and will not – dare to attempt a military coup in Cuba or invade the island. Whether or not the U.S. likes it, the military option for Cuba is not on the table.

The situation in Venezuela, however, is different. While the civic–military union is solid, a military intervention in Venezuela is still possible – and is always on the U.S. table. For example, during the Foro while meeting with parliamentarians on July 28, one of the Bolivarian Revolution’s main leaders, Diosdado Cabello, said,

“It is probable that the U.S. Marines will enter Venezuela; the problem for them, however, is how they are going to leave [alive].”

Even though some of the important Trump allies in the Lima Group do not approve of a military solution, how much weight does this hold in the balance when all these allies fully support regime change?

Let us take one example to draw a distinction between Cuba’s and Venezuela’s situation from the author’s own country. It is still very “fashionable” in Canada at all levels of society and in the mainstream media to oppose the U.S. blockade against Cuba and refrain from open regime change rhetoric. However, the U.S.-led media war against Venezuela is so powerful and all encompassing in Canada that it is “fashionable” in this country to repeat all the U.S. lies and swallow hook, line and sinker the U.S. narrative against Venezuela and especially its leader, Maduro.

Venezuela is thus indeed in the first trench of the anti-imperialist struggle. In the course of a meeting on February 4, 2019 with a small foreign delegation in Caracas, Maduro pointed out to us that Venezuela was not seeking the honour of being the epicentre of the international anti-imperialist battle. However, invoking Vietnam, he drew the historical parallel and stated that Venezuela is indeed up to the challenge.

Yes, Venezuela is in the first trench. However, as Díaz-Canel pointed out, the U.S. is also targeting Cuba and Nicaragua.

Thus, due to its repeatedly stubborn refusal to abandon Venezuela despite U.S. attempts to starve Cuba into submission and take the road of treason, Cuba is indeed, in a manner of speaking, sharing that first trench with Venezuela. Yet, Venezuela ranks first there, up front, not by its own choice, but rather because of a situation forced upon it by the U.S. and its allies. The Bolivarian Revolution holds its head up, courageously peering over the trench and ready to take that first bullet, if need be – but not without a fitting response.

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. He collaborates with many web sites, television and radio broadcasts based in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Twitter  Facebook, His trilingual website:  www.arnoldaugust.com.

Featured image is from CADTM

The FCC, the telecoms and cooperating MSM continue their resolute pr campaign to sell 5G to an unsuspecting American public as if the technology is up and running at effortless full capacity.  The truth is that even as ‘spotty’ coverage is being established in large urban markets, the telecoms are well aware that there are fundamental uncertainties yet to be addressed which may take years before widespread distribution can be accomplished.

The industry is driven by the hard reality that consumer indifference to increased data speed may be enough to threaten a return on their $275 billion investment thereby encouraging the telecoms to manufacture an insatiable demand for some new digital bells and whistles.  This is not to say that 5G is in jeopardy of being developed but that its cellular identity may be amended to focus more on the 30 GHz and higher projects.

The reality is, according to Scott Fulton, no single, simple way to create a new wireless technology on the scale of 5G.  Fulton compares the upgrade from 4G to 5G as akin to going from a telegraph to a fax machine.  As he explains, a wireless generation is a combination of technologies, all with multiple dimensions and differing standards, that must be integrated to form one mobile technological entity.  The 5G concept is not conducive to plugging one new generation into another but requires a level of co-existence as one merges with another, as new standards integrate with the old standards – all of which may take years.   As we know from the National Security Council power point, 5G is being built from the ground up as a brand new entity.

In other words, creating a new generation of digital technology is a lot more complicated with  rollout not ready for some years to come, even as the push for 6G begins to muddy the waters.

In addition, a recent Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings gave credence to the possibility that the telecoms are taking on more than they are able to deliver:

“for U.S. telecommunications companies, we have a cautious view on 5G wireless.  We believe that accelerated deployments could hurt balance sheets that are already stretched because of mergers and acquisitions, mature industry conditions, and competitive pressures.”

In a warning to investors, S&P cited “revenue growth associated with 5G will be constrained” as they questioned whether consumers are willing to spend more just to experience faster speeds on new devices.   S&P continued

“our forecast for 5G investment and customer appetite is bearish, so any incremental increase cost or delay should be nonmaterial to the ratings”and that “the bulk of the (Internet of Things) revenue opportunities may not materialize for at least five to 10 years”  as AT&T and Verizon could wait up to ten year for a pay back on their investment.

Tesla’s Coil

In 1891, the brilliant Nikola Tesla, Serbian physicist, engineer and inventor created the Tesla Coil which became the first high voltage transmission of wireless electricity utilizing an electro magnetic force.  The Coil radiated sufficient volts of artificial lightening to illuminate a fluorescent bulb with no electrical wire connection as Tesla also dared theorize on the possibility of death rays.

Some believe that Tesla derived his genius from interstellar spheres as he once suggested that “if you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy frequency and vibration” while displaying an intuitive recognition of the existence of the ionosphere, a premonition of plasma as the fourth state of matter and what today has been dubbed ‘free’ energy.   More famous for revolutionizing our understanding of electricity with his patent for ac (alternating) current, his prescient quote  “…in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration.  I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core but I know that it exists” further suggests a consciousness that had penetrated a “secret core” as another level of reality.  Today, ac is also known as radio frequency waves in the telecommunication world with the difference being the level of frequency on the spectrum.

After having his inventions ridiculed, laughed at and/or stolen by Thomas Edison,Marconi, George Westinghouse and lastly, JP Morgan who failed to grasp the significance of a global wireless communication network, Tesla experienced how a small independent inventor could be squeezed out by the rapacious robber baron class which continues to this day.   After his death in 1943, some of his remaining paperwork was confiscated by the US government and some became enshrined in a museum in Belgrade.   As the spirit of Tesla lives on through ingenious inventors of the day, there is reportedly a way to connect an android phone to the internet without wifi service.

T-Mobile Sprint Merger

Speaking of robber barons, the recent Department of Justice approval of a $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint reduced four major national wireless carriers to three thus creating another impossibly unwieldy mega-monster titan while assuring that Rural America’s Digital Divide will continue.  In a late hour concession to rural consumers, one of the divestiture requirements included the sale of “certain spectrum assets,” 20,000 cell sites, retail storefronts and total use of the T-Mobile network for seven years to Dish, a Colorado-based satellite TV provider as it builds its own 5G network in the expectation of ultimately becoming a fourth major carrier.

With the ink barely dry, T-Mobile CEO John Legere wasted no time in asserting that T Mobile’s  acquisition of Spectrum would offer a “true nationwide capability that this country needs that nobody else has” and that owning all three frequency bands, each containing different properties and ability to transmit data, is crucial to 5G’s success.

Radio Frequency Spectrum is a fixed, finite resource on the electromagnetic spectrum that enables wireless telecommunication to function.   With a radio frequency from 3 KHz to 300 GHz (gigahertz), 5G will utilize low and mid band frequencies as well as the higher mm Wave frequency which is an essential indicator as to the true purpose and intent of 5G.

In other words, while T-Mobil has shrewdly accumulated all three bands to create what it believes will be unbeatable in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are no match for their market dominance. Currently, both Verizon and AT&T own low band spectrum and the more expensive and complex mmWave. Neither owns any of the highly desirable, more versatile, Mid-band Spectrum necessary for urban and rural usage.

Legere then proceeded to attack the two remaining carriers as “dead in the water” and “lying”  as the merger put T-Mobile in the driver’s seat as Sprint was the only telecom to own any of the mid band spectrum.  The merger gave T-Mobile the opportunity to consolidate all three bands under one company. In addition, at the recent FCC auction in March, T-Mobile spent $840 million to quadruple their mmWave holdings which will facilitate the Internet of Things, AI’s and the Directed Energy Weapons.

With three remaining carriers there is little real expectation that T-Mobile will live up to its earlier promises to provide rural America with cellular service and that 99% of the country will be wired within six years.  The cost for installing thousands of miles of fiber cable and 200,000-plus cell sites required to make a 5G network operational will be an extensive project and cost $60 billion more than proposed.  Still pending isS1699, the Streamline Small Cell Deployment Act which will curtail local government role in locating 5G towers.  If and when 5G makes it to rural America, it promises to be prohibitively expensive.

The last remaining requirement for the merger is final approval by the five-member Federal Communications Commission although their vote is little more than a technicality.  The three Republican appointees to the Commission announced their support, although two of them admitted they had not read the necessary documentation; thereby winning the ”Bobbing Head Award of the Week.”

….to be continued

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

Secretary of State Pompeo’s surprise announcement that President Trump ordered him to reduce the US military presence in Afghanistan before the 2020 elections immediately raised the ire of the Mainstream Media and will probably see his domestic foes’ hostile narratives to these plans being tacitly supported by India, the only country that stands to lose if this scenario materializes and which might even rationalize its infowar operation on the basis of it being an asymmetrical response to Trump’s recent but highly controversial revelation that Modi allegedly asked him to mediate in Kashmir.

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Secretary of State Pompeo dropped a bombshell on Monday when he confirmed that President Trump ordered him to reduce the US military presence in Afghanistan before the 2020 elections. This surprise announcement immediately raised the ire of the Mainstream Media, with even supposedly “neutral” outlets such as Reuters embedding hostile narratives in their pieces about this decision. The latter inserted its editorial opinion into what unassuming readers thought was just a purely journalist article reporting the facts when it wrote that

“The disclosure of a timeline will add to speculation that Trump is prepared to strike any deal with the Taliban that will allow for at least partial U.S. withdrawal before American voters go to the polls, irrespective of the concerns of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul” and that “Disclosing Trump’s goal of withdrawing forces could weaken the U.S. negotiating position if the Taliban believe Trump wants to get out, no matter what.”

Going even further, Reuters cited unnamed diplomatic sources whose statements conformed to the outlet’s suspicious editorial stance towards this announcement, including the not-so-subtle innuendo that Trump is apparently selling out to the Taliban in order to boost his re-election prospects among the tens of millions of Americans who are fed up with this costly conflict. They wrote that “While U.S. diplomats say the peace process must be ‘Afghan owned and led’, senior Afghan officials and Western diplomats said the timetable being imposed by the White House to get U.S. troops out risked overshadowing the wider aim of peace among Afghans…Some U.S. allies fear that once a timetable for a U.S. pullout is announced, the Afghan government will have little leverage over the militants in their talks about how to run the country…’The bargaining power to protect democracy and basic freedom will be surrendered once the pullout is announced,’ the second diplomat said.”

This interpretation of events isn’t anything new, though, since it coincidentally reflects the Indian position, the only country that stands to lose if the scenario of a large-scale American military drawdown in Afghanistan materializes because it fears that its so-called “strategic depth” there vis-a-vis Pakistan would disappear with the withdrawal of American forces. The author elaborated on this perspective in his February analysis titled “Reading Between The Lines: India Has Sour Grapes Over America’s Afghan Peace Talks“, which proved that India had already begun low-level infowar operations against its newfound military-strategic ally. These efforts are only expected to intensify in the coming future, especially since India will probably rationalize its perception management operation on the basis of it being an asymmetrical response to Trump’s recent but highly controversial revelation that Modi allegedly asked him to mediate in Kashmir.

India’s “balancing” act of so-called “multi-alignment” has failed to reap any tangible dividends for it, especially as regards its grand strategic goal of being treated as an “equal” ally by the US, so its diplomats might start to turn against America despite its military leaders remaining on the same page with it regarding the shared objective of “containing” China. In that case, India would be emulating the US’ own “good cop, bad cop” approach, albeit without the leverage to actually gain anything from it other than a short-lived ego boost among the BJP’s hyper-nationalist base at home. If India joins forces with Trump’s domestic foes and attempts to more actively discredit him and his administration for their new peacemaking policy in Afghanistan, then the President would obviously interpret that as a political threat to his re-election prospects. Accordingly, he might even double down on the US’ campaign of diplomatic (Kashmir), economic (trade deal), and military (S-400 sanctions) pressure on India in response.

The end result of any Indian move in this direction could predictably be that the US’ “Indo-Pacific” strategy stalls despite both countries having a joint strategic vision of “containing” China, all because New Delhi couldn’t cut its losses in Afghanistan and throw its support behind Washington’s latest moves there. Interestingly enough, while the two might still cooperate real closely in the military sphere, they might also become trapped in a low intensity Hybrid War cycle with one another on the diplomatic, economic, and informational fronts because of the rampant distrust that’s developing between their respective “deep states” (military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) as a result of India’s refusal to back the US’ new approach towards Afghanistan and Trump’s controversial comments on Kashmir. Barring a complete strategic surrender by India (which certainly can’t be discounted), the prognosis doesn’t look too positive for bilateral relations with the US after Pompeo’s latest policy announcement and the likely reaction that it’ll provoke from New Delhi.

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Capitalists have claimed responsibility for America’s past economic success.  Let’s begin by setting the record straight. American success had little to do with capitalism. This is not to say that the US would have had more success with something like Soviet central planning.

Prior to 1900 when the frontier was closed, America’s success was a multi-century long success based on the plunder of a pristine environment and abundant natural resources. Individuals and companies were capitalized simply by occupying the land and using the resources present.

As the population grew and resources were depleted, the per capita resource endowment declined.

America got a second wind from World War I, which devastated European powers and permitted the emergence of the US as a budding world power.  World War II finished off Europe and put economic and financial supremacy in Washington’s hands.  The US dollar seized the world reserve currency role from the British pound, enabling the US to pay its bills by printing money.  The world currency role of the dollar, more than nuclear weapons, has been the source of American power. Russia has equal or greater nuclear weapons power, but it is the dollar not the ruble that is the currency in which international payments are settled. 

The world currency role made the US the financial hegemon.  This power together with the IMF and  World Bank enabled the US to plunder foreign resources the way vanishing American resources had been plundered.  

We can conclude that plunder of natural resources and the ability to externalize much of the cost have been  major contributors right through the present day to the success of American capitalism.  Michael Hudson has described the plunder process in his many books and articles (for example, see this), as has John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Essentially, capitalism is a plunder mechanism that generates short-run profits by externalizing long-run costs.  It exhausts natural resources, including air, land, and water, for temporary profits while imposing most of its costs, such as pollution, on the environment.  An example is the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by loggers.  The world loses a massive carbon sink that stabilizes the global climate, and loggers gain short-run profits that are a tiny percentage of the long-run costs.

This destructive process is amplified by the inherently short-run time perspective of capitalist activity which seldom extends beyond the next quarter.  

US economic success was also a result of a strong consumer demand fed by rising real wages as technological advances in manufacturing raised the productivity of labor and consumer purchasing power. The middle class became dominant. When I was an economics student, Paul Samuelson taught us that American prosperity was based entirely on the large American consumer market and had nothing to do with foreign trade.  Indeed, foreign trade was a minor factor in American GDP.  America had such a large domestic consumer market that the US did not need foreign trade to enjoy economics of scale.

All of this changed with the rise of free market ideology and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I was a student we were taught that boards of directors and corporate executives had responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and to their shareholders.  These responsibilities were all equally valid and needed to be kept in balance.

In response to liberals, who tried to impose more and more “social responsibilities” on corporations, free market economists responded with the argument that, in fact, corporations only have responsibilities to their owners. Rightly or wrongly, this reactive argument is blamed on Milton Friedman.  Conservative foundations set about teaching jurists and legislators that companies were only responsible to owners.  

Judges were taught that ownership is specific and cannot be abridged by government imposing obligations on the investments of owners for responsibilities that do not benefit the owners. This argument was used to terminate all responsibilities except to shareholders and left profit maximization as the corporate goal.

Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and China and India opened their economies to foreign capital, US corporations were free to desert their work forces and home towns and use cheaper labor abroad to produce the goods and services sold to Americans. This increased their profits and, thereby, executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains at the expense of the livelihoods of their former domestic work force and tax base of their local communities and states.  The external costs of the larger profits were born by their former employees and the impaired financial condition of states and localities. These costs greatly exceed the higher profits.

Generally speaking, economists assume away external costs.  Their mantra is that progress fixes everything.  But their measures of progress are deceptive.  Ecological economists, such as Herman Daly, have raised the issue whether, considering the neglect of external costs and the inaccurate way in which GDP is measured, announced increases in GDP exceed in value the cost of producing them.  It is entirely possible that GDP growth is simply an artifact of not counting all of the costs of production.  

As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end simultaneously with the ability of the US central bank to protect existing financial wealth by creating ever more money with which to support stock, bond, and real estate prices.  The US has a long history of overthrowing reformist governments in Latin America that threatened American control over their resources.  Washington’s coups against democracy and self-determination succeeded until Venezuela.  Washington’s coup against Chavez was overturned by the Venezuelan people and military, and so far Washington’s attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor, Maduro, has failed.

Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government was prevented by Russia, and most likely Russia and China will prevent Washington from overthrowing the government of Iran.  In Africa the Chinese are proving to be better business partners than the exploitative American corporations.  To continue feeding the empire with its heavy costs is becoming more difficult.

Washington’s policy of sanctions is making it even more difficult. To avoid the arbitrary and illegal sanctions, other countries are starting to abandon the US dollar as the currency of international transactions and arranging to settle their international accounts in their domestic currencies. China’s Silk Road encompasses Russia with much of Asia in a trade bloc independent of the Western financial system.  Other countries hoping to escape US control are turning to Russia and China to achieve sovereignty from Washington.  These developments will reduce the demand for dollars and impair US financial hegemony.  Alternatives to the World Bank will remove areas of the world from the reach of US plunder.

As plunderable resources diminish, American capitalism, which is heavily dependent on plunder, will have one foundation of its success removed.  As aggregate consumer demand collapses from the absence of growth in real income, absence of middle class jobs, and the extreme polarization of income and wealth in the US, another pillar of American capitalism disintegrates.  As business investment has also collapsed, as indicated by the use of corporate profits and borrowing to repurchase the corporations’ equity, thus decapitalizing the companies, total aggregate demand itself collapses. 

The absence of growth in aggregate demand will make the gap between high stock prices and dismal prospects for corporate profits too great to be bridged by the Federal Reserve flooding money into financial assets.  Without the ability to prop up financial asset prices with money creation, flight from dollar-denominated assets could bring down the US dollar.

What is left will be a ruin.

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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.

Featured image is from Kim Seidl via Shutterstock/samdiesel via iStock/Salon

The Tehran government has announced the arrest of seventeen Iranian citizens caught spying for America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Some of those arrested have already been sentenced to death. It is the third major roll-up of CIA agents in Iran that I have been aware of, the first occurring in 1991 involved 20 American agents. The second episode in 2011 led to the arrest of 30 spies. The earlier arrests reportedly eliminated what were presumed to be the entire networks of American agents operating inside Iran and it is to be presumed that the recent arrests will have the same impact.

The Iranians presented a considerable quantity of evidence, including photos and business cards of US government officials, to back up their claim of American spying but President Trump dismissed the report as “totally false” and “just more lies and propaganda” — while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said:

“I would take with a significant grain of salt any Iranian assertion about actions that they’ve taken.”

Iran’s press release on the arrests together with a briefing by an intelligence official supplemented by local media coverage provided some of the details. The seventeen reportedly had “sophisticated training” but those who had sabotage missions did not succeed. Other objectives included “collecting information at the facilities they worked at, carrying out technical and intelligence activities and transferring and installing monitoring devices.”

Some of the agents had reportedly been recruited by falling into what is referred to as a “visa trap” set by the CIA for Iranians seeking to travel to the US. This has long been the preferred tool for recruiting Iranian agents. The intelligence official handed out a CD with a video recording of an alleged CIA case officer speaking to an Iranian target, which was presumably recorded secretly. The video shows a blonde woman who speaks Persian with an American accent. The disc also included names of several US embassy staff in Dubai, Turkey, India, Zimbabwe and Austria who Iran claims were involved in the recruitment and training of the Iranian spies.

How exactly did the recruitments take place as there is no US Embassy in Tehran and few Americans resident in the country? Many of the Iranians were targeted when they walked into an American Embassy in a country to which they are free to travel, which includes Turkey and Dubai. In the words of the Iranian intelligence official,

“Some were approached when they were applying for a visa, while others had visas from before and were pressured by the CIA in order to renew them.”

Others were targeted and recruited as spies while attending scientific conferences around the world. Those recruited received promises of money, eventual resettlement and a job in the US or medical assistance. To maintain contact with its agents inside Iran, the CIA would reportedly conceal spyware and instructions in containers that look like rocks, which would be planted in city parks or in rural areas. The Iranian agents would then recover the material, which might include false identification documents. It should be observed that fake rocks are a standard espionage tool. They are hollowed out to conceal spy-gear and communications. After they are in place, a signal is made to alert the agent that there is something ready to be picked-up. In the trade they are referred to as “dead drops.”

Why does the United States continue to spy on Iran with such ferocity? The Mullahs became a major intelligence target for Washington in the wake of the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis, in which fifty-two American diplomats and intelligence officers were held for 444 days. The CIA mounted a major intelligence operation run from Europe that collected a wide range of information on the Iranian government and, increasingly, on its technical capabilities, including a suspected nuclear development program. In 2015 the CIA under President Barack Obama and Director John Brennan ramped up collection efforts against Iran as part of the verification process for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). More recently, Mike Pompeo, when CIA Director, further increased efforts against Iran when the Trump Administration withdrew from that agreement in the belief that Iran represented a rogue nation and a threat to United States interests and allies. In reality, of course, there is no real American vital interest relating to Iran and Trump has been acting on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom are hostile to Iran as a regional rival.

But running intelligence operations in a country without a US Embassy to serve as a base for spies proved difficult. Many spies have been caught, by one Iranian estimate, 290 agents arrested in recent years. Most often the exposure of the spies has been due to human error or technical problems in communications. Iran has benefited by boasting of those arrests and has long promoted its capacity to uncover American spy rings in the country. As the New York Times reports, Iran has recently aired a documentary featuring efforts to expose and rid the country of the CIA agents working there.

A recently produced and very popular Iranian fictional television series called “Gando” has also introduced the narrative of a perpetual fight against American spies into the country’s popular culture. The show features brave Iranian intelligence officials in pursuit of an American spy posing as a journalist.

According to a Yahoo News investigation, Iran was in 2009 enraged by reports that the CIA had possibly penetrated its nuclear program and its counter-intelligence agents immediately went on the hunt for moles. By 2011, Iranian officials had uncovered and arrested a network of 30 CIA sources, a fact that US officials later confirmed. Some of the accused informants were executed. The Iranian government was able to find the operatives because of failures in the systems and techniques that the CIA agents used to communicate with the agents. Once a flaw in communications is detected, it is possible to exploit that so one can sit back and wait and watch for all those linked to the network to reveal themselves.

One might observe that the continued massive American “maximum pressure” spying effort directed against Iran is a bit of an anachronism. It is agreed by nearly all observers that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and is unlikely to start one. The sanctions put in place against the country unilaterally by the US cannot produce a popular uprising that will bring down the regime, but they have indeed hurt the country’s economy badly and the people are suffering. Iran’s military cannot stand up against its neighbors, much less against the United States, and its ability to meddle in the affairs of its neighbors is extremely limited.

So, it is probably just as well that Iran has again rolled up most of the American spies in the country, though it will be a tragedy for the men and women involved. Many critics of the Agency have argued that the CIA has forgotten how to spy in an age of drones and electronic surveillance, which may be true. Certainly, the CIA record regarding Iran is nothing to brag about.

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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 Army.mil

Democratic National Committee (DNC) v. Russian Federation, et al was filed in April 2018.

Presided over by federal District Court Judge John Koeltl, the suit without substance was over fabricated claims of Russian 2016 US election meddling.

It named a long paragraph of defendants, including the Russian Federation, its Armed Forces General Staff military intelligence, WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the Trump campaign, and individuals connected to it.

The DNC accused the Trump campaign, Russia, and WikiLeaks et al of racketeering cybercrime related to (nonexistent) hacking of Dem computers. More on this below.

New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society Dems disappeared from the US political landscape during the Clinton co-presidency.

Dems shifted hard right, serving privileged interests more exclusively than earlier at the expense of ordinary people they disdain, their rights increasingly denied.

The agenda of both extremist right wings of the one-party state is militantly pro-war, anti-rule of law, pro-Wall Street, pro-corporate empowerment, anti-progressive, anti-labor, anti-consumer, anti-populist, anti-ecosanity, and anti-social justice.

The DNC suit without merit falsely called Russia the “primary wrongdoer,” claiming without evidence that it “surreptitiously and illegally hacked into the DNC’s computers and thereafter disseminated the results of its theft.”

Not a shred of evidence backed the fabricated claims. Judge Koeltl rejected them.

In his 81-page ruling, he said US courts aren’t the proper place for seeking damages against a nation-state. That’s for government branches to handle.

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

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

“The Court has considered all of the arguments raised by the parties. (They’re) either moot or without merit.” Case dismissed “with prejudice” — meaning the plaintiff may bring another suit on the same or similar grounds.

Koeltl perhaps has no knowledge that the documents in question were leaked by a Dem insider, not hacked by Russia or anyone else.

WikiLeaks is an investigative journalism operation, a noble initiative, publishing material the public has a right to know from sources believed to be reliable, what journalism the way it’s supposed to be is all about — deserving high praise, not criticism or prosecution.

Publishing information is a First Amendment right — no matter how unacceptable or offensive it may be to certain parties.

Earlier Supreme Court rulings upheld this right, including Justice William Brennan’s majority opinion in Texas v. Johnson (1989), saying:

“(I)f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

Justice Thurgood Marshall once said:

“(A)bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Nor does anyone else.

Separately he said:

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man (or woman), sitting alone in his (or her) own house, what books he (or she) may read or what films he (or she) may watch.”

“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s (and women’s) minds.”

As usual, Trump was wrong, tweeting in response to the ruling that “(t)he witch hunt ends” — far from it. It’ll likely continue as long as he’s in office and maybe after he’s gone.

It’s one of the most shameful political chapters in US history, worse than McCarthy’s witch-hunts. He self-destructed from demagogic smear-mongering against prominent figures at a time much different than today’s America.

A lesson wasn’t learned, repeated in new form by what’s been ongoing since Trump defeated media darling Hillary.

Modern-day Russophobia is worse and more threatening than during the height of Cold War hysteria.

Nary anyone in Congress or major media challenges what’s going on. The anti-Russia crowd drowns out voices of sanity, good sense, and sensibility way beyond the beltway.

No Russian US election meddling occurred, no threat by its ruling authorities to the US, West, or other countries.

Most people believe otherwise because of the power of Russophobic propaganda pounded into the public mind.

Instead of a world at peace, hardliners in charge of US policymaking wage endless wars against invented enemies, risking something much more devastating than what’s ongoing.

Instead of highlighting the danger to world peace, establishment media ignore it.

Repeating the century-ago “great red scare” and anti-communist hysteria during the Cold War is as phony now as earlier — with potentially catastrophic consequences if US belligerence is pushed too far.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from American Herald Tribune

Trump regime hardliners are struggling to enlist anti-Iran Operation Sentinel maritime coalition partners.

Britain’s limited Persian Gulf naval presence so far is separate from the Trump regime’s. The size of its fleet is a limiting factor. It’s been declining for years.

According to Defense News.com,

“(t)he US Navy has struggled to maintain its global commitments with a fleet of 290 ships, and it has seen a 52 percent decrease from its 1987 peak of 594 ships. The US Navy is today pursuing a goal of 355 ships,” adding:

“(D)uring roughly the same time period, (Britain’s) navy has lost more than 40 percent of its fleet, that stood at more than 130 ships. Today’s Royal Navy numbers fewer than 80 ships.”

Pentagon warships are deployed worldwide, limiting its capability to mobilize a large strike force in multiple global areas, along with maintaining its other global deployments.

Despite no Persian Gulf threat by Iran to commercial shipping of any countries, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Paul Selva invented a nonexistent regional IRGC maritime threat, claiming:

“…(T)here is a military role in defending freedom of navigation” in the Hormuz Strait. “The question will be to what extent the international community is behind that effort,” adding:

“If the Iranians come after US citizens, US assets or US military (sic), we reserve the right to respond with a military action. They need to know that. It needs to be very clear.”

Selva, other Pentagon commanders, and senior US political officials know Iran is “com(ing) after” no one.

The US military presence in the Middle East and elsewhere worldwide poses a major threat to world peace, stability, and security.

Nonbelligerent Iran is threatened by the US military presence near its territorial waters, coastline, and mainland, not the other way around.

France so far hasn’t agreed to join the Trump regime’s Operation Sentinel. According to Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur and other Western media, Angela Merkel’s government declined a White House request to join Pentagon warships in monitoring Hormuz Strait seaborne traffic, a Berlin statement saying:

“Members of the German government have been clear that freedom of navigation should be protected…Our question is, protected by whom” against what threat?

Iran poses none. A German Foreign Ministry statement said Berlin “took note of the (US) proposal, but made no promises,” adding:

“Foreign Minister Maas has repeatedly stressed that, in our opinion, priority must be given to reducing tensions, and to diplomatic efforts.”

“We are in close consultation with France and the UK. Participation in the US strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ is ruled out for us.”

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said his government is working with its UK and French counterparts to deescalate Persian Gulf tensions.

“The goal of all responsible politicians must be to observe the situation very soberly and carefully, and not to sleepwalk into an even bigger crisis,” he stressed, adding: “Deescalation is the order of the day.”

In May during a visit to Iraq, nonbelligerent Iran signed a non-aggression pact with Persian Gulf littoral states.

It emphasizes mutual cooperation for regional peace in a part of the world boiling from US aggression. Reportedly Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, and likely Oman welcome the agreement, Tehran still awaiting responses from other regional countries.

An unnamed Arab source said

“(i)n response to Washington’s request for joining an international coalition to protect commercial ships in the region, Kuwait stated that the situation in the region was not like Saddam Hussein’s…”

“Kuwait had earlier rejected the US request for deployment of four B-52 bombers in Kuwait.”

Russia prepared its own plan for Persian Gulf Security, its principles polar opposite US belligerent aims.

It calls for for peaceful cooperative security, stressing adherence to international law, Russia’s Foreign Ministry saying:

“Under the current circumstances, active and efficient steps at the international and regional levels are needed to normalize and further improve the situation in the Gulf area, overcome the protracted crisis phase, and turn this subregion towards peace, good-neighborliness, and sustainable development.”

The initiative includes the following principles:

Mutual cooperation to eliminate regional extremism and terrorism in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere in the region.

Mobilizing and influencing regional public opinion about the threat posed by terrorist groups and need to counter them by collective action.

All nations adhering “to international law, to the UN Charter, and UN Security Council resolutions in the first place. We all aim for a democratic and prosperous Middle East that would encourage inter-faith peace and coexistence.”

Trump regime hardliners strongly oppose Moscow’s initiative, along with any proposal for world peace and stability.

Achieving it undermines its imperial aims, why Russia’s plan won’t get out of the starting gate.

The Pentagon’s Operation Sentinel has nothing to do with protecting commercial or other shipping from an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist.

It may set the stage for a Gulf of Tonkin type false flag, wrongfully blamed on Iran, something more serious than others weeks earlier no evidence suggests Iran had anything to do with.

If US, UK, or other Western casualties occur, it could be a pretext for greater US toughness on Iran, including belligerence against its vessels, provoking the IRGC to respond, risking possible war.

What cool heads in the US, other Western states, and regional ones want avoided could be undermined a staged Trump regime incident, falsely blamed on Iran, setting off a chain reaction with unpredictable consequences.

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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: German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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India already discredited itself too much in both the eyes of the Afghan population and the rest of the world by being the only country to consistently stand with the unpopular puppet government in Kabul that even the US itself has all but officially abandoned for a rethinking of its failed strategy there to reap any benefits, though this hasn’t stopped some Indian pundits from desperately lobbying for exactly that as of late after it became obvious that every actor of significance has finally embraced the peacemaking position of its rivals in the global pivot of state of Pakistan.

An interesting trend has become discernible shortly after Pakistani Prime Minister Khan’s successful trip to the US, and it’s that Indian pundits are now desperately lobbying for their country to rethink its failed strategy towards Afghanistan after it became obvious that every actor of significance has finally embraced the peacemaking position of its rivals  in the global pivot state. The popular online Indian outlet LiveMint published an op-ed titled “Time to revise our Afghan strategy“, while the Indian web journal South Asian Monitor bemoaned the fact that “Trump’s ‘Mediation’ Talk Reflects India’’s Marginalisation In Afghanistan“.

Both pieces make the case that India’s approach towards Afghanistan has failed and that something must urgently be done to repair the geopolitical damage, yet they’re bereft of any realistic solutions. In addition, this new line of thinking sharply contrasts with the establishment’s recalcitrant stance of clinging to the country’s failed policy out of principle in spite of how counterproductive it is, as was elaborated on by the author in an analysis earlier this year titled “Reading Between The Lines: India Has Sour Grapes Over America’s Afghan Peace Talks“, which suggests that those two previously mentioned articles might be intended to “test the water” and see whether the state will finally realize the seeming inevitability of finally changing its position.

Even if New Delhi does, however, that won’t salvage its strategy after it already discredited itself too much both in the eyes of the Afghan population and the rest of the world by being the only country to consistently stand with the unpopular puppet government in Kabul that even the US itself has all but officially abandoned. India also already ruined the trust that it was rapidly developing with its new military-strategic partners in America by refusing to support the Pakistani-facilitated peace process, to say nothing of making Russia seriously suspicious of its intentions in this respect. It’ll take more than lip service to fix this reputational damage in the future.

Furthermore, any possible change in India’s stance would be blatantly opportunistic at this point, thus making it self-defeating in the soft power sense. It would also represent a powerful diplomatic victory for Pakistan, too, something that Modi’s ultra-jingoist Hindutva government is loath to deliver to its rival after bragging for years about its so-called “successful strategy” of “isolating” it. Nevertheless, Modi has nobody to blame for this unenviable predicament but himself, as he’s the one who ironically ended up isolating India from the rest of the world, and the consequences of his massive strategic blunder will haunt his country for years to come.

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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.

Brazil President’s Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental deregulation and new free trade deals would see the world consuming toxic pesticides that are banned in most countries, Oliver Tickell of the Green Economic Institute warned Tuesday in an interview with RT.

“This is not just a problem for Brazil and Brazilian people and people exposed in the countryside to these pesticides and consumers and farmers. It is actually affecting people all over the world through Brazil’s agricultural exports.”

Since coming to power, Bolsonaro’s right-wing government has legalized hundreds of formerly banned pesticides, as part of his promise to do away with environmental protections. The move represents a continuation of the neoliberal Michel Temer presidency, which has seen Brazil approve over 1,000 formerly banned pesticides since 2016.

Some of those chemicals include glyphosate and atrazine, which EU farmers have banned from using since 2003. Another, acephate, was recently banned in China for its toxic qualities.

Nevertheless, European customers are likely to begin consuming the pesticides that their own governments consider too dangerous, thanks to the new EU-Mercosur trade deal that will see Brazilian agricultural exports enter the European market.

Let’s not forget the EU just signed a trade deal with Bolsonaro to open up the amazon to european companies despite overwhelming opposition by indigenous and environmental groups about the irreparable damage that would be done.

The EU is an environmental disaster. https://t.co/KipvbJvFjn

— Josh Jackson (@JoshuaYJackson) July 27, 2019

Of the 262 pesticides newly approved by Bolsonaro, 82 are considered “extremely toxic”. His agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias has said only an “ideological process”, during the Workers Party administrations, had stopped agri-business from using the toxic chemicals, adding that critics of the chemicals are responsible for “data manipulation” and even “terrorism”.

Environmental deregulation has led to an increase in damaging forms of farming such as cattle rearing, that leads to widespread deforestation.

Recent data shows a 68 percent increase in deforestation in the past month alone, and that 1,000 sq km of the Amazon rainforest had been destroyed in the first 15 days of July. Bolsonaro claimed these figures are “lies” despite coming from his own administration’s government agencies.

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Featured image: Farmer spraying chemicals on crops (Source: Pixabay)

“If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Yet that is precisely what thousands of trade and investment treaties over the past half century have done, through a process known as ‘investor-state dispute settlement,’ or ISDS.”

This is how, in autumn 2014, The Economist introduced its readers to a once unknown element in international trade and investment agreements. The business magazine referred to ISDS as “a special privilege that many multinationals have abused”¹ and mentioned two infamous examples: Swedish energy giant Vattenfall suing Germany for €6.1 billion² in damages because the country phased out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster; and tobacco company Philip Morris suing Uruguay and Australia over government health warnings on cigarette packs and other measures to reduce smoking.

The legal basis for these investor-state dispute settlements – known under the acronym ISDS – is over 2,650 international trade and investment agreements in force between states worldwide.⁴ These agreements give sweeping powers to foreign investors, including the peculiar privilege to directly file lawsuits against states at international arbitration tribunals. Companies can claim compensation for actions by host governments that have allegedly damaged their investment, either directly through expropriation, for example, or indirectly through virtually any kind of regulation. ‘Investment’ is interpreted so broadly that mere shareholders and rich individuals can sue, and corporations can claim not just for the money invested, but for future anticipated earnings as well.

ISDS claims are usually decided by a tribunal of three private lawyers – the arbitrators – who are chosen by the litigating investor and the state. Unlike judges, these for-profit private sector arbitrators do not have a flat salary paid for by the state, but are in fact paid per case. At the most frequently used tribunal, the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), arbitrators make US$3,000 a day.⁵ In a one-sided system where only the investors can bring claims, this clearly creates a strong incentive to side with companies rather than states – because investor-friendly rulings pave the way for more lawsuits and more income in the future.

Read full article on tenissdstories.org here (carefully documented).

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It’s always been about regime change. Washington’s ultimate goal in Iran for the past 40 years has been to bring down the Mullah’s leading the Islamic Republic of Iran. As much as the current administration and specifically President Donald Trump try to hide or deny it, causing the collapse of the Iranian government would be seen as an incomparable “accomplishment” for the current (and even past) administrations.

Unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and imposing harsh sanctions, soon after, wasn’t truly meant to bring Iran back to the negotiating table to formulate a new nuclear deal, one that didn’t have Obama’s signature on it.

No, on the contrary, these actions were meant to make economic conditions as unbearable as possible for the majority of Iranian civilians in hopes that they would either revolt against their current government (which is unlikely) or that the entire country would implode taking down the current administration with it.

In other words, Washington is giving Iranian’s two options, either they bring down their government on their own or the United States will do that for them.

Then, Washington would install a puppet leader of its choosing, that they could easily manipulate. This mindless shell of a human would ultimately have the best interests of the United States as top priority.

A very recent example of this is what the United States is trying (and failing) to accomplish in Venezuela. The have attempted to unseat the legitimate president, Nicolas Maduro and insert a CIA sponsored imperial tool, Juan Guaido. Washington’s end goal, however, is not “regime change”, but instead the collapse of the oil-rich Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Other attempts by the United States at regime change have failed as well, including President Bashar Al Assad in Syria. After eight years of imposing sanctions, supporting terrorist factions, and using every overt and covert play in the book, President Assad is still in control and will continue to lead his country as long as the people support him (which the vast majority do).

Getting back to National Security Advisor John Bolton’s wildest dream, of the country with the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, kneeling helplessly before the “greatest country in the world”. In this twisted and unrealistic fantasy John probably likes to imagine Iran giving up its natural resources, it’s oil, it’s technology all over to the United States.

Whether or not that is because of a war matters little to the staunch war advocate, it probably wouldn’t even faze him to see able-bodied US troops marching over to the other side of the world to die in yet another unjust and unnecessary war…if it came to that. This is where the war-hawks and Trump might have a slight disagreement.

Now, this isn’t to say that Bolton, Pompeo, and the rest of the gang including Trump by any means underestimate Iran’s strength or resilience. They know that a military confrontation with Iran would be deadly for pretty much everyone on the planet. That’s why even if their mouths are saying, “we don’t want regime change”, their heart and actions are saying something entirely different.

Just in case it wasn’t crystal clear to the US and its allies just how important Iran takes its territorial integrity, on July 29th, while addressing the Iranian Parliament, Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister stated,

“When it comes to Iran’s territorial integrity and waters, we will stand on ceremony with nobody and will not negotiate with any party about honors Iran has gained during the past 40 years…The administration is committed to this issue and the Majlis has the final say on it.”

Zarif also said,

“A glance at the history [of Iran] will show that parts of Iran were separated [from the country] under previous [monarchial] dynasties and it was only under the Islamic Republic that despite the imposed war [with Iraq] and tremendous pressures, not a handspan of the country’s soil has been lost and this is a great honor for Iran’s leadership and people.”

The majority of Iranian’s living in Iran understand Washington’s motives and have seen what happens to countries that receive the “gift” of regime change from the U.S. Even if they have some grievances with the current administration, they are not eager to have a hand in destroying their own country.

They need not look far for examples of why “regime change” is a terrible idea. In Iraq, Daesh (ISIS) and AlQaeda grew and flourished amidst the chaos and destruction while using captured American weapons. In Libya, slave trade became a thing, people are bought and sold like cattle in the open market. Also, AlQaeda grew and flourished there as well. In Afghanistan, opium production has been at an all time high since US “regime change” and occupation. Maybe that’s the real reason why our troops are still there, to protect “our” Afghani poppy fields.

Then there’s the issue of the Taliban. And in Syria, just like in Iraq, weapons, supplies, armed vehicles, money etc. were made available to terrorists by the Obama and Trump administrations. However, under Trump those funds are going to the separatist Kurdish led – so called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) more so than the Free Syrian Army or other terrorist factions. Which is not an improvement, at all.

I’d like to mention that in both Iraq and Libya that the Christian minorities have since been directly targeted and their possible extinction in these areas under extremist groups is also a direct result of US regime change.

Another round of regime change is what Washington really wants and has wanted in Iran since 1979. Bolton has called for and supported “regime change” in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran.  Ultimately, regime change, foreign intervention, insurrections, manufactured revolutions, and staged uprisings by foreign states are all terrible ideas and cause much pain, suffering, destruction, and chaos. Regime change is never a good idea.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig

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Trump’s “Space Force”: Weaponizing Space Is the “New” Bad Idea Coming from Washington

By Federico Pieraccini, August 01, 2019

When considering the possibility of great-power conflict in the near future, it is difficult to bypass space as one of the main areas of strategic focus for the major powers.The United States, Russia and China all have cutting-edge programs for the militarization of space, though with a big difference.

5G Agriculture – Food from Frankenstein Farming

By Julian Rose, August 01, 2019

The director of development at Ericsson, Marcin Sugak, is excited. He has a new toy to sell to agribusiness farmers. This particular toy, he claims, is going to ‘overcome’ all the difficult new challenges facing agriculture today. It will be ‘A revolution’, he declares. According to the Ericsson corporation, with this new toy, farmers will be able to look at their plants and animals from a completely ‘new perspective’.

Psychotechnology: How Artificial Intelligence Is Designed to Change Humanity

By Makia Freeman, August 01, 2019

Psychotechnology is a word coined by William Ammerman, although the word may also have been coined by others and share multiple meanings. Ammerman defines the word as “technology that influences people psychologically by deploying artificial intelligence through digital media.”

Bolsonaro’s Clearcut Populism.”The Barbarism has Begun”

By Asad Ismi, August 01, 2019

“The barbarism has begun,” declared the Pankarurú Indigenous nation after Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s neofascist president, won fraudulent elections in October 2018 amidst accusations of breaking financing rules and shamelessly spreading fake news.

Erdogan’s Risky Geopolitical Pirouette. Turkey’s Economy in “Troubled Waters”

By F. William Engdahl, August 01, 2019

Turkey’s economy has been in increasingly difficult straits for months, especially since the failed July 2016 coup attempt. The latest move by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to fire his central bank head and replace him with a more amenable loyalist has already resulted in the largest one-time interest rate cut in the bank’s history.

Will Shake Up at IAEA Impact Iran? Washington’s Abuse of International Institutions

By Tony Cartalucci, July 31, 2019

Considering the foreign policy track records of either the US or Israel – an assassination targeting members of international institutions impeding Western interests certainly sounds plausible. However no evidence has been provided to suggest Amano was assassinated.

Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath

By Rick Sterling, July 31, 2019

The Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign has filed a major lawsuit against Google.  This article outlines the main points of the lawsuit and evidence the the social media giant Google has quietly acquired enormous influence on public perceptions and has been actively censoring alternative viewpoints.

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The illegal economic sanctions that the Trump administration has imposed on Iran are ruining its economy by increasing the inflation rate—from nine percent before the sanctions to 35-40 percent today—as well as unemployment, and forcing countless numbers of small businesses to close. Whereas Iran’s economy grew by 12.5 percent in 2016, it has shrunk by six percent in the first six months of 2019. These are the results that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton constantly brag about. But they have created unspeakable suffering for ordinary Iranian people, who don’t even have a say in what their political system does.

The worst aspect of the sanctions is their human toll, caused by severe shortage of critical medicines and medical equipment for millions of Iranians. Fear that common citizens will be unable to obtain the medicines they need is everywhere in Iran, and for good reason. Every year, there are 112,000 new cases of cancer in Iran, one of the fastest growth rates of cancer in the world. The most painful aspect is the situation faced by children with cancer whose chances of growing up have been dramatically reduced. As one Iranian mother whose child has cancer put it,

“Children battling cancer are an unintended victim of American sanctions on Iran. Maybe I have the financial support to travel to neighboring countries in order to provide medication, but what about other ordinary people? They are losing their child in front of their eyes. What about supporting human rights [as Pompeo and Bolton claim to do]? A lot of people are saying human rights, so where is it? There is no support for human rights, it is just a claim.”

In a letter published by The Lancet, the prestigious medical journal, three doctors working in Tehran’s MAHAK Pediatric Cancer Treatment and Research Center warned that,

“Re-establishment of sanctions, scarcity of drugs due to the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to deal with Iran, and a tremendous increase in oncology drug prices [due to the plummeting value of the Iranian rial by 50–70%], will inevitably lead to a decrease in survival of children with cancer.”

There are 5.2 million Iranian people who suffer from diabetes. Over 72,000 people suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS). There are at least 66,000 people afflicted by the AIDS, but many experts believe that the actual number is much larger because, due to the social stigma associated with the disease, many people are reluctant to seek treatment. There are at least 800,000 people with Parkinson’s disease and at least 700,000 people with Alzheimer’s. There are more than 23,000 people with thalassemia in Iran, who suffer from shortage of medicine despite great progress on the part of the Iranian government in addressing the problem. Such patients are treated by blood transfusion once every few weeks and take a medication called deferasirox, which treats a side effect of blood transfusion (excess iron). Iran has been able to produce some generic versions of the medication, but still needs to import significant quantities of it.

Another thirteen percent of Iran’s population of 83 million, about 10.8 million people, suffer from asthma. But while asthma is a global problem and, therefore, one would think that treating it should be routine and inexpensive, U.S. sanctions have also hit Iranian asthma patients hard. “My father has suffered from asthma for 15 years and needs a new inhaler every month, one young man said. “But the inhaler he used to buy has totally disappeared from the market. My sister is a nurse, but there is nowhere to find the inhalers in Iran anymore.” Another 3,000 people suffer from what are called “rare diseases”—those for which there are not many medications even in the West.

When the Obama administration imposed its crippling sanctions against Iran, there were credible reports of hemophiliac Iranians dying due to the interruption in the supply of essential medicine, 75 percent of which is produced in the U.S. and the European Union—on which Iran has long relied as suppliers. The same shortages exist today, putting thousands of lives at risk.

By far the most important cause of these shortages—and even total absence—of medicines for such terrible diseases is the economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States. Britain, France, and Germany tried and failed to persuade the Trump administration to guarantee Iranian imports of basic foods and medicine.

Officially, U.S. economic sanctions do not include medicine. But in practice, medicine is subject to sanctions. The reason is twofold: no pharmaceutical company producing critical medicines is willing to sell its products to Iran for fear that the Treasury Department might find some small technical or administrative errors in their applications and go after them with a vengeance. The enforcer of the sanctions is Sigal Mandelker, the under-secretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, who said recently, “without a doubt, sanctions are working.” The question is, for whom are the sanctions working? Ordinary Iranians?

The second reason is practical. Even if a pharmaceutical company was willing to export its medicines to Iran, Iran’s banking system has been effectively cut off from the rest of the world. At present, there is no mechanism to pay for the imports except through the personal accounts of individuals in Europe or elsewhere. This avenue was used during the crippling sanctions that President Obama imposed on Iran in the early 2010s, but it resulted in incredible corruption, theft, and the importation of expired medicines. As a result, the Rouhani administration has so far avoided this route.

One of the few Iranian financial institutions that the Obama administration did not sanction was Parsian Bank, which was a critical conduit for humanitarian trade, especially medicine and medical devices, with Europe. But, the Trump administration sanctioned Parsian Bank as well. So, while there still was a shortage of critical medicine under Obama, it was nowhere close to what we are witnessing now.

Even when some medicines are not in short supply, the huge inflation has put their costs out of reach for many Iranians. “The artificial tear drop that my son has to use for his eye condition has doubled in price,” from the equivalent of about $2.50 to $5, a housewife and mother of two told ABC News last month. Another drop went from $1.50 to $8 in a year. There are thousands of such stories reported by social networks.

My personal experience confirms such reports. My wife is a medical doctor who received her education and training in Iran. She and hundreds of old friends and classmates have a large network that helps ordinary people with their medical problems. Every single member of this network has been telling us the same thing: that the shortage of critical medicine is so severe that people are losing their lives. Two of my brothers-in-law and a nephew are pharmacists in Iran, and they tell me that they have to turn away more than half of the people who come to their shops every day because they have run out of medicine. My father-in-law suffers from severe diabetes and has to pay huge sums to get his medicine. He can afford it, but what about millions of other diabetic patients? A first cousin with three children suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, and she cannot even find her medication at any price. Shortages for MS medication is everywhere in Iran.

Under the Obama-era sanctions, leading science journals reported their crippling effect on the supply of critical medicines to Iran. A December 2013 report published in Nature, one of the world’s top science journals, stated, “A tightening of already draconian international economic sanctions against Iran is causing serious shortages of certain drugs, vaccines and other key medical supplies in the country, medical researchers and public-health officials are warning.” A letter by a faculty member in the department of pharmacology at Baqiyatollah University of Medical Sciences in Tehran that was published by the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science stated,

“Although medicines are exempted from sanctions, due to restriction on money transaction and proper insurance Iranian pharmaceutical companies have to pay cash in advance for imports of medicines and raw materials or to secure offshore funds at very high risks…. Sanctions against Iran are affecting ordinary citizens and national health sector which resulted in reduction of availability of lifesaving medicines in the local market and has caused increasing pain and suffering for Iranian patients.”

If these were the conditions in Iran under the Obama sanctions, one can only imagine the situation now, because the Trump sanctions are far more draconian than anything imposed on Iran in the past. In fact, a comprehensive review of the state of healthcare in Iran published in 2018 by International Journal of Health Policy and Management, demonstrates the severe adverse effect of the sanctions on the state of healthcare in Iran. Even if the sanctions are lifted, the article notes, their “adverse consequences … have already taken place and will take a long time to be alleviated.” Additionally, “the social impact of economic sanctions against Iran may extend beyond the sanction period because the costs of imposing sanctions exceed the benefits of lifting sanctions.”

But the shortage of vital medicines is only one factor that contributes to the unfolding human tragedy in Iran caused by the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton sanctions. A shortage of medical devices is another factor. In this case, the problem is even more complex because some devices are perceived as having a dual use—that is, they could have military as well as medical purposes—and their export to Iran is banned under all circumstances. Asr-e Iran, a reformist website in Iran, reported a list of medical devices that thousands of cancer patients need and that are unavailable in northwest Iran. The list only goes to show the mind-boggling nature of such shortages.

Beyond the medical field, there are several other ways in which U.S. sanctions are hurting ordinary Iranians every day. Another aspect is the shortage of some foodstuffs. As with medicines, the export of wheat, barley, corn, and other food items to Iran is not officially sanctioned, but major global traders have halted their supply agreements with Iran because the sanctions have paralyzed the banking systems required to secure payment. Two Iranian ships contracted to carry corn, soybean and meat to Iran were stranded in Brazil because Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, refuses to supply fuel to the ships, apparently in fear of running afoul of U.S. sanctions. After Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Petrobras to supply the ships with fuel, they finally left Brazil.

The most depressing aspect of the inhumane sanctions is that shortage of medicines in Iran has given rise once again to a black market, controlled by the regime’s hardliners and their cronies. The black market only enriches the most radical elements in Iran, those who benefit from continuing tension between Iran and the United States, and were assailed as “merchants of sanctions” by President Rouhani. The same profiteering happened during the Obama years, but has now returned in a much worse fashion because the shortages and desperation they cause are so much greater.

We should recall that, according to UNICEF, the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s killed at least 576,000 Iraqi children due to malnutrition and medical shortages. Given that the current sanctions imposed on Iran are even more severe, and that Iran’s population is three times greater than Iraq’s, there is every reason to believe that the continuation or aggravation of the sanctions regime will translate into the deaths of even more children in Iran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. stands with the Iranian people. But tL gives the lie to that claim. It’s quite clear that the lives of Iranian people do not matter to him. After all, this is the same man who suggested in 2014 to attack Iran with “2000 sorties,” which would have led to war with Iran, killing at least hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, and the same man who has been linked with some of the worst Islamophobes in this country. He and John Bolton shed only crocodile tears for the Iranian people.

Pompeo has also claimed that he cares about the Iranian government’s violation of its citizens’ human rights. According to the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, however, everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for his health and well-being, including food, medical care, and social security without any kind of discrimination on grounds such as gender, race, and the political, jurisdictional, or international status of the place to which a person belongs. Article 12 of the UN-approved International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, adopted in 1966, asserts the right to “the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” for everyone around the globe. By championing crippling sanctions against Iran under the policy of “maximum pressure,” Pompeo has only demonstrated that his claims are similar to those of his boss—fake.

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Muhammad Sahimi is a Professor at the University of Southern California.

Featured image: Trump reinstate sanctions against Iran (White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

When the directors of the film Advocate captured the biggest prize at Israel’s most important documentary festival, they never imagined their victory would trigger tighter controls on freedom of speech in the country.

But that is exactly what has happened, raising questions of funding and freedom for Israeli artists who say they are watching the state slowly shrink the space for creative expression around them. One filmmaker describes it as censorship by bureaucracy.

“It’s part of an ugly wave that we are seeing all of the time. My feeling – and other people’s feeling – is that the public bodies that are supporting us as a documentary film industry want us to fall in line with the ‘spirit of the commander’,” said Hagit Ben Yaakov, chairwoman of the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum.

“’The commander’ doesn’t want to support any leftist material or content. They would prefer not to anger anyone if they can give their money to content that is not threatening authority.”

The latest uproar began in June when Advocate won top honours at Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival. Along with the win came a distribution stipend of just over $42,000.

The film documents the life and work of well-known leftist attorney Leah Tsemel, branded by some as “the terrorists’ lawyer” because she defends Palestinians accused of terrorism in Israeli courts.

The win sparked a fervent backlash from right-wing organisations, which rejected the use of public funds to support the film. Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport Miri Regev joined their outcry, reportedly calling the film’s focus on Tsemel “annoying and infuriating”, and demanding that the National Lottery revoke the top prize it had funded and end its support of Docaviv altogether.

Within two weeks or so, the lottery caved, announcing that, as of next year, it would no longer support the festival with a distribution stipend for the winning film. It has even launched an inquiry to see whether the prize awarded to Advocate can be revoked.

The lottery’s reaction sent Israel’s artist organisations out onto the streets. They protested a session of the National Lottery’s executive committee for art and culture. Chairman Avigdor Yitzhaki refused to talk with them, so one of the protesters found a way into the meeting and confronted him.

“This process at the National Lottery is, from our perspective, censorship pure and simple,” said Liran Atzmor, a veteran documentary film producer and one of the organisers of the protest.

Atzmor said he and other protesters understand from Yitzhaki that the lottery consider its decision later this year.

“They hope that this announcement will persuade us to back off… They told us to be quiet and maybe things would settle down.”

But as protests spread to Israeli artists beyond the film industry that seems an unlikely outcome.

Al-Midan Theatre 

The controversy over Advocate is only the latest in a long line of disputes relating to artistic freedom in Israel.

The Al-Midan Theater, an Arabic-language centre in Haifa, has been struggling for several years to hold on to its funding after staging a play about a Palestinian prisoner in 2015.

After the run of the play, the Haifa municipality and the Ministry of Culture and Sports froze the theatre’s funding for 2016 and 2017 – worth over $284,000 each year – leaving the theatre in debt and forcing it to limit its productions.

The theatre successfully petitioned the municipality and the ministry and had most of its funds renewed. But this week, Israel’s High Court ruled that the theatre was not eligible for the ministry’s funding in 2016 and 2017 because not enough plays were staged and Al-Midan had not met the required conditions for the money.

Ben Yaakov said the limitations on artistic freedom, like what happened at Al-Midan, are often done in technical ways to obscure the real intentions.

“It’s very difficult to point your finger at the exact things or the assumptions because they use excuses that can sound logical. I call it censorship under bureaucracy,” she said.

Protest expands beyond filmmakers

In recent weeks, the protests over Advocate, which started with filmmakers, have expanded to poets, authors and other figures in the Israeli arts world who have announced that they will forgo their National Lottery support as a result of its decision.

On top of this, 39 applicants for the National Lottery’s 2019 Sapir Prize for Literature said they would donate their award money to support the documentary if they won.

Two judges of the prize resigned their positions, with one declaring on Facebook that the National Lottery decision was “part of a wave of shady attempts to restrict freedom of speech and artistic creativity”.

Those involved in Israel’s art world say the applicants’ gesture is a significant concession for a sector that already struggles under severe budget limitations.

“For artists to relinquish a prize awarded to them is a very brave thing,” said Ibtisam Marana, a documentary film director and producer who sits on the National Lottery’s arts and culture committee.

“Culture is an important point of pride in Israel, as a liberal and free country. The National Lottery has tremendous power because it can underwrite this creativity,” she said.

In the case of Advocate, it can also take away the power of a film to reach wider audiences. The top winner at Docaviv is recognized as a potential contender for the Academy Awards, but to win an Oscar, a film must be well-promoted – and that takes funding, said Philippe Bellaiche, the film’s co-director and co-producer.

“The National Lottery prize is actually a marketing stipend for an Oscar contender, so that we can build momentum for the film prior to the Oscar voting,” he said.

Marana said she was the acting chairwoman of the committee that awarded a National Lottery grant supporting the production of Advocate. She doesn’t remember any arguments over funding the film which, she said, the committee thought was excellent.

“Not because of its subject, but because of the production itself, the film itself. [The National Lottery] also supported films about settlements. And in those cases, too, I supported the decision to grant stipends, because those films contribute an interesting perspective,” Marana said.

Marana, who has been backing the protests, said if the lottery doesn’t backtrack on its decision now, she will resign.

“We work long hours and were promised the freedom to exercise our own judgment. We are supposed to be strictly independent and able to act and make decisions based solely on artistic criteria,” she said.

Atzmor said he calls on the lottery’s culture committee to follow the lead of the Sapir prize judges.

“They made it clear that there are red lines. We are always struggling to obtain the resources to make art, but what is it all for, if not for artistic freedom?” he said.

Meanwhile, he said he worries about creative freedom in Israel – and about Israeli society itself.

“I worry that people weaker than I, less experienced and less able to earn a living, will stop making the films they want to make because they are being silenced and threatened. They are being told that it’s not worth their while to make the films they want to make because they won’t get any support.”

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When considering the possibility of great-power conflict in the near future, it is difficult to bypass space as one of the main areas of strategic focus for the major powers.The United States, Russia and China all have cutting-edge programs for the militarization of space, though with a big difference.

Donald Trump’s announcement of a “Space Force” is by no means a new idea. During the Reagan presidency, a similar idea was proposed in the form of the famous “Star Wars“ program, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. It aimed to do away with the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) by positioning anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) interceptors in low-Earth orbit in order for them to be able to easily intercept ballistic missiles during their entry into orbit and before their re-entry phase. The costs and technology at the time proved prohibitive for the program, but military planners retained the dream of negating the concept of MAD in Washington’s favor, especially with the dawning of the unipolar era following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The decisions taken in the years since, such as the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2002 during Bush’s presidency and from the INF Treaty during Trump’s, follows Reagan in trying to invalidate MAD, a balance of terror that has served to maintain a strategic stability.

This hope of doing away with MAD so that the unthinkable may become thinkable has guided the missile developments of Russia and China, which through the development of hypersonic missiles aim to nullify the US’s ABM systems and thereby make the thought of an unreciprocated nuclear first strike MAD again. With Russia’s recent successes in testing hypersoning technologies, and the fast-tracking of other new strategic weapons announced by Putin less than 12 months ago, strategic stability seems to have been restored through Russia’s strengthened deterrence posture.

The weaponization of space is a less known and talked about aspect of Washington’s mad attempts to make mutually assured destruction no longer mutual and therefore thinkable. During the peak of the unipolar moment, the idea of the Pentagon and the lobbyists of the military-industrial complex was to develop the so-called Prompt Global Strike system, which envisioned being able to deliver an air strike with conventional weapons anywhere in the world in the space of an hour. The dream (or delusion) of the US was to have the unique ability to determine the course of events around the globe within an hour. Such experimental craft as the Orbital Test Vehicle seem to confirm that serious efforts have been underway to realize this objective.

Neither China nor Russia has been sitting idly by waiting to be struck undefended. Russia’s development of its S-500 system has been quite timely. The S-500 system is often considered an upgrade to the better-known S-400 system, but these are in reality different systems with different aims and objectives. The main task of the S-500 is to engage long-distance targets in low-Earth orbit. We are therefore talking about the ability to take out military or any future ABM satellites as those originally conceived with Reagan’s “Star Wars” program.

Unlike Washington, Moscow and Beijing do not appear to be developing space-based weaponry; they are certainly not going to increase their military budgets to create a space force. On the contrary, both countries have been working for more than a decade on a proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty that seeks to ban the weaponization of space. The aims are summarized as follows:

“Under the draft treaty submitted to the [Conference on Disarmament] by Russia in 2008, State Parties would have to refrain from carrying out such weapons and threatening to use objects in outer space. State Parties would also agree to practice agreed confidence-building measures.

A PAROS treaty would complement and reaffirm the importance of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which aims to preserve space for peaceful uses by prohibiting the use of space weapons, and technology related to ‘missile defense’. The treaty would prevent any nation from gaining a military advantage in outer space.”

The intentions of the draft treaty clearly go against Washington’s plans. It is therefore not surprising that Washington has no intention of acceding to PAROS, and it is probably only a matter of time before Washington withdraws from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Trump is looking at things from a practical point of view. He wants to give a major boost to the military-industrial complex, which is salivating at the prospect of being showered with tens or even hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars in a quest to weaponize space. But the policy makers in Washington and in think-tanks look at the weaponization of space from a different perspective. They look at it from the point of view of Washington as a superpower that must seek to prolong its unipolar moment through the use of force, even from space. While it is delusional nonsense, it has nevertheless been the prevailing outlook in Washington for at least the last 25 years.

The reason why China and Russia have proposed and continue to discuss the PAROS lies in their political and military philosophies that contrast with that of the US. As an imperial power bent on global domination, the US is always looking for ways to subjugate and dominate what it considers to be its underlings, while Russia and China act to hold back and counterbalance US aggression, in the process serving to enhance global stability.

The proposal for the non-militarization of space is the latest example of what unites and guides the Eurasian strategy of China and Russia without having any illusions about Washington’s intentions. The development of the SR-72 system seems to confirm that Washington wants to also bridge the gap with its Eurasian competitors in the field of hypersonic technology in addition to wishing to weaponize space.

Realistically, however, global powers in a multipolar context will seek to defend their territorial and economic sovereignty with every means at their disposal. Likewise, those seeking global hegemony will try to exploit any existing domain to gain an advantage over their rivals.

China and Russia seek to weaponize distance and speed to make any possible US attack on them impracticable, both in terms of the logistics required and the revivified cost-benefit calculus of MAD. The US, on the other hand, is trying to weaponize all conceivable domains of conflict by all means possible, hoping to be able to find a chink in its opponents’ armor.

Beijing and Moscow seem to have studied extensively how to respond. All the various defensive systems produced in recent years, from hypersonic anti-ship missiles to multi-layered defense systems like the S-400, S-500 and A-135/A-235, seem to meet the challenge.

Beijing fears US naval strength, and while seeking to achieve parity and surpass the US in the future, it aims above all to prevent the use of aircraft carriers as launching platforms through the employment of defensive area-denial weapons. In this sense, speed (Mach 10) and extending the range of Chinese anti-ship missiles (DF-21) are fundamental to the success of this strategy. Similarly, Moscow intends to seal Eurasia’s skies, and the S-500 seems to be the final flourish, able to protect up to 800 kilometers above sea level.

The weaponization of space is the latest issue that the US is exploiting for various political purposes. Be that as it may, this creates an adversarial environment that compels the US’s peer competitors to develop weapons capable of countering US belligerency. Instead of sitting down and defining the parameters of major-power interaction so as to reduce the likelihood of war, we are witnessing an intentional US policy of pursuing an arms race in every possible domain of warfare.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Featured image is from Flickr / glennbatuyong

UN Bullies in meticulous suits have launched another hospitals bombing psywar campaign to support NATO’s last terrorists in Idlib. It should be scandalous, international news, that key members of the United Nations continue to ignore the Geneva Agreements on hospitals, continue to ignore the UN’s own charter, continue to bray and bleat for terrorists occupying Idlib, while the UN and NATO countries maintain the savages on their terror lists.

But, no! These minions of Beelzebub are secure in knowing that approved media sources are part of that Military Industrial Complex, that they are free to pimp war, pimp corruption, engage in all forms of criminal lies with the impunity of those whose might makes right.

Again, the Geneva Conventions are clear that the host country of a war zone must agree to neutral zones for hospital facilities. Without such agreements, no hospitals can exist.

UN ‘diplomats’ & NATO journalists should read the Geneva Treaties.

…if the White Helmets have opened a room in a cellar in a building, where it launches missiles and shells from, this is another thing; this is not a hospital. This is not a hospital; this is called a makeshift medical facility. This is a hallucination and a cinema on the ground when they call it a hospital. It is not a hospital. It is a room they open in a cellar in one of the buildings used for bombing civilians and the Syrian Arab Army from.

Also, last month, H.E. Jaafari informed the Security Council that there are 8 hospitals in Idlib: 4 public and 4 private. At another of the never-ending meetings on the “Humanitarian Situation” in his country, Dr. Jaafari explained that the US-based SAMS gang is embedded with terrorists, has no authority to be in Syria, and therefore runs no hospitals in the SAR (unrestrained by diplomatic protocol, this author previously provided evidence that SAMS was either lying or engaged in human vivisection; evidence of its terrorist affiliation left behind in liberated Ghouta; evidence of collaboration in terrorist massacre in Douma).

If a Saudi-run gang of armed, Captagon-fueled human pathogens hangs a nice sign outside of a moped garage, saying “surgical hospital created & founded by Jaysh al Ezza,” no matter how many US university NGOs claim it is a hospital, it is still not a hospital.

Does anyone remember the UN uttering a single word of condemnation when the FSA — armed and funded by the P3 countries — was engaged in the wave of assassinations against Syrian physicians and professors of medical schools? Lamentations over the destruction of real hospitals such as al Watani, al Kindi, and Jisr al Shoghour?

Here are some recent breaches of international law and atrocities against Syria, that the rabid hyenas of the UN have neglected include in their humanitarian concerns:

• Massacre of civilians in Aleppo countryside
• Mad Hatters meeting to dedicate the fake Trump Heights on Syria’s Golan
• The torching of farmers’ wheat fields in Qamishli
• Oil pipelines sabotaged at Tartous Marine Terminal and Shaer Gas pipeline in Homs
• An attempt to blow up the Church of the Virgin Mary, in Qamishli
• Civilian massacres in Aleppo, Damascus, and Hama

Yesterday, the UN leadership again demonstrated it is not neutral, nor does it engage in promoting “peace and security,” despite its marketing claims. Shamelessly ignoring the above-noted horrors against the Syrian people, on 30 July, during its ‘humanitarian’ conjugal meeting, the gang again provided evidence of being press liaison for al Qaeda in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Is UN News headline a breach of Nuremberg Principle VI? Engaging in criminal propaganda is a “crime against peace.” Engaging in propaganda against a member state is a breach of its own charter.

Mark Lowcock — “UN relief chief” — again bragged about hearing voices when he addressed the SC over concerns for hospitals that don’t exist, imaginary physicians, and al Qaeda terrorists occupying Idlib.

In December, the non-Syrian who claims to speak for Syria, turned away when the Syrian ambassador who provided documentation that Lowcock had falsified the statistics he gave when haughtily speaking for ”Syrians.”

Almost immediately after the supporters of al Qaeda in Syria finished their UN fabrication statements, Reuters ran with an impressive headline, that “two-thirds” of the Security Council wants an “inquiry” into “attacks” on hospitals that do not exist, according to international law, and the UN’s own charter (though “two-thirds” sounds like a lot, Reuters is actually speaking of the P3 bullies running the UN: UK, US, and France.

Reuters also threw in a weird claim which completely contradicts Ambassador Jaafari’s statement on hospitals and the humanitarian situation in his country, on 16 June. His full statement in Arabic and English is found here. The bizarre claim, however, afforded the opportunity to quote the English ambassador to the United Nations, Karen “New Sykes-Picot or Bust” Pierce, in spewing more lies about the Syrian Arab Republic.

The new onslaught of criminal propaganda against Syria comes as the Syrian Arab Army continues to liberate “every inch” of the country from NATO and Gulfies owned terrorists. The re-opening of this dam of western sewage might be timed to break the US domestic fighting over the pros and cons of rat infestations in American cities — because everyone in the USA loves Donald J. Trump when he bombs Syrians for al Qaeda.

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All images in this article are from Syria News unless otherwise stated