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Julian Assange exposed U.S. war crimes, CIA spying capabilities, false flag cyber attacks and corruption within the Democratic Party and he’s the bad guy?

Trump’s Justice department has decided to charge Julian Assange with “17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday, a novel case that raises profound First Amendment issues” according to The New York Times.

The article ‘Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues’ does mention the fact that charging Assange under the Espionage Act sets the precedent to criminalize investigative journalism that is “related to obtaining, and in some cases publishing, state secrets to be criminal, the officials sought to minimize the implications for press freedoms.” However, The New York Times has become the judge and jury and says that Assange is a fugitive trying to avoid Sweden’s justice system for an alleged sexual assault charge and that he is a useful tool for the Russians in regards to interfering in U.S. elections:

The charges are the latest twist in a career in which Mr. Assange has morphed from a crusader for radical transparency to fugitive from a Swedish sexual assault investigation, to tool of Russia’s election interference, to criminal defendant in the United States.

Mr. Assange vaulted to global fame nearly a decade ago as a champion of openness about what governments secretly do. But with this indictment, he has become the target for a case that could open the door to criminalizing activities that are crucial to American investigative journalists who write about national security matters.

The case has nothing to do with Russia’s election interference in 2016, when Mr. Assange’s organization published Democratic emails stolen by Russia as part of its covert efforts to help elect President Trump. Instead, it focuses on Mr. Assange’s role in the leak of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and military files by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning

According to the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, John Demers, he said that “Some say that Assange is a journalist and that he should be immune from prosecution for these actions,” and that “The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it. It is not and has never been the department’s policy to target them for reporting.” But Mr. Assange, was “no journalist.”

Demers has accused Assange of collaborating with Chelsea Manning to steal classified information when he said that “No responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would purposefully publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in a war zone, exposing them to the gravest of dangers.”

The New York Times admits that they can be charged for doing what Wikileaks has done in the near future under the Espionage Act:

Notably, The New York Times, among many other news organizations, obtained precisely the same archives of documents from WikiLeaks, without authorization from the government — the act that most of the charges addressed. While The Times did take steps to withhold the names of informants in the subset of the files it published, it is not clear how that is legally different from publishing other classified information

Assange’s lawyer, Barry J. Pollack said that his client was charged for a crime, but according to Pollack, Assange is guilty “for encouraging sources to provide him truthful information and for publishing that information.”

The New York Times also said that

“the United States has asked Britain to extradite Mr. Assange, who is fighting the move, and the filing of the new charges clears the way for British courts to weigh whether it would be lawful to transfer custody of him to a place where he will face Espionage Act charges.”

Britain will most likely extradite Assange to the U.S. since Britain is a close U.S. ally. The New York Times is sort of playing good cop, bad cop with the case of Julian Assange. They describe Assange as a fugitive who is avoiding Sweden’s sexual assault investigation to becoming a tool or a puppet for “Russia’s election interference” which is a joke, then they say that they can face the same charges as Wikileaks if they use the same tactics to obtain information. However, The New York Times and every other mainstream media outlet works for the U.S. government and are on the same page with the politicians as they shamefully and continuously discredit Assange. According to a report by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) titled ‘Media Cheer Assange’s Arrest’ said that the media demonized Assange after his arrest:

A Washington Post editorial (4/11/19) claimed Assange was “no free-press hero” and insisted the arrest was “long overdue.” Likewise, the Wall Street Journal (4/11/19) demanded “accountability” for Assange, saying, “His targets always seem to be democratic institutions or governments.”

Other coverage was more condemnatory still. The View’s Meghan McCain (4/11/19) declared she hoped Assange “rots in hell.” Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost (4/13/19) said it was “so satisfying to see an Internet troll get dragged out into the sunlight.” But it was perhaps the National Review (4/12/19) that expressed the most enthusiastic approval of Assange’s arrest, condemning him for his “anti-Americanism, his antisemitism and his raw personal corruption” and for harming the US with his “vile spite”

Trump and the CIA

The CIA is Trump’s wet dream, I know it sounds nasty but it was obvious from the start when Trump made his first visit as President of the United States to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and said “But I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump. There’s nobody.” Trump practically brown-nosed the CIA, and in doing so, the writing was on the wall to where the Trump-CIA relationship was going, that’s why Trump’s u-turn on Julian Assange’s arrest was not surprising and may I say, one of the most dishonest responses made by the president since the Obama and Bush years. Let’s remember during Trump’s campaign trail, it was reported that he mentioned Wikileaks more than 141 times until the day Assange was dragged out in handcuffs from the Ecuadorian embassy, and then Trump changed his tune when he was asked by the media about Assange’s arrest, and what was his response? “I know nothing about WikiLeaks.” Politicians from both sides of the aisle in Washington praised the arrest of Julian Assange especially Hillary Clinton who said Assange “has to answer for what he has done” according to The Guardian.

Trump’s entire administration wants Julian Assange and his Wikileaks organization to be permanently shut down including Trump’s advisor John Bolton who was exposed by Wikileaks when they released more than 800 files exposing his war crimes. Secretary of State and former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo is another war hawk neocon who wants Assange either dead or alive. Pompeo had called Julian Assange a “narcissist” who allegedly works hands in glove with Russia and that Assange depends on “the dirty work of others to make him famous.”

During a speech at The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) back in 2017, Pompeo said that “It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Pompeo said that the U.S. intelligence community (including the CIA) had already determined that Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU used WikiLeaks to release hacked information from the DNC. But the reality is that the hacked emails came from a source who faced a serious risk according to Assange and that source was Seth Rich who was shot and killed in an affluent neighborhood in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2016 in an apparent robbery that “failed” according to Seth Rich’s father, Joel during an interview with a local TV station KMTV. In 2016, Assange was interviewed on a Dutch television program Nieuwsuur, and said that they were concerned about what happened to Seth Rich and were investigating the situation:

“We have to understand how high the stakes are in the US, and that our sources face serious risks. That’s why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity. We are investigating what happened with Seth Rich. We think it is a concerning situation. There is not a conclusion yet; we are not willing to state a conclusion, but we are concerned about it. And more importantly, a variety of WikiLeaks sources are concerned when that kind of thing happens”

 Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for the murder of Seth Rich.

Robert Mueller is a Conspiracy Theorist

The New York Times published an article based on the Mueller Report regarding the murder of Seth Rich ‘Seth Rich Was Not Source of Leaked D.N.C. Emails, Mueller Report Confirms’ claiming that Seth Rich was not the source of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) leaked emails proving that they were undermining the Bernie Sander’s campaign. The emails were first published by DCLeaks and then by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 right before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. According to The New York Times:

The special counsel’s report confirmed this week that Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee employee whose unsolved killing became grist for a right-wing conspiracy theory, was not the source of thousands of internal D.N.C. emails that WikiLeaks released during the 2016 presidential race, officially debunking a notion that had persisted without support for years

The report also said that

“tucked amid hundreds of pages of the report’s main findings, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took aim at WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, for falsely implying that Mr. Rich was somehow involved in the dissemination of the emails, an act that aided President Trump’s campaign.”

Mueller said that “WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing.” The report claims that WikiLeaks collaborated with the “true source of the leaked emails — Russian hackers — after Mr. Rich’s death.”

The New York Times also said that “The theory linking Mr. Rich to the email leak took root in conservative circles and was cited by prominent conservatives like Newt Gingrich and right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Alex Jones of Infowars.”

Mueller’s final statement regarding the murder of Seth Rich is just a diversion away from the truth and with Mueller’s help he can make it just go away, at least in the mainstream-media. The only people that can expose the truth regarding Seth Rich is Julian Assange and the Wikileaks organization. According to an nbcwashington.com article “The Mueller report says beginning in the summer of 2016 Julian Assange and WikiLeaks made statements about Rich falsely implying he leaked the stolen emails.” Last month, Vox.com published an article declaring that ‘The Seth Rich conspiracy theory needs to end now’ and falsely claimed that Assange knew that Seth Rich was not the source, because it was the Russians:

The report definitively disproved the notion that a Democratic National Committee staffer named Seth Rich was the source of leaked DNC documents later published by WikiLeaks, and that his July 2016 murder came as the result of his decision to leak those documents to WikiLeaks. This wasn’t true, although Trump associates like Jerome Corsi, Roger Stone, and countless others, have argued vehemently for years that it was. And WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange, knew it

The Trump-Russia collusion hoax has been on air since Trump took office more than 2 years ago. MSNBC who was a cheerleader for the removal of Trump was humiliated after the Mueller Report revealed that Trump did not collude with Russia in the 2016 Presidential elections to defeat Hillary Clinton. Clinton lost the election because of Clinton, not Assange, the Russians or anyone else. Clinton was and still is despised by most people within the U.S. especially when she tried to undermine the other hypocrite, Bernie Sanders (who would be another puppet of the deep state if he were to win the 2020 U.S. elections) and she was exposed. Clinton and the DNC’s plan to undermine the Sander’s campaign was to secure her nomination. Wikileaks embarrassed the DNC and forced them to make an apology to Bernie Sanders and his supporters by saying “On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email” and that “These comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.” The Mueller report claims that the emails were allegedly stolen by hackers associated with Russian intelligence called Guccifer 2.0. In the summer of 2018, Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents called Fancy Bear who were allegedly responsible for the attack. Fancy Bear was supposedly behind Guccifer 2.0 who claimed they were responsible, but then again, it’s all a lie.

Vault 7: The CIA’s ‘Global Covert Hacking System’

One of the biggest news stories involving Wikileaks and the release of more than 8,761 documents under ‘Year Zero’, exposing the CIA and its global operations. It was the first part of a series of leaks that Wikileaks called ‘Vault 7’ a network that was inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence based in Langley, Virginia that involves a “global covert hacking program,” including what Wikileaks describes as “weaponized exploits” used against such devices as “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.” The CIA bypassed encryption codes on messaging services such as WhatsApp and other phones devices. WikiLeaks said that government hackers can hack Android phones that basically collects “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.” There are various parts of Vault 7 such as ‘Dark Matter’ that exposed the CIA’s hacking capabilities including Apple’s iPhones and Macs. Weeping Angel is another hacking tool that was developed by the CIA and the U.K.’s very own MI5 used to penetrate smart TVs to gather intelligence. Once the program is installed in smart T.V.s with a USB stick, it enabled those same televisions’ with built-in microphones and sometimes even video cameras to record while the television is turned off. Then the recorded data is either stored into the television’s memory or sent to the CIA through the internet. There are several other programs exposed under the ‘Year Zero’ global covert hacking program, but one other program stands out the most is what the CIA uses to conduct “false flag” cyber-attacks that has portrayed Russia in the past as the aggressor. Regarding the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group, which is a subdivision of the center’s Remote Development Branch (RDB), and according to Wikileaks’s source, the program “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques” that were stolen from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. Wikileaks said the following:

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques

Kim Dotcom commented on the Wikileaks revelations when he tweeted that the “CIA uses techniques to make cyber attacks look like they originated from enemy state. It turns DNC/Russia hack allegation by CIA into a JOKE.”Wired.com claimed that “Russian hacking deniers” were at an advantage in a 2017 article titled ‘WikiLeaks CIA Dump Gives Russian Hacking Deniers the Perfect Ammo’ and said that:

One nugget of particular interest to Trump supporters: a section titled “Umbrage” that details the CIA’s ability to impersonate cyber-attack techniques used by Russia and other nation states. In theory, that means the agency could have faked digital forensic fingerprints to make the Russians look guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee

The CIA’s ability to hack smart TV’s, Smartphone’s and encrypted messaging applications and we must add to the fact that the CIA also has the capability to conduct cyber-attacks under the UMBRAGE group and make them appear it came from a foreign power is as Orwellian as one can get, it also carries very serious geopolitical implications.

What is insane about the CIA’s UMBRAGE group is that according to Wikileaks, “With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.” In other words, the CIA could launch a malware attack that was originally developed by another country to intentionally “misdirect attribution” for the hack that would not be traced back to the CIA in any way. In 2017, CNN quoted the former CIA director James Woolsey as saying that “It’s often not foolproof to say who it is because it is possible and sometimes easy to hide your tracks,” he said. “There’s lots of tricks.” and he should know. “I think the Russians were in there, but it doesn’t mean other people weren’t, too,” Woolsey told CNN.

The CIA and the Persecution of Julian Assange 

When Julian Assange was arrested by British authorities, Wikileaks immediately released a statement on twitter mentioning the role of the CIA:

This man is a son, a father, a brother. He has won dozens of journalism awards. He’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 2010. Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanise, delegitimize and imprison him. #ProtectJulian

The arrest of Assange has sparked outrage and anger around the world. Assange is a hero to us all especially those in the alternative media. The mainstream-media, as we all know are based on conspiracy theories, fabrications and flat-out lies are celebrating the arrest of Assange. Perhaps, they are hoping to rebound after the ‘RussiaGate’ conspiracy theory hoax which backfired in their faces and since then, their viewership has completely collapsed.

Julian Assange will face a U.S. court if he is extradited. But rest assured, there will be those of us who will continue to speak out for Assange, and there will also be worldwide protests in coming months and years until Julian Assange is released from prison. There is hope because Assange has the truth on his side no matter what happens. If is imprisoned for life or god forbid executed at the behest of Washington and the CIA, Assange will become a Martyr. There will be many more people like Assange because the truth is like a virus to the establishment, and that’s why they want to destroy Wikileaks and the alternative media, but it’s too late, the truth is out and it will never be stopped. #ProtectJulian

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Silent Crow News. Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from SCN

Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco, you approach the world’s largest contiguous temperate rainforest. But don’t look for any markers or directions. There aren’t any. In fact, the rainforest, which stretches 2,500 miles from Northern California all the way to Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska – almost as far as the distance as from New York to Los Angeles – doesn’t even have an official name.

“There’s no official name in the national names database,” says Bruce Fisher, president of the Oregon Geographic Names Board.

But what should we call it? We asked James Meacham, a professor of geology at the University of Oregon and an author of the Oregon Atlas.

“Great question,” he said. “I don’t have definitive answer for you.”

Only parts of this anonymous rainforest have any legal protection from logging and other development, including Redwood and Olympic National Parks in California and Washington, the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia and 5 million roadless acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

One of the largest, most protected areas of North American temperate rainforest is found in Washington’s Olympic National Park.

But outside these protected areas, most of the rainforest was cut down over the last century and replaced with industrial tree farms, which possess none of the diversity of a natural forest. The rainforest’s scant remaining unprotected old growth is rapidly disappearing from ongoing logging on Vancouver Island. The losses will likely accelerate if the Trump administration allows logging in roadless areas on the Tongass, which would require eliminating a policy on the books since 2000, as it plans to do.

About two hours north of the Golden Gate Bridge you cross the Russian River, which the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, an arm of the University of Alaska, defines as the coastal rainforest’s southern perimeter. Ecotrust, a conservation group based in Portland dedicated to protecting the rainforest, draws a similar boundary.

Massive ancient redwoods, some soaring 350 feet above the ground, tower overhead. Redwoods are the world’s tallest trees, but as you drive further up the coast, you encounter Douglas fir, cedar, hemlock and spruce trees almost as grand.

This mammoth of a rainforest, however, is much more than just a place where majestic trees grow. It helps cool global temperatures, a service the planet desperately needs as the climate spins out of control. Forests remove about a quarter of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) humans add to the atmosphere, keeping climate change from getting even worse.

For decades, forest advocacy groups like Oregon Wild and the Sierra Club demanded protection for rainforest-dependent species like wild salmon, the marbled murrelet and the northern spotted owl. Now they are refocusing their advocacy through the lens of climate change.

“Forest defense is climate defense,” says Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild’s conservation director.

Building public support behind strategies to protect the rainforest might be easier if it shed its anonymity. There are plenty of suggestions for a name.

The Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center calls it the “Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest.”

“You could call it Salmon Nation,” says Ian Gill, the former president of Ecotrust Canada, the Vancouver, BC-based affiliate of Ecotrust. “That’s what we’re doing.”

Ecotrust also calls it the “Rainforest of Home,” the title of an atlas it published in 1995.

Others call it the “Cascadia” rainforest after the bioregion of the same name.

None of these names, however, appear to have caught on.

Last summer, for example, an article in High Country News called it “an ecosystem that runs from Northern California to the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.”

That’s like calling the Amazon Rainforest “an ecosystem that runs between the Andes Mountains of Peru and the east coast of Brazil.”

Since 2004, deforestation in the tropical rainforest has slowed down dramatically, as Mongabay reports, thanks in part to worldwide pressure to “save the Amazon.”

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for someone to launch a campaign to “save the coastal ecosystem running from Northern California to Alaska.” It seems a grassroots campaign to save the entire rainforest might have a better chance at success if it had a globally recognized name.

The future of the planet might depend on it.

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Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate are editors of Cascadia Times, an environmental journal based in Portland, Oregon.

All images in this article are from Mongabay

In the past, whenever I went to (or more precisely, ‘through’) Israel, it was for some antagonistic purpose: to write about the brutal suppression of the intifada in Gaza or Hebron, to comment on the insanity of the land grab around Bethlehem, or to report from the eerie and de-populated Golan Heights, which Israel occupies against all international rules and the UN resolutions. You name it and I worked there: Shifa Hospital or Rafah Camp in Gaza, ‘Golans’, border with Jordan, Bethlehem.

I used to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, sleep one night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa, meet my contacts (my left-wing friends), hastily, and in the morning, dash towards the ‘front’, or towards one of the ‘fronts’ that the so-called ‘Jewish State’ sustains for decades at its ‘peripheries’.

But this time I decided to do exactly the opposite.

As it became evident that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost all his restraint and shame, as it has got clear that the United States will take full advantage of his madness, and as I was convinced that Europe as well as most of the Arab countries will do absolutely nothing to defend Palestine, Syria or Iran, being ‘in the neighborhood’ (Egypt), I bought my tickets to Tel Aviv, for just a 48 hour ‘visit’ and for one simple purpose: to observe Israeli citizens, talk to them, and to try to figure out how and what they think and want; how they see the world, and particularly how they perceive the region where they live, fight and kill.

And so, I flew to Israel, from Cairo and via Amman. Once there, for two days I commuted between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in a brand new, fast and elegant double-decker train. I talked to many people, provoking them to describe the conditions in which they have been existing; to describe their political system, and the apartheid which most of them keep upholding through (as they constantly point out – ‘democratic’) elections.

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Of course, the more ‘democratic’ Israel really is, the more shameful the state into which it reduces the Palestinians, other Arabs and in fact, the entire region. Israeli citizens are continuously voting in the governments that are locking millions inside the camps. They are electing those who are igniting wars and military conflicts in various countries of the Middle East.

Naturally, if you live in Beirut or Aleppo, it is easy to imagine that all this horror is happening because the Israeli citizens are simply ‘evil’; in fact, a bunch of blood-thirsty Rottweilers who have been let off the leash by their North American masters.

But when one interacts with Israelis, he or she quickly realizes that, bizarrely, this is not the case.

Many Israelis appear to be slightly confused, shy, and introverted.

They are ‘into themselves’. It appears that they ‘don’t give a damn about the world around them’.

The most shocking thing is not their brutality, but their detachment, indifference and selfishness.

But all of this is not ‘because most of them are Jews’, but because they are Europeans.

In fact, very little is known about the fact that most of the non-European Jews living in Israel (those originally from Morocco, Yemen, Ethiopia and elsewhere) are treated like second-class citizens, or even worse.

Israel is a European ‘outpost’ in the Middle East. The mindset of most of its inhabitants is predominantly European. Talk to people in Tel Aviv, Haifa, even Beersheba as well as in the non-religious parts of the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and you will most likely come to the same conclusion.

The ‘political awareness’ of the white, European Israeli Jews, is precisely on the same level as that of the Europeans, meaning near zero:

The U.K. may have more military bases and outposts abroad than any other country on earth. The British military is involved in several ‘projects’ – military occupations and attempts to overthrow foreign governments. These ‘projects’ are killing millions of innocent people, annually. But go to Tate Modern or the Covent Garden Opera House, or just to one of those countless funky nightclubs in London, and try to engage people in conversations about their nation’s murderous legacy. They will laugh at you, or confront you, or simply would not understand what are you talking about, and why.

Do the same in France, and most likely, the results would be identical. France is involved in the neo-colonialist projects in Africa, and millions of ‘lower humans’ are being ruined in the process. But how many French people know, and if they do, how many of them care, let alone try to stop it. Look at the Yellow Vests: how many of them are demanding justice for the French neo-colonies?

The mindset of Israelis is very similar.

Take Tel Aviv – the biggest city in Israel: it is one of the richest places on earth, with infrastructure better than that in North America or the United Kingdom, with cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, a masterpiece built by the architect Preston Scott Cohen. The green areas of Tel Aviv, public spaces, all this could rank it as one of the most livable cities on earth.

But for whom? At what price to the enslaved, exiled and exploited people of the region?

Does it sound familiar? Like all those museums, cathedrals, parks, public hospitals, universities that Europe constructed on the bones, on the corpses and misery of the Congolese, Indonesian, Indian and other people. All for the benefit of the Europeans, but paid for by the slave labor of “The Others”, as well as by the looted resources of “The Others”.

Talk about all of this in Madrid, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon or London. The chances are, you will not be understood. Chances are, you will get confronted: thrown out of cab or a pub, insulted, or even physically attacked (it happened to me in London, for instance).

Talk about it in Haifa or Tel Aviv, and the outcome would be similar; a bit milder (in Israel there is greater number of self-critical people than in Europe), but those who may disagree with you could be extremely unpleasant, and sometimes even violent.

And then, when all the other arguments are exhausted, the Holocaust would almost certainly be mentioned.

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And Holocaust is one word that is, when pronounced, simply supposed to end all arguments and criticism of Israel. It is like a password, to shut everyone up.

The Holocaust is then connected to the exodus of the Jews from Europe to the Middle East, after the end of the WWII. “Millions of Jews were killed, therefore they had full right to move, or to be moved, to the Middle East”, the argument goes.

It is bizarre, and powerful proof of how intellectually obedient and ‘shy’ the Western, as well as the Israeli public, has become.

Mentioning Holocaust should not be ‘the end’: this is precisely where the discussion should begin!

The Holocaust was committed by the Europeans (Germans, but also by several of its allies) against the Jews, the Roma and Communists. Millions of people died atrocious, unimaginably terrible deaths.

And then?

In a typically cynical and sinister British colonialist way, the perpetrators got rewarded, and then new victims created.

Germany got fully rebuilt, while Palestinians (un-people in the British minds), were singled out as those who were supposed to pay for the European crimes.

Why not award the Jews with the entire Bavaria? That’s where Hitler came from. That’s where his early supporters were living. This is where some terrible killings were perpetrated.

Bavaria, Germany, Central Europe, is where millions of Jews felt at home, before the Nazi madness began. For example, the greatest writer of the 20^th Century – Franz Kafka: he often described himself as a Czech, of Jewish origin, who wrote in the German language.

Before they realized the gravity and monstrosity of the situation, most of the Jews in Germany simply felt ‘betrayed’. As far as they were concerned, they were Europeans, not any less than that perverted freak Adolf Hitler, or his beer-guzzling buddies.

So, why not Bavaria, as compensation? Why Palestine?

The unpronounced truth has been: because the UK and US wanted that mighty Middle Eastern outpost, and because they wanted a powerful, industrialized Germany again, precisely where it was before and during the war.

Because the Allies knew: in terrible pain, full of outrage, the European Jews would come to Palestine and almost in unison declare: “Never Again!” “We will fight for our survival right now and right here!”

The sad reality was, however, that it was not Arabs, not Palestinians, who burnt the Jewish people in the concentration camps. The Arabs were actually fellow victims, suffering from different horrors – the horrors of European colonialism.

Instead of uniting the two groups of people, two victims, against European racism, colonialism and imperialism, the Brits and others succeeded in ‘dividing and ruling’ them; a horrid imperialist tactic they have been using all over the world, for the long centuries.

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Of course, after the horrors of WWII, many Jews went to the Middle East as Communists, or anarchists. They wanted to build a new world. They wanted to turn deserts into gardens, and to live in harmony with the Palestinians and other Arabs, in a wonderful and tolerant state. This dream never came through. Communism in Israel was defeated, and so was internationalism.

Militarism, nationalism and religious extremism (conservative religious parties in Israel are always a political minority, but no government, it appears, can be formed, without taking them into a coalition).

Then came the tsunami of the anti-Communist Soviet Jews, (and those who claimed to be Jews, but often weren’t). Accepting them was clearly a political decision of the Israeli elites – they moved Israel towards the right, and ‘rejuvenated’ “the Israeli struggle for ‘exclusive Jewish rights’, and against the rights of the Arab population. Cynical; tremendously cynical, but it all worked perfectly well – for the nationalists and the conservatives.

For the Palestinians, it was yet another disaster; the end of all hopes.

Like in Europe and North America, the Israeli political landscape has become fully re-defined: extreme right, right, and center-right. The left – Communists, internationalists and real socialists – can only be found in a few avant-garde theatres and at the ‘margins of society’.

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So, back to the Israeli life. Its Human Development Index (HDI) is the 22^nd highest in the world, above that of France, South Korea and Italy. Not bad, is it?

The question is again – for whom?

Israeli tank being moved towards Golan Heights

The interesting thing was that whenever I tried to discuss Palestine, Golan Heights, Syria, Iran, I encountered no anger. Do the white, European Israelis really hate Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians? My conclusion is: no, they don’t! They don’t, because these people do not exist. You cannot hate what doesn’t exist, can you?

The bombing of Syrians, shooting at Palestinians – it all has become like a video game. Nothing personal – something that ‘has to be done’ in order to preserve privileged status of European Jews. The same as building the settlements.

Image on the right: Electric pushbikes in Tel Aviv – so far from Gaza!

You know, when I was there, Tel Aviv was obsessed with new electric pushbikes. Bicycle lanes were full of them. Who gives a damn about the Palestinians?

The museums were packed, people waiting in lines for hours for the latest exhibitions. Concerts everywhere. The best stuff. Syria? Screw Syria! Falafel fusion has reached new heights, in countless cafes. Classical musicians were practicing, in front of the public, on grand pianos, at the new train station in Jerusalem; a station so deep that one could have no doubt – it is a posh, high tech nuclear shelter.

Another, even newer station will soon be called “Donald Trump”, as a big thank you for moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

In Israel, hardly anyone practices religion, yet on Shabbat, the entire country comes to a standstill. And that is just a few hours after those countless pubs, bars and clubs were regurgitating drunkards, until the wee hours.

Iran? Israeli politicians are professionals. They know what the West wants. And they go out of their way to please. Same as the Saudis, great allies of Washington, and secret cohorts of Israel.

After one day, everything began to feel extremely familiar. I couldn’t help it: I felt that I was in Europe. The same cynicism, opportunism, indifference.

“As long as we live well, we will do anything to keep it like that! If millions ‘elsewhere’ have to die for our wellbeing, who cares? Let them die!”

Image on the left: classic music at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem

Opera performances, top-notch public transportation (German), luxury cars (mostly German), and classical music (big chunk of it, German again). Top European brands at local luxury boutiques. Cute pet dogs in public parks.

Palestinians do not exist. Arabs exist mainly as a nuisance. Non-European Jews are good for cleaning latrines.

Seriously, have you heard about a Moroccan or Yemeni Jew commanding a battalion, giving orders to open fire on Palestinian women and children? Then ask a question: is it really about ‘Jewishness’ or about European colonialist legacy?

Actually… Really familiar, isn’t it? The only difference between the UK or France and Israel, is that the distance between London, Paris and the devastated neo-colonies can be counted by thousands of kilometers. From Tel Aviv to the ruined lives of the Palestinian people, it is often just a few minutes’ drive.

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Before the holocaust in Europe, Germans perpetrated their very first holocaust in their colony – in Southwest Africa, what is now called Namibia. They murdered over 85% of the native people there, including the Herero tribe. Almost no one knows about it. I went there to investigate, wrote and published reports.

German doctors like Mengele, those who tortured and experimented on Jews in the concentration camps during WWII, were trained by the doctors who previously murdered and beastly tortured African people.

‘Holocaust-deniers’ hate this information. It totally contradicts their ‘discoveries’ that ‘the Holocaust did not happen’, or that “humiliated Germany, after the unjust peace after WWI, just went ‘overboard’.” No, Germany had proven that it could easily exterminate almost an entire population. But African people do not matter to the Europeans, do they? Holocaust is only what occurred on the European continent (although Gypsies/Roma somehow do not qualify as victims, either. In Czech Republic, extermination camps for Roma have been converted to pig farms, with no monuments). They – non-European victims – do not matter to most of the Israelis, either.

When the Holocaust in Europe began, most of the Jews could not believe that their good neighbors – Germans – could commit such barbarity. They did not know their own history, obviously. Germany and other European countries have been committing holocausts all over the world; on all continents. For centuries. The victims, however, were not white, and so they did not qualify as fellow victims.

After WWII was over, and after (mainly) the Soviet Union defeated the German Nazis, many Jews who survived, went to Palestine. As we mentioned before, the murderers were never really punished. Those who had to pay for the German slaughterhouses, were the innocent Palestinians.

But who were those Jews who arrived first? Most of them were those who at the beginning of WWII ‘could not believe that Germans were “capable of committing such crimes”. Let’s face it; they were Europeans, maybe more European than the French, Italians, Dutch, Czechs or even the Germans.

Like Kissinger, who ended up in the United States, instead of Israel. His “Jewish blood” is totally irrelevant. What matters is his “culture”. And his culture is that of a European colonialist, imperialist bigot!

The suffering apart, European Jews were earlier, before WWII, educated in Europe. Their cultural references were those of the Europeans. Most of them saw Arabs with the same eyes as the Europeans observed Arabs in the late 1940’s. Should I say more?

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And now, 64 years after the fall of the Reichstag, Israel is an inseparable part of the “Western civilization”. Which means; it is obsessed with its complex of superiority. It is fully convinced, fanatically, that the only truth is the European and North American truth. It would not hesitate to sacrifice millions of non-Western/non-Jewish lives, for the advancement of their own cause. Justice exists only for the white Jews, as well as for the Europeans, and North Americans.

Intifada

Israel is not a ‘fascist country’. But it is an apartheid state, the same as the West, which treats the entire planet in an apartheid-style manner. It is what it is. Apartheid is used in order to guarantee a great life for its own people, and to hell with the rest.

Israel is fully integrated into the horrible imperialist adventures of the West, all over the Middle East, in Africa and Kashmir, in the Philippines and many other parts of the world.

And, like in the West, its people know nothing, want to know nothing, care about nothing except themselves.

Vacation in Australia, Thailand or Mexico? It can be discussed for long hours. That matters. But not the lives of conquered and colonized people.

I did not like what I saw and heard in Israel. As I do not like what I see and hear in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris or Madrid.

The same self-righteousness, hypocrisy, arrogance and brutality:

“You do it our way, or we will break your legs. We can bomb your cities, steal your land, but you shoot back at us, and we will bomb you back to the Stone Age. Why? Because, we simple can, because, we are part of that omnipotent Western world. Because you know what we can do if you start defending yourself! Because you are scared, frightened into submission. And above all: because our people are only ones who matter.”

Yes, this is the way the colonies were controlled, first by the Europeans and then by the United States. Israel learned; it learned quickly. From the victims, people can swiftly convert themselves into victimizers.

The Laws of any country are clear on this: Just because many of your family members and relatives were brutally murdered, does not give you any right to start beating, robbing and killing totally different groups of people.

Just because you were victim of racism, does not justify your colonialist behavior towards others.

Yes, as always, I was impressed by Israel’s infrastructure, but not by whom it serves. South Africa, during apartheid, built some of the greatest highways in the world. For the whites. Others were forced to live in the gutter. Israel does the same.

To make it worse, Israel’s Prime Minister is behaving like a war criminal. And he has been re-elected by his own people as a reward.

I believe in collective guilt. The indifference of people, who tolerate theft and murder committed on their behalf, becomes terrible crime itself.

For long awful centuries, Jews were tortured, humiliated and killed by the racist fanatic Europeans. Now, instead of joining internationalist, progressive forces, Israeli Jews of European origin, have changed their identity, and firmly joined the ranks of the imperialist oppressors. They joined their former torturers.

Now they are committing crimes against humanity not because they are Jews, but because they are Europeans.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon.

All images in this article are from the author

By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism.

That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible.

Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons – and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west.

But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we have learnt that the last supposed major chemical attack – which took place in April 2018 and was, as ever, blamed by all western sources on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad – was very possibly staged, a false-flag operation by those very al-Qaeda groups now claiming the Syrian government has attacked them once again.

Addicted to incompetence

Most astounding in this week’s coverage of the claims made by al-Qaeda groups is the fact that the western media continues to refuse to learn any lessons, develop any critical distance from the sources it relies on, even as those sources are shown to have repeatedly deceived it.

Image on the right: Hürriyet Daily News

This was true after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and it is now even more true after the the international community’s monitoring body on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was exposed this month as deeply dishonest.

It is bad enough that our governments and our expert institutions deceive and lie to us. But it is even worse that we have a corporate media addicted – at the most charitable interpretation – to its own incompetence. The evidence demonstrating that grows stronger by the day.

Unprovoked attack

In March the OPCW produced a report into a chemical weapons attack the Syrian government allegedly carried out in Douma in April last year. Several dozen civilians, many of them children, died apparently as a result of that attack.

The OPCW report concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” for believing a toxic form of chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in Douma, and that the most likely method of delivery were two cylinders dropped from the air.

This as good as confirmed claims made by al-Qaeda groups, backed by western states, that the cylinders had been dropped by the Syrian military. Using dry technical language, the OPCW joined the US and Europe in pointing the finger squarely at Assad.

It was vitally important that the OPCW reached that conclusion not only because of the west’s overarching regime-change ambitions in Syria.

In response to the alleged Douma attack a year ago, the US fired a volley of Cruise missiles at Syrian army and government positions before there had been any investigation of who was responsible.

Those missiles were already a war crime – an unprovoked attack on another sovereign country. But without the OPCW’s implicit blessing, the US would have been deprived of even its flimsy, humanitarian pretext for launching the missiles.

Leaked document

Undoubtedly the OPCW was under huge political pressure to arrive at the “right” conclusion. But as a scientific body carrying out a forensic investigation surely it would not simply doctor the data.

Nonetheless, it seems that may well be precisely what it did. This month the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – a group of academics who have grown increasingly sceptical of the western narratives told about Syria – published an internal, leaked OPCW document.

A few fays later the OPCW reluctantly confirmed that the document was genuine, and that it would identify and deal with those responsible for the leak.

The document was an assessment overseen by Ian Henderson, a senior OPCW expert, of the engineering data gathered by the OPCW’s fact-finding mission that attended the scene of the Douma attack. Its findings fly in the face of the OPCW’s published report.

Erased from the record

The leaked document is deeply troubling for two reasons.

First, the assessment, based on the available technical data, contradicts the conclusion of the final OPCW report that the two chemical cylinders were dropped from the air and crashed through building roofs. It argues instead that the cylinders were more likely placed at the locations they were found.

If that is right, the most probable explanation is that the cylinders were put there by al-Qaeda groups – presumably in a last desperate effort to persuade the west to intervene and to prevent the jihadists being driven out of Douma.

But even more shocking is the fact that the expert assessment based on the data collected by the OPCW team is entirely unaddressed in the OPCW’s final report.

It is not that the final report discounts or rebuts the findings of its own experts. It simply ignores those findings; it pretends they don’t exist. The report blacks them out, erases them from the official record. In short, it perpetrates a massive deception.

Experts ignored

All of this would be headline news if we had a responsible media that cared about the truth and about keeping its readers informed.

We now know both that the US attacked Syria on entirely bogus grounds, and that the OPCW – one of the international community’s most respected and authoritative bodies – has been caught redhanded in an outrageous deception with grave geopolitical implications. (In fact, it is not the first time the OPCW has been caught doing this, as I have previously explained here.)

The fact that the OPCW ignored its own expert and its own team’s technical findings when they proved politically indigestible casts a dark shadow over all the OPCW’s work in Syria, and beyond. If it was prepared to perpetrate a deception on this occasion, why should we assume it did not do so on other occasions when it proved politically expedient?

Active combatants

The OPCW’s reports into other possible chemical attacks – assisting western efforts to implicate Assad – are now equally tainted. That is especially so given that in those other cases the OPCW violated its own procedures by drawing prejudicial conclusions without its experts being on the ground, at the site of the alleged attacks. Instead it received samples and photos via al-Qaeda groups, who could easily have tampered with the evidence.

And yet there has been not a peep from the corporate media about this exposure of the OPCW’s dishonesty, apart from commentary pieces from the only two maverick mainstream journalists in the UK – Peter Hitchens, a conservative but independent-minded columnist for the Mail on Sunday, and veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk, of the little-read Independent newspaper (more on his special involvement in Douma in a moment).

Just as the OPCW blanked the findings of its technical experts to avoid political discomfort, the media have chosen to stay silent on this new, politically sensitive information.

They have preferred to prop up the discredited narrative that our governments have been acting to protect the human rights of ordinary Syrians rather than the reality that they have been active combatants in the war, helping to destabilise a country in ways that have caused huge suffering and death in Syria.

Systematic failure

This isn’t a one-off failure. It’s part of a series of failures by the corporate media in its coverage of Douma.

They ignored very obvious grounds for caution at the time of the alleged attack. Award-winning reporter Robert Fisk was among the first journalists to enter Douma shortly after those events. He and a few independent reporters communicated eye-witness testimony that flatly contradicted the joint narrative promoted by al-Qaeda groups and western governments that Assad had bombed Douma with chemical weapons.

The corporate media also mocked a subsequent press conference at which many of the supposed victims of that alleged chemical attack made appearances to show that they were unharmed and spoke of how they had been coerced into play-acting their roles.

And now the western media has compounded that failure – revealing its systematic nature – by ignoring the leaked OPCW document too.

But it gets worse, far worse.

Al-Qaeda propaganda

This week the same al-Qaeda groups that were present in Douma – and may have staged that lethal attack – claimed that the Syrian government had again launched chemical weapons against them, this time on their final holdout in Idlib.

A responsible media, a media interested in the facts, in evidence, in truth-telling, in holding the powerful to account, would be dutybound to frame this latest, unsubstantiated claim in the context of the new doubts raised about the OPCW report into last year’s chemical attack blamed on Assad.

Given that the technical data suggest that al-Qaeda groups, and the White Helmets who work closely with them, were responsible for staging the attack – even possibly of murdering civilians to make the attack look more persuasive – the corporate media had a professional and moral obligation to raise the matter of the leaked document.

It is vital context as anyone tries to weigh up whether the latest al-Qaeda claims are likely to be true. To deprive readers of this information, this essential context would be to take a side, to propagandise on behalf not only of western governments but of al-Qaeda too.

And that is exactly what the corporate media have just done. All of them.

Media worthy of Stalin

It is clear how grave their dereliction of the most basic journalistic duty is if we consider the Guardian’s uncritical coverage of jihadist claims about the latest alleged chemical attack.

Like most other media, the Guardian article included two strange allusions – one by France, the other by the US – to the deception perpetrated by the OPCW in its recent Douma report. The Guardian reported these allusions even though it has never before uttered a word anywhere in its pages about that deception.

In other words, the corporate media are so committed to propagandising on behalf of the western powers that they have reported the denials of official wrongdoing even though they have never reported the actual wrongdoing. It is hard to imagine the Soviet media under Stalin behaving in such a craven and dishonest fashion.

The corporate media have given France and the US a platform to reject accusations against the OPCW that the media themselves have never publicly raised.

Doubts about OPCW

The following is a brief statement (unintelligible without the forgoing context) from France, reported by the Guardian in relation to the latest claim that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons this week: “We have full confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

But no one, except bloggers and academics ignored by the media and state authorities, has ever raised doubts about the OPCW. Why would the Guardian think these French comments worthy of reporting unless there were reasons to doubt the OPCW? And if there are such reasons for doubt, why has the Guardian not thought to make them public, to report them to its readers?

The US state department similarly came to the aid of the OPCW. In the same Guardian report, a US official was quoted saying that the OPCW was facing “a continuing disinformation campaign” from Syria and Russia, and that the campaign was designed “to create the false narrative that others [rather than Assad] are to blame for chemical weapons attacks”.

So Washington too was rejecting accusations against the OPCW that have never been reported by the state-corporate media.

Interestingly, in the case of US officials, they claim that Syria and Russia are behind the “disinformation campaign” against the OPCW, even though the OPCW has admitted that the leaked document discrediting its work is genuine and written by one of its experts.

The OPCW is discredited, of course, only because it sought to conceal evidence contained in the leaked document that might have exonerated Assad of last year’s chemical attack. It is hard to see how Syria or Russia can be blamed for this.

Colluding in deception

But more astounding still, while US and French officials have at least acknowledged that there are doubts about the OPCW’s role in Syria, even if they unjustifiably reject such doubts, the corporate media have simply ignored those doubts as though they don’t exist.

The continuing media blackout on the leaked OPCW document cannot be viewed as accidental. It has been systematic across the media.

That blackout has remained resolutely in place even after the OPCW admitted the leaked document discrediting it was genuine and even after western countries began alluding to the leaked document themselves.

The corporate media is actively colluding both in the original deception perpetrated by al-Qaeda groups and the western powers, and in the subsequent dishonesty of the OPCW. They have worked together to deceive western publics.

The question is, why are the media so obviously incompetent? Why are they so eager to keep themselves and their readers in the dark? Why are they so willing to advance credulous narratives on behalf of western governments that have been repeatedly shown to have lied to them?

Iran the real target

The reason is that the corporate media are not what they claim. They are not a watchdog on power, or a fourth estate.

The media are actually the public relations wing of a handful of giant corporations – and states – that are pursuing two key goals in the Middle East.

First, they want to control its oil. Helping al-Qaeda in Syria – including in its propaganda war – against the Assad government serves a broader western agenda. The US and NATO bloc are ultimately gunning for the leadership of Iran, the one major oil producer in the region not under the US imperial thumb.

Powerful Shia groups in the region – Assad in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Iraqi leaders elevated by our invasion of that country in 2003 – are allies or potential allies of Iran. If they are in play, the US empire’s room for manoeuvre in taking on Iran is limited. Remove these smaller players and Iran stands isolated and vulnerable.

That is why Russia stepped in several years ago to save Assad, in a bid to stop the dominoes falling and the US engineering a third world war centred on the Middle East.

Second, with the Middle East awash with oil money, western corporations have a chance to sell more of the lucrative weapons that get used in overt and covert wars like the one raging in Syria for the past eight years.

What better profit-generator for these corporations than wasteful and pointless wars against manufactured bogeymen like Assad?

Like a death cult

From the outside, this looks and sounds like a conspiracy. But actually it is something worse – and far more difficult to overcome.

The corporations that run our media and our governments have simply conflated in their own minds – and ours – the idea that their narrow corporate interests are synonymous with “western interests”.

The false narratives they generate are there to serve a system of power, as I have explained in previous blogs. That system’s worldview and values are enforced by a charmed circle that includes politicians, military generals, scientists, journalists and others operating as if brainwashed by some kind of death cult. They see the world through a single prism: the system’s need to hold on to power. Everything else – truth, evidence, justice, human rights, love, compassion – must take a back seat.

It is this same system that paradoxically is determined to preserve itself even if it means destroying the planet, ravaging our economies, and starting and maintaining endlessly destructive wars. It is system that will drag us all into the abyss, unless we stop it.

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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Twitter

This year’s Africa Day (aka Africa Liberation Day) comes at period of significant transformation for the continent and its people throughout the region and the world.

It was 56 years ago that the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU), held its founding summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 25.

During this period there had been a whirlwind of African independence campaigns which had won the national liberation of over 30 former colonial states. Ethiopia, theoretically had never been colonized although it was under occupation by Italian imperialist-fascism during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In 1963, nonetheless, there was still much work to be done. Portugal was refusing to relinquish control of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, Sao Tome, Principe and Cape Verde to the African people. The settler-colonial regimes in the-then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa and Namibia (formerly known as South West Africa) were contested zones where revolutionary guerrilla armies were forming to overthrow the system of national oppression and economic exploitation.

African Union Summit on Free Trade Area, March 17, 2018

The theme for the official statement released by AU Commission Chair H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat for Africa Day 2019 was “Year of Refugees, Returnees and IDPS: Towards durable solutions to forced displacement in Africa.” Africa has been impacted severely by imperialist wars, economic strangulation and climate change which have dislocated communities. Coordinated policy among the agencies within the AU is desperately required to meet the ongoing crises.

Mahamat noted in the AU release that:

“After centuries of domination, oppression, enslavement and slave exploitation, Africa woke up and became aware of its strength and the underlying force behind that strength: its dignity in unity…. It is the solemn affirmation of this imperative that we celebrate today. However, there are still many hurdles to overcome before Africa’s independence and unity fully blossom. This would only come about when every African lives in peace, has free access to quality universal education, to full physical and mental health, to decent and remunerative job, to social and cultural development, to good democratic governance in the strict respect of his fundamental rights.” (See this)

Significantly on May 25, there was the celebration surrounding the inauguration of Republic of South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, a former negotiator for the demise of apartheid and secretary general of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), to a full term as head-of-state in Africa’s most industrialized state. Ramaphosa, also the president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, was sworn in once again to office after winning a more than 57% majority in the recent national parliamentary, provincial and presidential elections.

The ANC took power in South Africa 25 years ago in 1994 under the leadership of former President Nelson Mandela. Over the last quarter century the ANC and its allies inside the country has keep South Africa together and made tremendous strides in the areas housing, access to water, healthcare and technology development.

Despite these accomplishments, the challenges facing President Ramaphosa are not unique to South Africa. All AU member-states are reeling from the catastrophic economic changes being perpetuated by the West through the ascendancy of conservative and ultra-right regimes, trade wars and encroaching militarism.

The Current Political Situation in Africa Today

Since the escalation of production of oil and natural gas by the United States under the administration of former President Barack Obama, Africa and other energy-producing nations have experienced profound economic decline. The continent had been praised during the years leading up to the middle 2010s for its phenomenal economic growth rates. Although oil prices have risen over the period of 2018 and early 2019, substantial damage has already occurred.

South Africa has been facing an official 27% jobless rate along with other problems in the consumer energy, transport, agricultural, mining and service sectors. In neighboring Zimbabwe, the Second Republic under President Emmerson Mnangagwa is working diligently to have sanctions removed by the imperialist countries led by Britain and the U.S.

Under such circumstances in Southern Africa, the recent impact of Cyclone Idai and Kenneth has been devastating. Millions have been affected in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique with massive flooding resulting in the destruction of housing, schools, businesses, workplaces and crops.

These cataclysmic incidents are very much a part of contemporary life internationally as greater consciousness related to climate change has sparked demonstrations demanding the need to reduce carbon emissions and other harmful chemicals in the environment. Moreover, these factors tend to have a greater negative impact on regions which are underdeveloped. A major part of the reconstruction of Africa would have to include the effective capacity to respond to natural disasters placing the well-being of the people as being paramount.

West Africa has now been targeted by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in the Sahel region as a major source of “Islamic extremism or terrorism.” Along with France and other European Union (EU) military and naval forces, imperialism has in essence subsumed national armed forces on the continent into the strategic framework of the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Africa can point to the rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia during 2018 as a sign of progress in the movement towards unity and unification of the continent. Nevertheless, it will remain to be seen what influence this model of peacemaking between African states has on the role of imperialist militarism among AU member-states.

AFRICOM has its largest military base in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti where Camp Lemonnier serves as a major platform for offensive operations on both the continent and adjacent areas. The ongoing genocidal war in Yemen has the participation of regional client states along with the Republic of Sudan, which has stated even after the overthrow of former President Omer Hassan al-Bashir, that their troops will remain a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), who are carrying out the massive bombing and ground operations with the facilitation of Washington and London.

The Continuing Role of Imperialism: Nkrumah’s Legacy for the 21^st Century

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Africa, the founder of the modern national liberation and Revolutionary Pan-Africanist movements, referenced the presence of European and U.S. troops on the continent as a threat to the sovereignty of the people. This was the message distributed at the first OAU Summit in Ethiopia in 1963 when Nkrumah published and circulated his groundbreaking study “Africa Must Unite.”

Nkrumah advanced the notion along with other revolutionary leaders of the period that African independence and unity could not be secured without the construction of socialism. Imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism were responsible for the enslavement and super-exploitation of the continent. Consequently, the overthrow of the capitalist system was a prerequisite for genuine and sustainable development.

A pamphlet released by the Ghana First Republic Government under Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) entitled “Forward to Socialism”, emphasizes:

“For we are determined to create a society in which no man (human beings) shall fear oppression; a society in which all shall be free within the law; in which there shall be work for all and in which the condition for the happiness of each is the condition for the happiness of all; a socialist society that will be a blessing to all living within it.”

This same speech which was delivered at the 13^th anniversary of the beginning of “Positive Action”, on January 8, 1963, goes on to say:

“And to succeed—as succeed we must, for the sake of the masses, whose interests are our prime concern and whose welfare is our supreme law, you must each devote yourselves without stint or thought of self to this sacred cause of Ghana’s and Africa’s redemption. Forward with the Party! Forward to African Unity! Forward to Socialism!“

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

All images in this article are from the author

For the last four decades, we have been watching a new animal called neo-liberalism. At first, we did not know what it was; we hoped that it would bring global prosperity; we thought that the deregulation would be a blessing for the businesses, we hoped that the IMF doctrine of structural adjustment would strengthen the economies of developing countries; we imagined that the privatization of public corporations would improve the efficiency of the national economy; we wanted to believe that the free trade agreements would make us happier.

But, the doctrine of neo-liberalism has turned out to be a disappointment for many; it appears to be a blessing only for a few. Its performance has betrayed our hopes and expectations; it is so bad that it even threatens the very survival of the healthy free-market capitalism; its failure is so serious that we are now looking for new economic doctrines.

In this paper, I intend to share with the readers my honest concern for the future of neo-liberalism and the survival of the free-world capitalism. I am asking these questions. What is neo-liberalism? How destructive is it? What are the alternative doctrines?

1. What is Neo-liberalism?

The developed economies, especially the U.S. economy, enjoyed rapid economic growth during several decades following the World War II, mainly due to the vast reconstruction of war torn social and industrial infrastructure and the production of civil goods and services which was not easy during the war.

However, by the end of the 1960s, the process of the reconstruction of infrastructure was almost completed and the shortage of goods and services for civil use was solved. In other words, the rate of economic growth of the economy slowed down. This meant declining profit for businesses and it was a challenge for businesses to deal with. To make the matter worse for the business, the oil crisis of the 1970s shot up the cost of production and provoked decade-long inflation and at the same time, rising unemployment, that is, the world had to cope with “stagflation”.

Stagflation is one of the rare economic phenomena observed in the free-market economy. When stagflation happens, inflation and wide spread unemployment occur at the same time. In normal cyclical variations of the economy, inflation is accompanied by employment increase.

Suppose that a large number of immigrants come into the country or the income of citizens rises so that the demand for housing and other goods and services increases. The result is the increase in the price of goods and services. If the cost of production does not increase as much the price increase, the expectation of profit improves; the producer will expand the production and create more jobs. In other words, inflation goes with job creation and GDP growth.

But, if inflation caused by the demand increase is accompanied by increasing unemployment, something is wrong. This is the stagflation and it happens when the supply of goods and services does not increase along with inflation. This happens when the inflation is caused by the increase in the cost of production more than price increase,

The decade of the 1970s was an era of stagflation in the U.S. To understand what happened we have to go back to the period of 1960s which was the decade of President Johnson’s heavy spending on welfare and war resulting in increased demand for goods and services. The period of 1960s was the decade of Lyndon Johnson’s (1963-1969) “The Great Society” of equality and prosperity.

The period of 1960s was also a decade of heavy spending for the Vietnam War. The heavy spending of the government led to the expansion of demand for goods and services. But industries were not able to produce consumer goods and services rapidly enough meet the rising demand. The end result was inflation caused by increasing demand; it was the demand-pull inflation.

Then, in 1973, the oil embargo by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) shot up the oil price provoking cost-push inflation. The 1973 oil crisis provoked a grave recession in 1974-1975. The GDP in the first quarter of 1974 fell by 3.4% compared to the same period of the previous year. In the first quarter of 1975, the GDP fell by 4.8%.The rate of unemployment was as high as 9%. At the same time, the price of consumer goods and services rose by 12% in 1975. This was how the U.S. had to cope with a brand new strange phenomenon called stagflation unknown in the past.

Hoping to get out of the recession, the Federal Reserve Board increased substantially the money supply; the money supply rose by 10% in the period 1970-1974 compared to an average money supply increase of 4% in the 1990s. The money supply was designed to fight the recession; the expansion of the money supply was additional factor for the inflation of the 1970s.

In short, the inflation of the 1770s was the combination of the three types of inflation: the demand-pull information, the cost-push inflation and the money supply-led inflation

Despite the price increase, the companies did not increase production and create new jobs. There were two main reasons. First, when inflation goes beyond a certain level, the future prospect of profit becomes uncertain and the producer waits and would not increase investments. Second, President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) imposed price control; in 1970, he introduced the ACOLA (Automatic Cost of Living Adjustment).

Moreover, Nixon raised tariffs on imported goods. To make the matter worse, after the removal of the U.S. currency from the gold standard regime, the value of the American dollar fell. The end result was the higher cost of getting imported parts and components.

The combination of these factors made industries to hesitate to invest, hire more people and produce more goods and services. Here you are. You have your stagflation.

In a way, the stagflation of the 1970s was partly the fault of the government policy, but the private sector was not entirely free from blame, for they could have better responded to the increased demand for goods and services brought about by Johnson’s expanded public spending related to his Great Society policy.

This unusual phenomenon has stirred up heated controversy over the selection of better economic doctrines and policy measures. The economic doctrine which had ruled the economic thought during two postwar decades was the Keynesian doctrine. In 1937, a British economist John Maynard Keynes published a book called “The General Theory of Employment, Investment and Interest” in which he proposed policy measure to combat economic recession; this was the Keynesianism.

The structure of national demand may be expressed in terms of a simple equation: Y= C + I + G + (X-M): Y represents GDP, or national demand; C, household consumption expenditure; I, companies’ investment expenditures; G, government expenditures; X, value of exports; M, value of imports.

Suppose that the economy is suffering from severe recession and that the government is looking for measures to overcome the recession. Of these five variables in the above equation, all the four variables, except G, belong to the decision of the private sector; they are beyond government’s direct control; the only variable which can be controlled directly by the government is its own expenditures, G. Hence, the best way of overcoming the economic recession is the expansion of government expenditures.

The controversy was about whether the Keynesian remedy can solve the stagflation. The experience of stagflation of the 1970s has made a large number of economic think tanks, academics and politicians began to look at the freer private market as being better equipped than the government for the solution of economic problems. This was the theoretical justification for making the private market freer and even more liberal than the previous liberal private market. In other words, they were looking for new (neo) liberalism.

There is a basic difference between Keynesian remedy and neoliberal remedy of solving economic recession; the former relies on the demand side of the economy, while the latter, on the supply side. In fact, the postwar neo-liberalism is sometimes called the “supply-side economics”..

The neo-liberalism was boldly applied by British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. However, it was more formally structured by the concept of “Washington Consensus” by John William of the Institute of International Economics in Washington. William suggests ten points for the solution of economic problem.

Of these ten points, some are relevant to neo-liberalism; they are tax cuts for firms, smaller government, free-market determined interest rate, competitive exchange rate, trade liberalization, liberalization of foreign investments, privatization of government-owned enterprises, and deregulation. There is one more part in the Washington Consensus, namely the Structural Adjustment Policy conceived by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed on countries indebted to the IMF.

All of these measures are designed to minimize government interventions in national economic matters. But, a more important point is that they are in fact designed to let the private enterprises to make as much profit as they can without government interference.

In the final analysis, these measures allow the human greed to rule the economy. Why not? After all, the greed is the most powerful motivational factor of hard work; but, it is at the same time, the most devastating factor of immorality and the merciless exploitation of the weak.

The world led by unbound human greed ends up by destroying itself.

There is one more instrument in the tool bag of neo-liberalism; it is the system of Structural Adjustment imposed by the neoliberal policy makers, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF); this measure requires, as the condition of IMF loans, the transformation of the debtor country into neoliberal free market system economy.

2. What is wrong with neo-liberalism?

In this section, I will deal with the impact of the following neoliberal measures: deregulation, privatization, free trade and structural adjustment and the global production chains.

2.1 Deregulation

The measure of deregulation affects a host of sectors of the economy. The deregulation of the entry of new firms, foreign investments, labour unions and a host of other deregulations are all designed to minimize government interventions and let the private firms to make more money..

One of the most important deregulation is the removal of regulations designed to protect labour union rights. This type of deregulation is expected to produce labour flexibility; this means restriction of unionization of workers, abolition of minimum wage and prohibition of labour strike. The end result of labour related deregulation is lay-offs, increase in part-time works and inequitable income distribution.

The most devastating deregulation is that of national and international finance. This deregulation is truly one of the key elements of the neoliberal regime. It has allowed the global integration of finance on the one hand and, on the other hand, it has permitted the creation of unlimited range of financial products. Moreover, under the neoliberal regime, the international mobility of funds has no barriers.

The trouble is that these mobile funds are not development funds but highly speculative funds. In fact, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 initiated in Thailand was caused by the sudden flight of speculative funds.

What is more troubling is the emergence of diverse financial products. Many of these products are the securitized financial products (derivatives) such as the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) which are debts transformed into assets. The securitized assets can be further securitized and, as the securitization goes on, the quality of the assets decreases and the risk of default rises. In fact, the global sub-prime financial crisis of 2007 was caused by the multiplicity of securitized assets.

The main reason for the multiplication of financial products is low production cost of the asset and high profit. The attractiveness of these financial products is so great that the amount of funds invested in these products is of much greater amount than funds invested in the production of consumption goods and related services. It is why it is difficult for real good producers to acquire funds.

In the normal situation, the financial sector must serve the real sector which produces goods and services, but because of the deregulation, the former rules the latter.

2.2 Privatization of Government-Owned Enterprises (GOE)

The privatization of GOE is the core of the neoliberal regime. In fact, the idea of privatization was so popular in the 1990s that the World Bank devoted important human resources to study the privatization of SOE in Easter European countries which had been parts of the Soviet Union.

However, countries of democracy and free-market including South Korea also undertook massive privatization of SOEs. The privatized SOE are often those enterprises which are responsible for the production of public services such as transportation and telecommunication. The privatization of SOEs raises several problems

First,the rational of the justification of privatization is the argument that the government is less competent than the private enterprises in managing businesses. The usual criterion of efficiency is the rate of profit. The profit of an enterprise can increase either by good planning and management of production or by cutting the cost of production. But, in many cases, the profit is increased not through good management but through the cut of labour cost. In most of the cases, the efficiency of the privatized firms come from the decrease in labour cost obtained through lay-offs, use of part-time workers and the cut of wages

Second, many of the privatized companies are those which produce goods and services that are basically public goods and services such as hospitals, public transportation, telecommunication and highways. The proper criteria for the evaluation of their performance cannot be efficiency measured by profit but it should be measured by public welfare.

Third, once the SOEs are privatized, the government has no more control over the companies which have bought the SOE. We must remember that the reason for buying the SOE being profit, the price of privatized goods or services will rise and the quality of the service might worsen. In this game of privatization of the SOE, the losers are the government and the citizens; the winners are large corporations which are often friends of corrupted politicians, high-ranking civil servants and “leaders of the society”.

Fourth, the privatization further worsens the corruption culture. In South Korea, until 1980, the government could control the Chaebols such as the group Samsung and the group Hyundai through, among others measure, the generous “policy loans”. But, from the 1990s, the wind of neo-liberalism swept over South Korea and the government gave up any hope of controlling the Chaebols. This happened when South Korea had to liberalize the financial sector allowing the Chaebol to have unlimited access to international funds. At the same time, the government stopped the practice of policy loans which had been, in fact, the best way of disciplining the large corporations.

From there on, it was rather the Chaebols which started to dictate the government policy; this was how the conservative government-Chaebols collusion became the every-day collective life in Korea. This collusion transformed itself into the culture of corruption in which the income of privatized corporations was shared between the corruption partners.

The Korea Telecom (KT) was privatized; since its privatization, its priority shifted from the telecommunication business to the horizontal integration of unrelated businesses in order to make money through dubious ways. To protect itself from possible investigation by the authorities, it appointed a large number of “advisors” who were former ranking civil servants, prominent politicians, former judges, former prosecutors and “leaders”. These people do nothing for the company but get every month several thousand U.S. dollars. The similar phenomenon happens in the case of the Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) which was also privatized company; it used to be and is one of the largest steel producers in the world.

2.3 Free Trade

In the university class room of economics, free trade based on “comparative advantages” has been the Bible of economics. But this theory is based on the assumption that there are no trade barriers such as tariff and non tariff restrictions. But trade barriers have been necessary in many cases, especially at the early stage of the take-off of the economy. For instance, as happened in South Korea, in the 1970s, the import substitution policy was needed in order to create a solid basis for the industrialization.

The Washington Consensus requires the total elimination of all trade barriers through the intervention of the WTO and countless free trade agreements. In these days, rare are the countries which have no free trade agreement. As soon as the free trade agreement is signed, more than 80% of goods traded are free of tariffs. It goes without saying that free trade agreements offer some advantages.

For instance, there are several econometric estimates of the benefice of the free trade agreements; the GDP can increase as much as 0.5% and the value of exports of goods can rise, in some cases, by more than 50% over the period of tariff elimination. There is also the welfare benefit made possible by the decrease in the price of imported goods and services. In the case of Canada-Korea free-trade agreement, it is about 3 billion Canadian dollars available to both Koreans and Canadians combined.

But, the reliability of these estimates is debatable in view of simplistic assumptions used for the estimation. One of the principal shortcomings of these econometric estimates is the lack of considerations for the negative effects of increased imports on the national economy.

The free trade imposed by the Washington Consensus has the following issues to be tackled: benefits of tariff removal, absence of the trickle-down effects, negative effects on SMEs, worsening income distribution, the Industry State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system.

2.3.1 Benefits of Tariff Removal 

There is no doubt that the removal of tariffs would facilitate international trade. But, the beneficial effect is controversial. In the first place, the negotiations of free trade agreement are undertaken in secret and led by exporting companies. Hence, the negotiations are not undertaken between governments; they are undertaken between large corporations through government negotiators. As a result, the choice and the timing of goods selected for tariff removal is made for exporting companies. This is not necessarily good for the overall economic growth of trade partner countries. The more serious problem is that advantage coming from the tariff removal is short lived. You must remember that as free trade is generalized so that tariffs are all removed, exports of goods no longer depend on trade barriers but on real competitiveness.

2.3.2 Absence of Trickle-Down Effects 

There are two ways by which exports of goods and services contribute to the national economy: growth of the economy and its trickle-down effect. The trickle-down effects comprise the creation of jobs and fair income distribution.

There is no doubt that the exports of goods and services make the GDP grow; the greater the weight of exports in the economy, the greater will be its GDP contribution. However, such contribution tends to decrease because of two reasons.

First, an increasing part of the value of exports is more and more of foreign origin. In the case of South Korea, more than 40% of the value of exports of goods is of foreign origin. Second, the production of goods exported relies more and more on the advanced technology which kills jobs. The combination of these factors tend to minimize the trickle-down effects of the exports of goods

2.3.3 Negative Effect on SMEs 

In many countries, exporting companies are usually of fair size and close to the government and those who have power. This is especially so in South Korea and Japan.

The pro-large corporation and pro-export policies of many governments have resulted in the prevention of the healthy development of the SMEs for two reasons.

First, in order to take advantage of good opportunities offered by the free-trade agreements, the government allocates a major part of financial and fiscal resources to the exporting companies, namely, the Chaebols in the case of South Korea; this has been one of the major factors responsible for the under-development of SMEs. Another reason is Chaebols’ unfair treatment of SMEs which are their sub-contractors. A sample survey shows that 30% of SMEs claim that the quality of products asked by the Chaebols is too high given the product price paid by the Chaebols. According to 53% of SMEs, the Chaebols do not pay what is due in time. Almost 25% of the SMEs complain that the Chaebols change the contracts without prior consultation with the subcontractors

There are almost 4 million SMEs in Korea; they account for as much as 99.9% of the total number of firms, account for 85% of jobs. The under-development of SMEs means therefore the difficulty of job creation and the unfair income distribution. Thus, free trade agreements have been one of the factors which prevent the normal healthy development of SMEs and job creation.

2.3.4 Unfair Income Distribution

The export friendly policy has another serious problem; it worsens the fairness of income distribution. The exporting companies use more and more labour- cost-saving high technology to be competitive. The exports of goods generate the labour income and the capitalist income. As the exports increase, the gap between these two types of incomes widens. In fact, according to the official data in South Korea, in recent years, labour income has not increased or decreased, while the capitalist income rose by more than 15%.

The trend of the widening income disparity is a universal phenomenon. But, before the coming of the Washington Consensus, the government intervened to narrow the income gap through the progressive income tax and the transfer payment. Unfortunately, under the neoliberal regime, the government is powerless, because the large corporations dictate the government policy. This was especially pronounced in South Korea under the conservative government which has ruled South Korea for 58 years out of 70 years since WWII.

2.3.5 The Industry State Dispute Settlement System (ISDS)

One of the troubling aspects of free trade agreements is the ISDS. This is a mechanism of settling disputes between the host government and foreign corporations which are investing in the areas of natural resource development and even public utilities. If the corporation thinks that it has lost profit because of the host government’s interventions, the arising dispute is settled through a “tribunal” composed of representatives of parties concerned.

Canada is one of the countries which have lost most in the ISDS. Within the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), Canada lost 6 cases of disputes paying US $171 million. The U.S. won 11 cases; it has won all the cases. In most of the cases, Canada has lost by trying to protect the environment and public welfare.

The Canadian government did put a ban on the export of toxic PCB wastes. S.D. Myers, an American Co. waste disposal company sued the Canadian government and got US$ 6 million. The Canadian government applied guidelines for foreign offshore oil investments. The U.S. oil giant Exxon Oil sued and got US$ 17.3 million. Canada imposed a ban on the import of MMT a gasoline derivative. Canada was sued by Ethyl Corporation, an American Company, and Canada lost US$ 15 million. One can go on and on illustrating how Canada could have been prevented from protecting its environment because of the NAFTA’s ISDS.

The ISDS has the following problems. First, it seriously challenges the sovereignty of the host country in resource development and environment protection. Second, the tribunal of the ISDS is composed of the representatives of parties involved in the dispute who are not always those who know international laws and the tribunal may come up with unjust judgment. Third, to the extent that the process of the ISDS is highly political, the corporations of militarily and diplomatically dominating nations may have upper hand and get the better deal. In fact, it is a known fact that corporations from North America are known to be bullying the governments of developing countries.

2.4 The Structural Adjustment

The structural adjustment policy of the IMF is the condition of loans and it is applied without proper considerations for cultural and political conditions of the debtor countries.

The policy of Structural Adjustment is designed to facilitate the debt repayment. It has two main parts. First, it requires harsh fiscal discipline; it requires drastic cut in public spending and balanced budget. This measure ends up with deep cut in welfare spending; this makes citizens’ life miserable, a life which is already hard to cope with. Second, it requires harsh monetary policy leading to very high interest rate which invites inevitably mass unemployment and wide-spread bankruptcies of firms. In the 1997 crisis in South Korea, interest rate was as high as 20%. Third, the value of the national currency fell to the bottom from about 1,000 Korean Won per American dollar to 1,700 Korean Won

These measures have led, in South Korea, to the dreadful bankruptcies of several thousand firms, galloping inflation, massive unemployment and deep recession. But, South Korea could pay back the debts before the debt maturity date owing to solid macroeconomic environment and heroic devotion of the population. We still remember how millions of ordinary Koreans donated gold wedding rings, gold necklaces and other small gold items in order to facilitate the debt repayment

2.5 Global Production Chain (GPC) 

The free trade agreement has allowed major multinational corporations (MNC) to acquire, at low cost, raw materials, parts and components from developing countries and assemble them into finished goods to be exported to advanced countries. This is the global production chain.

It is true that this process allowed developing countries to increase GDP and exports of goods and services. But, it has two problems. On the one hand, these countries have to keep wage as low as possible, otherwise, the production chain moves to another country of lower wage. Thus, the host country has the risk of being caught in the prison of poverty. On the other hand, since the GPC is not integrated into the overall local economy, its impact on the sustained development of the host country economy is very limited.

3. What Next? 

The Washington version of neo-liberalism is, in reality, not a new liberalism; it is going back to the 19th-century laissez-faire regime in which the strong exploits the weak. In the laissez-faire regime, the market is governed by the “invisible hand”; it is the hand of price mechanism. Whenever there is demand-supply gap and the price departs from the original equilibrium position, the invisible hand intervenes and the original equilibrium price is restored. The invisible hand insures, in theory, the establishment of the market stability.

But, in order that the laissez-faire system works, the market should be one of perfect competition. To have such competition, the market should be perfect in such a way that there should be a great number of producers; there should be neither monopoly not oligopoly; the goods should be perfectly mobile; both the consumer and the producer should have perfect market information; the goods should be homogenous and perfect substitute. What is important is that there should be no government. But, the reality is far from being such a perfect market.

It is true that the invisible hand works, but it works with crooked fingers in such a way that the market equilibrium may not be secured.

We need the free market but we need also strong government.

Our experience with the neo-liberalism makes us to re-examine the meaning of the success of economic doctrine and economic policies. Up to now, we have been focusing, as criteria of such success, on the GDP growth; most of the international organizations including the World Bank, the IMF, OECD and others evaluate the performance of national economies in terms of GDP growth.

But, is this really the right way of judging the economies? What we have learned from living with neo-liberalism is that we need another criterion for judging the performance of national economies; it is the fair distribution of income. Even the most ardent proponent of the neo-liberalism, namely the IMF, is now recognizing that the neo-liberalism has worsened the national income distribution.

The fair income distribution claims its right for two reasons. First, the good old Judeo-Christian tradition of the Western world requires that the rich should look after the poor and the weak; this is the matter of human decency and social justice. If the western civilization has flourished for so long, it is precisely because of these virtues.

The second reason is something more down-to-earth thing. As we saw above, one of the worst performances of the neoliberal economic regime is the  concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few. But this means that the vast majority of the people have less and less income and weaker and weaker purchasing power. What come after is economic down fall.

Thus, the very success of the neoliberal economic regime brings down the economy.

The neo-liberalism has caused the financial crisis in 2007-2008; the world economy has been barely surviving because of the massive injection of money into the economy. But, the benefit of this desperate measure is dying. Nobody knows where the world economy will go.

Are there any other economic regimes better than the neo-liberalism? Should we go back to the Keynesian remedy? How about hybrid system of socialism cum private market system? To be more precise, should we adopt the Beijing Consensus? This concept was coined in 2016 by Joshua Cooper Ramo and it has been discussed by numerous experts in Chinese affairs. The discussion on the concept may be summarized as follow.

The Beijing Consensus, or simply the Chinese economic model, is a hybrid model. In this model, there are, by and large, three groups of enterprises: the government-owned enterprises (GOEs), the joint-enterprises (government-private enterprises or local enterprises-foreign enterprises) and the genuine private enterprises.

At the bottom, there are the private firms mainly in the agricultural sector; at the middle, the joint-enterprises producing a variety of goods and services for export and domestic consumption; at the top, the GOEs produce goods and services which are essential for the sustained development of the economy including steel, telecommunication, transport and energy.

The role of each type of enterprises evolves in time and in space. The GOEs have been the leading the economy, but its relative importance in the Chinese economy is now 30%, much lower than what they have been. As the economy develops, the private enterprises will increase in importance and replace the other two types of enterprises.

There is no doubt that the Chinese model has made possible the Chinese miracle. However, it has many problems including, the difficulty of coordinating the rules and regulations governing the different types of enterprises, the biased finance in favour of the GOEs, the collusion between the GOE and ranking Party members which lead inevitably to the corruption practices.

Nevertheless, nobody can deny the fact that without the strong government interventions, China’s economic miracle would have been impossible. That is, neo-liberalism would have been useless in China.

By the way, the Chinese model is very popular among developing countries; the utility and the relevance of the Washington Consensus are more and more questioned. One of the reasons for the popularity of the China model is its non-interference in the internal affairs of the country which receives Chinese aid. On this point, the China model is very different from the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policy

My final remark is this. What we need at this time of search for more universally applicable economic models is neither the Washington Consensus nor the Beijing Consensus; we need a Global Consensus allowing each country to combine the virtues of the free-market and the usefulness of the government not only for the growth of the economy but also, in particular, more equitable distribution of income generated by the growth.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is co-director of the East-Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Research Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

In the dramatic escalation of tariff escalations and trade war tensions between China and the USA, China President Xi Jinping made a well-timed visit to see the JL Mag Rare-Earth Company Ltd., a state-owned complex in Ganzhou. Though he did not openly threaten, he sent a clear psychological message to Washington that China has more “weapons” in its arsenal to pressure the Trump Administration. What is the nature of the China role in rare earth minerals mining and how serious is the likelihood they could weaponize it?

In a May 20 article the China government paper, Global Times, wrote of the Xi Jinping visit, “The visit [is] seen as a sign of backing from the top leadership for the domestic rare-earth industry.” They further noted not so subtly,

“Many have suggested that China should limit rare-earth exports to the US as a countermeasure to the US decision to slap tariffs on Chinese goods and cut supplies of semiconductors for Chinese companies.”

The paper makes a point to note that rare earth metals from China were “among the few items excluded from the latest US tariff list.”

The question is how serious would it impact the US economy were China to ban exports of rare earths to the USA? Short answer, very serious.

In addition to its use in most electronic devices such as smart phones or laptops, rare earth minerals are absolutely essential to the Pentagon and the US military forces. According to Breaking Defense newsletter, rare earth components are essential for such major weapons systems as the nuclear-powered SSN-774 Virginia-class fast attack submarine; the DDG-51 Aegis destroyer; the F-35 Joint Strike fighter among others. They note that “Rare earths are also essential to precision-guided munitions, lasers, satellite communications, radar, sonar and other military equipment, added a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.”

Import dependency

Now the next question is to what degree is the US economy, especially its defense industrial base dependent on imports of China rare earths? The answer is almost 100%. According to a December, 2017 report by the US Geological Survey, China today supplies more than 90% of world rare earths. This has been the case since the late 1990s when the Government of China prioritized its development of the vital minerals.

The rare earth elements group are generally denoted as 15 elements that range in atomic number from 57 (lanthanum) to 71 (lutetium), commonly referred to as the “lanthanides.” Some listings include Yttrium as well. The strongest magnets known, neodymium-iron-boron magnets, use rare earths, as do catalysts in petroleum refining.

In terms of known reserves, the USGS estimates that China has 55 million metric tons of REEs, most in Inner Mongolia. Global REE reserves are calculated at some 130 million metric tons led by, in decreasing order of reserves, China, Brazil, Australia, and India.

The Death of US Rare Earths

Most astonishing in the saga of rare earths today is the history of the United States as a major producer of REEs. Until 1995 the United States was the world’s largest producer of processed rare earths. According to the USGS, the US has approximately 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements, mainly in California, Alaska, and Wyoming and Texas.

The largest mining facility was Mountain Pass Mine in the Mojave Desert in California, owned by various interests, originally by Union Oil, later Chevron. Mountain Pass was forced to close over environmental spill charges in 2002 but after reorganizing, reopened in 2010 when a China rare earth embargo aimed at Japan forced world metals prices skyhigh. Japan’s Sumitomo participated in the upgrading of Mountain Pass. With the higher prices, by 2014 it was producing 4,700 tons of rare earths a year. However, when China ended its rare earth export ban in late 2014 and world supplies were abundant, prices collapsed and Mountain Pass owners, now Molycorp Minerals LLC, were forced to file for bankruptcy in 2015.

The full saga of the demise of the entire US rare earths mining and processing industry and the rise of China as world leader in merely a quarter century requires a separate treatment. A key part was played by the sale of another vital us rare earths company once owned by GM but sold to an investor group headed by Archibald Cox, jr, called Magnequench. Magnequench was then sold to a group of Chinese investors and its US facilities closed in 2000 and all equipment moved to China. In 1998, during the Clinton Presidency, astonishingly, a decision was also made to have the Pentagon sell its entire strategic reserve of rare earths. The same year, the last US producer of rare earth metals and alloys, Rhodia Incorporated, closed its processing facility in Texas and built a new one in Mongolia.

Ironically, Defense One journal notes that “even though American mining companies extract enough rare earth ore, through mining other metals, to meet 85% of global demand, it is discarded because the regulations make it uneconomic to mine.”

GAO Warning

In 2016 during the Obama Administration, the Congressional GAO issued a report on the state of rare earths. It warned, “rare earths are essential to the production, sustainment, and operation of US military equipment. Reliable access to the necessary material, regardless of the overall level of defense demand, is a bedrock requirement for DOD.” Obama Defense Secretary Ashton Carter failed to take any measures to address the vulnerability.

In one of his first acts as President, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order commissioning the most comprehensive inter-departmental government defense industrial base review. Shortly before the report was made public last December, Ellen Lord, Pentagon Undersecretary for Acquisition and Sustainment, said that once they looked in detail at the reliance the American defense industry has placed on China for critical minerals, the results were “quite alarming…we have an amazing amount of dependency on China. They are sole sources for rare earth minerals, some energetics, different things. This is a problem for us as we move forward.”

The problem is that it takes years to rebuild sophisticated mining and rare earth processing facilities, let alone to recruit the engineers and others essential to it. Unless the Pentagon has been quietly stockpiling rare earths, a declaration of China rare earth export embargo would be a huge strategic escalation. However, it would have huge consequences as well for China in an escalation that quickly could get out of control. At this point a China rare earth ban remains an unspoken threat only. One can hope it remains so for the sake of world peace.

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

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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

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

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

The vultures of the British conservative party have gathered, and the individual who seemed to thrive in failure, to gain momentum in defeat, has finally yielded.  UK Prime Minister Theresa May will leave the way for change of leadership on June 7.  Never known for any grand gestures of emotion, the Maybot finally gave way to it.

It had begun rather optimistically in 2016.  May would preside over a Britain leaving the European Union in good order.  She even dared suggest that an agenda of domestic reform might be implemented.  Neither has transpired, and clues were already apparent with the blithely optimistic trio in charge of overseeing the Brexit process: David Davis, as a fabulously ill-equipped Brexit Secretary, Liam Fox holding the reins as international trade secretary and Boris Johnson keeping up appearances at the Foreign Office.  But for all that it was May who seemed to insist that all was possible: the UK could still leave the customs union and single market, repudiate free movement and wriggle out of the jurisdiction of the European Court.  Independent trade deals with non-EU countries would be arrived at but similar trading agreements could still continue in some form with the EU. And there would be no Irish border issue. 

Problems, however, surfaced early.  May’s leadership style problematic.  Her cabinet reshuffles (read bloodletting) did much to create animosity.  Some eight ministers were sacked in the first round, with all but one under 50 at the time.  They were, as Stephen Bush puts it, “right in the middle of their political careers, a dangerous time to leave them with nothing to lose.” 

Her decision to go to the polls in 2017 to crush the opposition was also another act of a folly-ridden leader.  From a position of strength from which she could instruct her party on the hard truths of Brexit instead of covering their ears, she gave Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn ample kicking room to revive his party while imposing upon herself a considerable handicap.  EU negotiators knew they were negotiating with a significantly weakened leader. 

Then came the cold showers, initiated by such wake-up alarms as shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer’s suggestion in 2017 that a transitional phase would have to come into effect after the UK had thrown off the EU.  As Starmer observed at the time, “Constructive ambiguity – David Davis’s description of the government’s approach – can only take you so far.”

May duly suffered three horrendous defeats in Parliament, all to do with a failure to pass the Withdrawal Agreement, and fought off the daggers of usurpation within her own party. She had also had to convince the EU that two extensions to Brexit were warranted. The last throw of the dice featured bringing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to the negotiating table.  To a large extent, that had been encouraged by the third failure to pass the Withdrawal Agreement on March 29^th. 

On May 21, the prime minister outlined the latest incarnation of a plan that has never moved beyond the stage of life support.  It had that air of a captain heading for the iceberg of inevitability.  She remained committed “to deliver Brexit and help our country move beyond the division of the referendum and into a better future.”  It was spiced with the sweet nothings of forging that “country that works for everyone”, all with “the chance to get on in life and to go as far as their own talent and hard work can take them”. 

She hoped for alternative arrangements to the Irish backstop. The new Brexit deal would “set out in law that the House of Commons will approve the UK’s objectives for the negotiations on our future relationship with the EU and they will approve the treaties governing that relationship before the Government signs them.”  A new Workers’ Rights Bill would be introduced to guarantee equivalent protections to UK workers afforded to those in the EU, perhaps even better.  No change to the level of environmental protection would take place, something to be policed by a new Office of Environmental Protection.  But May’s concessions on the subject of a customs union and a proposed second referendum as part of the package, both largely designed to placate Labour, were too much for her cabinet.  Her resignation was assured.

The resignation speech was a patchwork attempt to salvage a difficult legacy.  It was “right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high.”  But it would be for her “successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum. To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in parliament where I have not.” 

She had led “a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government on the common ground of British politics”. She spoke of “a union of people”, standing together regardless of background, skin colour “or who we love”.  In an effort to move beyond a pure and exclusive focus on Brexit, she tried to single out such domestic achievements as gender pay reporting and the race disparity audit.  This led such conservative outlets as The Spectator to wonder whether such initiatives had “invented victimhood where none existed.”

There will be as many post-mortems on May’s tenure as Brexit proposals.  Steve Richards, writing for The New European, felt May never had a chance.  It was a period of uncertainty made permanent.  With each Brexit secretary resignation, with each parliamentary defeat of the exit plan, “nothing much happened, only an accumulative sense of doom.”  That was a ready-made outcome. 

The list of contenders seeking to replace May is a who’s who of agents, less of assuring stability than guaranteed chaos shadowed by enormous question marks.  Furthermore, anyone willing to offer themselves up for replacement is likely to face similar treatment to that given May. 

The current stable of contenders are of varying, uneven talents.  Environment secretary Michael Gove and former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab were rather late to the fold.  They joined Matt Hancock, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Rory Stewart.  Political watchers and the party faithful will be keeping an eye on wobbliness and wavering: foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt had campaigned in the 2016 referendum to remain in the UK; likewise the self-touted tech-savvy Hancock. 

With an individual such as Boris Johnson, you are assured a spell of chaos.  Incapable of mastering a brief, his temperament is utterly hostile to stable ministerial appointments.  He tries to make up for that with a buffoonish, public school air that treats certain character flaws as gifts of eccentricity.  While he is liked amongst the conservative fan base, his parliamentary colleagues are not so sure.  The Bold as British formula is only going to carry you so far; the hard negotiators in the EU will attest to that.

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

Featured image is from TruePublica

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New Syria Chemical Attack Blamed on Government. Reports Fostered Divisions Among U.S. Allies

By Firas Samuri, May 26, 2019

On May 19, 2019, several Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (ex. Jabhat al-Nusra) militants reported on the use of the chemical weapons in settlement of Al-Kabina by the Syrian Army (SAA). The mainstream media immediately replicated this news and a number of states brought charges against Damascus.

Accusations of Chemical Weapons Use by the Syrian Army Nullified by Fact-Checking

By Ahmad Al Khaled, May 26, 2019

Syrian government forces allegedly committed yet another chemical attack, local opposition affiliated media reported last Sunday.

Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age

By Ellen Brown, May 26, 2019

Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.

The Bolivarian Revolution and the Warmongering “Pacifists”

By Arnold August, May 26, 2019

There is only one reason the US has so far not been able to take the military option off the table and put it into action. It is not because it has any qualms about military invasion of other countries, but rather because it has failed miserably in its over ambitious attempt to break up the civilian–military alliance, an explicit precondition for the military option, at least for the time being.

Marginalizing Migrants and People of Colour Within the Labour Movement: Dialogues on Race and Class

By Michael Welch, Abayomi Azikiwe, and Chris Ramsaroop, May 26, 2019

A standard claim of union activists is that they are fighting to improve the lot, not just of their union brethren, but of society as a whole. However, evidence indicates that the benefits that have been had are not equitably distributed.

Saudi Ship of Death Halted in Europe

By Steven Sahiounie, May 25, 2019

In a collective demonstration of solidarity between European civilians and the suffering Yemeni civilians, the Saudi ship Bahri Yanbu was turned away from ports in France and Italy without loading its deadly cargo of weapons.

Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia

By Manlio Dinucci, May 25, 2019

Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

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While the Donald Trump administration is threatening two new wars on Iran and Venezuela, a substantial majority of the US Congress is clamoring for more immediate action.

Nearly 400 Congress members from both chambers — roughly 75 percent of all federal US lawmakers — have signed an open letter calling on President Trump to escalate the war in Syria, in the name of countering Iran, Russia, and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Top Democratic Party leaders have joined hawkish Republicans in a bipartisan demand that the far-right president “address threats in Syria” and “demonstrate American leadership in resolving the prolonged conflict.”

They hope to do this through more US intervention, implementing a three-pronged “Syria strategy”: one, “augment our support” for Israel and maintain its “qualitative military edge”; two, “increase pressure on Iran and Russia”; and, three, “increase pressure on Hezbollah.”

While the letter stops short of openly requesting more American troops inside Syria, it clearly states that the US should take more aggressive actions. It also expressly calls on the Trump White House to punish Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah with crippling sanctions.

Among the signatories are 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker. (The full list is here (PDF file).)

The letter was notably not signed by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Tulsi Gabbard, both 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who are running left-wing, anti-war campaigns.

The Congressional call does not even feign concern for the humanitarian situation of Syrians, or make any pretense of supporting the “Syrian people.” Rather, it is entirely framed within a chauvinistic perspective of expanding American power, protecting Israel, and weakening “US adversaries.”

“The conflict in #Syria is complicated, and the potential solutions are not perfect, but our only choice is to advance policies that can stop the growing threats to U.S. interests.”@RepEliotEngel, @RepMcCaul, @SenatorRisch, & @SenatorMenendez led the bicameral effort. pic.twitter.com/yuIvOukhcn

— House Foreign Affairs Committee (@HouseForeign) May 20, 2019

The letter fearmongers about the presence of Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah in Syria, all of which are fighting in alliance with Syria’s internationally recognized government, which sits at the United Nations, and which has requested their support.

The bipartisan document claims that the “region has also been destabilized by Iranian regime’s threatening behavior,” adding that “Russia’s destabilizing role only complements that of Iran,” and that “Hezbollah now poses a more potent threat to Israel as well.”

The Democratic chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Eliot Engel, and the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, James Risch, helped to lead the letter campaign.

It was also signed by Democratic Party leaders Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton loyalists such as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Kaine. Russiagate figurehead Adam Schiff lent his name, along with neoconservative Republicans like Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Ted Cruz. Republican white nationalist Rep. Steve King’s name also appeared on the letter.

Even some Democrats who have been outspoken opponents of the US-Saudi war on Yemen like Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Ted Lieu were signatories.

The letter goes on to express “deep concern” about “pockets of ungoverned space [that] have allowed terrorist groups, such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and their affiliates, to keep parts of Syria in their stranglehold.”

Left unacknowledged in the congressional letter is the way that US intervention in Syria in fact fueled the spread of these extremist groups. The multi-billion-dollar arm-and-equip program — the largest since the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan in the 1980s — funneled weapons to ISIS and Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the biggest affiliate of the Salafi-jihadist group since 9/11.

Former Barack Obama administration officials even admitted that their proxy war and intervention by US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey greatly strengthened these radical Islamist groups.

The letter reflects the national security state’s perpetual feedback loop, where US military intervention fuels extremist groups, and then the strength and persistence of these extremist groups is in turn used to justify further US military intervention to fight them.

The Trump White House’s growing threats against Iran

The US Congress is often a site of bipartisan belligerence. In 2018, not a single member of the legislature opposed the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions on Nicaragua’s leftist government.

The latest missive reflects a yearning for more war from the leadership of both major political parties, at a moment when the Trump administration is ratcheting up US aggression against numerous countries.

US sanctions on Venezuela led to the preventable deaths of some 40,000 Venezuelans in 2017 and 2018, and the Trump administration is hardly concealing its ambition to starve the Venezuelan population as a whole by threatening sanctions on the government’s CLAP food program.

The Trump administration is also increasingly threatening Iran. On May 24, Trump announced that he will be sending 1,500 troops and a dozen fighter jets to the Middle East, in a significant escalation of US aggression against Tehran.

At the same time, the Trump administration declared an “emergency” to bypass Congressional oversight and expedite the sale of billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, an outsider in the 2020 presidential race, has helped lead the campaign against a potential US war on Iran.

In one of many anti-war tweets, Gabbard wrote: “Cost of Iran war? A region engulfed in bloodletting, countless lives, many trillions $, our ntnl security undermined, ISIS/AQ strengthened, massive immigration crisis, likely confrontation btwn US & nuclear Russia or China. War without end because ‘victory’ will remain undefined.”

Intel officials & politicians led us into Iraq war. Now Trump’s using the same playbook to lead our country into war with Iran. The cost in lives & treasure will be infinitely greater than the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Syria, and will undermine our ntnl security. #NoIranWar pic.twitter.com/BOdnJh33HE

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) May 20, 2019

Senator Bernie Sanders has also joined the movement against a war on Iran. He published a video on May 24 affirming, “I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I apologize to no one.”

I was right about Vietnam.

I was right about Iraq.

I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran.

I apologize to no one. pic.twitter.com/Lna3oBZMKB

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 24, 2019

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Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

On May 19, 2019, several Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (ex. Jabhat al-Nusra) militants reported on the use of the chemical weapons in settlement of Al-Kabina by the Syrian Army (SAA). The mainstream media immediately replicated this news and a number of states brought charges against Damascus. Thus, the State Department’s new spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, said there had been indications of new use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. She also warned that if Assad uses chemical weapons, the United States and its allies will respond quickly and appropriately. Then on May 23, Ortagus announced that the American leadership would not rush to conclusions until the end of its own investigation.

It is not the first time we hear such accusations. Earlier, the Western politicians and media spoke with one voice against the legitimate Syrian government, but now far from all supported the position of the United States.

For instance, the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in an interview with Deutsche Welle TV channel stated that Damascus didn’t use chemical weapons in Al-Kabina, and the information was spread by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. He also expressed surprise that the United States took the side of the radicals without understanding the circumstances of the incident. Moreover, the representatives of the White Helmets also disproved the information on the chemical attack.

These organizations have never been the supporters of the Syrian President, but even they did not dare to spread lies, jeopardizing its reputation.

However, such facts do not confuse the U.S. allies, including France and the UK, who instantly joined the American position and demanded an early investigation.

Such a situation looks quite familiar. Last spring, the American leadership based on the White Helmets footage of the alleged chemical attack initiated a missile attack on Syria. Only in February 2019, the independent investigation by BBC producer Riam Dalati proved that the footage was staged.

The U.S. has repeatedly accused the Syrian government in producing chemical weapons. Washington even has indicated the alleged place of a chemical plant that turned out to be a research center in Damascus. The OPCW commission also denied the U.S. allegations. As several years ago, the Syrian government destroyed its chemical arsenal under control of the OPCW.

It is doubtful that the statements of the U.S. establishment are aimed at finding the truth. Instead, the United States seeks to find a reason to use its cruise missiles. After all, the basis for the current charges is the ongoing SAA operation in Idlib province. After the full liberation of the region, Bashar Assad will come closer to the restoration of Syria’s territorial integrity. That’s why the White House is looking for any possibility to lend support to the militants.

So, in order to hamper the political resolution of the Syrian crisis, Western elites use any methods, including the support of terrorist groups. However, even their own means of propaganda and so-called human rights organizations are no ready to spread lies and discredit themselves in the eyes of the world community.

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The May 12 explosions off the coast of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates–one of the oil-shipping hubs across the globe–has become a controversy shrouded in mystery that could serve the interests of those seeking escalated tensions in Iran relations.

With details of the incident remaining obscure over a week later, it’s still unclear what happened and who was behind the explosions.

But a close look at the coverage of the incident by Western corporate media indicates they parroted the UAE/Saudi narrative and assisted them to cover up the real magnitude of the incident, instead of practicing skeptical professional journalism.

Media also worked hand in hand with the two oil kingdoms and also some western governments to implicate Iran in the case.

This is while there are plausible reasons those governments could have incentives to distort the genuine account and point a finger at Iran.

What Happened?

The incident was first emerged on May 12 morning by the Beirut-based TV channel Al-Mayadeen, which quoted “Gulf sources” as saying explosions were heard at the port, and seven ships anchored nearby had been damaged.

The Fujairah Media Office initially dismissed the reports, insisting it was business as usual at the port.

In the evening, however, the UAE Foreign Ministry released a short, vague statement that acknowledged the incident but sought to play it down.

The statement said only “four” of what it called “commercial vessels” had suffered “sabotage” near its territorial waters close to Fujairah, and there were no injuries, and no spill of chemicals or fuel.

Act of Sabotage?

Outlets in Russia, India, Iran and elsewhere immediately picked up the Al Mayadeen report, but the Western agencies were silent until hours later when the UAE issued its statement.

Russian, Iranian and Indian publications including the Times of India picked up the story from Al Mayadeen and reported there had been explosions. 

Even after the Western agencies published reports on the incident, they simply repeated the UAE and Saudi narrative. Typically, Western news media echoed the “sabotage” as if it were fact, sourcing their information to the Saudi and Emirati officials. As an example, Time headlined one of its stories “The U.S. Issues a Warning Amid Reports of Ships Being Sabotaged off the UAE Coast”.

At this time, there was no verifiable information about the “sabotage.” All they had were claims from Saudi and UAE officials, the same people who claim people disappear into thin air while in consulates, or that Yemeni children are massacred in air strikes by “mistake,” or that political dissidents are “terrorists” who must be beheaded by sword (FAIR.org, 5/15/19).

Advocates or Journalists? 

The Western agencies chose not to question the UAE/Saudi claims about what had happened.

Instead, some agencies inquired claims disputing the UAE/Saudi narrative, perhaps to further legitimize their account of the incident. As an instance, Reuters (5/12/19) contacted “trading and industry sources” and wrote in the third paragraph of its article that “operations were running smoothly” at the port.

Moreover, the US-based Associated Press (5/12/19) reported that claims by the “pro-Iran” Al-Mayadeen that “explosions had struck Fujairah’s port” were “false,” after it spoke to Emirati officials and local witnesses. AP makes the accusation in the lead of its main article on the incident, indicating the agency wants to put particular emphasis on its claim. The Al-Mayadeen report attributed to “Gulf sources” might contain some inconsistencies, but it seems AP appeared more like an advocate for the UAE and Saudi Arabia than a neutral news agency just doing its job.

Most other Western news media adopted the same reliance on the official Saudi and Emirati claims.

Playing Favorites

One wonders if Western outlets would treat the incident the same way if Saudi Arabia or the UAE were not client states who lavishly exchange their nations’ petrodollars for the West’s support.

And this is not something new. The western outlets, claimed to be freest and fairest in the world, have for a very, very long time been favoring Saudi Arabia and its wealthy Arab neighbours in their reporting.

An interesting illustration is New York Times, which for over 70 years has been working to put the Saudi family in a good light, according to a report.

A more recent example was the case of Jamal Khashoggi’s slaughter. Four days into the late journalist’s disappearance, the Saudi government gave an exclusive tour of the building to Reuters to demonstrate that Khashoggi was not there. Amusingly, Reuters quotes Saudi consul-general Mohammad al-Otaibi as saying there was no footage of Khashoggi inside the building as “the consulate was equipped with cameras but they did not record footage”! However, Reuters refuses to bring into question al-Otaibi’s account, as if the whole report was an expensive advertorial.

The same Western agencies who seem so credulous when citing Saudi/Emirati claims are highly skeptical toward assertions by official enemies like Iran. As an illustration, some Western agencies sought to cast doubt on Iran’s official account in 2017 when it launched missile attacks against ISIS positions in Syria; Reuters, for example, wrote in an article that “it could not independently verify the report” that Iran had targeted ISIS. In another instance, the Associated Press called into question an Iranian rocket launch in 2017 by headlining its report, “Iran Claims Launch of Satellite-Carrying Rocket Into Space.”

Oil Factor at Play?

The behavior of the Western corporate media regarding the Fujairah incident was similar to their treatment of reports on Saudi port of Yanbu published earlier this month.

On May 6, several outlets in Yemen, Iran and elsewhere reported that powerful explosions had been heard in Yanbu, the main shipping terminal for Saudi exports to the US and Europe. Western agencies ignored the reports, toeing the line of Saudi officials, who refused to provide comment on them.

This is while similar attacks against the port in 2017 and 2018 had been confirmed by Saudi sources, including the state-funded Al-Arabiya, which in 2018 claimed the Saudi forces had destroyed a Yemeni ballistic missile en route to Yanbu.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have an incentive to play down such incidents, lest the global oil market is negatively impacted at a time when escalating US pressure to cut off Iran’s oil exports has created worries over upsetting the oil market. The shortage of oil in the global markets, resulting at least partly from the US decision not to extend sanctions waivers for Iran’s oil customers, has already led to increased fuel prices in the US and Britain.

Iran Taking Blame

More than nine days into the incident, little information has been offered on what sort of weapon was used and who did it.
Yet many Western media linked the incident to the Iran/US standoff and went into detail regarding Iran’s role in the region, implying that Iran was the main culprit. Many outlets, notably BBC, Reuters, and AP, covered extensively claims by the US officials that Iran was most likely behind the case but failed to report Iran’s position.

This is while Iranian officials almost immediately condemned the attacks, with Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson warning against a “conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers” and “adventurism by foreigners” to undermine the Gulf region’s stability and security.

False Flag Operation?

Taking into account the incident came at a particularly sensitive time in the region and as the US is stepping up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, one could easily argue the explosions could be a well-planned false-flag operation organized by a state actor to incite hostilities with Iran.

Al Mayadeen first broke the news oil tankers anchored just off the coast were on fire. 

But given the US government’s eagerness to make accusations against Tehran and the corporate media’s willingness to suggest Iranian culpability, it appears that this incident could be seized upon by those eager to see tensions with Iran escalate.

With the results of a joint investigation by the UAE, the US and France to be announced in the coming days, one could anticipate western governments who have been busy wreaking havoc in the Middle East for the past couple of decades to rush to accuse Iran of disrupting peace in the region and call for measures to protect “security” and “stability” in the Persian Gulf.

The UAE has refused to elaborate on the nature of the “sabotage,” perhaps to prepare the ground for a powerful smear campaign against Iran, aided by outlets who feel no compunction about presenting unsubstituted claims as unchallenged facts.
Let’s hope the world has become smart enough not to be fooled into buying lies.

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This article was originally published on Tehran Times.

All images in this article are from Tehran Times

A few days ago I wrote a poem about the Red Army victory over the international forces of fascism in 1945, the poem called simply, The 9th of May, about the celebration date of the victory. The first stanza reads,

“Laughter lingered in the cold night air,

Like snowflakes caught in crystal glass,

Hurrahs rang out as tears were wept,

For the lost, returned, for memories kept,

Of the days we feared would never pass,

Unless we burned the monster’s lair.”

But the monster has taken on a new form, and the monster of war that is the United States, NATO and their allies, with its many Hydra heads, all aspects of western capital, is flexing its dark wings again, ready to spit flame and devastation on another people who hoped to avoid the gaze and the greed of the monster but are cursed because they possess what the monster wants and because they stand in its way.

Iran faces the threat of attack by the Americans that will be devastating no matter the outcome. The world faces the risk of world war. Yet, despite the examples of Yugoslavia, 911, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which demonstrate the complete ruthlessness of the American leadership, its psychopathic disdain for human life and civilization, people are falling into the trap of believing the latest contradictory statements from that leadership acting out a charade in which differences of opinion about war and peace are expressed, as if they are actually a democracy, as if they actually had morals and a love of humankind; all the better to lull the people into a state of confusion and torpor as they their make ready their nuclear weapons, run silent their submarines and prime their cruise missiles.

And what can be done about it? What is being done about it?

There are protests and calls for peace and disarmament, for a social and political system in which imperialism cannot exist, for a just world order. The World Peace Council has issued a statement, it’s various national affiliated peace councils, such as the Canadian Peace Council, have issued statements condemning the US threats and actions; communist and workers parties world wide, the real left, have all issued statements, organized actions, opposing the US aggression, individual activists, writers, intellectuals, artists and musicians, some unions, have joined in the calls for peace from the governments of countries that the monster wants to destroy: Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, Iran.

There are calls from these nations for a dialogue of civilizations instead of conflict between them but, while laudable, these calls are almost quaint when the problem is not conflict or misunderstanding between civilizations, for there is only one divided world civilization, but the criminal designs of the western powers against the rest of the world, driven by their insatiable desire to control all the resources, all the markets and all the profit.

The power of capital is what we are up against, of western capital in particular. The only force capable of resisting that power are all those who supply that capital with the profit they need to exist and continue; in other words us. But where are the mass street protests in the imperialist countries we saw take place when the US monster attacked other countries in the past as took place before they invaded Iraq? Where were they when they destroyed Libya in front of our eyes in 2011 and most said and did nothing or even supported it? Where are they as they continue to harass Syria, Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea with direct and economic warfare that is aimed at weakening and crippling those countries and which even are damaging the economies of the European countries?

I can’t answer that question without entering into the various explanations offered as to why the anti-war movement in the west has not ignited the mass of the people who will be made to pay for this war and suffer from it; fatigue and disillusionment from the mass demonstrations against the Iraq War that failed to stop the American invasion of 2003, the perceived futility of speaking out against anything in an overtly fascist political system, burn out of the core antiwar groups and individuals, plain fatigue.

A general strike in the imperialist countries would get their attention, threaten their power, their existence, but unions are weaker, workers disunited, turned against each other, distracted by the ever-changing news images on their screens, or the illusion we have actually done something by posting a note on Facebook or Twitter. Even in France where the popular protests against Macron’s attempt to make conditions worse for working people continue, the calls for a general strike gain no general support. We have surrendered mass action for mass communication, deluded ourselves into thinking we can change things by just writing an entry, posting a tragic photo of the victims of war, or expressing outrage at the latest crime of the day, on social media, but it achieves nothing.

We are individuals living in a society that wants each of us to act like Narcissus, to look in the mirror and love ourselves and keep spending the pittance in wages they throw at us so we can give it back to them the very next day, to think only of ourselves, not the others, our brothers and sisters around the world. So what can any individual do to oppose a war in a far-off land when their immediate daily problems are more pressing and the world’s problems are overwhelming? Not much, but then I wonder what would happen if each one of you, of us, decided not to go to work tomorrow. Just phoned in sick, refused to go to work until they got the message that we won’t work for them, make them their profit, until they listen to us, obey us, abandon their hegemonic plans, and work for peace instead of war. Imagine, if you will, as John and Yoko suggested, and then act if you have the will. But there seems to be no will to act by the mass of people who have surrendered their sovereign power to the cutthroats and gangsters who compose our governments.

So each day we wonder if Iran will be attacked or not attacked. We wonder whether the US will use nuclear weapons in that attack, what will happen to the rest of us as a consequence. We wonder if not Iran, then will it be Venezuela, or another assault on Syria, or Russia or China all of which the US treats as so many inferiors, countries whose only future in the American plans is to be colonies of US capital. And that is all that most of us do, sit around and wonder.

But it seems to me that the unless the mass of working people in the west stand up to join the peace and antiwar organizations so that they become a real movement, a force to be reckoned with, and take action to force our governments to abandon their colonial designs, their plans for more wars, we are doomed to stand on the edge of world destruction into the distant future and risk our imminent destruction at any time.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

There is a growing push in the U.S. Congress to slap sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The pipeline under construction would carry Russian natural gas to Germany, and has been a lightning rod of controversy both in Europe and across the Atlantic. Many governments and officials from Eastern Europe fear deeper dependence on Russia for gas supplies, a sentiment echoed by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, many in Western Europe are less concerned, viewing Russia as a rather reliable low-cost supplier of gas.

The U.S. has long tried to pry away Europe from Russia for geopolitical ends, and Nord Stream 2 is merely the latest chapter in this Cold War-era calculus. But, increasingly, the pipeline has commercial implications for the United States. The U.S. has become a major exporter of LNG, a position that will only grow over time with several gas export terminals along the Gulf Coast. The flood of shale gas is finding its way around the world.

At first, when U.S. LNG exports began in 2016, shipments were going to a smattering of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Soon, top importers included South Korea, Japan and China. Only a handful of countries in Europe have imported U.S. LNG in any significant way.

But that is starting to change with more U.S. shipments arriving in European ports. U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has likened U.S. gas to American soldiers liberating Europe from the Nazis.

“The United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent,” he told reporters in Brussels earlier this month. “And rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas.”

Over-the-top American bravado notwithstanding, U.S LNG shipments to Europe are on the rise. The wave of new LNG export terminals coming online this year – in the U.S., but also in Australia, among other places – has led to a glut for LNG. Spot prices in Asia have collapsed. Lower prices have made Europe a more attractive destination for gas, particularly as transit costs are lower than for shipments heading to Asia. The U.S.-China trade war has also boxed out American LNG from China, rerouting cargoes elsewhere.

As a result, more U.S. LNG has found its way to Europe (although in grand scheme of things, the U.S. is a marginal supplier of gas to Europe when compared to Russia, Norway or Algeria). However, gas prices in Europe, too, have collapsed, which pose a challenge to U.S. LNG exporters.

The U.S. government may offer a lifeline to gas exporters in Texas and Louisiana by targeting Nord Stream 2. Recently, Sec. Perry predicted that U.S. sanctions on Nord Stream 2 were coming in the “not too distant future.” Sanctions would hit companies working on the project.

It may or may not be a coincidence that some of the biggest proponents of sanctioning Nord Stream 2 hail from Texas, home to a growing number of LNG export terminals.

“We are looking at that issue,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, told Politico, referring to sanctions. “I think we’re going to have legislation on it as well. The pipeline is going to empower Russia. I’m against it,” Rep. McCaul said. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has spearheaded a sanctions bill in the Senate.

But, to be clear, the fight to punish Russia has bipartisan support. Politico’s Morning Energy pointed out that the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved a bill sponsored by Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA), which calls on Congress to “continue to oppose construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and other Russian Federation gas pipelines in northern Europe; and take affirmative diplomatic steps to halt the construction of such pipelines.” Meanwhile, the Chairman of the committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) told Politico that he was open to sanctions on technologies used for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The overarching motivation for American politicians in targeting Nord Stream 2 continues to be geopolitical – reducing European dependence on Russian gas. However, cutting down on Russia’s market share in Europe over the long run would also have major implications for the billions of dollars’ worth of investments along the U.S. Gulf Coast. And because there is almost no constituency in the Congress in favor of Nord Stream 2, Sec. Perry might be correct in saying that sanctions are on the way.

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Nick Cunningham is a freelance writer on oil and gas, renewable energy, climate change, energy policy and geopolitics. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.

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Ahmad Al Khaled is a Syrian journalist who specializes in covering foreign involvement in the Syrian conflict.

US President Donald Trump no longer has any cards to wave in the face of Iran nor any grounds for negotiation. He can only resort to more economic sanctions and wait by the phone for a call from Iran, unlikely in view of Iran’s clear decision to reject any negotiations for the time being. Humanitarian discussions, such as the mutual exchange of prisoners, may take place but are totally unrelated to the nuclear deal. Such exchanges can happen between enemies and even between countries at war. 

Donald Trump has succeeded in unifying the Iranian internal front to the point that President Rouhani no longer calls the US by name but refers to it as “the enemy” in his recent statements. Rouhani emphasizes that “there is no place for talking with the enemy,only for resistance”. Nevertheless, prevailing tensions are not dissuading countries like Oman, Qatar, Iraq and Switzerland from trying to ease tensions and carry clear messages that the US is not planning to go to war with Iran.

But Iran still insists on its rights: exporting its two million barrels of oil while anticipating partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal unless Europe  fills the gap created by the severe US sanctions. Two crucial points that Donald Trump can’t pull back from if he wants to avoid losing, politically, on the domestic level, everything he was won in his last years of office from the partisans of Israel. Trump made gifts of property he doesn’t own—Jerusalem and the Golan Heights -to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, to attract support from the strong Israeli lobby in the US. This lobby has proven its ability to control key positions in the mainstream media, social media and to influence important decisions and deciders in Washington. Trump needs the lobby’s support for his campaign for re-election to a second term in 2020.

Iran has become an important player in Trump’s 2020 re-election. Tehran contributed to the failure of President Jimmy Carter, the 39^th US President, to be re-elected through the US embassy hostage crisis and his unsuccessful hostage rescue in Iran (compounded by domestic economic difficulties and high interest rates). Trump’s “zero Iran oil exports” policy is failing – already China and Turkey have refused to halt oil imports from Iran – and his failure to prevent Iran from moving towards heightened nuclear capability when the 60 day limit expires. These miscarriages will certainly be used by the domestic political enemies of Trump in the next presidential campaign.

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iran has been weaned on the milk of US sanctions. This has taught Iran to adapt to recessions, find alternatives and increase its economic autonomy, even if these sanctions have been effective in slowing economic growth.

Since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon 1982, Iran has invested in its Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and Yemeni partners. Today Iran is reaping the rewards of this long-standing military and financial support. Through its partners, it has managed to prevent Israel from occupying Lebanon and imposing peace on its own terms, it has prevented the fall of the Syrian government, created a solid relationship with Iraq, supported the Houthis in Yemen and reconstructed its alliance with the Taliban.

Following the al-Fujairah and Aramco attacks, Iran’s message to Trump was clear: in any conflict with Iran, the front will not be limited to Iranian geography but will extend over a vast territory orchestrated by Iran and its allies and will expand to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The Al-Fujairah and Aramco attacks benefitted Iran and lessened the chances of war. However, the rocket launched into Baghdad’s Green zone (the area where foreign embassies and governmental institutions are located), a mile away from the US embassy, was on balance not helpful to Iran and Iraq. Iran’s partners – Asaeb Ahl al-Haq, Hezbollah Iraq, BADR – condemned the rocket launching as “inappropriate, bad-timing and not serving any purpose”. It was launched on a day when the US and Iran were easing tensions and expressing their intention to avoid any military confrontation. Nonetheless, the attack did show how US forces – who have invested 7 trillion dollars in Iraq – are standing on ground that could turn extremely hostile when the time comes (a war or a message sent by Iran).

Iran, an expert in dealing with economic hardship, has today the choice to partially withdraw from the nuclear deal in case Europe doesn’t stand up to its commitments and fill the void created by the severe US sanctions. One thing is certain: Trump is doing everything in his power to help Iran fully withdraw from the nuclear deal and become a nuclear country with military capability.

Russian President Vladimir Putin – during a meeting with the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Sochi – warned that “Russia is not the fire brigade  and cannot rescue everything”.

“Iran is fulfilling all of its obligations. The Americans withdrew and the deal is falling apart. Europe is in no position to do much to save it and compensate Iran. As soon as Iran will pull out, the world will forget how Trump pushed the US out of the deal and instead will blame Iran”, said Putin.

Pompeo is dictating his twelve conditions as though Iran had lost a war. The US must be well aware that Iran cannot compromise or negotiate on any of these conditions, which directly challenge Iranian national security. The US is now aware that Iran believes in its right to nuclear technology for civilian and research purposes; but the development of its missiles is Iran’s protection from foreign attacks and support for its allies in the Middle East, and is vital to its existence and defence.

Just as the US has the right to defend itself and have allies in the Middle East, so do Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. The tension between the US and Iran is winding down. The next rendezvous  will be in less than 60 days, when Europe announces its success or failure in offering Iran what is needed to stop its partial or full withdrawal from the JCPOA and the reduce its prospects of nuclear military capability.

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Ellen Brown has just released a new book that is available for pre-order. 

Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.

Reviews

“Banking on the People is a compelling and fast-moving primer on the new monetary revolution by the godmother of the public banking movement now emerging throughout the country. Brown shows how our new understanding of money and its creation, long concealed by bankers and others capturing the benefits for their own purposes, can be turned to support the public in powerful new ways.” —  Gar Alperovitz, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, Co-Founder of The Democracy Collaborative and author of America Beyond Capitalism and other books

“More lucidly that any other expert I know, Ellen Brown shows in Banking on the People how we can break the grip of predatory financialization now extracting value from real peoples’ productive activities all over the world. This book is a must read for those who see the promising future as we seek to widen democracies and transform to a cleaner, greener, shared prosperity.” — Hazel Henderson, CEO of Ethical Markets Media and author of Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age and other books

“Ellen Brown shows that there is a much better alternative to Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Public banks can safeguard public funds while avoiding the payday loans, redlining, predatory junk-mortgage loans and add-on small-print extras for which the large commercial banks are becoming notorious.” — Michael Hudson, Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author of Killing the Host and other books

“Banking on the People offers a tour de force for those activists, NGOs, and academics wanting to understand the forces at play when we talk about the democratization of finance. A must read!” — Thomas Marois, Senior Lecturer, SOAS University of London, author of States, Banks and Crisis and other publications

Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age

Author: Ellen Brown

Publisher: Democracy Collaborative (June 1, 2019)

ISBN-10: 0998471917

ISBN-13: 978-0998471914

Click here to pre-order.

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A 38-year old man, a Muslim convert from Alabama, is a threat to America, according to the war party and its nameless “authorities.”

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This man is being released in Northern Virginia 3 years early for “good behavior” : In letter, 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh said ISIS 'doing a spectacular job'
Via @NBCNews @KenDilanianNBC https://t.co/r3HsglearN

— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) May 23, 2019

Soon as John Walker Lindh was released from prison, the “Make America Great Again” MAGAites piled on, echoing Trump and his neocons (who are responsible for mainstreaming hatred of Islam, embracing apartheid Israel, and violating a raft of international laws). 

Y’all are mad @realDonaldTrump is set to pardon our American warfighters but this is okay? This piece of trash set to be released and I don’t hear @HillaryClinton squawking about it being “grotesque.” https://t.co/4NJnW4BIhw

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) May 21, 2019

For so many MAGAites, it’s about Hillary, the Democrats, and a select few Republicans who worked against Trump during the election. 

The willful stupidity and viciousness of the average MAGAite should not be underestimated. Facts are irrelevant, even despised. 

For instance, here is the Queen of Islamophobia, Pam Geller. 

American Taliban Abu Sulayman (John Walker Lindh), who fought and killed US soldiers, set to walk free Thursday: He should have faced a firing squad. Sulayman continues to call for violent jihad. https://t.co/AKingWdMSE pic.twitter.com/Pz64oOLkmR

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) May 22, 2019

If she had bothered to investigate this case, she would realize Lindh didn’t kill Americans and murder was not part of the case against him.

This is, of course, irrelevant for Geller and other Zionists. She can get away with telling such lies because most Americans are ignorant of what the government is doing—mass murder, theft, war crimes—and after two decades of incessant propaganda, fabrication, and lies now believe all Muslims are killers. 

Lindh reportedly fought with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, a CIA-supported group. If he killed anybody—and there is no evidence he did—it would have been Afghans fighting against the Taliban, a group of Wahhabi-esque fanatics supported by the US until it was decided Afghanistan would need to be invaded and the Taliban wiped out before an oil pipeline could move forward. 

It would seem most Americans really don’t care if the US military has invaded and occupied countries, killing millions. It is now considered a dangerous psychopathic serial killer by the rest of the world. 

So well trained—like Pavlov’s dogs—are most Americans, they believe obvious lies about Venezuela, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Libya, etc. So out of touch with reality—and plugged into an alternate reality designed by the state and corporations—are the American people, they now instinctively buy into the humanitarian interventionist agenda of Democrats, Republicans, and a MAGA president who is almost entirely clueless, an idiot savant only able to tweet and repeat adjectives. 

NEW: CIA Officer Mike Spann was the first American KIA post-9/11. I spoke with his daughter Alison Spann @newsgirlalison, who blasted the early release of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban who was part of the prison uprising where her dad was killed.https://t.co/R6dOBj4IeV

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) May 22, 2019

Alison, your father was killed as a result of an illegal and criminal invasion. He was an invader working for a national security state that has overthrown dozens of governments and killed thousands, if not millions, with its subversive behavior since the end of the Second World War, an orchestrated event designed to make the US an indispensable and exceptional nation able to plow over countries where oil, minerals, and other precious natural resources are coveted by a bankster and corporate elite. 

So long as the ruling elite, its media and academics, are able to tell lies without pushback—or rather a small amount of resistance, which is ignored and dismissed as extremism—it will be able to hoodwink the public and motivate them with more lies and patriotic gobbledegook to support organized mass murder ahead of grand larceny. 

The rest of the world knows the United States is a rabid, irrational, and violent predator. The American people, however, remain clueless and shamefully disinterested in the fact the country is run by psychopaths and serial murderers. 

More often than not, arch war criminals like Henry Kissinger, Clinton, Bush, and Obama are celebrated as “elder statesmen,” and soldiers involved in unspeakable crimes are portrayed as saviors.

I’m told over and over I need to thank them for their “service” in destroying and raping the rest of the world, which a fine-tuned Bernaysian propaganda and lie machine have distorted into a quest to give the rest of the world the neoliberal version of democracy and freedom. 

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The century-old tradition that the Espionage Act not be used against journalistic activities has now been broken. Seventeen new charges were filed yesterday against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. These new charges make clear that he is being prosecuted for basic journalistic tasks, including being openly available to receive leaked information, expressing interest in publishing information regarding certain otherwise secret operations of government, and then disseminating newsworthy information to the public. The government has now dropped the charade that this prosecution is only about hacking or helping in hacking. Regardless of whether Assange himself is labeled a “journalist,” the indictment targets routine journalistic practices.

But the indictment is also a challenge to fundamental principles of freedom of speech. As the Supreme Court has explained, every person has the right to disseminate truthful information pertaining to matters of public interest, even if that information was obtained by someone else illegally. The indictment purports to evade this protection by repeatedly alleging that Assange simply “encouraged” his sources to provide information to him. This places a fundamental free speech right on uncertain and ambiguous footing.

A Threat To The Free Press

Make no mistake, this not just about Assange or Wikileaks—this is a threat to all journalism, and the public interest. The press stands in place of the public in holding the government accountable, and the Assange charges threaten that critical role. The charges threaten reporters who communicate with and knowingly obtain information of public interest from sources and whistleblowers, or publish that information, by sending a clear signal that they can be charged with spying simply for doing their jobs. And they threaten everyone seeking to educate the public about the operation of government and expose government wrongdoing, whether or not they are professional journalists.

Assistant Attorney General John Demers, head of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, told reporters after the indictment that the department “takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it,” and that it’s not the government’s policy to target them for reporting. But it’s difficult to separate the Assange indictment from President Trump’s repeated attacks on the press, including his declarations on Twitter, at White House briefings, and in interviews that the press is “the enemy of the people,” “dishonest,” “out of control,” and “fake news.” Demers’ statement was very narrow—disavowing the “targeting” of journalists, but not the prosecution of them as part of targeting their sources. And contrary to the DOJ’s public statements, the actual text of the Assange Indictment sets a dangerous precedent; by the same reasoning it asserts here, the administration could turn its fervent anti-press sentiments into charges against any other media organization it disfavors for engaging in routine journalistic practices.

Most dangerously, the indictment contends that anyone who “counsels, commands, induces” (under 18 USC §2, for aiding and abetting) a source to obtain or attempt to obtain classified information violates the Espionage Act, 18 USC § 793(b). Under the language of the statute, this includes literally “anything connected with the national defense,” so long as there is an  “intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” The indictment relies heavily and repeatedly on allegations that Assange “encouraged” his sources to leak documents to Wikileaks, even though he knew that the documents contained national security information.

But encouraging sources and knowingly receiving documents containing classified information are standard journalistic practices, especially among national security reporters. Neither law nor custom has ever required a journalist to be a purely passive, unexpected, or unknowing recipient of a leaked document. And the U.S. government has regularly maintained, in EFF’s own cases and elsewhere, that virtually any release of classified information injures the United States and advantages foreign nations.

The DOJ indictment thus raises questions about what specific acts of “encouragement” the department believes cross the bright line between First Amendment protected newsgathering and crime. If a journalist, like then-candidate Trump, had said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the [classified] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” would that be a chargeable crime?

The DOJ Does Not Decide What Is And Isn’t Journalism

Demers said Assange was “no journalist,” perhaps to justify the DOJ’s decision to charge Assange and show that it is not targeting the press. But it is not the DOJ’s role to determine who is or is not a “journalist,” and courts have consistently found that what makes something journalism is the function of the work, not the character of the person. As the Second Circuit once wrote in a case about the reporters’ privilege, the question is whether they intended to “use material—sought, gathered, or received—to disseminate information to the public.”  No government label or approval is necessary, nor is any job title or formal affiliation. Rather than justifying the indictment, Demers’ non-sequitur appears aimed at distracting from the reality of it.

Moreover, Demers’ statement is as dangerous as it is irrelevant. None of the elements of the 18 statutory charges (Assange is also facing a charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) require a determination that Assange is not a journalist. Instead, the charges broadly describe journalism–seeking, gathering and receiving information for dissemination to the public, and then publishing that information–as unlawful espionage when it involves classified information.

Of course news organizations routinely publish classified information. This is not considered unusual, nor (previously) illegal. When the government went to the Supreme Court to stop the publication of the classified Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court refused (though it did not reach the question of whether the Espionage Act could constitutionally be charged against the publishers). Justice Hugo Black, concurring in the judgment, explained why:

In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

Despite this precedent and American tradition, three of the DOJ charges against Assange specifically focus solely on the purported crime of publication. These three charges are for Wikileaks’ publication of the State Department cables and the Significant Activity Reports (war logs) for Iraq and Afghanistan, documents which were also published in Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and Le Monde, and republished by many other news media.

For these charges, the government included allegations that Assange failed to properly redact, and thereby endangered sources. This may be another attempt to make a distinction between Wikileaks and other publishers, and perhaps to tarnish Assange along the way. Yet this is not a distinction that makes a difference, as sometimes the media may need to provide unredacted data. For example, in 2017 the New York Times published the name of a CIA official who was behind the CIA program to use drones to kill high-ranking militants, explaining “that the American public has a right to know who is making life-or-death decisions in its name.”

While one can certainly criticize the press’ publication of sensitive data, including identities of sources or covert officials, especially if that leads to harm, this does not mean the government must have the power to decide what can be published, or to criminalize publication that does not first get the approval of a government censor. The Supreme Court has justly held the government to a very high standard for abridging the ability of the press to publish, limited to exceptional circumstances like “publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops” during wartime.

A Threat to Free Speech

In a broader context, the indictment challenges a fundamental principle of free speech: that a person has a strong First Amendment right to disseminate truthful information pertaining to matters of public interest, including in situations in which the person’s source obtained the information illegally. In Bartnicki v. Vopper, the Supreme Court affirmed this, explaining: “it would be quite remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding possessor of information can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party. … [A] stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.”

While Bartnicki involved an unknown source who anonymously left an illegal recording with Bartnicki, later courts have acknowledged that the rule applies, and perhaps even more strongly, to recipients who knowingly and willfully received material from sources, even when they know the source obtained it illegally. In one such case, the court rejected a claim that the willing acceptance of such material could sustain a charge of conspiracy between the publisher and her source.

Regardless of what one thinks of Assange’s personal behavior, the indictment itself will inevitably have a chilling effect on critical national security journalism, and the dissemination in the public interest of available information that the government would prefer to hide. There can be no doubt now that the Assange indictment is an attack on the freedoms of speech and the press, and it must not stand.

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“Oh, I am against military intervention!” goes a “pacifist” narrative heard in the North that serves as pretext for a statement on Venezuela. This prelude consoles the soul, clears the liberal conscience and strives to maintain the desired – but increasingly elusive – “progressive” academic, journalistic and political credentials.

However, the “pacifism” dealt with here has nothing to do with Norway’s recent gesture to seek a peaceful solution. The government of President Nicolás Maduro is of course fully involved in this latest attempt at negotiations. In fact, the Venezuelan government has been proposing this throughout the crisis.

For example, on May 1, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as one of the main architects of this “pacifist” narrative along with John Bolton and President Trump, said,

“Military action is possible. If that’s what’s required, that’s what the United States will do…We’re trying to do everything we can to avoid violence… We’d prefer a peaceful transition of government….”

There is only one reason the US has so far not been able to take the military option off the table and put it into action. It is not because it has any qualms about military invasion of other countries, but rather because it has failed miserably in its over ambitious attempt to break up the civilian–military alliance, an explicit precondition for the military option, at least for the time being.

However, as far as Washington is concerned, the economic war option has not only always been on the table, but it has been ferociously applied. After the 2013 election of President Nicolás Maduro following the death of Hugo Chávez, the US supported the all too often violent opposition protests against the legal election, resulting in a pretext for President Obama’s Venezuela legislation in 2014, designed to sanction individuals in the Bolivarian Republic as a lever of economic punishment with the goal of creating hurdles for Chavista political officials and a section of the state.

In March 2015, Obama extended this policy by declaring Venezuela a “threat to US national security,” opening the door for additional individual sanctions. Trump expanded this further into collective economic sanctions and full-blown economic war. As the noted international writer/academic Vijay Prashad, influential in the US left, has written,

“Obama forged the spear; Trump has thrown it at the heart of Venezuela.” (1)

The Trump-led economic war against Venezuela especially hits the key petroleum industry. According to an April 2019 study published in the US by noted American economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, these and other economic sanctions “reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans…. We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory.” (2)

The Venezuelan government claims that the war also includes no fewer than three electrical grid sabotages in March 2019 (March 7–14, March 29 and March 30). Coupled with this were three coup attempts, on January 23, February 23 and April 30. All three were met with multiple and widespread opposition in the streets by Chavismo to defend the revolution. However, one can imagine how this mass mobilization affects the already-battered economy and the “normal” running of what has become a very difficult life.

Moreover, the US-led media war against Maduro and Chavismo is one of the most ferocious against any revolutionary leader in recent history.

On May 16, after a one-month physical standoff, the Trump Administration ordered a police invasion of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC, arresting four members of the embassy protection collective who were there at the invitation of the government of Venezuela, all while the “pacifists” continued their silence on the war in the very city where many of them live and work.

What then remains of this “pacifist” narrative in opposition to an eventual military intervention and in favour of a “peaceful transition” while remaining silent on the current multi-faceted war?

The “pacifists” provide a complicit apologetics for Washington’s rhetoric on “peaceful transition” by framing opposition to US policy on Venezuela solely in terms of avoiding military intervention while failing to denounce US backed coup attempts and economic warfare. This policy appears to be designed to provoke a social implosion in Venezuela so that the US can set up a client government without ever having put one military boot on the ground. Is this the new war? If it is, then this type of war is not that new. Was this not the goal of the US in 1960 as the guiding line of the blockade against Cuba, that is, to create “disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship” as indicated by the Department of State in 1960 (2), so that people revolt against the government? And was this not the scenario that unfolded to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973? This new regime change wine in old bottles is just as lethal today as it was yesterday. The US does not learn from history.

For an earlier version of this article in Spanish see “La revolución bolivariana y el belicismo de los pacifistas” in Telesur, May 20, 2019, Arnold August Blog.

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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, Cuba, Europe, North America and the Middle East including Global Research. Twitter  Facebook, His trilingual website:  www.arnoldaugust.com.

Source

COHA, http://www.coha.org/the-bolivarian-revolution-and-the-warmongering-pacifists/

Notes

(1) “The plot to kill Venezuela”, by Vijay Prashad, in Salon.com. Source: https://www.salon.com/2019/05/17/the-plot-to-kill-venezuela_partner/

(2) Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela By Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs. April 2019. Source: http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf

(3) Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom). Washington DC, April 6, 1960. Source: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499

Featured image is from Venezuelanalysis.com

“You Can’t Have Capitalism Without Racism.”

– Malcolm X (1964) [1]

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

-George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

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A standard claim of union activists is that they are fighting to improve the lot, not just of their union brethren, but of society as a whole. However, evidence indicates that the benefits that have been had are not equitably distributed.

According to a March 2011 report, a significant pay gap was evidenced between racialized and non-racialized Canadians, with the former earning on average 81.4 cents for every dollar earned by the latter. The same study also found the work racialized Canadians were able to attain was more likely to be insecure, low paying and temporary. Consequently, as stated in the report’s findings, “poverty becomes disproportionately concentrated and reproduced among racialized group members, in some cases inter-generationally.” [2]

Similarly in the United States, a June 2017 “State of the Union “report from Stanford’s Center on Poverty and Inequality noted the persistence of “profound racial and ethnic inequalities that persist in many domains” including housing, employment and health. The study found as of 2010, the median income of black males was 32 percentage points lower than that of their white counterparts. One in four blacks, one in four Hispanics, and one in four Native Americans were classified as poor versus one in ten whites and one in ten Asians. The employment rate has been 11 to 15 percentage points lower for blacks than for whites consistently since the turn of the century. [3]

The rights of migrant workers in particular are particularly challenged. The Canadian Council for Refugees noted in May of 2018 that this non-resident workforce takes on tough jobs while not benefiting from basic protections enjoyed by citizens of the country. The precariousness of their status, work permits tied to a single employer, isolation, and lack of clarity about their basic rights are reasons named for migrants’ unique vulnerability to abuse and exploitation.[4]

So, a rising tide of labour gains does not seem to have raised all workers equally. What is at the roots of these failures, and what remedies are possible? These and other questions are at the core of this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program.

The bulk of the show is devoted to a conversation involving a speaker at the University of Winnipeg based conference marking the centenary of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, as well as a Winnipeg-based activist. Chris Ramsaroop and Louis Ifill joined host Michael Welch in the CKUW studio on May 11, 2019 to discuss some of the historical background behind this marginalization of people of colour within the labour force, the importance of international solidarity, the need for class based analysis in anti-racism work, and about the gains that could inform our movements.

In the last segment of the program, the noted commentator Abayomi Azikiwe provides some of the background behind the splitting of labor along racial lines in the industrial northeast of the U.S., particularly in America’s automotive capital Detroit, Michigan. He also outlines some practical steps that could be taken to authentically and not cosmetically correct ongoing injustices against a racialized workforce.

Chris Ramsaroop is an activist with Justice for Migrant Workers (Toronto).

Louis Ifill is a former program coordinator for the Winnipeg-based Workers of Colour Support network.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, and has appeared as a commentator on several media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 261)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

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

Notes:

1. https://www.socialistalternative.org/2005/07/01/you-cant-have-capitalism-without-racism-looking-back-at-malcolm-x-1925-1965/
2. Sheila Block and Grace Edward Galabuzi (March 2011), ‘Canada’s Colour-Coded Labour Market: The gap for racialized workers’, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Wellesley Institute; http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2011/03/Colour%20Coded%20Labour%20Market.pdf
3. https://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/16/report-finds-significant-racial-ethnic-disparities/
4. https://ccrweb.ca/en/media/migrant-worker-report-cards-2018

Forçar o adversário a desdobrar-se excessivamente, a fim de desequilibrá-lo e derrubá-lo – não é um movimento de judo, mas o plano contra a Rússia desenvolvido pela Rand Corporation, o ‘think tank’ mais influente dos EUA que, com uma equipa de milhares de peritos, representa a fonte mundial mais fiável dos serviços secretos (inteligência) e análise política para os governantes dos Estados Unidos e para os seus aliados. A Rand Corp orgulha-se de ter contribuído para a elaboração da estratégia a longo prazo que permitiu aos Estados Unidos  serem os vencedores da Guerra Fria, obrigando a União Soviética a esgotar os seus recursos económicos no confronto estratégico.

É neste modelo que se inspira o novo plano, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, publicado pela Rand.[1]  Segundo os seus analistas, a Rússia continua a ser um poderoso concorrente dos Estados Unidos em alguns campos fundamentais. Por conseguinte, os Estados Unidos, juntamente com os seus aliados, devem empenhar-se numa estratégia abrangente a longo prazo que tire o máximo partido das suas vulnerabilidades. Assim sendo, são analisadas as várias maneiras de forçar a Rússia a desequilibrar-se, indicando para cada uma delas, as possibilidades de sucesso, os benefícios, os custos e os riscos para os EUA.

Os analistas da Rand acreditam que a maior vulnerabilidade da Rússia é de caracter económico, devido à sua forte dependência das exportações de petróleo e gás, cujas receitas podem ser reduzidas, agravando as sanções e aumentando as exportações de energia dos EUA. Devem fazer com que a Europa reduza a importação de gás natural russo, substituindo-o por gás natural liquefeito transportado por mar, de outros países.

Outra maneira de prejudicar a economia da Rússia a longo prazo, é encorajar a emigração de pessoal qualificado, em particular, jovens russos com um nível de educação elevado.

No campo ideológico e informativo, devem ser encorajados os protestos internos e, ao mesmo tempo,  prejudicar a imagem da Rússia no estrangeiro, expulsando-a dos fóruns internacionais e boicotando os acontecimentos desportivos internacionais que ela organiza.

No campo geopolítico, armar a Ucrânia permite que os EUA aproveitem o ponto de maior vulnerabilidade externa da Rússia, mas isso deve ser ajustado para manter a Rússia sob pressão, sem atingir um grande conflito, em que ela teria vantagem.

No campo militar, os EUA podem ter grandes benefícios, com baixos custos e riscos, através  do aumento das forças terrestres dos países europeus da NATO em  função anti-Rússia.

Os EUA podem ter grandes oportunidades de serem bem sucedidos e altos benefícios com riscos moderados,  investindo, sobretudo, em mais bombardeiros estratégicos e mísseis de ataque de longo alcance contra a Rússia.

Sair do Tratado INF e instalar novos mísseis nucleares de alcance intermédio apontados contra a Rússiaasseguram grandes possibilidades de êxito, mas também envolvem riscos elevados. Ao discriminar cada opção para alcançar o efeito desejado – concluem os analistas de Rand – a Rússia acabará por pagar o preço mais alto no confronto com os EUA, mas até mesmo os americanos terão de investir grandes recursos, subtraindo-os a outros fins. Anuncia-se, assim, um aumento ainda maior das despesas militares militares USA/NATO em detrimento das despesas sociais.

Este é o futuro previsto pela Rand Corporation, o mais influente ‘think tank’ do Estado Profundo, ou seja, do centro subterrâneo do verdadeiro poder, mantido pelas oligarquias económicas, financeiras e militares, o poder que determina as escolhas estratégicas não só dos EUA, mas do todo o Ocidente.

As “opções” previstas pelo plano são, na realidade, apenas variantes da mesma estratégia de guerra, cujo preço em termos de sacrifícios e riscos, é pago por todos nós.

Manlio Dinucci

Il manifesto, 21 de Maio de 2019

Artigo em italiano :

Rand Corp: come abbattere la Russia

Tradutora; Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

[1] Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options, by James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, Rand Corporation, May 2019.

First published by Black Agenda Report and Global Research on December 28, 2018

The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM’s massive military infiltration of the region.

“The ‘West’s’ political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China’s phenomenal domestic growth or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World.”

Donald Trump last week trotted out his war dog, National Security Advisor John Bolton, to growl and snarl  over China’s attempts to “gain a competitive advantage” in Africa through “predatory” practices that supposed include “bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive” to Beijing’s global schemes.

Bolton gave his speech at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a place that specializes in crafting social policies that appeal to white supremacist majorities within the U.S. domestic order. He could be confident that the Heritage audience knows little about the actual state of the world, holds facts in low regard, and gives less than a damn about Africa. There was no need for Bolton, the man with the comic mustache, to make sense with this crowd, so he didn’t even try.

The net effect of China’s investments in Africa, said the nonsensical Bolton, has been to “stunt” Africa’s economic growth. Only blocks away from the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, the staff and officers of the International Monetary Fund — the guys that actually do hold much of Africa and the developing world “captive” with loan structures and political conditions that stunt the ability of governments to serve their people — had quite a different assessment of China’s impact on the African continent, whose dramatic growth coincides with Beijing’s rise to number one investor.

“China actually increased its contribution to the growth of sub-Saharan African exports, which helped cushion the impact on sub-Saharan Africa growth during the Great Recession.”

“Access to new markets for its raw materials has spurred Africa’s exports, which quintupled in real value over the past twenty years ,” the staffers wrote in their inhouse IMFBlog . “But maybe even more importantly, sub-Saharan Africa’s trade engagement with China and other new trading partners has reduced the volatility in its exports. This helped cushion the impact of the global economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, when advanced economies experienced a deep economic deceleration, and thus curbed their demand for imports. At the same time, China actually increased its contribution to the growth of sub-Saharan African exports, which helped cushion the impact on sub-Saharan Africa growth during the Great Recession. On the import side, access to cheap Chinese consumer goods, from clothing to mopeds, has boosted African living standards and contributed to low and stable inflation.”

China and its “command economy” fared far better than the rest of the world in coping with the “American disease” – the near melt-down of capitalist financial markets in 2008-09 – and thus was able to provide Africa and its other trading partners some respite from the chaos and near collapse that enveloped the West. Most importantly, the Chinese offered what even the Americans concede is a “no-strings” arrangement, attaching no political conditions to their loans and projects.

“China was able to provide Africa and its other trading partners some respite from the chaos and near collapse that enveloped the West.”

To be sure, China’s voracious appetite for raw materials to fuel its own miraculous growth is central to its global trade strategy. But the folks at Bloomberg, the American oligarch-owned financial network, testify to the broad and deep character of China’s African trade and investment policy.

“Although securing access to natural resources is surely one of China’s goals, its investments in Africa go beyond extractive industries,” wrote Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith , in September of this year. “The sectors receiving the most Chinese money have been business services, wholesale and retail, import and export, construction, transportation, storage and postal services, with mineral products coming in fifth. In Ethiopia, China is pouring money into garment manufacturing — the traditional first step on the road to industrialization.”

There is no question that China’s deep penetration of African markets has caused lots of dislocation of existing African enterprises, or that China’s policy of importing its own workforces to staff major projects is cause for resentment among Africans in need of work. It is also true that Chinese entrepreneurs have flooded the nooks and crannies of many African economies, sometimes crowding out real or potential local small businesspeople. But it is generally agreed that China’s trade policies in Africa are not coercive or marked by “bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive,” as Bolton alleges. Rather, as Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) lead organizer Ajamu Baraka writes in this week’s issue of BAR,

“China provides African states a modicum of space  to exercise more effective national sovereignty than had ever been afforded them by the European colonial powers that carved up and unmercifully exploited African labor and land.”

“Although securing access to natural resources is surely one of China’s goals, its investments in Africa go beyond extractive industries.”

As if Africa and the world need to be reminded, it was European colonialism that robbed Africa of people and resources for hundreds of years. Colonial powers claim the right to exclusively exploit the material and human resources of colonized peoples, to treat whole regions of the world as national property. The U.S., as the world’s premier white settler state, assumed the mantle of protector of the international white supremacist order after World War Two, from which it emerged as the top industrial power. In the 21stcentury, however, the U.S. imperialist overlord has been crippled by the accumulated contradictions of late stage capitalism and its own hyper-corruption and racism-induced cognitive incapacities (of which Bolton and Trump are prime, almost farcical examples).

The simple, yet earth-shaking truth is: the United States and western Europe lack the capacity to mount investments in Africa that are conducive to the continent’s economic and social development. The same applies to Latin America, where China is the number one trade and investment partner. The “West’s” political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China’s phenomenal domestic growth — which should be seen as Beijing’s re-assumption of its historical status as the center of the world economy — or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World. The system is collapsing at its imperial center, the United States, which is incapable of investing in its own crumbling infrastructure.

“It is generally agreed that China’s trade policies in Africa are not coercive or marked by ‘bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive.’”

The United States does not have an Africa problem, it has a capitalism problem that is made more acute — at home and abroad — by its deep history of white supremacism and insular ignorance. U.S. elites wish they could muster the “soft power” to effectively penetrate and dominate the economies of Africa, Latin America and central, south and southeast Asia, but U.S. power is instead diminishing, daily. Except for the dollar’s artificial status as world reserve currency, the U.S. is no longer an economic superpower; it can only intervene decisively in global affairs by force of arms and military intimidation. China is truly a global economic superpower, capable of credibly launching a multi-continental Belt and Road (and maritime) new order in industrial production and trade – not a socialist order, but one that is far more equitable and voluntary than the western, neocolonial model — which it is offering to Africa.

“The U.S. is no longer an economic superpower; it can only intervene decisively in global affairs by force of arms and military intimidation.”

The United States offers only “more guns, more bases and more subversion,” in Ajamu Baraka’s words. Since the inception of AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa, in 2008, Washington has placed its strategic bets on dominating Africa by converting the continent’s military class into servants of U.S. empire. The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM’s massive military infiltration of the region. U.S. strategic thinkers are wagering that, should African nations become too enamored of the Chinese economic model, Washington can call on its dependent African war dogs to create regime change, or to sow chaos and genocidal warfare, as Uganda and Rwanda have been doing in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a generation.

John Bolton, a truly freakish example of the American that is always eager to annihilate non-white people, is threatening to exercise that U.S. military veto in Africa, with his warning to the natives not to get too close to the Chinese (or Russians — he threw them in the pot for good measure). That’s the meaning of his warning that the U.S. will now choose its African partners more carefully; it implicitly threatens to put some regimes and social movements on an enemies list. Bolton’s threats to curtail U.S. “foreign aid” have far more military than economic weight, since most U.S. “aid” is military, or contingent on military cooperation with AFRICOM.

“China is truly a global economic superpower, capable of credibly launching a multi-continental Belt and Road (and maritime) new order in industrial production and trade.”

U.S. “economic” assistance is hopelessly entangled with mandates that Africans contract with American corporations whose services are so vastly overpriced as to be worse than useless for national development. But such is also the case on the American domestic scene, where late stage capitalism cannot build even one mile of high-speed rail, while China has constructed 15,500 miles of ultra-modern railway, and is extending these veins of trade and communication throughout Eurasia.

African civil society will have to choose between a U.S. alignment that over-arms the continent’s militaries for the benefit of Euro-American multinational corporations, or takes advantage of China’s offer of structural development with no strings attached and a multiplicity of markets and investors — the freedom to shop around for partners in progress. John Bolton and his boss, being professional racists, are boorishly forcing the issue on Africa, but the Democrats offer the same dead-end deal, only in more diplomatic language.

“Late stage [US] capitalism cannot build even one mile of high-speed rail, while China has constructed 15,500 miles of ultra-modern railway.”

This is not a peculiarly African dilemma, or even strictly a problem of developing nations. U.S. elites have no program for their own citizens other than endless austerity and war. The corporate oligarchy is incapable of remaking the U.S. national infrastructure, despite the fact that tools for national regeneration are available and have already been deployed, during the Great Depression. Their only vision is of capitalist “creative destruction” devoid of security for the masses of people, and to prevail against foreign threats to their global dominion by force of arms. They have now weaponized the dollar through sanctions against everyone that disobeys U.S. foreign policy dictates, including putative U.S. allies.

If, in the end, bullies and abusers have no friends, then we are close to the end of U.S. imperialism.

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BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image is from BAR

The eminent conservative scholar of public budgeting Aaron Wildavsky characterized annual budgets as a record of “victories, defeats, bargains, and compromises.” The province of Ontario’s 2019 Budget, the first of the new Conservative government of Doug Ford, does indeed tell us something of this – additional fiscal supports for business, erosion of social expenditures in general, and for the most vulnerable in particular, large expenditures on public programs needed now spread far into the future, and generous symbolic gestures for this and that political constituency. Few surprises here: after all, Ontario is long-standing as Canada’s pre-eminent fiscally conservative jurisdiction with an unbroken legacy of clientelist politics greased by the public purse of the provincial state.

But budgetary policies also reveal deeper structural features such as the regional setting of the world market, the administrative form and policy regime of the state, and social struggles over justice and democracy. Such a shift in focus immediately registers a line of continuity extending back from the Ford government to the 1995-2003 Common Sense Revolution of the Conservative government of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. Their market-expanding and labour-disciplining agenda established Ontario as a low-tax, low-cost regional production zone of North America dominated by an increasingly powerful financial class and a state committed to extensive growth at whatever the costs to Ontario’s ecology, First Nations, and workers. Neoliberalism, with its core tenets of a constitutionally constrained and coercive state buttressing of a ‘free market’, guided budgetary policy and all else. Despite the shift to a more ‘inclusionary’ political discourse, the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, from 2003-18, never departed from this fiscal legacy and consolidated, for the most part, a variation of the same policy regime and development strategy.

There is no single neoliberal budgetary framework that has guided every single state, other than an underlying faith in ‘expansionary austerity’ – fiscal restraint to encourage business investment. After the ‘shock therapy’ of the initial Harris budgets in the mid-90s, Ontario fiscal policy has been focused on budgetary balance and total debt reduction. Ontario budgetary practice has been to keep nominal growth in spending below the combined rate of growth in inflation and output to steadily reduce the size of government as a portion of the provincial economy. As a result, Ontario sits last among the provinces in per capita government expenditures and more than $2000 below the average for the rest of Canada. Since 2010, program spending in Ontario has been growing at half the rate it has been in the rest of Canada. The Ford Budget aggressively amplifies this austerity logic (and makes absurd the austerity-lite verdict of the mainstream media and business economists).

Undermining Fiscal Capacities

First, since Harris, budgetary strategy has deliberately undermined the fiscal capacity to fund program spending adequately. Ontario now trails other provinces with lower personal and corporate tax rates and the lowest per capita revenues. Still, potential revenues are cut in the order of $3.3-billion from scrapping carbon pricing, reducing the average marginal effective tax rate on business from 16% to 12.6% (well below the U.S. average of 18.7%) through accelerated capital cost allowances, and cutting the small business deduction surtax from 11.5% to 3.5% (with a further reduction in the small business tax to come as well as a substantial cut to the middle income tax rate remains for the future). While Budget 2019 forecasts public expenditure in the aggregate to grow, the Tory plan is to further ratchet down the existing trend rate of growth of program spending, beginning with the levelling out of nominal spending as a whole for the current budget year. Indeed, considering inflation and a growing population, this entails a radical cut to per capita program spending (and a spending cut in real terms if inflation runs above 1.5%, directly recalling the Harris period, as a TD Bank budget commentary approvingly notes).

As a consequence, the Ontario Public Service has already been reduced by 3.5% through voluntary attrition alone, with further employee cuts coming across the public sector (with teachers and support staff in the education sector already receiving layoff notices). As the restraint to revenue growth and spending cuts take hold, Ontario’s net debt to the provincial GDP ratio will steadily decline from a current 40.2% to 38.6% over the term of the government (and after accounting changes the Tories used to boost up net debt).

The post-budget Spring Economic and Budget Outlook of the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario tersely notes that “the government’s plan for balancing the budget relies on restraining the growth in program spending to historic lows.” The fiscal consequences of this punishing austerity for social provisioning in Ontario are shocking. As the FAO projects on the Ford government fiscal strategy: “Specifically, the government plans to hold program spending growth to just 1.0 per cent on average over the next five years – which would be the slowest pace of spending growth since the mid-1990s. As a result of this restraint, provincial spending on public services would be reduced by $1,100 per person (or by more than 10 per cent) over the next five years.”

Second, while not discarding the Liberal efforts to foster an investment climate favourable to the ‘gig economy’ and financial capital in Toronto and southern Ontario, the Tory budgetary strategy reorders an array of departments and agencies to boost the development sector in general and extractive capital investment in particular. This includes a major deregulatory agenda to be pursued through a task force with a mandate to reduce the ‘regulatory burden’ by 25%, but also the creation of the Office of Economic Growth and Innovation.

Departmental budgetary allocations also disclose this agenda. The budget for the Environment and Parks ministry, for example, is to be cut by some 35%, which will gut already enfeebled enforcement capacities and further open up parks for commercialization and development. But the biggest departmental cut is the almost halving of the budget for Indigenous Affairs. This will slow a range of land claim and treaty settlement issues and also undermine processes of consultation and collaboration over resource development. The government is seeking to restrict regulatory processes and other obstacles to resource development in the ‘Ring of Fire’ in Northern Ontario, as well as a number of areas where conflicts over logging and mining exist. As Sol Mamakwa, New Democrat MPP representing Kiiwetinoong in northern Ontario, bluntly stated, “Ford is dragging Ontario further away from reconciliation.”

Third, the Ford Budget explicitly targets reducing social provisioning costs and labour costs for business. Spending for the education sector, for example, is to grow on average only 1% for the next three years, meaning annual cuts in real terms. The training, university, and colleges sectors are even harder hit, with budget allocations to decline on average by 1% over the same period (and also facing cuts to student loans and student fees). Healthcare spending is to grow by a modest 1.6% per year on average over three years, but this is far below trend rates of growth in the sector and what healthcare providers were requesting just to stay in the same place. The single healthcare agency being set up and the amalgamation of health districts are to facilitate a dramatic restructuring of healthcare delivery to further cut costs.

The third largest proportional cut, nearly 25%, hits Municipal Affairs and Housing. The budget signals a market-driven policy strategy in which regulations are to be ‘streamlined’ and development costs reduced to increase ‘housing supply’. But while the words “alcohol” and “beer” appear 46 times in the budget, the crisis of housing affordability does not merit a mention. The stock of Toronto Community Housing units in need of major repair continues to grow with an estimated backlog of more than $3-billion. The budget also walks back a planned hike to the municipal portion of gas tax revenue, estimated to cost the city of Toronto $1.1-billion in planned transit investments as Ontario municipalities continue to struggle with fiscal capacities incapable of funding public transit needs.

Slash and Burn

Few ministries have been left unscathed, with everything from Seniors’ Affairs to Children’s Services to Legal Aid moving forward with less capacity than they had on April 10th, including a $1-billion cut to social assistance alone. According to the Conservatives’ own figures, Budget 2019 puts $5-billion back into the pockets of the business community, nearly $1.3-billion resulting from the cancellation of the planned increase in the minimum wage. Another $1.4-billion is estimated to come from a 30% reduction to workplace safety insurance premiums for employers, although the WSIB agency is already plagued with problems of understaffing, backlogs, and denied claims.

The budget also moves away from proactive Ministry of Labour investigations toward a “self-reliant” model, along with a planned $10-million cut by 2019-20. Employment blitzes carried out by the Ministry of Labour between 2015-17 found high levels of violations, including non-compliance rates of 84% for young workers, 61% for temporary foreign workers, 54% in the construction industry, 75% for those in precarious jobs, and 72% of repeat violators. These changes follow on the heels of new regulations that allow employers to pay lessfor overtime work.

The fiscal guidelines of budgets are but one aspect of state economic policy attempting to manage the competitive imperatives of capitalism. Budgetary policy provides, however, the outline of the economic mechanisms – taxes, resource allocations across departments and agencies, agendas for monetization and dispossessions of public assets and lands, strategies for debt management – that will be deployed to support capital accumulation and the policy regime that will skill, employ, and discipline workers. The first Ford budget vigorously affirms Ontario’s commitment to neoliberal economic policy and austerity. The government will offer a sweeping set of material incentives and regulatory changes to encourage business investment, while ‘inefficiencies’ in social spending will lead to program cuts far past this fiscal year. Development at whatever the ecological and social costs is what is meant by the Conservatives’ tired slogan of Ontario being ‘open for business’.

For the Conservative Party of Doug Ford, democracy is but one more ‘inefficient’ entanglement getting in the way of business. The permanent austerity that has been at the core of Ontario budgetary policy for two decades now illustrates all too well the democratic limits of the Ontario state. But the budget also makes clear the alignment of the Ford regime with the authoritarian right-wing populisms gaining traction across the world. This is the political terrain upon which the growing social movement – of teachers, healthcare workers, parents, First Nations, tenants, ecologists – will be forming its strategy and building its resistance. In a so-called era of disruption, the most decisive act of rupture from the way things are will be to make possible another Ontario freed from the constraints and pressures of market imperatives.

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Jimmy Dore is a comic who has taken on Russiagate, a deadly serious matter.  He is one of those brave souls who count themselves as progressives but dared to call into question Russiagate.

There are those who will tell you that Trump is a despicable human; and so if Russiagate tarnished Trump, the argument goes, what did it matter whether it was true.  (The proposition that Trump is more monstrous than his predecessors, Obama, W or the Clintons is highly dubious to say the least – but that is a different topic.). There is, however, a very good reason why it does matter whether the charges making up Russiagate are true; for opposing Trump over his tax policies or stance on health care is quite a different matter from labeling him a Manchurian Candidate who colluded with Vlad Putin in 2016.  Russiagate put a US President in a position where he was unable to negotiate crucial issues with the other nuclear superpower. To do so invited charges of being a Putin puppet, as evidenced by the howls that went up from the Establishment and most progressives over the Helsinki Summit.

What if the tensions between the US and Russia were to spin out of control in hot spots like Syria, where troops from the two nuclear superpowers pass within a whisker of one another, or Ukraine or even Venezuela? To extract us from such a predicament, Putin and Trump would need to make concessions to one another, as Kennedy and Krushchev did successfully in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But with the cloud of Russiagate hanging over his head Trump could make no such concession without being labelled a treasonous Putin puppet. So Russiagate took away from Trump the ability to negotiate his way out of an existential threat should one emerge. As such it should have been based on the highest levels of evidence.  In fact it was not based on any hard evidence at all – there was none for the central charge of collusion.  And the Mueller investigation finally admitted this.  Given this, those who knowingly concocted Russiagate owe us all a great apology, for they committed the most serious of crimes by creating a situation that potentially threatened the existence of the American and Russian peoples – and perhaps all of humanity.

The absurdity of Russiagate and the absence of evidence for it was evident from the start.  But very few on the progressive side broke with the mainstream media and the Democratic Party political herd to say so.  That carried the risk of being shunned in progressive circles.  Or as one brave Russiagate dissident said under his breath, “I don’t have much social life any longer.”  That fact in itself is a sad commentary on what is called “progressivism” in the U.S.

Nevertheless, a handful of Russiagate debunkers emerged on the left, including Robert Parry and others at Consortium News, Aaron Maté now at The Nation, Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, Michael Tracey, Stephen F. Cohen of EastWestAccord.com, Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone, Craig Murray and others. They deserve enormous credit for poring over the detritus that the media dumped on us 24/7 for over two years and refuting it, one noxious bit at a time.

A standout among these dissidents is Jimmy Dore, a nightclub comic with a YouTube show run out of his garage in Pasadena.  Dore took on Russiagate just as he took on the Dem Establishment and backed Bernie in 2016, and as he now offers high praise for Tulsi Gabbard, the peace candidate for 2020.  Jimmy Dore made the exposure of Russiagate fun.

Dore enjoys raising a simple question in the wake of the Mueller report:  How did a “jagoff comedian,” as he calls himself, who claims on occasion to smoke marijuana when he gets out of bed in the morning, get Russiagate right when grads of the Columbia School of Journalism and pundits like Rhodes Scholar Rachel Maddow and David Corn got it so wrong?

Dore has the answer, taking Maddow as an example who earns $30,000 for every single show.  For that and the celebrity career that goes with it, she lies – simple as that.   Dore even allows that he might be willing to lie at $30,000 an hour. But, he laments, the invitation has not been forthcoming.  And what is true of Maddow and the other Cable “News” talking heads is just as true of the upscale propagandists who dump their extrusions into gilded receptacles like the NYT, WaPo, New Yorker, NPR.  In contrast to be a Jimmy Dore or any of the other truth tellers requires a considerable dose of courage, because swimming against the mainstream can be a career terminator as Chris Hedges once of the NYT and a number of others can testify.

One of Dore’s approaches is especially powerful.  He provides a quote from the mainstream media, an establishment journalist or a faux progressive, reads it and then tears it apart.  Dore likes to play down his intellect – a good comic shtick – but the precision of his takedowns tells another story.  The takedown is followed by invective that is as accurate as it is impassioned.  Dore’s invective for which he has considerable talent would turn Jeremiah green with envy. In this task he is usually aided by his fellow comic, the insightful Ron Placone and Dore’s wife Stefane Zamorano, who styles herself The Miserable Liberal.

It is very satisfying to watch Dore in action – and funny.  In fact at the gym I watch Jimmy on my iPad to save me from looking up at the omnipresent fake news on CNN.  My cardiac health, as well as my mental health, over the past two years has depended on his show.  If Dore were a physician, he could bill me.

You can best appreciate the Jimmy Dore show by going to YouTube and watching an episode.  I recommend this one, “Mueller Report Drops! Aaron Maté Explains.”  Here Maté also names the names of the fake progressives who caved to the Establishment narrative and some of the heroes who did not.  Dore expresses his usual sympathy for Mate’ for having to live among journalists most of whom compromise themselves whereas Dore gets to dwell among comics.

For a dose of truth, sanity and fun – catch the Jimmy Dore Show.  Russiagate is behind us but Dore already has the bogus basis for war on Venezuela and Iran clearly in his sites – along with the 2020 election and its rich veins of hypocrisy to mine.

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John V. Walsh can be reached at [email protected]

Originally published by GR in February 2009, this article focusses on the role of Hollywood as an instrument of propaganda. The Deep Politics of Hollywood are part of the broader process of media manipulation and disinformation in support of US led wars.  

Here we build a prima facae case supporting the idea that Hollywood continues to be a target for infiltration and subversion by a variety of state agencies, in particular the CIA. Academic debates on cinematic propaganda are almost entirely retrospective, and whilst a number of commentators have drawn attention to Hollywood’s longstanding and open relationship with the Pentagon, little of substance has been written about the more clandestine influences working through Hollywood in the post-9/11 world. As such, our work delves into the field of what Peter Dale Scott calls “deep politics”; namely, activities which cannot currently be fully understood due to the covert influence of shadowy power players.

 The Latest Picture

A variety of state agencies have liaison offices in Hollywood today, from the FBI, to NASA and the Secret Service. Few of these agencies, though, have much to offer in exchange for favourable storylines, and so their influence in Hollywood is minimal. The major exception here is the Department of Defense, which has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town, whereby, in exchange for advice, men and invaluable equipment, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, the Pentagon routinely demands flattering script alterations. Examples of this policy include changing the true identity of a heroic military character in Black Hawk Down (2001) due to his real-life status as a child rapist; the removal of a joke about “losing Vietnam” from the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and cutting images of Marines taking gold teeth from dead Japanese soldiers in Windtalkers (2002). Instances such as these are innumerable, and the Pentagon has granted its coveted “full cooperation” to a long list of contemporary pictures including Top Gun (1986), True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), Air Force One (1997), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Transformers (2007), Iron Man (2008), as well as TV series such as JAG (1995-2005).

Such government activity, whilst morally dubious and barely advertised, has at least occurred within the public domain. This much cannot be said of the CIA’s dealings with Hollywood, which, until recently, went largely unacknowledged by the Agency. In 1996, the CIA announced with little fanfare the dry remit of its newly established Media Liaison Office, headed by veteran operative Chase Brandon. As part of its new stance, the CIA would now openly collaborate on Hollywood productions, supposedly in a strictly ‘advisory’ capacity.

The Agency’s decision to work publicly with Hollywood was preceded by the 1991 “Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness,” compiled by CIA Director Robert Gates’ newly appointed ‘Openness Task Force,’ which secretly debated –ironically– whether the Agency should be less secretive. The report acknowledges that the CIA “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation,” and the authors of the report note that this helped them “turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success’ stories, and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others.” It goes on to reveal that the CIA has in the past “persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests…”

These admissions add weight to several reports and Congressional hearings from the 1970s which indicated that the CIA once maintained a deep-rooted and covert presence in national and international media, informally dubbed “Operation Mockingbird.” In its 1991 report, the CIA acknowledged that it had, in fact, “reviewed some film scripts about the Agency, documentary and fictional, at the request of filmmakers seeking guidance on accuracy and authenticity.” But the report is at pains to state that, although the CIA has “facilitated the filming of a few scenes on Agency premises,” it does “not seek to play a role in filmmaking ventures.” But it seems highly implausible that the CIA, whilst maintaining a decades-long presence in media and academia, would have shown no interest in the hugely influential Cinema industry.

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the CIA has been involved in a number of recent blockbusters and TV series. The 2001 CBS TV series, The Agency, executive produced by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One) was actually co-written by ex-CIA agent and Marine Bazzel Baz, with additional ex-CIA agents working as consultants. The CIA gladly opened its doors to the production, and facilitated both external and internal shots of its Langley headquarters as the camera gazed lovingly at the CIA seal. This arrangement was comparable to the Feds’ efforts on the popular TV series The FBI (1965-74) which was shaped by the Bureau in cooperation with ABC and which thanked J. Edgar Hoover in the credits of each episode. Similarly, The Agency glorified the actions of US spooks as they fought predictable villains including the Russian military, Arab and German terrorists, Columbian drug dealers, and Iraqis. One episode even shows the CIA saving the life of Fidel Castro; ironically, since the CIA in real life had made repeated attempts to assassinate the Cuban President. Promos for the show traded on 9/11, which had occurred just prior to its premiere, with tag lines like “Now, more than ever, we need the CIA.”

A TV movie, In the Company of Spies (1999) starring Tom Berenger depicted a retired CIA operative returning to duty to save captured Agency officers held by North Korea. The CIA was so enthusiastic about this product that it hosted its presentation, cooperated during production, facilitated filming at Langley, and provided fifty off-duty officers as extras, according to its website.

Espionage novelist Tom Clancy has enjoyed an especially close relationship with the CIA. In 1984, Clancy was invited to Langley after writing The Hunt for Red October, which was later turned into the 1990 film. The Agency invited him again when he was working on Patriot Games (1992), and the movie adaptation was, in turn, granted access to Langley facilities. More recently, The Sum of All Fears (2002) depicted the CIA as tracking down terrorists who detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this production, CIA director George Tenet gave the filmmakers a personal tour of the Langley HQ; the film’s star, Ben Affleck also consulted with Agency analysts, and Chase Brandon served as on-set advisor.

Media sources indicate that the CIA also worked on the Anthony Hopkins/Chris Rock feature Bad Company (2002) and the Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster Enemy of the State (2001). However, no details whatsoever about these appear to be in the public domain. Similarly, Spy Game director Tony Scott’s DVD commentary for said film indicates that he visited Langley whilst in pre-production but, according to one report, endorsement appeared to have been withheld after Chase Brandon read the final draft of the script.

More details than usual emerged about CIA involvement in the Tom Hanks movie Charlie Wilsons War (2007) and Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006) – but not many. Milt Bearden had traveled to the Moscow Film Festival with De Niro and claims the pair then “disappeared and hung out with the mob and KGB crowd for a while. I introduced him to generals and colonels, the old guys I had been locked with for so many years.” De Niro later tagged along with Beardon to Pakistan. “We wandered around the North-West Frontier Province,” Bearden recalls, “crossed the bridge [to Afghanistan] I built years ago, hung out with a bunch of guys firing off machine guns and drinking tea.” Still, The Good Shepherd didn’t fulfill the CIA’s earnest hopes of being the CIA equivalent of Flags of Our Fathers (2006), which the Agency’s official historian says it should have been – all in the interests of what he calls a “culture of truth.”

Charlie Wilson’s War depicted the United States’ covert efforts to supply arms to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s which had the real-life consequence of America’s old ally turned against it in the form of al-Qaeda (as Crile explains in the book of the film). However, Beardon, who was the CIA agent who supplied the weapons, worked as consultant on the film and said prior to its release that it “will put aside the notion that because we did that, we had 9/11.” CIA involvement in the film therefore appears to have paid dividends.

The real reasons for the CIA adopting an “advisory” role on all of these productions are thrown into sharp relief by a solitary comment from former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. In 2007, whilst at a College in Virginia, Kelbaugh delivered a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist was present. The journalist (who now wishes to remain anonymous) wrote a review of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 thriller The Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The review noted that, according to Kelbaugh, a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers: “We didn’t want Hollywood getting too close to the truth,” the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying.

Peculiarly, in a strongly-worded email to the authors, Kelbaugh emphatically denied having made the public statement and claimed that he remembered “very specific discussions with senior [CIA] management that no one was ever to misrepresent to affect [film] content – EVER.” The journalist considers Kelbaugh’s denial “weird,” and told us that “after the story came out, he [Kelbaugh] emailed me and loved it… I think maybe it’s just that because [the lecture] was ‘just in Lynchburg’ he was okay with it – you know, like, no one in Lynchburg is really going to pay much attention to it, I guess. Maybe that’s why he said it, and maybe that’s why he’s denying it now.” The journalist stands by the original report, and Kelbaugh has pointedly refused to engage us in further discussion on the matter.

Early Screening

Clandestine agencies have a long history of interference in the cinema industry. Letters discovered in the Eisenhower Presidential Library from the secret agent Luigi G. Luraschi (identified by British academic John Eldridge), the Paramount executive who worked for the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), reveal just how far the CIA was able to reach into the film industry in the early days of the Cold War, despite its claims that it sought no such influence.

For instance, Luraschi reported that he had secured the agreement of several casting directors to subtly plant “well dressed negroes” into films, including “a dignified negro butler” who has lines “indicating he is a free man” in Sangaree (1953) and in a golf club scene in the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis vehicle The Caddy (1953). Elsewhere, CIA arranged the removal of key scenes from the film Arrowhead (1953), which questioned America’s treatment of Apache Indians, including a sequence where a tribe is forcibly shipped and tagged by the US Army. Such changes were not part of a ham-fisted campaign to instill what we now call “political correctness” in the populace. Rather, they were specifically enacted to hamper the Soviets’ ability to exploit its enemy’s poor record in race relations and served to create a peculiarly anodyne impression of America, which was, at that time, still mired in an era of racial segregation.

Other efforts were made. The PSB tried –unsuccessfully– to commission Frank Capra to direct Why We Fight the Cold War and to provide details to filmmakers about conditions in the USSR in the hope that they would use them in their movies. More successfully, in 1950, the CIA –along with other secretive organizations like the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) and aided by the PSB– bought the rights to and invested in the cartoon of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954), which was given an anti-Soviet spin to satisfy its covert investors. Author Daniel Leab has pointed to the fact it took decades for the rumours about CIA involvement in Animal Farm to be properly documented; this, he observes, “Speaks volumes about the ability of a government agency to keep its activities covert.”

Additionally, the production of the Michael Redgrave featureNineteen-Eighty Four (1956) was in turn overseen by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, which was supervised by the CIA. Key points in the movie were altered to demonise the Soviets.

The CIA also tampered with the 1958 film version of The Quiet American, provoking the author, Graham Greene, to denounce the film. US Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale, the CIA operative behind Operation Mongoose (the CIA sabotage and assassination campaign against Cuba) had entered into production correspondence with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who accepted his ideas. These included a change to the final scene in which we learn that Redgrave’s anti-hero has been hoodwinked by the Communists into murdering the suspicious American, who turns out not to be a bomb-maker as we had been led to believe, but instead a manufacturer of children’s toys.

 Behind the Scenes

It would be a mistake to regard the CIA as unique in its involvement in Hollywood. The industry is in fact fundamentally open to manipulation by a range of state agencies. In 2000, it emerged that the White House’s drug war officers had spent tens of millions of dollars paying the major US networks to inject anti-drug plots into the scripts of primetime series such as ER, The Practice, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Chicago Hope. Despite criticism for this blatant propagandizing, the government continued to employ this method of spreading its message on drugs.

The White House went to Tinsel Town again the following year when, on November 11, 2001 a meeting was held in Hollywood between President Bush’s then Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, and representatives of each of the major Hollywood studios to discuss how the film industry might contribute to the ‘War on Terror.’ Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America said with a straight face that, “content was off the table”, but Rove had clearly outlined a series of requests. It is hard to gauge the consequences of the meeting, but a Rambo sequel, for instance, was certainly discussed, and duly produced. Similarly, several series with national security themes emerged within a short time of the meeting including She Spies (2002-2004) and Threat Matrix (2003).

The meeting was, in fact, just one in a series between Hollywood and the White House from October to December, 2001. On October 17, in response to 9/11, the White House announced the formation of its “Arts and Entertainment Task Force,” and by November, Valenti had assumed leadership of Hollywood’s new role in the ‘War on Terror’. As a direct result of meetings, Congress sought advice from Hollywood insiders on how to shape an effective wartime message to America and to the world. In November 2001, John Romano, writer-producer of the popular US TV series Third Watch, advised the House International Relations Committee that the content of Hollywood productions was a key part of shaping foreign perceptions of America.

On December 5, 2001, the powerful Academy of Television Arts & Sciences convened its own panel entitled “Hollywood Goes to War?” to discuss what the industry might do in response to 9/11. Representing the government at the meeting were Mark McKinnon, a White House advisor, and the Pentagon’s chief entertainment liaison, Phil Strub. Also in attendance, among others, were Jeff Zucker, President of NBC Entertainment, and Aaron Sorkin, creator and writer of the White House drama The West Wing (1999-2006). Immediately after, Sorkin and his team set about producing a special episode of the show dealing with a massive terrorist threat to America entitled “Isaac and Ishmael”. The episode was given top priority and was successfully completed and aired within just ten days of the meeting. The product championed the superiority of American values whilst brimming with rage against the Islamist jihadists.

The interlocking of Hollywood and national security apparatuses remains as tight as ever: ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, “There’s a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood” and revealed that former CIA director George Tenet is currently, “out in Hollywood, talking to studios.” Baer’s claims are given weight by the Sun Valley meetings, annual get-togethers in Idaho’s Sun Valley in which several hundred of the biggest names in American media –including every major Hollywood studio executive– convene to discuss collective media strategy for the coming year. Against the idyllic backdrop of expansive golf courses, pine forests and clear fishing lakes, deals are struck, contracts are signed, and the face of the American media is quietly altered. The press has yet to be granted permission to report on these corporate media gatherings and so the exact nature of what is discussed at the events has never been publicly disclosed. It is known, however, that Tenet was keynote speaker at Sun Valley in 2003 (whilst still CIA head) and again in 2005.

Conclusions

Many would recoil at the thought of modern Hollywood cinema being used as a propagandist tool, but the facts seem to speak for themselves. Do agencies such as the CIA have the power, like the Pentagon, to affect movie content by providing much-sought-after expertise, locations and other benefits? Or are they able to affect script changes through simple persuasion, or even coercion? Do they continue to carry out covert actions in Hollywood as they did so extensively in the 1950s, and, beyond cinema, might covert government influence play some part in the creation of national security messages in TV series such as 24 and Alias (the star of the latter, Jennifer Garner, even made an unpaid recruitment video for the CIA)? The notion that covert agencies aspire to be more open is hard to take seriously when they provide such scant information about their role within the media, even regarding activities from decades past. The spy may have come in from the cold, but he continues to shelter in the shadows of the movie theatre.

Matthew Alford(PhD: University of Bath) lectures on Film and Television at the University of Bristol and is currently writing a book about propaganda in Hollywood. Robbie Graham is Associate Lecturer in Media at Stafford College. They can be contacted at: [email protected] and [email protected] respectively. References available on request.

Since WW II, the US waged wars of aggression against nations threatening no one, the highest of high crimes gone unpunished.

From North Korea in the early 1950s to what’s ongoing endlessly post-9/11, the US attacked nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights affirmed under international law to its interests.

Longstanding US plans call for regime change in Iran and Syria for this reason, in a part of the world with around two-thirds known oil reserves — why it’s strategically important.

US war on the Syrian Arab Republic rages in its ninth year with no prospect for near-term resolution. US hostility toward the Islamic Republic makes anything possible ahead, including unthinkable war against a nation able to hit back hard if attacked.

In a Friday op-ed published by the Washington Post, Iran’s UN envoy Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Trump regime hardliners (meaning Pompeo, Bolton, and their subordinates) are pushing DJT for belligerence against the Islamic Republic based on “fake intelligence,” adding:

“The recent dispatching of a US naval armada (and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers) to the Persian Gulf (region) is a response to the same fake intelligence, supported not by members of Congress or US allies.”

“While Iran does not desire war in the region, neither with the United States nor with any other country, we will stand firmly against any act of aggression against our country.”

On Friday, the Trump regime heightened regional tensions further. Acting war secretary Patrick Shanahan issued a statement, saying his department “approved the deployment of about 1,500 service members and additional capabilities to the Middle East to deter (nonexistent) Iranian efforts to destabilize the region (sic).”

Sending more US troops and military hardware to a tinder box part of the world further destabilizes the region, heightening the risk of greater conflict.

Trump regime assistant war secretary for international security affairs Katie Wheelbarger turned truth on its head, claiming the troop deployment is in response to “credible intelligence we have received that Iran continues to plan for attacks by itself and its proxies against the United States, its forces and its allies in the region” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

No such intelligence exists! Throughout its history over the past 40 years, Iran never attacked another nation. No evidence suggests it intends to now.

There’s nothing “defensive” about US military deployments and actions. Its record speaks for itself, waging multiple wars of aggression against invented enemies. Real ones don’t exist — not now or any other time post-WW II.

US Navy Vice Admiral Mike Gilday lied, saying

“Iranian leaders have initiated actions that pose a danger to the United States, its allies in the region and the globe (sic).”

The US war department lied, falsely accusing Iran of “at least three recent attacks in the region, including the attacks on oil tankers in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, drone attacks on oil pipelines in Saudi Arabia, and rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad last weekend (sic).”

Not a shred of evidence connects Iran to these incidents, most likely false flags, a longstanding US tradition, 9/11 the mother of them all.

Bypassing Congress on Friday, the Trump regime upped the stakes further, Pompeo saying pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act, he directed the State Department “to complete immediately the formal notification of 22 pending arms transfers to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia totaling approximately $8.1 billion to deter Iranian aggression (sic) and build partner self-defense capacity (sic).”

There’s no “Iranian aggression” to deter. Weapons sales to the Saudis and UAE are all about offense, not “self-defense.”

US weapons sales to aggressor nations — notably Israel, the Gulf states, Egypt, and other despotic regimes — violate the US  Foreign Assistance Act (FAA).

It prohibits aiding regimes engaged “in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.”

The Leahy Law provision of the 2001 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FOAA) (Sec. 8092 of PL 106-259) states the following:

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to support any training program involving a unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of Defense has received credible information from the Department of State that a member of such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, unless all necessary corrective steps have been taken.”

Washington consistently breaches international, constitutional, and US statute laws, operating by its own rules exclusively.

Throwing more weapons at Middle East rogue states increases the chance of greater belligerence than already.

While US war on Iran is unlikely in my judgment, its hostile actions make the unthinkable possible — despite strong world community opposition against it.

On May 24, 76 retired US generals, admirals, and envoys signed an open letter to Trump, urging him against attacking Iran — “express(ing) deep concern with the current escalation with Iran,” adding:

“(W)ar with Iran, either by choice or miscalculation, would produce dramatic repercussions in an already destabilized Middle East and drag the United States into another armed conflict at immense financial, human, and geopolitical cost.”

The signatories urged “thoughtful statesmanship and…diplomacy (to avoid) unnecessary armed conflict.”

Hostile US actions against Russia, China, Iran, and other nations heighten the risk of global war, what’s vital to go all out to avoid.

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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 Arctic remains one of the few areas of the globe with relatively little human activity and therefore limited prospects for international conflict. Even during the Cold War the Arctic remained comparatively under-resourced by both adversarial blocs. The main theater was Europe, supporting theaters included the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but the Arctic was mainly visited by strategic nuclear platforms such as submarines and bombers which rehearsed their WW3 missions there.

The end of the Cold War gradually raised the Arctic’s importance, and it did so for two reasons. The current multipolar power distribution means the addition of two independent or largely independent political actors, namely the EU and China, and the shifting of the global economic “center of gravity” eastward. This development is increasing Russia’s importance as the economic and political link between the EU and China. However, while the European and Asian economic powerhouses are exploring various forms of economic linkages with Russia serving as a vital component of the relationship, United States is actively seeking to drive a wedge between them by isolating the EU from Russia and therefore also China, and fully subordinating Europe to its economic and political interests. Whether the EU acquiesces to being merely a US protectorate or asserts its independence remains to be seen, however, in the meantime the Arctic is acquiring importance as a trade route linking Europe and Asia. The second reason for the Arctic’s importance is the presence of considerable reserves of energy resources in the region on which the global economy will depend. National control over these resources or lack thereof will in turn determine the power ranking of the country in question.

And since we are increasingly in a world where “possession is 9/10ths of the law”, anyone seeking to access the Arctic and maintain permanent presence there will have to maintain a sizable force of icebreakers in order to ensure navigation in areas which are temporarily or permanently ice-bound. Each of interested powers already maintains an icebreaker fleet whose size and importance is only going to increase in the coming decades.

Russia

Having the longest coastline facing the North Pole and maritime and trade interests in the region going back centuries, it is no surprise the Russian Federation maintains the largest and the most modern icebreaker fleet in the world, with no country even coming close to it. It is also the only country to operate nuclear icebreakers, vessels whose powerplant ensures remarkable endurance and which can plow through ice pack with the aid of hot water jets, courtesy of the reactors.

As of 2019, the nuclear icebreaker fleet consists of four active and one reserve vessels. The active ships include two-reactor, 75,000hp “Yamal” and “50 Years of Victory”, and two single-reactor 50,000hp “Taimyr” and “Vaygach”. The “Sovetskiy Soyuz” remains in reserve, to be used in the event of another ship becoming not operational. The fleet is rounded off by the “Sevmorput” nuclear-powered barge-carrier, capable of independent operations in the ice. The nuclear icebreaker fleet is complemented by five Project 21900 conventional icebreakers, each powered by a 30,000hp diesel powerplant.

The aging of the nuclear fleet means they will be replaced in the coming decade by the LK-60Ya (Project 22220) nuclear-powered icebreakers. They are also two-reactor designs, but boasting slightly greater power than their predecessors at 80,000hp. The first two ships of the class, “Arktika” and “Sibir” have already been launched, the third “Ural” is under construction. A total of five ships of this class are planned, all to enter service during the 2020s.  The LK-60Ya (Project 22220) icebreakers will be followed by LK-120Ya “Lider” (Project 10510) boasting not only vastly greater power (160,000hp) but also greater width, to enable even the largest of ships to use the Northern Sea Passage. Overall, the plan is to have not fewer than 13 heavy icebreakers in service, of which 9 will be nuclear-powered, by 2030. This represents both a quantitative and qualitative expansion of the force, an indicator of the importance of the Arctic to Russia.

United States

By comparison, and in spite of Alaska being part of the United States, the US Coast Guard operates exactly one (1) heavy icebreaker dating back to the 1970s, the Polar Star, with an 78,000hp diesel/gas turbine power plant. A second ship of the class, the Polar Sea, is ostensibly in reserve but has not been to sea in many years and is likely being cannibalized for spare parts to sustain the Polar Star in service which even so remains prone to mechanical breakdowns due to its advanced age and heavy use caused by an absence of alternative ships with similar capabilities.

When it comes to the expansion of its icebreaker fleet, the United States also lags behind the Russian Federation. Currently the plan is to procure three heavy and three medium polar icebreakers within the next decade, with the first of the new ships to be delivered in 2023 and the final in 2029. However, it should be noted that the Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and its modernization programs have suffered after the service was merged with the DHS which is a very much post-9/11 creation whose current budget priorities also happen to include the infamous “wall” separating the United States and Mexico.  Therefore the icebreakers will remain vulnerable to the DHS budget battles, and may also be affected by the looming next US financial crisis.

Canada

The United States may to some extent rely on Canada’s icebreaker fleet, which includes two heavy (36,000hp) and five medium icebreakers. However, its construction program is not as ambitious as Russia’s or even the United States. Only one new icebreaker, the 45,000hp John G. Diefenbaker is expected to join service in the 2020s, replacing one of the current heavy icebreakers. This would mean that for the first time in decades Canada would face icebreaker inferiority relative to the United States. Given US Secretary of State Pompeo’s recent assertion that Canada’s claims to the Northwest Passage are “illegitimate”, it appears that Canada is about to lose control over its portion of the Arctic to the United States.

China

While the PRC is not generally considered an Arctic power, its interest in trade routes means that even though it operates exactly one ship capable of ice-breaking operations, the Xue Long scientific research vessel built in Ukraine in the 1990s, there is an ongoing discussion in China over the importance of the Arctic to its economy. Therefore it is not surprising that China is in the process of developing a heavy nuclear-powered icebreaker comparable to the Russian vessels currently in service, which will likely enter service during the 2020s. Given the pace of Chinese ship-building in general, should China decide to enter the Arctic power play in earnest, it will be able to quickly out-match the United States and Canada in that realm.

Conclusions

Looking at the current situation and the emerging trends, it would appear that the two Eurasian powers, Russia and China, will remain dominant in the Arctic at least during the coming decade. While the United States is starting to get into the game, it is clearly very low on its list of priorities. The fact that the US capabilities are being stretched very thin indeed and the sorry state of America’s finances mean that US Arctic capabilities, military or otherwise, will receive veritable crumbs in terms of funding. Canada’s sovereignty is being gradually eroded by the United States and may lose its status as an Arctic player altogether in the next decade, particularly if icebreaker construction will have to compete for funding with the F-35 fighters which the United States is bent on imposing on Canada. China remains the wild card. At the moment, it seems content to rely on Russia’s icebreaking capabilities in the region, however, should US-China competition in the region intensify, the PRC will become more proactive in exerting its influence in the region.

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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov staunchly defended Pakistan’s “sovereign right to take care of its security” amidst South Asia’s tit-for-tat missile tests, with this unprecedented statement not only signifying the strength of the Russian-Pakistani Strategic Partnership, but also potentially being a response to the Indian Ambassador to the US’ recent hint that his country will prioritize the undertaking of an anti-Russian military pivot towards the Pentagon during Modi’s second term in office.

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Successful training launch of surface to surface ballistic missile Shaheen-II conducted. Capable of carrying both conventional & nuclear warheads upto a range of 1500 KMs. Shaheen-II fully meets Pak’s strat needs towards maintenance of desired deterrence stability in the region. pic.twitter.com/I9t468wxnq

— Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) May 23, 2019

Tit-for-tat missile tests aren’t really a new trend anywhere in the world, but the latest ones in South Asia have captured the world’s attention because of the tense context in which they’re occurring. Pakistan recently gave India a “bloody nose” a few months ago in February after Modi’s military misadventure ended in failure following the downing of at least one of his country’s warplanes, which in turn prompted the incumbent premier to make anti-Pakistani hostility one of the main platforms of his re-election campaign. He ended up winning handsomely, but Pakistan sent him the message that he shouldn’t think about carrying through on his campaign rhetoric when it tested a new nuclear-capable missile on the same day that Modi declared victory.

Unaware observers might have predicted that Russia would condemn Pakistan for “saber-rattling” against Moscow’s Soviet-era ally, but the exact opposite actually occurred when Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov staunched defended Pakistan’s “sovereign right to take care of its security”. This stance shouldn’t be surprising to those who have been following Russia’s “Return to South Asia” and realized that the global pivot state of Pakistan is intended to form its main component, which isn’t for an arbitrary reason either but is a direct “balancing” response to India’s pro-American pivot through the so-called “Indo-Pacific” concept that Foreign Ministry Lavrov earlier decried as an “artificially imposed” plot to “contain” China.

That said, Russia’s multibillion-dollar arms deals with India greatly contribute to the national budget and have become all the more important during the last five years of surviving under increasingly strict sanctions. It’s actually because of the looming threat of CAATSA sanctions, however, that India might abandon its S-400 deal with Russia and replace its much-needed anti-air systems with American THAADs instead, especially judging by what the Indian Ambassador to the US just hinted on the day of Modi’s re-election. He made it clear that India intends to prioritize the undertaking of an anti-Russian military pivot towards the Pentagon during Modi’s second term in office by replacing even more of its Moscow-provided arsenal with Washington’s wares.

If executed rapidly enough and in parallel with the US’ ever-tightening sanctions regime, this could cripple the Kremlin’s socio-economic development plans that are supposed to coincidentally be implemented during this exact same timeframe and therefore make it much more likely that Russia will be forced to make the many “concessions” that the US demands of it in exchange for a “New Detente“. Russia realizes the game that the US and India are playing and that’s why it’s been steadily diversifying its military partners over the past couple of years ever since it became evident that the Indo-American alliance is to its strategic detriment, which relevantly culminated in turning its rapidly accelerated rapprochement with Pakistan into a strategic partnership.

Although the Pakistani arms market is by no means comparable to India’s and could never replace the revenue that Russia stands to lose from the latter, its importance derives from how it figures into Moscow’s strategic calculus. Russia’s 21st-century grand strategy is to become the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia, to which end it’s inclined to militarily tilt towards Pakistan the more than India pivots towards the US. The recent tensions in South Asia also revealed that India, not Pakistan, is the real rogue state, which has been proven even more by the regionally destabilizing effect that its pro-American pivot is having, so it makes sense why Russia would side with the most responsible state in the region, Pakistan.

From Russia’s perspective, Pakistan is entirely in the right to test a new state-of-the-art nuclear-capable missile on the same day as Modi declared victory because it wasn’t Islamabad that almost brought the region to the brink of nuclear war earlier this year but New Delhi. There’s a high likelihood that India’s alliance with America will see it continuing to behave aggressively as the US cheers it on in order to justify more arms sales to the world’s second-largest customer, which would undoubtedly disrupt the regional balance of power. In response, Russia would naturally consider selling its own wares to Pakistan in order to restore the aforementioned balance that the US and India disrupted, as signaled by its support for Islamabad’s tit-for-tat missile tests.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The United States government is always beating the war drums; it’s what violent, rogue nations do. Currently, a non-issue in the Middle East is being seized upon as a threat to the mighty U.S.

The headlines were sensational:

• ‘Saudi Arabia Says Oil Tankers Attacked as Iranian Tensions Rise’. – Bloomberg
• ‘President Trump Warns Iran over ‘Sabotaged’ Oil Tankers in Gulf’. – Time

And a third, that might be worth paying attention to:

• ‘U.S. Says Gulf Oil Tankers were Sabotaged by Iran or Iranian allies, but Satellite Images Show no Major Damage’. – National Post.

Let’s look again at the second phrase in the National Post headline: “…satellite images show no major damage.”

For those who are not cognizant of U.S. history, let’s go back fifty-five years, and review another non-event that had catastrophic, deadly consequences.

On August 2, 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox had been deployed to the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam, where it had no legitimate business. On that day, personnel on the Maddox reported that the ship had been fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox fired back, and one Vietnamese boat was sunk. Tensions between the U.S. and Vietnam, already high, continued to rise.

Two days later, the Maddox and a second ship, the C. Turner Joy, were again in the Gulf of Tonkin. Instruments on the Maddox showed that it was under attack, and both ships fired back, assisted by U.S. war planes.

Yet had there actually been an attack? Within 24 hours, the captain of the Maddox concluded that perhaps there wasn’t one. The pilot of a Crusader jet, James B. Stockdale, undertook a reconnaissance flight over the gulf that evening. He was asked if he saw any North Vietnamese attack vessels. Stockdale did not equivocate in his response. Said he: “Not a one. No boats, no wakes, no ricochets off boats, no boat impacts, no torpedo wakes–nothing but black sea and American firepower.” Apparently, ‘ghost’ images on the radar registered an attack that didn’t happen.

Yet this non-event was seen as an attack against the sacred United States. Never mind that there had been no attack. Never mind that, even if there had been, the Vietnamese government had every right to protect its citizen from outside invaders. Within days, Congress passed the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Resolution’, giving President Lyndon Johnson broad powers to repel the non-existent aggression. Yet prior to the passing of that resolution, it was known to Johnson and his top aides that there was no attack. And the U.S. president wasn’t too sympathetic to the faulty equipment that registered an attack where there hadn’t been one. A few days after the second attack, he told an aide: “Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish”.

It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. The lie of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, exposed within 24 hours but concealed from the public for years, enabled Johnson to greatly increase U.S. presence in Vietnam, causing the deaths of at least 2,000,000 people of Vietnam, and hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions more, in Cambodia and Laos. Over 55,000 U.S. soldiers died. All this carnage due to a lie that government officials knew from almost the very start was, in fact, a lie.

In terms of history, fifty-five years isn’t a long time, but for U.S. government officials, it might as well be an eternity.  The National Post article says this: “Four oil tankers anchored in the Mideast were damaged by what Gulf officials described as ‘sabotage,’ though satellite images obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday showed no major visible damage to the vessels.” Yet the U.S. has sent destroyers to the Persian Gulf, and is ramping up the war-mongering rhetoric. Surprisingly, it isn’t the head blowhard, the erratic and ignorant Donald Trump who is leading the charge, but his top aides, including the unhinged National Security Advisor John Bolton, and the evangelical pseudo-Christian Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who will do anything for Israel. And Iran threatens Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, so U.S. soldiers must be prepared to die so apartheid Israel can maintain its status as powerful rogue state. And this non-event may be just what Bolton and Pompeo need to start another war.

Will the U.S. invade Iran as it did Vietnam in 1964? The Vietnam War was a demoralizing loss for the United States, the government of which underestimated the strength and resiliency of the people of Vietnam. It will make that same mistake about Iranians at its peril. Iran is not an isolated nation; it is powerful in its own right, despite the unjust and illegal sanctions the U.S. has imposed, that the former United Nations rapporteur Alfred de Zayas said could amount to crimes against humanity, and it has powerful allies, including Russia. Any invasion by the U.S. of Iran will be a catastrophe for the Middle East and the United States.

In 1964, Johnson, like all U.S. politicians, needed to show that he was ‘strong’ against Communism, despite the choices of the people in independent, sovereign countries around the world. Today, all politicians have to demonstrate their strength against ‘terrorism’, the bugaboo that the U.S. invented, and that it practices with such expertise around the world. Despite its long and ugly record of terrorism – it is estimated that, just since World War II, the U.S. has killed at least 20,000,000 people – and its current terrorist activities in Yemen, Syria and other locations around the world, the U.S. government has, incredibly, accused Iran of being the ‘foremost’ sponsor of terrorism in the world.  Iran has not invaded another nation since 1798. The U.S. has been at war for at least 224 of its bloody 243-year history.

Will there be war? Will the U.S. actually make the colossal mistake of invading Iran? While one hopes that cooler heads will prevail, it’s frightening to think that Donald Trump is one of the ‘cooler’ heads. But that seems to be the current situation in the United States.

While Trump seems to care not at all what the U.S.’s closest allies think, one hopes that they can somehow influence him to act in a rational manner. It is a lot to hope for, but may be the best that can be expected to prevent the U.S. from self-destructing, and taking much of the world with him, in another needless war.

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In a collective demonstration of solidarity between European civilians and the suffering Yemeni civilians, the Saudi ship Bahri Yanbu was turned away from ports in France and Italy without loading its deadly cargo of weapons.

Last summer, the Saudi-led coalition targeted a school bus in Yemen, killing 54 people, including 44 small children.  Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with a large group of witnesses and survivors and came to the conclusion that the attack was an apparent war crime, as there had not been any military target in the area at that time.  Lockheed Martin, an American weapons manufacturer had made the 500-pound laser-guided bomb that was sold and used by Saudi Arabia.

“No EU state should be making the deadly decision to authorize the transfer or transit of arms to a conflict where there is a clear risk they will be used in war crimes and other serious violations of international law,” said Ara Marcen Naval, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Arms Control and Human Rights.

The UN has issued a report that Saudi Arabia may have committed war crimes in Yemen.  The activists cite the UN Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the shipment of weapons if there is a risk of them being used on civilians.

Pres. Emmanuel Macron, of France, defended selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, on the basis that it was a good source of income.  However, French civilian groups organized to prevent the deadly cargo from shipment.  Recently, three French journalists have faced serious accusations from the French government, after a report was made public which contained sensitive information on the use of French weapons in Yemen.

Italian civilian groups as well banded together to prevent the docks of Genoa from being the transit point in the chain of events leading to yet further civilian deaths in Yemen.  “What happened today in Genoa, what happened in Le Havre and Santander, showed the importance of international working-class solidarity, especially in stopping wars. And it showed the strength of the dock workers. We are winning because the arms will not be loaded here as was planned,” said activist Giacomo Marchetti, a member of Unione Sindacale di Base.

Pres. Trump has praised the Saudi Crown Prince, as an ally in the ‘war on terror’, and staunchly defends the continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia.  He feels strongly that the sales are a vital source of income for the U.S, and that the Saudi leaders can be trusted to prevent war crimes while waging a war on Yemen.

Predictably, the U.S., UK, and France are in favor of arms sales to Saudi Arabia; however, Germany has taken a pause in order to reassess the situation, with a keen eye on humanitarian aspects.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest arms importer from 2014 to 2018.  This time frame corresponds directly with the beginning of the conflict in Yemen, which broadened in 2015 to become a coalition with the UAE.  The conflict arose when a Houthi rebel group toppled Pres. Hadi from the capital, Sanaa in 2014.  The Saudi led coalition attempts to reinstate the former government.

In a wide range of reports, the Saudi coalition has attacked infrastructure, targeted civilians, and have demonstrated blatant disregard to accusations of war crimes and violations of international law.  This attitude seems to stem from the Saudi Crown Prince’s unshakable relationship with Pres. Trump.  Even after the U.S. Congress voted to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war, citing humanitarian concerns, Pres. Trump is now studying how to use a loophole to circumvent Congress.

Many civilians in Yemen may have lost hope, and are unaware that Europeans are peacefully protesting in an effort to save Yemeni civilians, and especially children.  The UN has stated that about 360,000 children in Yemen face possible starvation.  The protests have demonstrated the effectiveness of activists, and the power of civilians in the face of war crimes, even when the richest countries are involved.

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It didn’t take long for the computer intrusion case against Julian Assange to morph into a much larger and far more serious charge of espionage.

The murder of Julian Assange—the espionage act carries the death penalty—and the organized destruction of freedom of speech by the ruling financial and corporate elite are the final objective of this long-running drama.

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The war on Julian #Assange is now a war on all. Eighteen absurd charges including espionage send a burning message to every journalist, every publisher. The target today is #Assange. Tomorrow it will be you on the New York Times, you on the BBC. Modern fascism is breaking cover.

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) May 23, 2019

The corporate-funded internationalist sham known as Amnesty International has refused to support Assange and Manning. 

Shame on you @amnesty!

"Amnesty refused to declare #Assange & #Manning as a prisoners of conscience"#FreeJulianAssange #FreeChelseaManning

Worth remembering: back in 2018 #Amnesty was very quick to declare Russia's #Navalny POC…

Does Amnesty have a political agenda? https://t.co/n6NSwCqLGJ pic.twitter.com/7S3ZykTnQk

— Malinka🔸Tanya P (@Malinka1102) May 24, 2019

This really isn’t surprising considering the folks who fund this “human rights” organization. It has received grants over the past ten years from the UK Department for International Development, the European Commission, the United States State Department, and other governments, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation. In other words, it is working for the people who want Assange prosecuted and executed. 

For decades, the state used “soft fascism” to rule, but this has changed over the last few years, especially since the awakening that naively put Donald Trump in the White House. 

As the economic house of cards begins to fold and an outlier takes office, the state and its controllers discard the soft fascism-corporatism facade in favor of more direct measures. 

The erosion of soft fascism for its more direct and menacing ancestor is an ongoing process in effect since 9/11, the Patriot Act, and a cascade of media-generated (from government scripts) fear mongering—first exploiting Muslims, and now going after real enemies of the state: the truth-tellers, the whistleblowers, and those who reveal the reality of naked modern fascism hidden beneath a soft fascist exterior. 

In order to accomplish the destruction of truth-telling media, the state unimaginatively created a monster—Vladimir Putin and the Russians. This is a recycling of the old Cold War Soviet monster and a make-over of the sort of induced hysteria and fear mongering that almost brought America to the edge of nuclear war. 

The persecution of Assange is a key element in the effort to destroy alternative media and investigative journalism. 

After Julian Assange is extradited from his hole in Belmarsh and brought up on charges for revealing the psychopathic activity of the US government, he will either be slammed in prison for the remainder of his life or marched to the little room where they perform lethal injection, the same sort of “justice” dealt Timothy McVeigh for his questionable role in the anomalistic Oklahoma City bombing. 

Henceforth, journalists may think twice about revealing government “national security secrets” for fear of the Assange Effect. 

The parallel destruction of alternative media—motivated by the absurd fantasy Russia wants to destroy our “democracy”—will make certain no war crimes are exposed and no malfeasance by the DNC to throw elections unmasked. 

The endgame is a return to a docile and submissive public indifferent to wars and the lawless and violent conduct of the state. 

“There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way one captures volition itself,” wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 

But there is a problem. Millions of Americans in flyover country are fed-up with the government and Congress. They voted for Trump in the false hope the “deep state” would be confronted, the wars brought to an end, and the swamp drained of corporate and foreign lobbyists and parasitical crony capitalist profiteers destroying what is left of a crumbling republic. 

Plan B will resort to hard fascism. 

The soft variant is no longer effective in controlling the people. It’s a make-or-break situation for the ruling elite. If they are unable to control us with an endless infusion of propaganda hyperventilating over iniquitous Russians and the destruction of a “democracy” that does not exist, they will waste little time rolling out hard fascism under some dire and totally fallacious pretext.

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

An overwhelming majority of Europeans want new laws to ensure that the food they eat and the products they buy don’t drive global deforestation, according to a YouGov poll released today.

Eighty-seven per cent of those polled across 25 EU countries agreed that legislation was necessary to protect forests. Ninety-one per cent also said they cared deeply about forests and agreed that deforestation is harmful for people and wildlife.

The poll, which is released ahead of international biodiversity day on Wednesday 22 May, was commissioned by the Environmental Investigation Agency, Fern, Greenpeace and WWF.

Speaking on behalf of the NGOs, Hannah Mowat said:

“Europeans have made it very clear: they understand the terrible consequences of deforestation and don’t want to be complicit in this tragedy. They don’t want to buy dairy products, steaks or snacks that are tainted by forest destruction. They want new laws ensuring that the simple act of shopping no longer means walking an ethical tightrope.”

The poll also concludes that the majority of EU citizens think neither their national governments (sixty-six per cent) nor the EU (sixty-one per cent) are doing enough to tackle global deforestation.

“Some countries, such as France or the Netherlands, are already acting to stop deforestation. But a piecemeal approach will not work, as companies can bypass the laws of one EU country by operating in another. The solution must be EU-wide regulation. This is the last chance for the EU to stand by its commitment to halt deforestation by 2020. Failing to act would be a black mark on M. Juncker’s environmental legacy,” Mowat said.

The poll is published at a time when the European Commission, which will be presided by M. Jean Claude Juncker until November 2019, is expected to unveil plans to step up EU action against deforestation. It remains unclear whether these will include proposals for new laws.

The European Parliament, governments, European citizens and NGOs have all called for regulatory measures to ensure that products placed on the EU market have not  caused deforestation or violated human rights. Similarly, new laws should stop the EU financial sector from facilitating global deforestation.

The EU has made an international pledge to halt global deforestation by 2020. Yet it remains one of the largest markets for agricultural commodities, such as beef, palm oil, soy and cocoa, which have a major impact on the world’s forests. Agriculture in general is one of the main causes of the destruction of primary forests, according to recent data.

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In his first publicly-released comments to supporters since his arrest, WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has detailed the repressive conditions he faces in Britain’s Belmarsh prison and called for a campaign against his threatened extradition to the United States.

“I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life,” Assange wrote, adding, “Truth ultimately is all we have.”

Assange’s comments were made in a letter addressed to independent British journalist Gordon Dimmack, who decided to make it public following last Thursday’s announcement by the US Justice Department of additional charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. The WSWS is republishing the letter, with Dimmack’s permission, in full below.

Assange explained that since he was convicted on trumped-up bail charges shortly after his arrest on April 11, he has been “isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself, no laptop, no internet, no computer, no library so far, but even if I do get access it will be just for half an hour with everyone else once a week.”

The WikiLeaks founder stated that he is allowed “Just two visits a month and it takes weeks to get someone on the call list.”

All of his calls, except those to his lawyers, are monitored and limited to a maximum of ten minutes. There is a window of just 30 minutes per day for phone calls to be made “in which all prisoners compete for the phone.” Assange receives only a few pounds of phone credit per week and is not allowed to receive inbound calls.

The WikiLeaks founder declared that, despite these onerous conditions, he is “unbroken albeit literally surrounded by murderers. But the days when I could read and speak and organise to defend myself, my ideals and my people are over until I am free. Everyone else must take my place.”

The WikiLeaks founder stated that he faced “A superpower” that has “been preparing for 9 years with hundreds of people and untold millions spent” on the case against him.

He warned that

“The US government or rather those regrettable elements in it that hate truth liberty and justice want to cheat their way into my extradition and death rather than letting the public hear the truth for which I have won the highest awards in journalism and have been nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

The unveiling of the US charges is a vindication of Assange’s warnings, in the letter and over the past nine years, that he faces a politically-motivated US prosecution for his role in WikiLeaks’ exposures of war crimes, mass surveillance operations and global diplomatic conspiracies.

The 17 counts against Assange carry a combined maximum prison sentence of 175 years. They are an unprecedented attempt to criminalise investigative journalism, and abolish the free press protections of the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

The charges centre on WikiLeaks’ receipt and publication of classified US government documents. These core journalistic practices are presented as criminal activities which “risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries.”

The documents covered include the Afghan war logs, which exposed the extrajudicial killing of civilians by US-led forces, and other violations of international law.

Assange’s letter further exposes the ongoing political conspiracy against him, which included his illegal expulsion from Ecuador’s London embassy and detention by the British authorities.

The WikiLeaks founder was convicted, within hours of his arrest, on the British charges. The judge dismissed the fact that the offenses were effectively resolved years ago as a result of Assange’s forfeiture of bail monies, his years of arbitrary detention in the small embassy building and his United Nations-upheld status as a political refugee.

Despite the minor character of the bail conviction, Assange has been held in virtual isolation in a maximum security prison. This is a clear attempt to hinder his defence against the Trump administration’s extradition request, and the revived Swedish investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, which is aimed at blackening his name and creating an alternate route for him to be dispatched to a US prison.

Assange’s call for a campaign in his defence coincides with growing opposition to his persecution and to the Espionage Act charges against him.

In a Tweet shared almost 5,000 times, investigative journalist John Pilger warned that “The war on Julian #Assange is now a war on all. Eighteen absurd charges including espionage send a burning message to every journalist, every publisher… Modern fascism is breaking cover.”

The American Civil Liberties Union branded the charges “an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism, establishing a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation described them as “the most significant and terrifying threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century.”

In Australia, there are mounting calls for the government to fulfil its obligations to Assange as an Australian citizen and journalist. Former Labor politician Bob Carr yesterday cynically warned that Foreign Minister Marise Payne “needs to protect herself from the charge that she’s failed in her duty to protect the life of an Australian citizen”

Greg Barns, an Australian-based advisor to Assange, declared “Australia does have a role to play here and our view is that the Australian government needs to intervene.” He said the US prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder was aimed at applying US domestic law extraterritorially. This meant that “anyone who publishes information the US deems to be classified anywhere in the world” could be targeted by the US government.

Over the past 18 months, the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Parties (SEP) around the world have played a prominent role in the struggle against the stepped-up persecution of Assange.

The SEP (Australia) has held a series of rallies, demanding that the Australian government secure Assange’s release from Britain and return to Australia, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

The events, addressed by SEP national secretary James Cogan, and well-known fighters for civil liberties, including Pilger, Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria and Professor Stuart Rees, have been attended by hundreds of workers, students and young people.

The SEP (Britain) held a powerful public meeting in London on May 12, which brought together 150 defenders of Assange, and featured speakers from around the world. It was streamed live on Dimmack’s YouTube page to an audience of thousands.

On May 18, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei held a rally in Berlin, attended by 300 people, under the banner “freedom for Julian Assange.”

Over the coming weeks, the WSWS and the SEP’s will intensify the struggle against Assange’s extradition to the US, and for his complete freedom. We appeal to all supporters of civil liberties to join us in this crucial fight, which is the spearhead of the defence of democratic rights and against imperialist war.

Assange’s next hearing is set for Thursday May 30 at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. We urge all readers of the WSWS in the UK to attend.

Below is the full text of Assange’s letter to Gordon Dimmack:

I have been isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself, no laptop, no internet, no computer, no library so far, but even if I do get access it will be just for half an hour with everyone else once a week. Just two visits a month and it takes weeks to get someone on the call list and the Catch-22 in getting their details to be security screened. Then all calls except lawyer are recorded and are a maximum 10 minutes and in a limited 30 minutes each day in which all prisoners compete for the phone. And credit? Just a few pounds a week and no one can call in.

A superpower that has been preparing for 9 years with hundreds of people and untold millions spent on the case. I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life

I am unbroken albeit literally surrounded by murderers. But the days when I could read and speak and organise to defend myself, my ideals and my people are over until I am free. Everyone else must take my place.

The US government or rather those regrettable elements in it that hate truth liberty and justice want to cheat their way into my extradition and death rather than letting the public hear the truth for which I have won the highest awards in journalism and have been nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Truth ultimately is all we have.

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Donald Trump’s foreign policy relies heavily on putting to use to the tools available to the Empire: economic terrorism, threats of war, diplomatic pressure, trade wars, etc. But in resorting to tried-and-true imperialism, it is isolating itself internationally from traditional allies and raising tensions on the global chessboard to an unprecedented level.

Threats of war against Venezuela, North Korea, Syria and Iran are now repeated on a daily basis. Economic measures involving tariffs or duties, in many ways comparable to declarations of war, are now habitual, whether directed at friends or allies. Iran and Syria are under sanctions, while Pyongyang is even prevented from docking one of its ships in its ports, thereby finding itself de facto placed under US embargo, such as was threatened against Venezuela.

China and Russia are daily fighting to support the multipolar world through diplomatic, economic and sometimes military means, offering to Washington’s enemies some kind of shield with which to withstand the outrageous slings and arrows of the Trump administration. Beijing and Moscow carry out their resistance with an eye to their long-term objectives, given that in the short term their actions will inevitably invite the implacable hostility of Washington and her lackeys.

The fate of the new multipolar world order essentially depends on how well China and Russia will be able weather Washington’s storm. It is naturally in the interests of the rest of the world that the chaos of Washington’s unipolarity will be brought to a close in the least chaotic and destructive manner.

Washington’s European allies are sanctioned for Iranian oil imports, are unable to participate in the reconstruction of Syria, are asked to abandon joint projects with Russia (Nord Stream II), are asked to cut technological imports from China, are requested not to become involved in the largest project the world has ever known, known as the Belt And Road Initiative (BRI) – all these requests come at a time when Donald Trump keeps undermining the international globalist order on which US allies have come to rely on to maintain the status quo. US allies are obliged to comply with Washington’s requests even as it hurts their business interests and poses grave consequences in the medium to long term. This is essentially the motivation behind European countries seeking to diversify their international trade and exchanges through a currency not controlled by Washington, thereby effectively de-dollarizing their economies. It will be quite some time before such an ideal can be realized, demonstrated by the failure of the efforts to import Iranian oil by circumventing the US embargo through such mechanisms as Instex.

Recent weeks have seen international affairs swing from one worrying scenario to another, from the failed summit between Trump and Kim, to the support for Guaido’s attempted coup in Venezuela, culminating in the continuous threats directed towards Iran after designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

With little rhyme or reason, with an administration divided among several factions, we see constant changes in strategy and approach that only end up weakening Washington’s international stature.

Military planners at the Pentagon fear an open conflict with Iran or Venezuela, but only for purely propagandistic reasons. Washington’s formidable firepower would probably be able to overwhelm whatever defenses Tehran or Caracas would be able to offer, but at what price? The site of Washington’s latest-generation aircraft falling from the sky at the hands of air-defense systems from the Soviet period would have a devastating effect on the image America’s military-industrial complex likes to project of itself.

It would damage the prestige of American systems, which cost considerably more than their Russian counterparts. (An American F-22 Raptor, for example, costs about $150 million, whereas a Russian Su-35 only costs about $55 million.)

This embarrassing reality is currently being highlighted in Syria to some degree, where the anti-aircraft defenses of Damascus, combined with Russian capabilities, have foiled dozens of Israeli, US and Saudi attacks. The hitherto venerable US cruise missiles have had to genuflect before the legendary S-300/S-400 systems that have now become (as a defensive and not offensive weapon) a symbol of peace.

The myth of the invincibility of US weapons is being challenged by Moscow’s defensive capabilities deployed in Syria and Venezuela. These same capabilities are readily available to Tehran in the event that Washington decides to attack the Persian country. But the likelihood of such a war becomes less and less likely with every passing day, with Pentagon military planners fearing a far worse scenario for the United States than Iraq. Iran is three times the size of Iraq and would require about 1.2 million US troops to occupy the country on a permanent basis.

Iran, moreover, is one of the top 15 world powers and Washington would be confronted for the first time with an opponent of high capabilities, something that Americans have been trying to avoid for decades, fearful of revealing the vulnerability of their weapons systems as a result of corruption and wrong strategic decisions. Hollywood movies have served to build up in the public mind the myth of US military prowess, being a form of extreme propaganda for the purposes of disguising the reality of military ineffectiveness.

Pentagon planners have no intention of revealing their military vulnerabilities in a war with Iran. The loss of US military prestige would also show to countries hitherto under Washington’s thumb that this dog has more bark than bite, making it all the more difficult for the US to browbeat countries with the threat of military force in the future.

What Trump seems to find difficult to understand is that his foreign policy is slowly eroding the superpower status of the US. The free pass Trump has given to the neocons and the pro-Israel and pro-Saudi lobbies have only served to bring the US the the brink of a new war with Venezuela, the DPRK, Iran or Syria. With Trump not really committed to any war himself, this will only lead to a humiliating backdown.

A commitment to no further wars seems to be one of the last election promises Trump wants to remain faithful to.

These continuous threats, never followed up by real actions, are a very short-lived tactic, given that they do not bear any strategic result. The DPRK did not get rid of its nukes, Venezuela still has Maduro as president, and Iran will never sit down with the US to discuss a new nuclear deal.

International attitudes are cooling towards the US, even among allies, who are subjected to absurd impositions on imported goods and punitive measures resulting from industrial cooperation with Russia, China and Iran (the three main opponents of the Israeli-Neocon-Saudi triad). Threats to Germany for the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline are not dissimilar to the threats to Turkey for seeking to acquire the S-400, or to Italy for accepting Huawei 5G technology, or to India for importing Iranian oil.

Opponents of Washington share a lot in common and are increasingly coordinating their efforts economically, diplomatically and militarily to limit the chaos and damage brought on by the Trump administration’s rampage on the global stage.

The doctrine of America First, combined with the need to grant a free hand to the Israeli-Saudi neocons, has been disastrous, particularly to the US. The rest of the world watches with mounting amazement and wonder how Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv are determined to paint themselves into a corner, just so that they can satisfy particular lobbies, powerful factions and warmongers like Bolton, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman and Pompeo.

Trump is able to deceive his base due to their lack of interest in international affairs, the failing Democratic party, and Fox News’ tricky propaganda. But internationally, the role of Washington is becoming less and less relevant, with the figure of Trump serving to unite both friends and enemies of the US alike in a type of temporary pact as they wait out the Trump presidency. Once Trump is out of the way, then issues of fundamental importance for world trade (the Belt and Road Initiative) and the stability of crucial areas like the Middle East and North Africa can be dealt with, even though US adversaries are fully aware that US foreign policy isn’t decided by the President of the United States, rather from the ‘Washington consensus’ driven by ‘US Exceptionalism’.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

Tory leader Theresa May’s days have been numbered for months,  her nearly three years as UK prime minister a colossal failure by any standard.

She’s been ridiculed and reviled as “mean…crude…stupid (and) the prime minister of humiliation.”

Since majority Brits voted for Brexit on June 23, 2016, she lied expressing support, while privately working against Britain leaving the EU.

Despite losing multiple parliamentary votes on her no-Brexit/Brexit deal from January to April this year, she hung on, delaying her departure until announcing it on Friday, saying she’ll end her turbulent premiership on June 7.

The end of the line drew near after announcing another version of her no-Brexit/Brexit deal on Tuesday. It fell flat for amounting to old wine in new bottles, parliamentarians overwhelmingly against it without a vote taken.

Tory House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom resigned on Wednesday, refusing to present May’s last-gasp deal for a floor vote.

Four more Tory ministers resigned. On Wednesday, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith suggested her husband, known as her “rock,” advise her to step aside and end what’s going on, adding:

“(T)he reality is that she has no confidence any longer, not just in her party but in the cabinet as well. So the best thing for her and the best thing for everybody else is to break away and say it’s time to find a new leader, somebody who campaigned for Brexit, who is committed to Brexit in any form.”

Greatly understating how widely she’s reviled by Tories and opposition MPs, the BBC said she’s “unlikely to join Margaret Thatcher in the annals of leaders who left an indelible mark on their country.”

A London Guardian readers section headlined: “Good riddance,” saying as well: “Don’t let her failure to deliver Brexit overshadow her many other failures.”

Following her resignation, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a general election, saying:

“She has now accepted what the country has known for months: she cannot govern, and nor can her divided and disintegrating party,” adding:

“The Conservative Party has utterly failed the country over Brexit and is unable to improve people’s lives or deal with their most pressing needs.”

“Parliament is deadlocked and the Conservatives offer no solutions to the other major challenges facing our country.”

“Whoever becomes the new Conservative leader must let the people decide our country’s future through an immediate general election.”

As of now, a Tory leadership contest is scheduled for June 10 to choose her successor. She’ll stay on until a selection is made.

Vowing for nearly three years to deliver Brexit, she covertly worked to undermine what majority Brits voted for.

Her scheme to leave Britain half in and half out of the EU angered most parliamentarians, along with Brussels and most Brits.

Months earlier, her days looked numbered, UK media reporting that virtually all her cabinet members urged her to step down voluntarily.

She angered fellow Tories and opposition MPs alike, blaming them for her ineptness and arrogance over the Brexit impasse.

Former MP George Galloway slammed her, saying her Brexit scheme “surely cooks the goose of the plan but also bastes her ready for roasting,” adding:

“In any normal polity the leader at least would already be gone…(It’s) obvious (that Tories) must get rid of” her.

An unnamed EU official said

“there is a complete lack of confidence (by Brussels in May) to deliver on this deal.”

She colluded with US hardliners against Russia, falsely calling the Kremlin a threat to UK security, a diversionary tactic, shifting attention from her disastrous no-Brexit/Brexit deal, overwhelmingly opposed by parliamentarians, including fellow Tories.

In response to her hostile anti-Russia rhetoric and actions, Moscow’s London embassy said she “can only bring all sorts of negative consequences for the UK and the state of Russian-British bilateral relations.”

In the US and UK, they’re ruptured beyond repair, Cold War 2.0 raging more intensely than during the Soviet Russia era, risking East/West confrontation. The ominous possibility of nuclear war is real.

May’s tenure will be defined by Brexit deception and failure, breaching the public trust, and militant hostility toward Russia based on Big Lies — a nation threatening no one.

She got Brussels to extend the March 29 Brexit deadline twice, October 31 the latest deadline, perhaps to be extended again if major differences aren’t resolved.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

“(w)e are closely monitoring (events in Britain) because the European Union is our main trading and economic partner. For this reason we are naturally interested in a predictable, stable and developing partner,” adding:

“Regrettably, I cannot recall offhand any landmarks that might somehow illustrate a contribution to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Britain. It is rather the other way round. May’s premiership was a very complicated period in our bilateral relations.”

Russian upper house Federation Council International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov slammed her, saying

“(t)he further march of events in bilateral relations will depend on who will take the vacant seat of the prime minister,” adding:

“Rumors vary but by and large they inspire little optimism, if at all. The outgoing prime minister will be remembered mostly for her scandalous ‘highly likely’ style rhetoric – in other words, groundless charges against Russia which a number of European countries interpreted as a reason enough to expel Russian diplomats.”

May is an example of leadership “not bother(ing) to present solid proof when it comes to Russia. So I believe nobody in Russia will be too much aggrieved over (her) resignation.”

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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.

President Nicolas Maduro initiated Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs) in early 2016.

The program distributes subsidized food to around six million Venezuelan families, around two-thirds of the population, part of the nation’s participatory social democracy.

From inception with Obama in office, the US falsely claimed the program is used as a political weapon against opposition interests.

It’s nothing of the sort, all Venezuelans in need able to receive aid regardless of their political affiliations.

The CLAP program is administered by neighborhood committees connected to communal councils, social organizations operating nationwide, including community, environmental and feminist groups, others involved in cultural, education and various other activities.

Their common theme is defending Bolivarian social democracy they want preserved and protected, notably serving the rights and welfare of all Venezuelans as constitutionally mandated.

The nation’s Social Development and Popular Participation Ministry, later the Communes Ministry, mobilized activists to form government funded communal councils, encouraging ordinary Venezuelans to become involved in defending the revolution from internal and external efforts to undermine it.

In 1999, Chavez instituted revolutionary social change. Maduro carries his torch, participatory social democracy the way it should be, entirely absent in the West, fantasy democracies in these countries, not the real thing — notably how the US and its EU allies operate.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump regime is preparing criminal charges and sanctions against Bolivarian Republic officials involved in the food distribution CLAP program.

What’s apparently coming has nothing to do with combatting what the Journal called “a large-scale money-laundering operation run by the government,” adding:

“[The Trump regime] is preparing to allege in criminal charges and sanctions that Venezuelan officials and private contractors, including a Colombian businessman, have laundered billions of dollars in state funds meant for the food program and other state operations, the officials and other people familiar with the matter said.”

In April, Maduro slammed the accusations, calling them a smear campaign to undermine Venezuela’s ability to import food, stressing his government “will never surrender” to US pressure, threats and intimidation tactics.

What’s going on? Do Trump regime hardliners want to starve Venezuelans into submission? They continue going all out to topple Maduro and eliminate Bolivarian social democracy by waging war by other means, featuring unlawful sanctions and other hostile actions.

In its article, the Journal cited no evidence proving allegations made, just baseless remarks by named and unnamed Trump regime officials, including from Justice Department criminal division head Brian Benczkowski, saying:

The Venezuelan government and military commanders “are using the CLAP program to steal from it, launder money, and for political control (sic).”

According to an unnamed Treasury Department official, “…Maduro insiders continue to seek illicit revenue streams (sic), even as the Venezuelan people and economy sink deeper into despair,” adding:

“We are alerting financial institutions (that Maduro) is using sophisticated schemes (sic), including the diversion of humanitarian assistance (sic), to evade sanctions and maintain its grip on power (sic).”

Neither official backed allegations made with evidence because none exists.

Throughout Bolivarian Republic history, US regimes falsely charged its officials and entities with illicit drugs trafficking, including against Minister of Industries and National Production Tareck El Aissami.

He debunked false accusations against him and the Venezuelan government, saying its “fight against drug cartels achieved the greatest progress in our history and in the western hemisphere, both in terms of the transnational drug trafficking business and their logistics structures,” adding:

Under his public security corps leadership, “Venezuelan anti-drug enforcement authorities…captured, arrested and brought 102 heads of criminal drug trafficking organizations not only to the Venezuelan justice but also to the justice of other countries where they were wanted.”

The CIA has been involved in illicit drugs trafficking throughout nearly its entire post-WW II history. So are major US and other Western banks, laundering dirty money, boosting their profits.

Langley relies on involvement in drugs trafficking for a significant portion of its revenues. Venezuela leads the hemisphere in combatting this scourge.

The CIA in cahoots with organized crime and major Western financial institutions constitute ground zero for the global proliferation of illicit drugs, vital information major media suppress.

Accusations against Venezuela’s CLAP program are fabricated. It’s not a money laundering operation to enrich Bolivarian government and military officials.

Activist Gloria La Riva, former US Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) presidential candidate, observed how the CLAP program works firsthand, saying the following:

“Outrageous lies against the government of President Nicolas Maduro are being published or broadcast on a daily basis by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc…to justify” unjustifiable Trump regime actions against Venezuela, adding:

“This battering ram of false propaganda hides a more insidious truth: The US government is the biggest reason for the shortages, with the strangling sanctions it has imposed.”

“Major Venezuelan and US corporations have engaged in a concerted production, an act of war, and in this war the attacks are increasing daily.”

Maduro’s government “has gone into overdrive to help the population resist the economic war, by expanding the scope and reach of the historic missions begun by the revolution’s leader Hugo Chavez” — including food distribution through the CLAP program to millions of Venezuelans in need.

A woman showed La Riva the food box her family receives monthly. It “contain(s) six pounds of rice, six pounds of black beans, two pounds of lentils, two liter bottles of oil, two bags of milk, 2.2 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of corn flour, the essential ingredients of arepas, mayonnaise, catsup, two cans of tuna fish,” she explained.

“CLAP supplies (also) include chicken, meat, and 36 eggs per month,” said La Riva. The program involves entire communities, local coordinators administering it.

Trump regime claims about Venezuelan officials siphoning off funds earmarked for the program are refuted by its recipients.

Nourishing food reaches millions of Venezuelans on a regular basis. False Trump regime accusations about the program, along with sanctions and other measures apparently coming to target it are all about wanting to undermine what’s vital for millions of Venezuelans — aiming to starve them into submission.

There’s no ambiguity about how the US operates, demanding other nations bow to its will or face the full force of its wrath.

It’s an agenda risking humanity-destroying nuclear war by going too far — where things are heading if not challenged and stopped by the world community.

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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.

Relying on the corporate media, including BBC News, to provide a reliable account of the world is literally a matter of life or death, on many levels.

Imagine, for example, a Russian dissident living in the UK who had published copious evidence of Russian war crimes, and who had then sought political asylum in an embassy in London. Imagine if that dissident were then expelled from the embassy, under pressure from Russia, immediately imprisoned in a high-security prison here and faced with the prospect of extradition to Russia to face life imprisonment or the death sentence. There would be a massive uproar in the Western media. Western political leaders would issue strong statements of disapproval and demand the freedom of a brave dissident. The case of Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is much worse. He is being pursued relentlessly by a powerful country, the United States, of which he is not even a citizen.

US prosecutors are now reportedly helping themselves to Assange’s possessions, including medical records and two manuscripts. Baltasar Garzon, international legal co-ordinator for the defence of Assange and WikiLeaks, urged international bodies to intervene in what he called:

‘an unprecedented attack on the rights of the defence, freedom of expression and access to information.’

He added:

‘It is extremely worrying that Ecuador has proceeded with the search and seizure of property, documents, information and other material belonging to the defence of Julian Assange, which Ecuador arbitrarily confiscated, so that these can be handed over to the agent of political persecution against him, the United States.’

The US is undoubtedly looking for evidence to build a bogus case against Assange to lock him away for life for alleged crimes against the world’s number one rogue state. As Noam Chomsky has long observed, the US behaves like the Mafia writ large. You go against their power at your peril.

The incentives for Ecuador, under a Washington-friendly government led by Lenín Moreno since 2017, to behave in this appalling manner are obvious. A report in The Canary spelled it out:

‘Ecuador is raking in new [trade] deals with the UK and US after handing over Julian Assange’.

In Sweden, surely under US pressure, prosecutors have now applied for a warrant for Assange’s arrest. Craig Murray provided the vital background to this latest disgraceful development, pointing to the:

‘incredible and open bias of the courts against Assange […] since day 1.’

The former British diplomat is clear about the crucial importance of the work of WikiLeaks and Assange:

‘Julian Assange revolutionised publishing by bringing the public direct access to massive amounts of raw material showing secrets the government wished to hide. By giving the public this direct access he cut out the filtering and mediating role of the journalistic and political classes.’

Murray pointed out the contrast with the Panama Papers, detailing how the super-rich hide their money, covered by the Guardian and other ‘mainstream media’ outlets with great fanfare. However, contrary to media promises, such coverage:

‘only ever saw less than 2% of the raw material published and where major western companies and individuals were completely protected from revelation because of the use of MSM [“mainstream” media] intermediaries.’

He continued:

‘Or compare Wikileaks to the Snowden files, the vast majority of which have now been buried and will never be revealed, after foolishly being entrusted to the Guardian and the Intercept. Assange cut out the intermediary role of the mediating journalist and, by allowing the people to see the truth about how they are governed, played a major role in undercutting public confidence in the political establishment that exploits them.’

John Pilger, a staunch defender of Assange and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, as all journalists should be, said via Twitter:

‘The filthy war on Julian #Assange and Chelsea Manning, whose heresy is to have revealed the crimes of great power, intensifies. Craven Sweden plays to its theatre of darkness while Assange the prisoner is denied even his glasses.’

Manning is yet again back in prison, following a brief spell of freedom. She has steadfastly refused to testify to a secret grand jury in Virginia that is attempting to entrap her into revealing incriminating evidence about her past communications with WikiLeaks. The reluctance of corporate journalists, and even human rights groups, to support Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks is symptomatic of a broken political system still masquerading as ‘democracy’.

Missing Headlines On Douma

The freedom of the Western media, then, is a cruel deception. In reality, the corporate media has paved the way for war after war: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen; and possible future wars in Venezuela and Iran. On and on it goes. Last week, a leaked document from the headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), directly contradicted the concocted ‘consensus’ that Syrian President Assad’s forces dropped canisters containing poison gas from helicopters over Douma on April 7, 2018, killing dozens of civilians. The claim was crucial to the justification given by Western governments for launching air strikes on Syria one week later, relayed dutifully by the Guardian in its headline:

‘Syria: US, UK and France launch strikes in response to chemical attack’

The leaked report was published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM), a group of independent scholars and researchers, and signed by Ian Henderson, an engineering expert who, as independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone noted, has been listed in leadership positions on OPCW documents as far back as 1998 and as recently as 2018. The report concluded:

‘In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.’

WGSPM concluded in their analysis of the leaked engineering report that it is:

‘beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018 was staged.’

Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave his initial assessment of the leaked report and concurred that the alleged chemical attack was staged:

‘The OPCW engineering assessment unambiguously describes evidence collected by the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that indicates two analyzed chlorine cylinder attacks were staged in April 2018 in Douma. The holes in the reinforced concrete roofs that were supposedly produced by high-speed impacts (impact at speeds of perhaps 100 m/s or more, 250 mph) of industrial chlorine canisters dropped from helicopters were instead created by earlier explosions of either artillery rockets or mortar shells. In one event a chlorine canister that was damaged on another occasion was placed on the roof with its head inserted into an existing crater hole, and in the other case a damaged chlorine cylinder was placed on a bed supposedly after it penetrated the building roof and bounced from its original trajectory into a bed. In both cases the damage to the chlorine cylinders was incompatible with the damage to the surroundings that was allegedly caused by the cylinder impacts.’

Shockingly:

’35 deaths that were originally attributed to these staged chlorine events cannot be explained and it cannot be ruled out that these people were murdered as part of the staging effort.’

Postol emphasised:

‘the voices that come through the engineering report are those of highly knowledgeable and sophisticated experts.’

But the dissenting engineering analysis was ‘entirely unmentioned in the report that went to the UN Security Council’. Postol concluded:

‘This omission is very serious, as the findings of that report are critical to the process of determining attribution. There is absolutely no reason to justify the omission of the engineering report in the OPCW account to the UN Security Council as its policy implications are of extreme importance.’

Caitlin Johnstone commented:

‘This should be a major news headline all around the world, but of course it is not. As of this writing the mass media have remained deathly silent about the document despite its enormous relevance to an international headline story last year which occupied many days of air time. It not only debunks a major news story that had military consequences, it casts doubt on a most esteemed international independent investigative body and undermines the fundamental assumptions behind many years of western reporting in the area.’

The OPCW confirmed that the document is genuine. However, rather than address the serious questions about its omission in its official report to the UN, the OPCW merely said that they would now be ‘conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question.’ They added that they would not be commenting further ‘at this time’.

Journalist Peter Hitchens asked:

‘What is going on at the OPCW? It is a valuable organisation, containing many fine people, with a noble purpose, but has it been placed under pressure, or even hijacked, by political forces which seek a justification for military intervention in Syria? Given that a decision between war or peace, affecting the whole world, could one day hang on its judgements, I think the whole world is entitled to an inquiry into what is happening behind its closed doors.’

Our searches of the ProQuest newspaper database confirm that there has not been a single mention of this devastating document in any ‘mainstream’ US or UK national newspaper except in an opinion column by Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday. It is truly remarkable, but predictable, that corporate media journalists have ignored an expert assessment that casts serious doubt on the official narrative on Douma and, therefore, the West’s ‘justification’ for bombing Syria.

There is no mention on the BBC News website of the leaked OPCW report. This is consistent with the ‘public’ broadcaster’s central role in maintaining and supporting the case for UK state policies. As Caitlin Johnstone astutely observed, the BBC’s preferred mode when it comes to foreign policy is fact-free war propaganda. Even when the press reported fresh US claims of a ‘possible Assad chemical attack in Syria’ – likely a propaganda effort intended to deflect attention from the leak – journalists managed to avoid mentioning the newly published OPCW report.

A news article in the small-circulation Morning Star is the only other exception to the craven silence in the national press. The overwhelming media acquiescence for Western foreign policy is surely a performance that the old Soviet press of Pravda, Izvestia, et al. could only have dreamt of.

Human Extinction

But the greatest calamity resulting from the myth of a free and fair media is the inexorable rush towards climate breakdown. In 1982, Exxon scientists predicted that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would reach 415 parts per million (ppm) by around this year; which is exactly what has happened. In pre-industrial times, the concentration was much lower; around 280 ppm. The last time it was this high was 2.5 to 5 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, well before modern humans evolved. Global sea level was 25m higher than now and global temperatures were 2-3 degrees Celsius higher.

As Kyla Mandel noted in an article for ThinkProgress:

‘Despite this knowledge, the company chose not to change or adapt its business model. Instead, it chose to invest heavily in disinformation campaigns that promoted climate science denial, failing to disclose its knowledge that the majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must remain untapped in order to avert catastrophic climate change.’

Over ten years ago, in January 2009, New Scientist reported that:

‘Billions could go hungry from global warming by 2100’.

As we have documented in media alerts and books since then, there has been warning after warning from reputable scientists, and things are worse now than they were in 2009. Governments have not merely ‘done nothing’; they have promoted and perpetuated corporate policies that are destroying the planet’s ecosystems and unleashing climate instability.

The World Health Organisation states that climate change is already leading to 150,000 deaths annually around the world. Researchers fear that the number may well double by 2030, even if serious emissions reductions begin today. Relevant factors include malnutrition, heat stress and increased incidence of diseases such as malaria. Death rates will likely worsen even further because of population displacement, reductions in labour productivity from farmers trying to work in hotter conditions, and disruptions to health services because of destructive weather and climate. Climate change could also force more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, increasing their vulnerability to ill health and disease.

The corporate disinformation campaign to block or slow action to tackle climate breakdown has therefore already led to huge numbers of people dying and suffering from illness. It will only get worse, potentially leading to a mass extinction of species, including humans.

When will senior BBC News editors and journalists, funded by the public licence fee, make the climate emergency central to their reporting? How long before economics and business correspondents notice the utter absurdity of ignoring climate breakdown in their reports, day after day? Last December, we asked BBC News business editor Simon Jack when he would address the climate crisis. He had never responded to us before. He replied this time:

‘Very soon’.

Over four months later, he published a piece on his blog titled, ‘UK’s biggest money manager warns on climate catastrophe’.

It began:

‘The world is facing a climate catastrophe and businesses around the world must address it urgently or face the ultimate sanction for a public company, shareholders who refuse to back them any more.

‘That is not a message from an environmental action group but from the largest money manager in the UK, Legal & General Investment Management, which manages £1 trillion worth of UK pension fund investments.

‘Its climate warning was the top of a list of concerns about the way companies are run.’

A serious message indeed; surely there could be nothing more pressing. ‘Climate catastrophe’; ‘top of a list of concerns’, ‘ultimate sanction’. Would this mark a sea change in the business editor’s reporting? Seemingly not. Simon Jack’s reporting since then has been business as usual.

Our previous media alert highlighted the valiant campaigning and protests by Extinction Rebellion, and at least some degree of serious media coverage has been generated recently. But peaceful protests need to proliferate, intensify and seriously disrupt government policies and industry practices that are continuing to pump up dangerous global levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, two well-respected writers on climate, believe that although ‘the political tide could be turning on climate change’, they are both deeply concerned that it is too little, too late.

McKibben, whose book ‘The End of Nature’ was published thirty years ago, told journalist David Remnick in a New Yorker interview:

‘The argument about climate change was over by the early nineteen-nineties, when scientists had reached a very robust consensus. We’d won the argument. We were just losing the fight, because the fight was not about data and reason and evidence. It was about the thing that fights are always about: money and power.’

Kolbert, author of ‘The Sixth Extinction’ about the human-driven mass loss of species, warned in the same interview:

‘We have not yet experienced the full impact of the greenhouse gases we have already put up there. And once we do [in] a decade or so, there’s a sort of a long tail to that, we will have put up that much more. So we’re always chasing this problem […] Once we decide, “Oh, we really don’t like this climate,” you don’t get the old climate back for […] many, many, many generations. So we are fighting a very very, very uphill battle. […] maybe we can avoid the worst possible future. But I don’t think at this point we can avoid a lot, a lot, a lot of damage.’

The outlook is so pessimistic that the best McKibben can hope for is that global warming is slowed down ‘to the point where it doesn’t make civilizations impossible.’ But it is ‘an open question’ as to whether even that is attainable.

McKibben added:

‘There are scientists who tell you we’re already past that point. The consensus, at least for the moment, is that we’ve got a narrow and closing window, but that if we move with everything we have, then, perhaps, we’ll be able to squeeze a fair amount of our legacy through it.’

This is terrifying, and it should drive media coverage of the problem with huge urgency and scope. The real prospect that all of humanity’s achievements – in art, science, music, literature, philosophy – might be wiped out of existence, should compel dramatic action.

Journalist Jonathan Cook, freed from the need to kowtow to state or corporate interests in his reporting, states our predicament clearly and honestly:

‘Climate collapse is so close at hand, the window to avert our fate so narrow, that only the insane, the deeply propagandised and those so alienated from the natural world that they have lost all sense of themselves and what matters can still ignore the reality. We are teetering over the precipice.’

Now is the time, says Cook, for ‘genuine populism’: a widespread, grassroots struggle to overturn ‘turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism’, including the corporate media, before it destroys us all.

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The US Department of Justice issued an 18-count indictment against Julian Assange for violating the 1917 Espionage Act. We speak to Daniel Ellsberg about the dangerous implications this move has for journalism in the United States

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SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

In breaking news, the U.S. Department of Justice just charged Julian Assange on 18 counts of having violated the 1917 Espionage Act. This is a significant escalation of charges against him. Previously he was indicted on a charge of hacking into a Pentagon computer system. Assange is currently in prison in London after Ecuador revoked his political asylum at the London embassy, where he lived for almost seven years.

Joining me now to discuss the Assange indictment is Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel is a former U.S. military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who became famous in 1971 when he released the Pentagon papers. The papers revealed top secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision making about the Vietnam War. His recent book is The Doomsday Machine, and you’ll find a series of interviews right here at The Real News Network with Daniel Ellsberg about the book. Good to have you here, Daniel.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Glad to be here, though not under these circumstances, Sharmini. Go ahead.

SHARMINI PERIES: Daniel, last time we spoke, which was just after Julian Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, you already expected that this might happen, that Assange might be indicted under the Espionage Act. What is the significance of this move, and why did they do it now and not wait until he was extradited to the U.S.?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I was sure that the Trump administration would not be content with keeping Julian Assange in prison for five years, which was the sentence for the one charge of conspiracy that he was charged with earlier. So I was sure they would go after him with a much longer sentence under the Espionage Act. I was charged with 12 counts, including one of conspiracy, in 1971, for a possible sentence of 115 years. In this case they brought 17 counts under the Espionage Act, plus the one conspiracy. So they’re facing him with 175 years. That’s, frankly, not that different from 115. It’s a life sentence. And it’ll be enough for them.

They weren’t anxious, I think, to bring it while he was still in Britain because it’s so clearly a political offense, and Britain isn’t compelled to extradite under the treaty for a political offense. And that’s what they’re charging here now, as well as a politically motivated charge. But apparently they had to bring the charges now rather than after he is back in the States, which was what I had expected, because they have to tell Britain, in deciding whether to extradite him to the U.S. or not, the full scale of the charges that he would be facing. In particular, both Sweden and the U.S., I think, are reluctant to extradite people on charges that hold the death penalty. That’s true I think for Sweden in particular, which is also trying to extradite him. They’re not going to charge him with the death penalty. Just a life sentence, as I was facing.

This does, however, complicate somewhat their extradition. And I thought that Trump would hold off on declaring war on the press until the extradition matter had been settled. But no, the declaration of war came today. This is a historic day, and a very challenging one for American democracy.

SHARMINI PERIES: Now, Daniel, Ecuador, at the time they released him or revoked his stay at the embassy, made it a condition that Julian Assange be not extradited to a country where there is the death penalty. Now, you said that there could be a lifelong sentence here in terms of prison. So the fact that there is a death penalty in the United States is insignificant, as far as you’re concerned?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: My understanding is that Sweden, which is trying to extradite him as well, cannot extradite somebody to a country that has a death penalty. But I think they would probably try to get around that if the prosecutors said we’re not seeking the death penalty, and that’s surely the case right now. Actually, the death penalty under the Espionage Act only applies in certain circumstances; probably not the paragraphs of 18 USC 793, paragraphs D and E, which I was charged under, didn’t carry a death penalty. That was essentially for people who were spies in wartime against an enemy country. So they’ll say they’re not seeking the death penalty. But the problem remains that these are very clearly political offenses. And the question whether they should extradite him for that, that will complicate the appeals in the extradition process, and probably make it longer. So I don’t expect him in the U.S. very quickly, unless the U.K., with their special friendship, just ships him off very quickly, instead of to Sweden.

But the challenge is on as of now, right now. Every journalist in the country now knows for the first time that she or he is subject to prosecution for doing their job as journalists. It cuts out the First Amendment, essentially. That eliminates the First Amendment freedom of the press, which is the cornerstone of our American democracy and of this republic. So there’s an immediate focus, there should be an immediate concern not just for journalists over here and publishers, but for everyone who wants this country to remain a democratic republic.

SHARMINI PERIES: As journalists we engage with states all the time. We engage and we ask questions, and we try to assess and ascertain information. How does it actually specifically affect journalists working?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: John Demer for the Department of Justice, I notice just now, is trying to distinguish Julian from journalists. In fact, he’s saying he’s not a journalist, although the New York Times, to whom he gave Chelsea Manning’s information initially, as I did, is saying very frankly that what he does is what The New York Times does. And clearly if he’s prosecuted and convicted, that confronts the New York Times, The Washington Post, and you, and every other journalist, with the possibility of the same charges. A second DOJ is saying he didn’t act like a responsible journalist. Well, people who are responsible journalists often do what Julian criticized, actually, and that is they give their stuff to the Department of Defense, or the Department of Justice, or the White House, before it’s printed. That’s a very questionable practice, really, and he certainly doesn’t do that. And it was not done, for example, in the case of the Pentagon papers, because they knew they would get an injunction before they published instead of an injunction after they had started publishing.

So this shows, in other words, that they’re saying, well, we won’t prosecute responsible journalists. But that assurance is worth nothing, aside from the question of who they’ll consider responsible or not. Remember that President Trump’s unprecedented charge here is that the American press, the mainstream press, is the enemy of the people. That’s a phrase that was used under Stalin, and also under Hitler, to describe people who were to be eliminated. It’s a very, very ominous historical phrase. But he has now declared war on the enemy of the people. And by saying that, for example, that he requested information, classified information, from Chelsea Manning, and that’s what distinguishes him from the press, or the responsible press, well, let me tell you, I can’t count the number of times I have been asked and urged to give classified information to the responsible press. The Times, the Post, AP. Anything you can name.

So that is journalism. And the idea that they’re distinguishing that should not reassure any journalists. I’m sure it won’t, actually. So they’re feeling the chill right now, before the prosecution actually begins. These indictments are unprecedented. And I would say they are blatantly unconstitutional, in my opinion. Which is not worth that much, except it’s a subject I’ve been close to for a long time. This is an impeachable offense, to carry on a prosecution this blatantly in violation of the Constitution, which the president and the attorney general are sworn to uphold. They are not doing that at this moment.

SHARMINI PERIES: Daniel, the 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act, what are they, as far as you know?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: What is most ominous to me, by the way–it’s not obvious–is that they referred to 2010, when he was dealing with Chelsea Manning. Now, I followed those charges, and the material that was released by the Times, Le Monde, the Observer in London, and several, a number of other papers. I followed that fairly closely, including in the Chelsea Manning trial. That clearly was shown to result in no damage, no harm to any individual, which was precisely what they’re charging him now with having risked. And they weren’t able to come up with a single instance in these hundreds of thousands of files which were released in which a person had, in fact, been harmed. Now, I thought they would probably bring charges under his very recent revelations of various kinds, of which I don’t know the substance, entirely, what he had or what he released, and they might have come up with something that looked very questionable. I know that for 2010 we now know that what he released was in not violation of national security, did not harm any individuals, and is indeed what journalists do all the time.

His releasing himself, in contrast to some of the newspapers he gave it to, of unredacted material was questionable at that time, including by me, and raised questions of whether that was the right way to do it. As I say, though, that was tested over a matter of years in terms of not having done any harm, given the sources from which that was drawn, and that reassured me about the judgment of both Chelsea and Julian in having released at that time. But in any case, there’s no question that the 2010 material is is material that should have been protected by the First Amendment. And he is. And if the current court fairly judges the intent and effect of the First Amendment, this case would be dropped. As we all know, we can’t count on that. And a 5-4 decision now by this Supreme Court is probably another reason why Trump has gone further in attacking the First Amendment than any previous president, because he has an unprecedented court.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Daniel. I’ve been speaking with Daniel Ellsberg, former U.S. military analysts employed by RAND Corporation who released the Pentagon papers. I thank you so much for joining us today.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Very good. Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

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The U.S. justice department has filed 17 new charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. In reaction, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: It’s a war on journalism. Journalists have reacted: “Modern fascism is breaking cover”.

The new charges expand the original one-count indictment of conspiracy to hack into U.S. government computers, announced in March, prior to Assange’s arrest in London. He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count, on top of another five from a previous indictment, if convicted, which make the total years 175.

Media reports said:

A U.S. federal grand jury has announced 17 additional charges under the Espionage Act against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who is currently in a UK jail awaiting an extradition hearing.

The new indictment, made public on Thursday, relates to U.S. documents WikiLeaks published in 2010, and alleges Assange revealed the names of individuals who were working with the U.S. government, thus endangering their lives.

He was previously charged last month with one count of conspiring with ex-intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to the Pentagon network.

Assange is serving a jail sentence in the UK for jumping bail.

“The superseding indictment alleges that Assange was complicit with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the US Army, in unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

“The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it. It has not and never has been the department’s policy to target them for reporting. But Julian Assange is no journalist,” said John Demers, head of the DOJ’s National Security Division.

Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army private who provided the U.S. State Department documents and military documents, was summoned by a federal grand jury in Virginia, but she refused to testify. Manning refusing to testify against Wikileaks said: “I’d rather starve to death.”

She is currently in jail, facing indefinite confinement for contempt of court. There was no indication Manning was in any way involved with the new charges.

Assange is currently in the Belmarsh crown prison outside of London, serving his 50-month prison sentence for violating UK bail by seeking asylum in Ecuador, and awaiting a hearing on the US extradition request.

Meanwhile, Swedish prosecutors are talking about reviving the sexual assault charges against Assange, based on claims that he had consensual but unprotected sex with two women in 2010.

War on journalism, says Snowden

The fate of journalism as we know it is now at stake, after Washington indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted in reaction to 17 new charges against the WikiLeaks founder.

“The Department of Justice just declared war – not on Wikileaks, but on journalism itself,” Snowden tweeted Thursday, adding “this is no longer about Julian Assange: This case will decide the future of media.”

Snowden affirmed the case was much bigger than Assange.

Madness, says Wikileaks

WikiLeaks has also reacted by slamming the move as “madness” and declaring “the end of national security journalism” and even the First Amendment itself.

Modern fascism: react journalists

The U.S. government’s indictment of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange on 17 additional charges has shocked and horrified journalists who are calling it an unprecedented attack on press freedom.

Under the draconian Espionage Act, which has never before been used against a journalist publishing classified information, Assange faces up to 10 years in prison for each charge.

Actual journalists are horrified by the “unprecedented assault on the First Amendment.”

“This is the first time in history that anyone operating in a journalistic capacity has been charged under the Espionage Act,” Michael Tracey tweeted, adding in another tweet that the charges represented “the gravest attack on the First Amendment in years — possibly ever.” Even the Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined, ultimately opted not to pursue charges against Assange, concerned such prosecution would violate the First Amendment.

John Pilger declared: “Modern fascism is breaking cover“.

The famous journalist warned the mainstream media (MSM) that they were next.

The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald highlighted the hypocrisy of the MSM “proclaiming to be so very concerned about attacks on a free press” while remaining mute on Assange’s prosecution – or even cheering it on.

Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch made an important distinction between Wikileaks’ journalism and the mainstream media, however: “Assange has had to issue fewer corrections than the NYT and none of his stories has helped launch a war.”

Even some mainstream media journalists finally seemed to realize the gravity of the situation.

“What happens to Assange today can happen to the NYT or WaPo tomorrow,” investigative journalist James Ball tweeted.

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It was just a matter of time before the Trump regime piled on more spurious charges against Assange, clearly prepared long before Thursday’s release.

They’re on top of falsely accusing him of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,” according to an unsealed indictment, dated March 6, 2018.

New charges and the above one are all about waging war on truth-telling investigative journalism the way it should be conducted, providing vital information on issues related to the rule of law, fundamental rights, and the public welfare.

On Thursday, the Trump regime’s Justice Department headlined: “WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Charged in 18-Count Superseding Indictment — Charges Related to Illegally Obtaining, Receiving and Disclosing Classified Information (sic).”

Spurious charges include the following:

• Criminal No.1:18-cr-l11 (CMH)
• Count1: 18 U.S.C. (US Code) § 793(g) Conspiracy To Receive National Defense Information
• Counts 2-4: 18 U.S.C. & 793(b) and 2 — Obtaining National Defense Information
• Counts 5-8: 18 U.S.C. § 793(c) and 2 — Obtaining National Defense Information
• Counts 9-11: 18U.S.C. §793(d) and 2 — Disclosure of National Defense Information
• Counts 12-14: 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) and 2 — Disclosure of National Defense Information
• Counts 15-17: 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) — Disclosure of National Defense Information
• Count 18: 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1030 — Conspiracy To Commit Computer Intrusion

According an accompanying DOJ statement,

“Assange conspired with (Chelsea) Manning…aid(ing) and abet(ing) her in obtaining classified information with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

Manning is a courageous whistleblower. Material she released exposed US high crimes of war and against humanity, information vital for the public to know about how its government operates — extrajudicially time and again, accountability never forthcoming.

Assange is an investigative journalist. He earlier explained that WikiLeaks has the right “to publish newsworthy content,” adding: “Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true.”

Everyone in the US has the same right, what the First Amendment is all about, affirming speech, press, and academic freedoms – the most fundamental of all democratic rights bipartisan hardliners in Washington want compromised and eliminated.

Arresting and detaining Assange by UK authorities for extradition to the US for prosecution on the above charges is all about wanting truth-telling on vital issues suppressed — the same true for actions taken against Manning and other courageous whistleblowers.

The US wants scrutiny of its dirty linen prevented. Targeting individuals courageously revealing it harshly is all about intimidating other potential whistleblowers with damning information to remain silent.

Manning, Assange, and others targeted like them are innocent of charges against them. They’re victims of US judicial unfairness, denied their fundamental habeas, due process, and equal protection under law rights.

Manning is currently detained indefinitely for invoking her constitutional right to remain silent — refusing to give grand jury testimony that could unwittingly be used by prosecutors against Assange, potentially leaving herself vulnerable to new falsified charges.

Like Manning in 2010, Assange is charged under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act, relating to WW I, what should have been rescinded at war’s end.

Following Assange’s unlawful April 11 arrest in London at the behest of the Trump regime, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) called the action against him “an attack on press freedom,” a flagrant First Amendment breach, leaving all independent journalists vulnerable to similar actions against them.

In response to Thursday’s 18-count indictment of Assange, ACLU speech, privacy, and technology project director Ben Wizner said the following:

“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information,” adding:

“This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump (regime’s) attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment.”

“It establishes a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets.”

Each charge against Assange carries a potential 10-year sentence. Trump regime hardliners want him punished and silenced behind bars longterm — for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism the way it should be.

In response to Thursday’s indictment, WikiLeaks tweeted: “This is madness.” It represents “the end of national security journalism and the first amendment.”

At age 47 in poor health from his near seven-year ordeal in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid his current fate, a slow-motion judicial unfairness death sentence likely awaits him.

Given deplorable healthcare for US prison inmates, what greatly shortened human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart’s life from her unjustifiable four-year imprisonment ordeal, Assange may not last more than a few years behind bars, especially if abused by US prison authorities.

A Final Comment

Chelsea Manning and her lawyer Moira Meltzer-Cohen said the following in response to Assange’s 18-count indictment:

“The continued detention of Chelsea Manning is purely punitive. Today’s events underscore what Chelsea has previously said, that “(a)ll of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013.”

“I continue to accept full and sole responsibility for those disclosures in 2010. It’s telling that the government appears to have already obtained this indictment before my contempt hearing last week. (The Trump regime) describes the press as the opposition party and an enemy of the people.”

“Today, they use the law as a sword, and have shown their willingness to bring the full power of the state against the very institution intended to shield us from such excesses.”

Manning’s attorney Meltzer-Cohen said “up until now, the Department Of Justice has been reticent to actually indict publishers for work implicating matters of national security, because the first amendment rights of the press and public are so constitutionally valuable.”

Assange’s 18-count indictment “signals a real shift, and sets a new precedent for the federal government’s desire to chill and even punish the vigorous exercise of the free press.”

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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.

Iran is becoming increasingly desperate after the US intensified the economic component of its Hybrid War on the country, and while Indian Prime Minister Modi snubbed the Islamic Republic’s top diplomat during his visit to the country earlier this month and humiliatingly sent him back to his homeland empty-handed, his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan warmly embraced Zarif and offered to mediate between Iran and the US.

Iran knows that it’s in trouble after the US rescinded its sanctions waiver for the country’s main oil partners in order to intensify the economic component of its Hybrid War on the Islamic Republic, with the intent being to deprive its rival of valuable budgetary revenue so as to compel it into undertaking painful austerity measures that could exacerbate the already-high risk of a Color Revolution. It was with this increasing strategic desperation in mind that the country dispatched its top diplomat to India earlier this month to plead for it to defy the US like it famously promised it would do last year and not submit to its unilateral sanctions regime.

Foreign Minister Zarif must have been sorely disappointed when he was unsurprisingly snubbed by Indian Prime Minister Modi who refused to meet with him so as to avoid sending any inadvertent signals to his American ally that India would even dare to consider going against Washington’s will, which is why Iran’s top diplomat was humiliatingly sent back to his homeland empty-handed after only having a brief chat with his Indian counterpart. To add insult to injury and ensure that Iran got the message that it was trying to convey, India shortly thereafter tested a surface-to-air missile that it jointly produced with “Israel“, putting to rest any hopes that New Delhi still endeavors to practice its over-hyped and now-outdated policy of “multi-alignment”.

Zarif’s dishonorable treatment by his Indian hosts was completely contrasted by the warm reception that he was just given by his Pakistani ones during his latest visit, where he met with Prime Minister Khan and was even told by his Foreign Ministry counterpart that Islamabad is willing to mediate between Iran and the US in pursuit of a peaceful solution to their latest tensions. This is very important because Pakistan already has decades’ worth of very solid ties with the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”), which have most recently been put to use to promote the revived peace process in Afghanistan.

Perhaps sensing that Pakistani mediation could eventually be just as much of a game-changer in Iranian-American relations as it has been for American-Taliban ones, the Indian Ambassador to the US announced on the same day as Zarif’s arrival in the global pivot state that his country officially terminated its import of Iranian oil in response to Washington’s sanctions demands. The timing of this statement was very symbolic because it highlights just how different both South Asian states’ stances towards Iran are. India is playing partisan political games by unashamedly supporting the US’ policies, while Pakistan is trying to “balance” (or rather, in Indian political parlance, “multi-align”) between all Great Powers.

India wants to prove its loyalty to the US and remind America that its compliance with the unilateral sanctions regime against Iran is greatly contributing to the worsening economic crisis in the Islamic Republic, whereas Pakistan is flaunting its strategic independence by showing the world that it feels confident enough with its increasingly important geopolitical position to proactively play a leading diplomatic role in reducing tensions between those two countries. Just as significantly, Pakistan proved that it will continue to respect its partners’ state representatives instead of humiliating them like India just did to Zarif.

The main takeaway from Zarif’s totally different experiences visiting those two South Asian states is that Iran should seriously consider recalibrating its regional partnerships. India is no longer a reliable partner after it disrespected Iran’s top diplomat in such a shameful manner and then strongly signaled the strength of its new alliances with the US and “Israel” right after humiliating him. Pakistan, meanwhile, has shown itself to be totally dependable and genuinely interested in proactively playing a constructive role in supporting a peaceful solution to the latest Iranian-American tensions. As such, it would be wise for Iran to prioritize is relations with Pakistan in order to replace India as its regional strategic partner.

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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.

While the offensive of the Libyan National Army (LNA) under the command of Field Marshal Halifa Haftar in Tripoli against the armed groups controlled by the Government of National Unity (PNU) is well underway, more and more international and regional players intervene in the Libyan crisis. Initially, the intervention would seem to be aimed at exerting political pressure on the warring parties to stop the hostilities and then grew into open military support, which only aggravates the process of resolving the long-term conflict.

Thus, on Friday, May 18, the cargo ship Amazon delivered several dozen Turkish-made Kirpi II and Vuran armored personnel carriers to the seaport of Tripoli. It is noteworthy that this occurred two weeks after the Turkish President Erdogan announced his intention to make maximum efforts to “break the plot against the Libyan people” and “comprehensive support of the legitimate government in Tripoli”.

According to the tracking information, the ship under the flag of Moldova left the city of Samsun in the north of Turkey and before the departure to Libya stopped at Izmir, where the Kirpi factory is located. Apart from the armed vehicles, various small arms, including Bulgarian machine guns MG-M1 along with a large batch of ammunition were on board, the locals report. Moreover, Turkey could supply several Stinger MANPADS, anti-tank missiles and heavy weapons to PNU units connected to Muslim Brothers.

The reports on the shipment of anti-aircraft complexes to the PNU units can be confirmed by the latest statements of M. Ganun, a representative of “Volcano of Rage” operation. It was initiated to repeal Haftar’s attacks and air raids.

It worth noting that lethal weapons supplies to Libya have been completely banned since 2011 based on UN Security Council resolutions, imposing an arms embargo even on the ‘official’ government in Tripoli. Though Ankara has not yet commented on these reports underpinned by photos and videos, it indicates that Turkey has provided military support to the Libyan armed groups in violation of UN restrictions.

So far, the majority of foreign players involved in the Libyan conflict, including Haftar’s allies, preferred not to go beyond “legal support”. The actions of Turkey could provoke them to provide more support to the LNA. The development of the Libyan crisis in this scenario threatens to transform the local confrontation to a real mediated war.

Also, the overt intervention of Turkey can cast a shadow on the primary recipient of military aid – the PNU. I hardly think Sarajj, who still retains presidential ambitions, is interested in international criticism and accusation because of violations of fundamental UN resolutions on Libya.

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Today marks 16 years since Paul Bremer, the former American diplomat, made history three times in the space of one month. First he was appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the administration that ran Iraq after it was occupied by the United States in April 2003. This propelled him to the post of the most powerful American citizen outside the US comparable only to general Douglas MacArthur who commanded US occupational forces in Japan after its defeat in 1945.

A week later he made history once again when he signed Order Number 1 banning the Baath Party in Iraq and launching what became known as the “De-Ba’athification of Iraqi society”.

On 23 May 2003, he brought into effect CPA Order Number 2 called “Coalition Provisional Authority Number 2; Dissolution of Entities” disbanding the entire Iraqi military, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of State for Military Affairs, intelligence establishments and the whole security apparatus.

With little understanding of the serious damage his order would cause Iraq, Bremer earned his place in history as the man who, with a stroke of a pen, wiped out one of the oldest militaries in the region, decades of political doctrine and accompanying literally aspects reflected in millions of pages of novels, political theories and even short stories that impacted, greatly, the very idea of Pan-Arabism ever since the Baath Party was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1947.

Disbanding the military, along with the security service, made Iraq – the historical counter-weight to powerful Iran in the region – an easy prey to its domestic militias and even accessible for terror groups like Al-Qaeda. In later years Deash would capture large swaths of Iraqi territory and maintain its control over it for over four years.

It was almost impossible for weak and fragmented Iraq to get rid of Daesh by itself and it had to depend on an international coalition led by the US; the perpetrator of the whole mess!

It is tempting to think that the US actually wanted Iraq weak and always in need of its militarily or security assistance. As if the whole illegal and brutal invasion of the country in 2003 intended, from the start, to push Iraq once again to become no more than an remote American colony.

Neither Bremer nor his top aides or superiors, including then president George W. Bush, considered the consequences of their actions. In 2014 the world watched as Iraq collapsed.

Order Number 1, which saw the Baath party outlawed, led to the dismissal of its officials and cadres, closing its organisations; automatically hallowing out all institutions in the country and pushing Iraq in to chaos. This opened the door for hundreds of Iraqis who had been living in the diaspora, including agents of the US, to return and take over the country.

No one questioned the wisdom behind Orders 1 and 2 or their long-term effects on a country whose invaders said they had “liberated”. No question was asked as to what to do about decades of Baath doctrine that dominated the entire education system prevailing in much of the Arab world, within Pan-Arabism ideology that was cherished in the 1950s and 1960s. The Baath party in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and even Mauritania was much more than a political vehicle, it was a progressive ideology; an important tributary to the larger dream of Arab unity to which the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser devoted his entire life.

The Arab Socialist Baath Party was founded in Syria in the 1940s, principally, by Syrian intellectuals – Michel Aflaq, a Greek Orthodox, and Salah Al-Din Al-Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Neither ever took office in either Syria or Iraq and both dreamed of the elusive Arab unity.

Bremer’s decision to ban the ruling Baath party was echoed in the Middle East during the Arab Spring when countries experiencing the Arab Spring went on to outlaw the parties from which their former leaders stemmed. These parties, in the case of countries including Tunisia, had previously helped liberate their people from the clutches of colonisers.

After its 2011 revolution, Egypt outlawed the National Party from which ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak stemmed. The party’s first objective was liberating the country from British colonial power. Its roots stretched in to the country since the 1920s.

In all three cases, wrongdoings or crimes committed by the regimes of the day were ascribed to the ideology of each of the three parties rather than to individual politicians.

Such generalisation is wrong and can only lead to discontinuity in the national political experiences.

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Uncle Sam has a problem in his South American “backyard” with those uppity Venezuelans who insisted on democratically electing Nicolás Maduro as their president instead of by-passing the electoral process and installing the unelected US asset Juan Guaidó. No matter, Amnesty International has come to the rescue with a full-throated defense of US imperialism:

“Faced with grave human rights violations, shortages of medicines and food and generalized violence in Venezuela, there is an urgent hunger for justice. The crimes against humanity probably committed by the authorities must not go unpunished.” – Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International

Amnesty International fails in its broadside to put its claims against the Maduro government in the context of a concerted regime-change campaign, which amounts to war, by the bully from the north. The US is waging an illegal war against Venezuela and Amnesty International’s broadside leaves out this inconvenient fact, egregiously even omitting any mention of sanctions.

As human rights activist Chuck Kaufman of the Alliance for Global Justice noted about Amnesty International (AI): “They don’t seem to even care about their credibility anymore.” A more credible and honest account of what is unfolding in Venezuela, than the hatchet job presented in AI’s May 14thVenezuela: Crimes against humanity require a vigorous response from the international justice system, would have also noted along with the alleged transgressions of the Maduro government:

• Grave human rights violations. Economists Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University recently reported that US sanctions on Venezuela are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. This is the price being exacted on Venezuela, with a prediction for worse to come, for the regime change that AI is implicitly promoting.
• Shortages of medicines and food. Since 2015, when US President Obama first instituted them, the US has been imposing ever more crippling illegal sanctions on Venezuela expressly to create misery for the population in the hope that it would then turn against their own democratically electedgovernment. The sanctions are specifically designed to suffocate the economy so that Venezuela cannot address its problems. The US government boasts about the impacts of sanctions. Playing the good cop to the US role as bad cop, AI laments the very conditions they are tacitly promoting in asking for ever increasing “punishments.” New US sanctions on Venezuela were imposed on May 10th.
• Generalized violence. The US government has repeatedly and unapologetically threatened military intervention in Venezuela if the elected government doesn’t abdicate. Short of attacking militarily, the US has waged war against Venezuela by economic and diplomatic means, not to mention low-intensity warfare such as cyber attacks. The extreme rightwing opposition has called for the extra-legal overthrow of the government and has eschewed electoral means for effecting political change. AI is correct in noting that since 2017 new violence has been inflicted on the Venezuelan people but fails to note the role of the opposition in provoking that violence with their guarimbas and other actions. Meanwhile Guaidó, whose popular support in Venezuela is bottoming out, is reported sending his envoy to meet with the US Southern Command to “coordinate.”

How is it possible that an organization purporting to stand for human rights and global justice can so blithely ignore facts that do not fit into their narrative and so obsequiously parrot the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton-Abrams talking points? Why would AI go so far as to meet with the self-appointed Guaidó and then within days issue a report condemning the Maduro government, without also investigating the other side in the conflict?

Unfortunately, this is not the first time AI has shown an imperial bias as it has regarding US-backed regime-change projects in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Nicaragua.

Objectively deconstructing the many allegations (e.g., “more than 8,000 extrajudicial executions by the security forces”) made against Venezuela in the AI broadside and its accompanying report remains to be done. Unfortunately, the Empire has a surfeit of resources to churn out propaganda compared to the ability to counter it by genuine humanitarian groups. AI alone has an annual budget of over $300 million. According to sources cited by Wikipedia, AI receives grants from the US State Department, the European Commission, and other governments along with the Rockefeller Foundation.

To conclude, AI’s broadside calls for justice about as often as it calls for punishment with the subtext that punishment of the Empire’s victims is justice. Were AI truly concerned about justice, rather than justifying another US regime-change operation, they would champion the following:

• Ending the unilateral sanctions by the US on Venezuela, which are illegal under the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
• Supporting dialogue between the elected government and the opposition as has been promoted by Mexico, Uruguay, Pope Francis, and most recently by Norway.
• Condemning regime-change activities and interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs and actively rejecting the US government’s aggressive stance as articulated by US VP Pence: “This is no time for dialogue. This is time for action.”
• Respecting the sovereignty of Venezuela and restoring normal diplomatic relations between the US and Venezuela.

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Roger Harris is a board member for the 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization Task Force on the Americas. He is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions Against Venezuela (https://tinyurl.com/yd4ptxkx).

After weeks of drama with Iranian ‘threats’ and having conducted classified briefings with Congress on Tuesday, acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by his side, informed a press briefing that

“there will be no war with Iran” and the US had “deterred an Iranian attack based on our reposturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces” and that now the “focus is to prevent an Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate.  This is about deterrence; not about war.  We’re not about going to war.”

And yet Shanahan’s words could not have been more clear and definitive and yet, they have been met with silence by the Democrats and the MSM as if peace is less desirable, less a profitable pr commodity than war.  At the same press briefing, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee added his own piroutte as if there had been verifiable evidence of an Iranian threat:

“We are ready to respond if we have to.  The best thing would be for everyone to calm down and Iran to back off.  I am hoping that this show of force will result in de-escalating.”

In other words, the US was selling the notion to anyone who would buy that the Iranians would have launched an attack if not for an increased US military build up that forced the Iranians to backpedal.   It makes little difference who or what takes credit in the final analysis since peace is of the essence.

Donald Trump very likely won the 2016 election with pronouncement such as:

“Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.” 

“We should have never been in Iraq.” 

“We have destabilized the middle east.” 

“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.”

In view of the recent escalation of threats to Venezuela and collapse of the summit with North Korea, it has been unclear exactly who is administering US foreign policy given the President’s consistently inconsistent views and with the B Team filling a prominent role in what appears to be a presidential vacuum.

As unconfirmed, undefined “Iranian threats” first surfaced and the President’s closest national security advisors fanned the flames, he told White House reporters

“It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that. They’re not going to be happy.” and later tweeting

“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.  Never threaten the United States again!”

Declaring “heightened tensions” as if Iran was out-of-their-minds crazy enough to imminently launch an attack on a US facility, the Trump Administration evacuated non essential US Embassy personnel from Baghdad after two Saudi oil tankers were ‘attacked’ off the UAE coast, a low grade rocket exploded near the Embassy, three mortar shells landed within Baghdad’s Green Zone and a Yemeni drone ‘attacked’ a Saudi pipeline.

Combining an alarming sense of panic with an overly zealous response, all of that confluence of confusion was sufficient for the US to react with its usual belligerence dispatching a B52 bomber task force, an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aimed for the Strait of Hormuz (where one third of all oil passes through) and the release of a Pentagon “just in case” contingency for 120,000 troops in preparation for Armageddon.  History has its irony as it was the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln where President GW Bush grandstanded with his Mission Accomplished strut in May, 2003 announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq, six weeks after the US invasion.

With no moderating voice on the President’s national security team, National Security Advisor John Bolton, also known as the “devil incarnate,” has been aided and abetted by ‘bull in a china shop’ Pompeo to create a neocon foreign policy strategy that was not what Trump campaigned on.  While the combative trio is equally obsessive regarding Iran, Bolton and Pompeo organized the recent military buildup in the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a rapid response deployment when the next Iranian ‘threat’ occurred.  While Bolton holds dual citizenship with Israel and the US, both Israel and Saudi Arabia have long targeted Iran for a direct military confrontation and would relish the opportunity.

Not surprisingly, there was push back from some of the usual coalition allies with British deputy commander Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika daring to suggest “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas that he made it clear to Pompeo that a unilateral strategy of increasing pressure against Iran was ‘ill-advised.’ Pompeo’s hastily arranged ‘drop in’ on a European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels did little to instill confidence in sloppy US intel or the administration’s Iran agenda as Pompeo related the details.

The Pentagon helpfully pointed out that 120,000 troops would be insufficient if a ground mission was ordered which led Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to remark that war in Iran would make the Iraq war look like a “cake walk’ referring to the fact that Iran is a cohesive country, four times larger than Iraq and has more than double the population of Iraq. In other words, a recipe for an environmental, humanitarian and military disaster of epic proportions – in addition it should be expected that Russia and China would not be content to sit on the sidelines.  Many will recall the 2003 prediction that the Iraqi people would welcome American troops as liberators, strewing roses in their path, just prior to the war descending into unthinkable carnage.

As a result of all the uncertainty, Trump gave up the trash-talk and told Shanahan during a military briefing last week that he does not want to go to war with Iran letting his hawkish aides know that he did not want the “intensifying American pressure campaign against the Iranians to explode into open conflict.” It is worth knowing whether the President directly ordered Bolton and Pompeo to back off.

Trump’s assertion that “I make the final decision” is as if to reassure himself that he is in charge belies a reputation for vacillating and a weak-will that continues to plague his Administration especially on foreign policy.

While Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has refused to negotiate with the US, explaining that “negotiating with the current US Government is toxic,” the Iranians have no interest in bargaining away their ballistic missiles which could reach Tel Aviv or putting limits on their operational range.  As with North Korea, Iran is well aware of Libya’s Mummar Quaddafi fate  as he laid down his weapons only to have HRC organize a revolt and order his untimely demise.

A recent FoxNews interview added some clarity and further confusion as Trump totally buys the neocon view that

“Iran has been a problem for so many years, look at all the conflicts they have caused.”  Further explaining “I want to invade if I have to economically” to provide jobs.  While Trump agreed that “there is aMilitary Industrial Complex” and “they do like war” and yet complaining that “I wipe out 100% of the caliphate and people here in DC, they never want to leave.”

When asked about his campaign pledges in 2016, Trump responded “I’m not somebody that wants to go into war” offering the assurance that “I have not changed” and yet the belligerent talk comes too easily as if Bolton was the last person he spoke with.

As he has expressed little public reaction to the administration’s ineptitude with North Korea at the Vietnam summit or the fiasco in Venezuela, Trump allows himself to be played like a fiddle, complicit with the neocon’s latest nefarious schemes that reveal him as a second-rate player; deteriorating before the public with a history of clumsy international gaffes.  There is no question that neither Bolton nor Pompeo are to be trusted and that Bolton’s over reach of authority is the key driver pushing for confrontation and divisiveness while Pompeo is a more personally shrewd team player and somewhat less of a loose cannon.

Thanks to the high level of public awareness that nailed down the faulty details of this latest kerfuffle and its excessive harangues, Trump needs to relieve Bolton of his keys to the office before the next ‘threats’ take the US to the brink and find someone who better reflects his 2016 campaign promises.

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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 for 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.

India’s much-touted and over-hyped policy of “multi-alignment” is seeming more and more like a cover for unconvincingly disguising the country’s strategic alliance the US, especially after its Ambassador to America strongly hinted that Modi will undertake an anti-Russian military pivot during his second term in office.

There’s little doubt that India will ditch Russia like it just recently did Iran after its Ambassador to America strongly hinted as much in an exclusive interview that he gave to CNBC. The South Asian state’s top diplomatic representative to the US told the outlet the following in an article provocatively headlined “India, facing sanctions for Russian arms deals, says it wants to pivot spending to the US“:

“There has been a tradition of dependence on defense equipment from Russia. But if you go by SIPRI figures, in the block year 2008 to 2013 we imported 76% of our defense items from Russia. In the next five-year block, from 2013 to 2018, this came down 58% and in the same period our imports from the United States increased by 569%. So that itself tells you that, when we have a choice…we are obviously diversifying our purchases.”

India’s era of “multi-alignment” appears to be over, though it’s keeping this discredited slogan alive as a cover for unconvincingly disguising its strategic alliance with the US. This game-changing development will certainly complicate the regional geopolitical situation, but it also nevertheless provides the impetus for Russia to strengthen its ties with the global pivot state of Pakistan as the main component of its “Return to South Asia“.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The more than twenty Democrats who are seeking to become their party’s presidential candidate in 2020 have been more than a little reticent about the foreign policy of the United States. There has been some muttering from the more progressive aspirants regarding the regular and bipartisan presidential abuse of his war powers, together with some demands that the next conflict be approved by a vote of congress as the Constitution demands, but most of the Democrats prefer to keep their heads down on the issue because it is believed to be too complicated for American voters to understand. That assumption might actually be true as the US citizenry has been fed a banquet of lies from both the media and the wise men and women running the government, so it would be surprising if they could be anything but. The oft-repeated joke is that the United States is fighting wars in places that most American would be unable to find on a map.

Only Tulsi Gabbard has been outspoken, calling for an end to the current wars and a new policy alignment that would make it more difficult to rush into something new. She has inevitably been marginalized by the Establishment media and is way down in the polls relating to the preferences of Democratic voters.

The inside the beltway consensus candidate is, inevitably, Joe Biden, who is again portraying himself as some kind of working class hero to undercut Donald Trump’s blue collar appeal in the 2020 showdown. Biden is a hero in his own mind, as the expression goes, and he is deeply complicit in the abominations during the Obama Administration, in which he served as Vice President. Those crimes against humanity as well as the Constitution of the United States included the destruction of a functioning government in Libya, which included the brutal assassination of its leader, an action that has produced today’s anarchy in that country while also unleashing a wave of Islamic terrorism in north and central Africa. Biden was also surely involved in the Obama assassination by drone program, which include Tuesday morning meetings in the office of the president to draw up lists of American citizens to be targeted.

One of the core constituencies that most of the candidate-aspirants, as well as Trump, seek to get on board is the Israel Lobby, which is important not necessarily because it delivers Jewish and Christian Zionist votes, but more-so because of the favorable media coverage it guarantees and the millions of dollars in political donations and PAC money (which some prefer to call Benjamins) required to run a campaign.

Navigating the shoals of Greater Israel can be tricky, as several Democrats have learned to their dismay. Popular favorite, the boyish looking Pete Buttigieg Mayor of South Bend Indiana, was the latest to fall into the trap. He made what some might well regard as innocent comments. He criticized the principal Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, who has succeeded in buying both Trump and the Republican Party on behalf of Israel. Speaking in Las Vegas, the home of Adelson when he is not in Israel, and the source of his wealth as he owns a chain of casinos that have “earned” billions of dollars by fleecing the ungodly, Buttigieg reportedly told his audience that

“I know I’m a guest in Sheldon Adelson’s town. But I know … that real democracy means that the voice you have in our political process is gauged by the merits of what you have to say and not by the number of zeros in your bank balance.”

Even though the comment had nothing to do with either Jews or Israel, Adelson immediately fired back that Buttigieg is an anti-Semite. Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, wrote on Twitter also went to bat for Adelson, claiming that Buttigieg’s remarks were an “anti-Semitic dog whistle.” It is clear from the two comments, that disproving any allegations of anti-Semitism will be a major issue no matter who is nominated for 2020. On the Republican side, former House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy was accused a year ago of repeating anti-Semitic tropes when he criticized the influence of Hungarian-Jewish Democratic major donor George Soros. In other words, if you criticize the actions of a Jew, no matter in what context, you now will likely be accused of anti-Semitism.

Candidate Cory Booker has also felt the lash from “America’s rabbi” Shmuley Boteach who wrote a lengthy letter to the Jerusalem Post letter to the Jerusalem Post. In it, he explains why Cory’s candidacy is sinking both in the polls and his donations received:

“[His]…friendship has not foundered. It was betrayed. It was betrayed by a friend who was as close to me as a brother, whom my people embraced as a son, but who decided to vote to fund a government that was calling for our annihilation. It was betrayed by a friend whom I introduced to Elie Wiesel, and who quotes the great Holocaust survivor at every turn, but who chose to close his eyes to Iran’s promise to perpetrate a second Holocaust. And it was betrayed by a politician to whom the Jewish community gave incalculable support for his promises to support Israel, only to see him condemn the embassy move to Jerusalem and vote in committee against a bill that would stop payments to Palestinian terrorists for murdering Jews.”

What had Cory Booker done? He had voted in support of the agreement to monitor Iran’s nuclear program so it would not produce a weapon. Boteach described the betrayal as “Giving the Iranian terrorists more money by which to murder innocents [and] open the gates to lush opportunities of a global economy happy to overlook the mullahs’ vows to eradicate Israel.” Of course, Boteach is talking nonsense but his particular brand of mud will stick on Booker.

So Israel will be an issue from now until next November when Americans go to the polls. The solution? Let’s get Israel and the frequent charges about anti-Semitism out of our politics. Once and for all and forever.

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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.

No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only in part due to sympathy for Iran and its plight against the latest bluster by the Zio-American bully.

In the politics of the Middle East, however, money is at the heart of all matters. As such, this ring of defensive nations is collectively and quickly shifting towards the new Russo/ Sino sphere of economic influence. These countries now form a geo-political defensive perimeter that, with Iraq entering the fold, make a US ground war virtually impossible and an air war very restricted in opportunity.

If Iraq holds, there will be no war in Iran.

In the last two months, Iraq parliamentarians have been exceptionally vocal in their calls for all foreign military forces- particularly US forces- to leave immediately.Politicians from both blocs of Iraq’s divided parliament called for a vote to expel US troops and promised to schedule an extraordinary session to debate the matter.

“Parliament must clearly and urgently express its view about the ongoing American violations of Iraqi sovereignty,” said Salam al-Shimiri, a lawmaker loyal to the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq’s ambassador to Moscow, Haidar Mansour Hadi, went further saying that Iraq “does not want a new devastating war in the region.” He told a press conference in Moscow this past week,

“Iraq is a sovereign nation. We will not let [the US] use our territory,” he said.

Other comments by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi agreed. Other MPs called for a timetable for complete US troop withdrawal.

Then a motion was introduced demanding war reparations from the US and Israel for using internationally banned weapons while destroying Iraq for seventeen years and somehow failing to find those “weapons of mass destruction.”

As Iraq/ Iran economic ties continue to strengthen, with Iraq recently signing on for billions of cubic meters of Iranian natural gas, the shift towards Russian influence- an influence that prefers peace- was certified as Iraq sent a delegation to Moscow to negotiate the purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system

To this massive show of pending democracy and rapidly rising Iraqi nationalism, US Army spokesman, Colonel Ryan Dillon, provided the kind of delusion only the Zio-American military is known for, saying,

“Our continued presence in Iraq will be conditions-based, proportional to need, in coordination with and by the approval of the Iraqi government.”

Good luck with that.

US influence in Iraq came to a possible conclusion this past Saturday, May 18, 2019, when it was reported that the Iraqi parliament would vote on a bill compelling the invaders to leave. Speaking about the vote on the draft bill, Karim Alivi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s national security and defense committee, said on Thursday that the country’s two biggest parliamentary factions — the Sairoon bloc, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah alliance, headed by secretary general of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri — supported the bill.Strangely, Saturday’s result has not made it to the media as yet, and American meddling would be a safe guess as to the delay, but the fact that this bill would certainly have passed strongly shows that Iraq well understands the weakness of the American bully: Iraq’s own US militarily imposed democracy.

Iraq shares a common border with Iran that the US must have for any ground war. Both countries also share a similar religious demographic where Shia is predominant and the plurality of cultures substantially similar and previously living in harmony. Both also share a very deep seeded and deserved hatred of Zio- America. Muqtada al-Sadr, who, after coming out first in the 2018 Iraqi elections, is similar to Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his religious and military influence within the well trained and various Shia militias. He is firmly aligned with Iran as is Fattah Alliance. Both detest Zio- America.

A ground invasion needs a common and safe border. Without Iraq, this strategic problem for US forces becomes complete. The other countries also with borders with Iran are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All have several good reasons that they will not, or cannot, be used for ground forces.

With former Armenian President Robert Kocharian under arrest in the aftermath of the massive anti-government 2018 protests, Bolton can check that one off the list first. Azerbaijan is mere months behind the example next door in Armenia, with protests increasing and indicating a change towards eastern winds. Regardless, Azerbaijan, like Turkmenistan, is an oil producing nation and as such is firmly aligned economically with Russia. Political allegiance seems obvious since US influence is limited in all three countries to blindly ignoring the massive additional corruption and human rights violations by Presidents Ilham Aliyev  and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

However, Russian economic influence pays in cash. Oil under Russian control is the lifeblood of both of these countries. Recent developments and new international contracts with Russia clearly show whom these leaders are actually listening to.

Turkey would appear to be firmly shifting into Russian influence. A NATO member in name only. Ever since he shot down his first- and last– Russian fighter jet, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has thumbed his nose at the Americans. Recently he refused to succumb to pressure and will receive Iranian oil and, in July, the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft/missile system. This is important since there is zero chance Putin will relinquish command and control or see them missiles used against Russian armaments. Now, Erdogan is considering replacing his purchase of thirty US F-35s with the far superior Russian SU- 57 and a few S-500s for good measure.

Economically, America did all it could to stop the Turk Stream gas pipeline installed by Russia’s Gazprom, that runs through Turkey to eastern Europe and will provide $billions to Erdogan and Turkey. It will commence operation this year. Erdogan continues to purchase Iranian oil and to call for Arab nations to come together against US invasion in Iran. This week, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar renewed Turkey’s resolve, saying his country is preparing for potential American sanctions as a deadline reportedly set by the US for Ankara to cancel the S-400 arms deal with Russia or face penalties draws near.

So, Turkey is out for both a ground war and an air war since the effectiveness of all those S-400’s might be put to good use if America was to launch from naval positions in the Mediterranean. Attacking from the Black Sea is out since it is ringed by countries under Russo/ Sino influence and any attack on Iran will have to illegally cross national airspace aligned with countries preferring the Russo/ Sino alliance that favours peace. An unprovoked attack would leave the US fleet surrounded with the only safe harbours in Romania and Ukraine. Ships move much slower than missiles.

Afghanistan is out, as the Taliban are winning. Considering recent peace talks from which they walked out and next slaughtered a police station near the western border with Iran, they have already won. Add the difficult terrain near the Iranian border and a ground invasion is very unlikely

Although new Pakistani President Amir Khan has all the power and authority of a primary school crossing guard, the real power within the Pakistani military, the ISI, is more than tired of American influence. ISI has propagated the Taliban for years and often gave refuge to Afghan anti-US forces allowing them to use their common border for cover. Although in the past ISI has been utterly mercenary in its very duplicitous- at least- foreign allegiances, after a decade of US drone strikes on innocent Pakistanis, the chance of ground-based forces being allowed is very doubtful. Like Afghanistan terrain also increases this unlikelihood.

Considerations as to terrain and location for a ground war and the resulting failure of not doing so was shown to Israel previously when, in 2016 Hizbullah virtually obliterated its ground attack, heavy armour and battle tanks in the hills of southern Lebanon. In further cautionary detail, this failure cost PM Ehud Olmert his job.

For the Russo/ Sino pact nations, or those leaning in their direction, the definition of national foreign interest is no longer military, it is economic. Those with resources and therefore bright futures within the expanding philosophy and economic offerings of the Russo/ Sino pact have little use any longer for the “Sorrows of Empire.” These nation’s leaders, if nothing more than to line their own pockets, have had a very natural epiphany: War…is not, for them, profitable.

For Iran, the geographic, economic and therefore geo-political ring of defensive nations is made complete by Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Syria, like Iraq, has every reason to despise the Americans and similar reasons to embrace Iran, Russia, China and border neighbour Lebanon. Syria now has its own Russian S-300 system which is already bringing down Israeli missiles. It is surprising that Lebanon has not requested a few S-300s of their own. No one knows what Hizbullah has up its sleeve, but it has been enough to keep the Israelis at bay. Combined with a currently more prepared Lebanese army, Lebanon under the direction of Nasrallah is a formidable nation for its size. Ask Israel.

Lebanon and Syria also take away the chance of a ground-based attack, leaving the US Marines and Army to stare longingly across the Persian Gulf open waters from Saudi Arabia or one of its too few and militarily insignificant allies in the southern Gulf region.

Friendly airspace will also be vastly limited, so also gone will be the tactical element of surprise of any incoming attack. The reality of this defensive ring of nations means that US military options will be severely limited. The lack of a ground invasion threat and the element of surprise will allow Iranian defences to prioritize and therefore be dramatically more effective. As shown in a previous article, “The Return of the Madness of M.A.D,” Iran like Russia and China, after forty years of US/ Israeli threats, has developed new weapons and military capabilities, that combined with tactics will make any direct aggression towards it by American forces a fair fight.

If the US launches a war it will go it alone except for the few remaining US lapdogs like the UK, France, Germany and Australia, but with anti-US emotions running as wild across the EU as in the southern Caspian nations, the support of these Zionist influenced EU leaders is not necessarily guaranteed.

Regardless, a lengthy public ramp-up to stage military assets for an attack by the US will be seen by the vast majority of the world- and Iran- as an unprovoked act of war. Certainly at absolute minimum Iran will close the Straits of Hormuz, throwing the price of oil skyrocketing and world economies into very shaky waters. World capitalist leaders will not be happy. Without a friendly landing point for ground troops, the US will either have to abandon this strategy in favour of an air war or see piles of body bags of US servicemen sacrificed to Israeli inspired hegemony come home by the thousands just months before the ’20 primary season. If this is not military and economic suicide, it is certainly political.

Air war will likely see a similar disaster. With avenues of attack severely restricted, obvious targets such as Iran’s non-military nuclear program and major infrastructure will be thus more easily defended and the likelihood of the deaths of US airmen similarly increased.

In terms of Naval power, Bolton would have only the Mediterranean as a launch pad, since using the Black Sea to initiate war will see the US fleet virtually surrounded by nations aligned with the Russo/ Sino pact. Naval forces, it should be recalled, are, due to modern anti-ship technologies and weapons, now the sitting ducks of blusterous diplomacy. A hot naval war in the Persian Gulf, like a ground war, will leave a US death toll far worse than the American public has witnessed in their lifetimes and the US navy in tatters.

Trump is already reportedly seething that his machismo has been tarnished by Bolton and Pompeo’s false assurances of an easy overthrow of Maduro in Venezuela. With too many top generals getting jumpy about him initiating a hot war with Iraq, Bolton’s stock in trade-war is waning. Trump basks in being the American bully personified, but he and his ego will not stand for being exposed as weak. Remaining as president is necessary to stoke his shallow character. When Trump’s limited political intelligence wakes up to the facts that his Zio masters want a war with Iran more than they want him as president, and that these forces can easily replace him with a Biden, Harris, Bernie or Warren political prostitute instead, even America’s marmalade Messiah, will lose the flavor of his master’s blood lust for war.

In two excellent articles in Asia times by Pepe Escobar, he details the plethora of projects, agreements, and cooperation that are taking place from Asia to the Mid-East to the Baltics. Lead by Russia and China this very quickly developing Russo/ Sino pact of economic opportunity and its intentions of “soft power” collectively spell doom for Zio-America’s only remaining tactics of influence: military intervention. States, Escobar:

“We should know by now that the heart of the 21^st Century Great Game is the myriad layers of the battle between the United States and the partnership of Russia and China. The long game indicates Russia and China will break down language and cultural barriers to lead Eurasian integration against American economic hegemony backed by military might.”

The remaining civilized world, that which understands the expanding world threat of Zio-America, can rest easy. Under the direction of this new Russo/ Sino influence, without Iraq, the US will not launch a war on Iran.

This growing Axis of Sanity surrounds Iran geographically and empathetically, but more importantly, economically. This economy, as clearly stated by both Putin and Xi, does not benefit from any further wars of American aggression. In this new allegiance to future riches, it is Russian and China that will call the shots and a shooting war involving their new client nations will not be sanctioned from the top.

However, to Putin, Xi and this Axis of Sanity: If American wishes to continue to bankrupt itself by ineffective military adventures of Israel’s making, rather than fix its own nation that is in societal decline and desiccated after decades of increasing Zionist control, well…

That just good for business!

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 170 in-depth articles over the past eight years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

Featured image is from LobeLog

It seemed flimsy from the start, but the US Department of Justice is keen to get their man.  What has certainly transpired of late is that Mike Pompeo was being unusually faithful to the truth when director of the CIA: every means would be found to prosecute the case against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.  His assessment of the publishing outfit in 2017 as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” finds its way into the latest Justice Department’s indictment, which adds a further 18 counts. 

The prosecution effort was initially focused on a charge of computer intrusion, with a stress on conspiracy.  It was feeble but intentionally narrow, fit for extradition purpose.  Now, a few more eggs have been added to the basket in a broader effort to capture the entire field of national security publishing.  The Espionage Act of 1917, that ghoulish reminder of police state nervousness, has been brought into play.  Drafted to combat spies as the United States made its way into the First World War, the act has become a blunt instrument against journalists and whistleblowers.  But Assange, being no US citizen, is essentially being sought out for not abiding by the legislation.  The counts range from the first, “conspiracy to receive national defense information” (s. 793(g) of the Espionage Act) to “obtaining national defense information,” to the disclosures of such information.

The first part is problematic, as prosecutors are arguing that Assange does not have to release the said “national defence” information to an unauthorised recipient. In short, as a publisher to the world at large of such material, he can be punished.  The second round of charges, drawn from section 793(b) of the Act, makes the prosecution purpose even clearer.  The provision, dealing with the copying, taking, making, obtaining, or attempting to do so, material connected with national defence, would suggest the punishment of the source itself.  Not so, claim the prosecutors: the publisher or journalist can be caught in its web.

Section 793(c), upon which four counts rest, is intended to capture instances of soliciting the leaks in question or the recipient of that information, one who “agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter.” 

If there was any doubt about what the indictment does to media organisations who facilitate the means to receive confidential material or leaks, the following should allay it: “WikiLeaks’s website explicitly solicited, otherwise restricted, and until September 2010, ‘classified materials’.  As the website then-stated, ‘WikiLeaks accepts classified, censored, or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance.”  From the perspective of prosecutors, “Assange and WikiLeaks have repeatedly sought, obtained, and disseminated information that the United States classified due to the serious risk that unauthorized disclosure could harm the national security of the United States.” 

Seething with venom, the indictment also takes issue with instances where Assange sought to popularise the effort to obtain leaks.  Assange “intended the ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ list to encourage and cause individuals to illegally obtain and disclose protected information, including classified information, to WikiLeaks contrary to law.”

The standout feature of this angle is that Chelsea Manning, the key source for WikiLeaks as former intelligence analyst for the US Army, is less important than Assange the mesmerising Svengali.  It was the WikiLeaks’s publisher who convinced Manning to respond to his seductive call, a point the prosecutors insist is proved by search terms plugged into the classified network search engine, Intelink.

The response from the scribbling fraternity, and anybody who might wish to write about national security matters, has been one of bracing alarm, tinged by characteristic apologias.  On the latter point, Assange the principle, and Assange the man, have proven confusing to fence sitters and traditional Fourth Estate sell outs. 

Sam Vinograd shines in this regard as CNN national security analyst, an important point because such hacks previously served as advisors or agents to political masters.  They can be trusted to toe the line.  In Vinograd’s case, it was as senior advisor in the Obama administration. 

Triumphantly, she claims, Assange “knowingly endangered the lives of journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents and did incredible harm to our national security.” 

No evidence is supplied for any of these assertions – the claims in the indictment will do.  Obscenely, we are to take at face value that the US Justice Department is doing us, not to mention journalists, a favour.  Wither analysis.

The mistake often made is that such previous experience as a national security advisor or some such will enable in-stable media figures to speak openly about topics when the opposite is true.  Their goggles remain permanently blurred to the broader implications of punishing media outlets: they, after all, speak power to truth.

Those like John Pilger, one of Assange’s more tireless defenders, have been unequivocal and, thus far, accurate.

“The war on Julian Assange is now a war on all,” he tweeted.  “Eighteen absurd charges including espionage send a burning message to every journalist, every publisher.” 

The war on Julian #Assange is now a war on all. Eighteen absurd charges including espionage send a burning message to every journalist, every publisher. The target today is #Assange. Tomorrow it will be you on the New York Times, you on the BBC. Modern fascism is breaking cover.

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) May 23, 2019

WikiLeaks’s current publisher-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed “no satisfaction in saying ‘I told you so’ to those who for 9 years scorned us for warning this moment would come.”

The ACLU has also made the pertinent point that the charges against Assange are easily replicable across the board: do it to Assange and you might give the nod of approval to other states to do the same.  They “are equally dangerous for US journalists who uncover the secrets of other nations. If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same.”  Fairly precise, that.

Trevor Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director, did not mince his words.

“Put simply,” came his statement, “these unprecedented charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the most significant and terrifying threat to the First Amendment in the 21^st century.”

The silver lining – for even in this charred landscape of desperation, there is one – is the overzealous nature of this effort.  For one thing, proving espionage requires the necessary mental state, namely the “intent or reason to believe that the [leaked] information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” It was precisely such grounds that failed to convince Colonel Denise Lind in Manning’s trial, who found that the analyst was not “aiding the enemy” in supplying material to WikiLeaks. 

By larding the charge folder against Assange so heavily, the political intention of the prosecutors is clear.  It reeks of overreach, an attempt to get ahead of the queue of Sweden.  A sensible reading of any extradition effort now must conclude that Assange is as much a target of political interest as anything else. Not a hacker, nor a figure so personalised as to be reviled, but a symbol of publishing itself, persecuted by the only superpower on the planet.  The case, surmises Edward Snowden, “will decide the future of media.” 

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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]

The text of this interview was published by Global Research on June 15, 2017

According to the Flemish Father Daniel Maes, who has lived in Syria since 2010, the coverage of the Syrian war is based on lies. President Bashar al-Assad is not the problem, but our own politicians, who support ISIS and Al Nusra, in order to topple the Syrian government. “The real terrorist leaders are in the West and Saudi Arabia.”

The 79-year-old Father Daniel Maes is back in his native country Belgium. He stays in the Norbertine abbey of the Flemish village Postel, which he left for Syria in 2010, when the country was not yet at war. In Qara he experienced precarious moments, when the village of 25.000 souls was overrun by a rebel army of approximately 60,000 men. He is on holiday now in Belgium to recuperate after he became ill in Syria (‘I thought: I’m finished’), and could not tolerate the local cuisine anymore. But also to tell people in the West the “real story” about Syria, since they don’t hear it from the mainstream media. In mid-June he returns, his suitcases filled with relief supplies for the needy Syrian population.

I met Father Maes last week in Antwerp. This week he will return to his monastery in Syria.

You live in a monastery dating to the sixth century AD, in a country far from home. How did you get there?

I arrived in Qara at the invitation of Mother superior, Sister Agnes-Mariam. She is quite a character. For years, she has roamed the world as a hippie. And she has the gift to modernise monk life while keeping its authenticity. In the Mar Yakub monastery I found what I had been looking for all my life: charismatic enthusiasm, ecumenical openness, missionary work and care for the poor. The monastery was a ruin when Mother Agnes-Mariam stumbled upon it, and since the year 2000 it was beautifully restored under her leadership. I came as a tourist, and I would have left as a tourist, but Agnes-Mariam asked me if I wanted to organise a propedeutical year, a preparation for priesthood training, the very first Catholic seminar of all Syria and so I stayed.

What was your impression of Syria before the war broke out?

It was a beautiful country. As I expected, it lacked political freedom. But above all I was pleasantly surprised. I very much enjoyed the Eastern hospitality, and I experienced a peaceful and orderly society that I had never experienced before in my own country or elsewhere. Stealing and insolence were virtually non-existent. The many different religious and ethnic groups lived in harmony with one another.

Photo from Photographer Daniel Demeter’s new book ‘Lens on Syria’ paints life before the 2011 civil war in vivid detail.

The country had no government debt and there were no homeless people. On the contrary, over two million refugees from neighboring countries, such as Iraq, were taken care of and being treated in the same way as native Syrians.

Moreover, daily life was very cheap, such as food. Schools, universities and hospitals were free even for us as foreigners. I spoke to a French surgeon who said the hospitals in Syria were better than those in France.

How did the conflict in Syria begin? The prevailing opinion in the West is that the first protests in Homs started peacefully, and that things escalated because the government reacted violently.

That’s complete nonsense. I have seen with my own eyes how this so-called popular uprising arose in Qara. On a Friday evening in November 2011, on my way to the vicarage, where I was invited, I saw a group of about fifteen young people at the central mosque. They shouted Assad was a dictator, and that he had to leave. And I saw other youngsters who took pictures of it. They made such a noise; it gave me the chills. I reported it to the vicar, but he already knew. He said, “For some time now men have been coming from outside Syria, to make noise, and they invite our young people to take pictures and videos. If they deliver these to Al Jazeera, they receive money. ”

This was around the time when the violence started in Homs?

It must have been around that time. The Dutch father Frans van der Lugt, who lived in Homs and who was later killed there, had also seen and reported in his letters that it was not the police that started shooting, but the terrorists hiding themselves between the demonstrators.

The Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Bert Koenders has declared Assad should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.

Koenders is just like the other so called European leaders. He is a little boy standing there like an emperor, while not being aware he has no clothes on him. Anyone with half a brain can see that he is a puppet of the Americans, telling him exactly what to say and not to say.

He who serves the interests of foreign powers and destroys the lives of people of other nations is a terrorist leader, unworthy of the name of a statesman.

Assad did nothing wrong?

See the poison gas attack in Goutha, near Damascus, in 2013, for which Assad immediately was accused of. Is it so hard to understand the terrorists were behind this?

One year before the poison gas attack, Obama said, “The use of chemical weapons is a red line.” At that very moment every journalist should have thought: “Doesn’t that sound like President Bush, who said:” Within 48 hours, the weapons of mass destruction of Iraq must come to surface.”

But they let themselves be fooled again.

An international committee of inquiry was sent to Damascus, accompanied by media from all over the world, and just after they arrived, there was this huge poison gas attack, practically under their noses. Some timing, isn’t it? In Ghouta, of all places, an uninhabited region, where people had fled a long time ago. And within two hours pictures popped up of rooms with dying children. Pictures of Hollywood quality. Some proved to’ve been taken long before, others two hours after the attack. And nowhere a mourning mother to be seen.

Nevertheless there were mourning mothers, and fathers. But they did not live in Ghouta. They lived 200 kilometers away, in villages around Latakia. They recognised their children in the pictures. Two weeks before the poison gas attack, their villages had been attacked by terrorists, who had kidnapped their children. So, these children in the pictures were in fact kidnapped children from Latakia, who were killed to pull a media stunt. How is it possible that there are so many stupid journalists who did not see through that? This has all been well documented in the report of Mother Agnes-Mariam.

You think there are no war crimes committed by the Syrian authorities at all? In February, Amnesty International released a report on mass executions in a prison near Damascus.

If you, as a journalist, want to know what is really going on in Syria, you must come to Syria and find out for yourself instead of reading Amnesty-reports. And I ask you: How can a president who commits so many war crimes against his own people keep himself from being killed for such a long time stay in a country crowded with terrorists who want to finish him off? And why is it you see so many people in Syria with Assad’s picture on their car’s rear window?

Assad’s face painted in a car parked at a destroyed area in Syria (Source: Business Insider)

The Christians, Shiites, Druzes and Alawites perhaps. But also the Sunnis?

Absolutely. The vast majority of the Sunnis are behind Assad. And if you come to Tartus, where many Sunnis live, you will see not only pictures of Assad, but also of Putin.

For the Amnesty report on the Saydnaya prison, dozens of witnesses have been interviewed.

That’s false. The latest story is that Assad has cremated thousands of people in that prison. This cannot be true. This prison is so small, they could never have done this in such a short period of time.

Amnesty has said that they cannot confirm the US story of cremations.

But they haven’t refuted it either. And meanwhile, the media have repeated this ridiculous claim so often that the public has started to believe it’s the truth.

How do you see the role of journalism? How is it possible their view on Syria is so different from yours?

For that you have to read this book of the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, Bought Journalists, that he wrote from his own experience. If you go against the dominant narrative, and don’t follow the script, you will inevitably collide with the Powers That Be. They will put you out of business.

In a way I can understand these journalists. They often have a family they need to take care of.

But it’s beyond me how an organization like Pax Christi supports the assassination of Syrian Christians. Acting in the name of church communities, they promote these so-called “moderate rebels”. By doing so they have totally turned themselves against the Christians in Syria, the bishops and patriarchs there.

I have seen a presentation of a so-called Middle East expert of Pax Christi. At the end of her lecture, she showed her sources. Those were: Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera.

Why do you think so many countries want to get rid of Assad?

In 2009, Qatar asked Bashar al-Assad to permit running a pipeline through Syria to the Mediterranean. Assad said, “We are not going to do that because we are already working on such a pipeline with Russia and Iran.”
Then the war began. Not in 2011.

We must not forget: Homs is an important location for the passage of the pipeline. It’s no coincidence that the violence started right there, and that Qatar’s tv station Al Jazeera was on top of it.

And the other countries? Why do they treat Assad with such hostility?

For the West, it is unacceptable that Syria is still one of the few countries with a central bank that is truly independent and that the country had no state debt and thus did not need to be ‘saved’.

And the Turks. They just want to revive the Ottoman empire. It’s scandalous what they did in Aleppo. The city of Aleppo was the industrial heart of Syria. The Turks dismantled all of the factories in a few days and took them to Turkey.

Israel is also a very important motor behind the conflict. The Zionists want a pure Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates. They want to chop up Syria into a group of small, weak states, fighting each other. Likewise the old Roman motto: Divide et empera. Divide and rule.

The Israelis are bombarding Syria, they treat injured terrorists and they deliver weapons.

I think Zionism is as bad for Judaism as ISIS is for Islam. But let’s not say that out loud, for many Protestants might take you for the devil.

The Israelis say they took part in the conflict because of the presence of Hezbollah’s militias.

That’s true. But Hezbollah is one of the greatest resistance movements there is. I spoke to young men of Hezbollah, and they say, “We started our organization when the Zionists came chasing and killing our families. And we therefore help those who are suppressed in the same way.”

Israel sees Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

It is partly thanks to Hezbollah that so many Christians and other Syrians are still alive. They came to our rescue in our darkest hours. And the same goes for the Syrian army and the Russians. If Putin hadn’t come in 2015, Syria certainly would have ceased to exist.

It is said that the Russians came to Syria to keep it in their sphere of influence.

There certainly will be some self-interest involved. But Putin is a true Christian, wanting to defend Christianity. And he also wants a multipolar world order, in which no country dominates the rest. It annoys Putin that the Americans do not play by international rules. They overthrew the Ukrainian government, and then had the nerve to say that the Russians responded so aggressively. Syria is a sovereign country. That is what Putin emphasises. He also says: ‘We are not there for the protection of Assad, but for the protection of the Syrian statehood.’ Russia doesn’t want another failed state, like Iraq and Libya. And let’s not forget: The Russian military is the only foreign army in Syria with the consent of the Syrian government. What are other countries doing there? The Americans? The French? The Saudis? They have no right to be there. They are working on the destruction of Syria.

Source: New Eastern Outlook

The Western governments say they are fighting ISIS. But you doubt that?

Do you remember these Hollywood-like images of ISIS entering Syria? An endless column of brand new Toyotas. They were moving across the desert like sitting ducks. Wouldn’t it have been a piece of cake to have blown them off the face of the earth had the West really wanted? But that did not happen. Why not? And how did they get the Toyotas? Who gave those to them?

The thing we hear time and again is that ISIS accidentally gets weapons that are meant for the nonexisting moderates, and that by mistake the Syrian government troops bombarded. Here and there the US and its allies kill some ISIS warriors, but these are more exceptions.

Christians are a minority in Syria. How do they see the violence of ISIS, Al Nusra and other groups? As a problem of Islam?

First of all, they regard these terrorist groups as a political tool of the West, to disrupt Syria and bring regime change. And not only the Christians, the Muslims in Syria are of the same opinion. They are ashamed of ISIS and Al Nusra. They say, “That is not Islam.”

How do you see violence in Islam?

Islam is ambiguous. The Qur’an contains very beautiful verses about peace. But in the Qur’an it is also said that the unbelievers, the non-Muslims, must be killed.

The Bible and the Torah are not free of violence either.

That’s so. But the imperfections of the Old Testament have evolved in the New Testament. And of the Qur’an, you could say, it’s the Old Testament without the spirit of the New Testament.

Jesus said, “I’m not coming to bring peace but the sword.”

If you kill or injure someone with the sword, then throughout the Christianity nobody will say, “That man is following the gospel.” But if a Muslim blows itself up in a large group of people, then there are Muslims who will say, “I should actually do that too, but I don’t have the courage.”

But your experiences with Muslims in Syria are predominantly positive?

I have always been treated with the same hospitality by Muslims as Christians. Syria is a secular state. Syrians regard themselves in the first place as Syrians, and secondly as Christians, Sunni, Grape, Alavite or Shiite. It’s clearly visible in the Syrian government. There you see ministers of various religions. Everyone can be himself. The harmonious cooperation of populations has always been characteristic of Syria. They see themselves as one family. I even met a colonel from the Syrian army, a Sunni, who asked me if I wanted to bless him before he left for Aleppo.

How do Christians in Syria think about the support of Western governments to jihadi groups?

They suffer from the fact that their fellow-Christians in the West forsake them. They simply do not understand.

Perhaps there are Christians in Syria who welcome the fact that the West supports armed groups?

I do not know such people but if you’re looking for them, maybe you’ll find them. There are always exceptions to the rule but the average Syrian opposes any Western support to any armed group.

Are you in contact with any politicians in the European Union?

I spoke to Herman van Rompuy, in 2012, when he was President of the European Council. I was under the impression that he barely knew where Syria was. All he knew from Syria was based on reports describing the country as the most terrible dictatorship in the world. That meeting really disappointed me. When I told him that in my experience Assad was supported by a wide majority of the population, also by the Sunni, he looked at me as if I committed a sacrilege. It seemed to me he was mainly concerned with the question: “How not to step on those 28 pairs of toes in the European Council.”

I have read that in the Netherlands, the Christian parties voted in favour of a proposal to stop supporting the Free Syrian Army, but Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom voted against it. Do you understand that? Is that because they are Zionists? If you are against radical Islam, why are you voting for supporting Islamic terrorists in Syria?

Many Syrians have fled to Lebanon and to areas in Syria under the control of the Syrian state. What distinguishes these refugees from those who flee to the West?

Everyone who had the opportunity to flee to areas controlled by the government’s army did so, except those who did not see any future in Syria.

Young men leaving Syria for Europe are being criticised. Europeans ask themselves: Why aren’t they fighting for their country, and protecting their mothers, sisters and other family members?

It is an organised disruption. Those young men have been lured to Europe because Europe has to be Islamicized.

Can any young man join the Syrian Army? Is there a service obligation?

Yes, The only way to escape the army is to hide or to flee the country. On the other hand, many older men have volunteered.

The West leads a boycott against Syria. How do the Syrians manage to keep themselves alive?

A lot of aid is brought into the country through charity. But, to my surprise, just before my departure from Syria, I saw medications that were made in Aleppo. So despite all the devastation there, they managed to re-start.

In a previous interview, you expressed the hope that President Donald Trump would make changes to US policy. Are you still so hopeful about him?

Trump said during his election campaign what any sane person would have said in his place: “We must stop delivering weapons to fighting groups in Syria because we do not know who they are. Let’s stop intervening in sovereign countries. And let’s fight terrorism with Russia. “

That was hopeful. But in the meantime he has come under attack of the Deep State, the real rulers in the country. He fired those missiles at that military airport in Syria, probably under pressure from the Deep State. Nevertheless, he informed the Syrians, so little damage has been done. Most aircrafts were already taken away and half of the missiles did not even arrive. The next day the airport was operational again.

You are on holiday in Belgium. Are you going back to Syria with a restful heart? You’ve been through troublesome times.

In 2013, Qara was taken by a huge army of tens of thousands terrorists. They walked through the streets shooting. We then hid ourselves in the basement of the monastery. After a week, the area was cleared by the Syrian Army. They were only 200 men! They pushed the terrorists back to Lebanon, one group after another. That was because the terrorists did not form a unity. They fought each other. Yet, there is no human explanation for why the terrorists did not take the monastery when they arrived.

You were not afraid at that time?

Most of us had no fear even at the moments we thought: ‘We’re finished’. We also did not have time to worry, because there were children, women and handicapped we had to take care of. There was even a child born while we were in hiding. Everyone was very worried about each other. The children had to be kept busy. We played games, we prayed and sang. After a few days, we had no more water, only milk and at the end of the week it started to snow. That was the beginning of the end of the siege.

Eric van de Beek studied journalism at Windesheim University in Zwolle, and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. For years he worked as a journalist for the Dutch leading weekly Elsevier. Now he mainly writes for Holland’s one and only geopolitical magazine Novini. 

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Defunding UNRWA: Trump’s Legal Sleight of Hand against Palestine

By Rima Najjar, May 23, 2019

Trump wants to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and shift responsibility for Palestine refugees to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). What has UNHCR got to say about that? Is it worried about any negative effects, such as what it has to say about Iran?

Turkish Army Pullout Will Bring Peace to Northern Syria?

By Firas Samuri, May 23, 2019

In mid-January 2018, the Turkish General Staff announced the beginning of Olive Branch Operation. The goal was to oust the Kurds from the outskirts of Afrin, as well as to create a buffer zone along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Newly Revealed Documents Show Syrian Chemical “Attacks Were Staged”

By Dr. Theodore Postol and Institute for Public Accuracy, May 22, 2019

The British-based Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media recently revealed an internal engineering assessment by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that undermines claims justifying U.S. attacks on Syria.

Britain: The Database State. Intrusive Surveillance

By True Publica, May 23, 2019

Last September’s damning judgement of British security operations against its own people saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rule that the government had unlawfully obtained data from communications companies and didn’t put in place safeguards around how it did it.  But what does the state really know about us and what about the future?

“Research”: The US Navy Wants to Archive 350 Billion Social Media Posts

By Mac Slavo, May 23, 2019

The United States Navy wants to archive 350 billion social media posts in order to conduct “research.” What exactly does the military want to study? “Modes of collective expression.”

Oiling the Wheels of Injustice. Indigenous Communities in the Amazon

By Khaled Diab, May 23, 2019

After a quarter of a century of legal battles, indigenous communities in the Amazon are still awaiting justice for the damage inflicted on their environments and health by Texaco, which was taken over by US oil giant Chevron. Civil society organisations from around the world are standing in solidarity with the victims.

Risk of Nuclear War Now Highest Since World War 2: UN

By Telesur, May 23, 2019

The Director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), Renata Dwan, warned that all states with nuclear weapons are pushing for weapon modernization programs, while arms control regulations are changing or fading.

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Militant groups are attacking key military and civilian infrastructure in the government-controlled area.

The Reconciliation Center for Syria revealed that militants launched 17 rockets at the Russian Hmeimim airbase early on May 22. 8 rockets did not reach the base. 9 – were intercepted.

In the evening of May 22, a squadron of armed unmanned aerial vehicles attacked Hama’s airbase. Pro-government sources said that the Syrian Air Defense Forces intercepted all the UAVs and the airbase sustained no damage.

Nonetheless, the Hama airbase was not the only target. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency confirmed that at least one UAV attacked the Zara’a power plant in southern Hama causing “extensive damage to the plant’s equipment.”

The new wave of UAV attacks took place amid fierce fighting in northwestern Hama where the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) recently lost the initiative and is now in defense.

According to statements by the Russian military at least 700 militants, 7 battle tanks, 4 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 vehicles equipped with machine guns and 2 explosive-filled vehicles driven by suicide bombers were employed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies.

The main area of clashes are Kafr Nabuda, al-Hayrat and nearby points. After 24 hours of fighting, units of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) lost most of Kafr Nabuda to militants and are now only holding positions in the southern vicinity of the town.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham media wing Iba’a released a video from the area showing several destroyed battle tanks and vehicles. The outlet claimed that 50 Syrian soldiers and officers were killed in the town.

Some pro-government sources explained the SAA retreat with a lack of air support from Russia.

The situation is developing.

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Washington’s geopolitical agenda is based on the notion that it can prevail against other nations by pressuring, bullying, warning, and intimidating them to bow to its interests.

It works against some countries, by no means not all, notably not in dealings with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, for the most part Russia, most of all not China.

It’s a growing power, not about to sacrifice the development of its longterm economic, industrial, technological, and defense aims.

Sino/US trade negotiations broke down over unacceptable Trump regime demands Beijing won’t agree to no matter how many rounds of talks are held.

On Tuesday, China’s envoy to the US Cui Tiankai said

“(i)f we review the process of trade talks between us over the last year or so, it is quite clear (that the) US, more than once, (not China) changed its mind overnight, and broke the tentative deal already reached.”

As a result, Beijing is in “no rush” to restart talks. It’s prepared to suspend them if Trump regime negotiators aren’t “prepared to be realistic,” according to analysts quoted by the South China Morning Post.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Tao Wenzhao said

“there is no need to get into frantic calculations about when (Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin) will come (to Beijing for further talks) if the US continues to lack sincerity.”

According to International Relations Professor Jia Qingguo,

“(t)he standoff should last for a while because the US has refused to make even the slightest compromise – to a point that is somewhat unreasonable.”

It’s how Washington virtually always operates. It doesn’t negotiate. It demands, why two Kim Jong-un/Trump summits failed to reach agreement. The Trump regime remains unbending, making on unacceptable demands in return for empty promises.

The tactics failed with North Korea, jeopardizing future talks. Eleven rounds of Sino/US trade left both countries at an impasse because Trump regime officials are unbending, Beijing not about to yield to their unacceptable demands.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping said “(w)e are now embarking on a new Long March, and we must start all over again” — referring to the protracted struggle between  Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai v. US supported Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces, ending with the Red Army’s triumph, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army.

Xi’s remarks reflect the Sino/US trade talks standoff, no near-term resolution in prospect. While not mentioning the impasse directly, he indicated that there may be hardships ahead because of the worsening external environment at a time China’s economy is slowing.

On Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency said China “has been standing tall in the East for the last 70 years,” adding:

“It has never lowered its head and it has never feared anyone. History will prove again that bullying and threats by the US will not work.”

According to an unnamed source, “China is ready to fight a protracted trade war” if the Trump regime remains unbending.

International relations expert Jin Canrong suggested that China could retaliate against its toughness by banning exports of rare earth minerals to the US its tech companies rely on.

China accounts for about 90% of world production, a weapon it can use against the US if it pushes things too far, the direction it took by blacklisting tech giant Huawei and its affiliates, shutting them out of the US market, pressuring its allies to do the same thing, maybe intending similar action against other Chinese companies.

Beijing holds around $1.1 trillion of US treasuries, down from its 2013 $1.3 trillion peak. It could continue reducing its holdings even though taking this action could lower their value.

It’ll clearly implement what it considers appropriate countermeasures in response to unacceptable US actions. Toughness cuts both ways, hurting both parties, Xi signaling China is willing to sustain pain in its quest to achieve objectives it won’t sacrifice to US demands.

In separate commentaries this week, China’s Global Times explained the following:

Freezing US tech exports to China’s Huawei, including software, chips, and Google’s Android open-source platform,  won’t “stifle” the company’s operations, the impact to be “limited” because it prepared for possible adverse scenarios aimed at giving corporate America a competitive advantage.

Huawei’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei explained that US bias forced the company to develop “backup products” to deal with what’s going on now, adding:

“Huawei will defeat the challenges created by the US supply ban. Although the US excels at high technology, the industry will not kneel before Washington.”

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that plans to blacklist Huawei from the US market were made months earlier, postponed so as not to disrupt trade talks, the action taken in response to the current impasse.

It’s a counterproductive strategy, falsely believing toughness can get Beijing to yield, clearly showing little understanding of its resolve not to do anything jeopardizing its longterm aims, even it takes a protracted struggle.

According to a South China Post “exclusive” report, the US Senate’s South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act “proposes sanctions (on Beijing) for involvement in (what it calls) ‘illegal’ activities in (the) South and East China seas,” adding:

If passed by both houses and signed into law by Trump, it would authorize “seizure of US-based (Chinese) assets of those developing projects in areas contested by Asean members” — on the phony pretext of saying Beijing’s “actions or policies…threaten the peace, security or stability” of South China Sea areas contested by Southeast Asian nations.

Similar legislation was introduced in 2017, never reaching the Senate floor for a vote. Bipartisan supporters of the measure hope to make it US law this year.

Going this far will worsen bilateral relations, perhaps putting resolution of trade differences out of reach any time soon, jeopardizing them altogether as long as Trump regime hardball tactics persist.

The only solution to bilateral differences is compromise, short of demanding China sacrifice its longterm aims to US interests — what it surely won’t agree to.

The alternative is continued impasse, adversely affecting both countries and the global economy.

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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.

Britain is a surveillance state, the worst in the democratic West. In a short period of time, it has amassed a rather sordid history of citizen surveillance – and it continues to be unlawful. Last September’s damning judgement of British security operations against its own people saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rule that the government had unlawfully obtained data from communications companies and didn’t put in place safeguards around how it did it.  But what does the state really know about us and what about the future?

Under Theresa May in the Home Office, the surveillance state became ever more paranoid. It became the most extreme surveillance architecture ever devised in the West – and still is. And it’s getting worse.

They wanted it all – compromising (naked usually) images of you, your family and friends, what subscriptions you have, sexual orientation and preferences and with whom, earnings, expenditure and on what – places you visit, dates you went there, what you did when you were there.

The state is so out of control its own security services were diverted away from external threats towards us – law-abiding citizens. It was not long ago that MI5 and GCHQ were accused of infecting domestic civilian equipment with viruses so they could turn on TV’s and mobile devices at will in people’s homes, they recorded conversations and took photos, hacked into iOS, Apple systems and Android equipment, encryption was circumvented even when it was specifically outlawed. Britain’s spy agencies worked with the American CIA and created more than 1,000 viruses and other types of malware to gain access to everyday items and either monitor or steal data. It is not known exactly how much information the state has gathered about its people.

Scale of Data

The police can now find out any information it wants from any government agency – and there are 25 of them and they collect from dozens of others. For instance, the Ministry for Justice (one of the 25) has thirty-three government agencies reporting to it. They include the courts and tribunals, prisons and probation, family justice and so on. There are another 20 non-ministerial departments, with yet more agencies. All collecting data, all the time.

Companies such as Experian collect electoral roll and tax information and then pass it on to the government. The scale of data collected by the state is unprecedented in human history.

The oldest known government database is the one that collects DNA. It is estimated that it has about 10 per cent of the population listed – many of whom have never been charged with anything ever. The government announced it had removed nearly 7 million individual files – and then admitted it still has another 7 million. The second largest civilian police DNA database in the West is in Austria. That database holds just 1 per cent of its population.

In Britain, the law allows police to take DNA samples for offences as minor as begging or being drunk and even taking part in a demonstration or protest that was not pre-approved by them. They can demand fingerprints on the streets and access extremely private data without any permissions or real oversight and illegally amass facial recognition data at sporting events and shopping centres.

Numerous Data Sets

Data.gov.uk was launched in 2010 under the guise of non-personal open data. Today, it holds something 40,000 data sets (a data set is a single database table or a single statistical data matrix) and includes all manner of information collected from areas such as schools and families, Department for Health and so on.

On the 29 January 2010, Boris Johnson, former mayor of London, opened an online data warehouse containing more than 200 data sets just from London city authorities.

Today, for instance, the government knows you have visited www.truepublica.org.uk, the time you visited, how long you stayed, your IP address, and some information about your device. The law says they are not allowed to collect data on the pages read – but who knows. It also says they can’t extract data from your device but they do as they’ve been caught doing it.

Each Internet Service Provider (ISP) and mobile carrier in the UK will have to store all these data sets, which the taxpayer will pay them to do, even though the taxpayer was never consulted. There is no judicial oversight, it’ll be impossible to know when police target specific groups disproportionately. They are known to have illegally targeted law-abiding protestors, journalists, non-violent activists for instance.

Even More Intrusive

Just think about all this for a moment. You can’t get away from a state snooper standing over you. But it is about to get much worse.

In July this year, the UK will become the first country in the world to bring in age checks for pornography online. Anyone visiting a porn website will be required to prove they are over 18. You may think that it is a good thing to be protecting our youngsters – but this is designed to lead somewhere else.

This is a set-up for what we at TruePublica have written about before – the creation of Digital ID cards. You will soon be hearing of a term called ‘Robust Age Verification’ (RAV). This is already different from Age Verification – itself to be legally rolled out in July this year. The RAV system is being piloted on those aged under 18. The Home Office is now already looking to add RAV technology for buying knives and alcohol and will extend it quite soon to vaping websites.

A similar system is now routinely in use for online gambling sites that started just two weeks ago.

Insiders have already stated that this same system is to be rolled out in Britain for using other online services in the future such as YouTube and Netflix. You might think this is outrageous, a conspiracy theory even – I promise you, it is the reality of what the government are allowing companies to do – and this, in turn, becomes a data collection point for the government.

One company, OCL is preparing to offer identity cards for students. It is already working with nightclubs and supermarkets and aiming to “own” the identity on their smartphones.

No Blunders

The mainstream media is starting to report that “the government has quietly blundered into the creation of a digital passport – then outsourced its development to private firms, without setting clear limits on how it is to be used.”

But they haven’t blundered. This is all part of the overall desire to see the emergence of a digital ID card.

HMRC was recently told by the Information Commissioner to ditch millions of illegally collated voiceprints.

Further from collecting voiceprints, this state intervention into our lives has now extended to creating a biometric database, linked to a health database. These announced databases will hold the most private information imaginable about the civilian population of Britain. Fingerprints and facial recognition systems are just scratching the surface.

After the Windrush scandal, so serious that it saw the Home Secretary resign, you might have thought that the government would curtail its so-called ‘hostile environment.’ You’d be wrong – they doubled down without debate.

In January this year, an inspection report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) revealed Home Office ambitions to:

“establish a system that obtains and shares an individual’s immigration status in real time with authorised users, providing proof of entitlement to a range of public and private services, such as work, rented accommodation, healthcare and benefits.”

It took this report to confirm that the Home Office is indeed building a massive hostile environment database for anyone with a background that is ‘non-indigenous’ – known internally as the “Status Checking Project”.

Liberty said – this system “could ostensibly be used to facilitate the sharing of personal data of any individual interacting with public services … amounting in effect to a digital ID card.”

This digital ID card will be online, you won’t have access to it, but each time you want to use the NHS, send a child to a new school, accept benefits, go to the airport and so on, the state knows and builds its data set on you.

The government of Britain, using taxpayers money, have spent undisclosed billions building the architecture of a secretive and terrifying surveillance state so intrusive it is no longer possible to escape its tentacles slowly wrapping itself around the face of civil society. In the not too distant future, there is nothing that law-abiding people will be able to do without the state snooper watching every move, waiting to approve your actions or worse still, penalise every minor infringement.

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Featured image is from TP

In addition to the militarization of Eastern Europe, NATO partakes in active intelligence operations – be it by land, sea and air.

There are numerous reports of various intelligence (spy) aircraft going and even entering Russian airspace, and the Russian Aerospace Forces intercepting them.

Officially, NATO has 14 Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS) aircraft with their radar domes, stationed at NATO Air Base (NAB) Geilenkirchen, Germany.

The fleet is involved in the reassurance measures following the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and in the tailored assurance measures for Turkey against the background of the Syrian crisis.

Under normal circumstances, the aircraft operates for about eight hours, at 30,000 feet (9,150 meters) and covers a surveillance area of more than 120,000 square miles (310,798 square kilometers).

As for February 11^th, 2016, “the AWACS aircraft completed the 1,000th mission in support of NATO reassurance measures. These measures are a series of land, sea and air activities in, on and around the territory of NATO Allies in Central and Eastern Europe, designed to reassure their populations and deter potential aggression. They are taken in response to Russia’s aggressive actions to NATO’s east.”

NATO’s E-3 AWACS fleet is predicted to retire around 2035. At the Warsaw Summit in 2016, Allies declared that “by 2035, the Alliance needs to have a follow-on capability to the E-3 AWACS. Based on high6level military requirements, we have decided to collectively start the process of defining options for future NATO surveillance and control capabilities.” This effort has since been carried forward as the Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) initiative.

Most spy plane flights are by US aircraft, and not NATO one.

In 2018, the Russian army detected about 3,000 foreign aircraft, including a thousand aircraft and spy drone, near Russia’s maritime and land borders.

In addition, the US frequently attempts to enter Russian airspace with its spy planes. Following are some of the more recent examples:

• On May 21^st, a RQ-4B-40 Global Hawk took off from Sigonella, Italy, it flew over the separation line in the Donbass;
• On May 20^th, a US RC-135V conducted a reconnaissance mission along the Black Sea coast of Russia;
• On May 16^th, a RQ-4b-30 Global Hawk flew out from Sigonella and over the separation line in the Donbass;
• On May 15^th, a RQ-4B-40 Global Hawk flew out of Sigonella and along the Russian border of the Kaliningrad area, within Estonian airspace;
• On May 3^rd, the Russian aerial observation center reported the overflight by American spy planes of Russia’s southern and western borders – a United States Air Force Boeing RC-135V (large spy plane, deployed at the US military base in the United Kingdom), was observed above the Baltic Sea, along Russia’s border;
• On April 30^th, a United States Air Force P-8A aircraft took off from the Sikonya base on Sicily Island in Italy before heading to the city of Novorossiisk. Following that, a reconnaissance aircraft flew for three hours over the southern borders of the Crimea;
• An American RQ-4B-40 UAV took off from the Sicilian base to fly over the Donbass region of Ukraine;
• On April 24^th, a US Air Force Boeing RC-135V made its way into the Black Sea this morning, coasting along the Russian maritime border in the Krasnodar region before making its way around the Crimean Peninsula, online aircraft monitoring resource PlaneRadar reported, citing the plane’s transponder data;

Similar flights are a constant, most of them focused on the Donbass, the Baltics and the Black sea. That is no surprise, since the Baltics are a hotbed of NATO military build-up and so is the Kaliningrad area. The same goes for Crimea and the Donbass (with the Donbass not by Russian forces, while they’re still blamed for it).

On January 24^th, even a NATO partner nation – Sweden – sent a spy plane, which was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter jet.

On March 7^th, a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter jet approached and shadowed a US RC-135 spy plane over the Baltic Sea.

“After the withdrawal of the foreign aircraft from the Russian state border, the Russian fighter safely returned to the airfield,” the Defense Ministry wrote. Of course, Russia was condemned for its “aggressive” conduct.

Separately, Poseidon P-8 anti-submarine aircraft, with intelligence capabilities frequently patrol the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, checking Russian submarine activity. It most recently happened on May 21^st, it usually flies out of Sigonella, Italy every few days.

On average Russia spots upwards of 20 foreign spy planes along its airspace, while it intercepts only some of them.

In April 2018, US provided $3 million in funding, Latvia would be provided with RQ-20A Puma UAVs from AeroViroment to help enhance their monitoring and reconnaissance capabilities.

US forces deployed in Lithuania would remain there, as per a report from April 4^th, 2019.

As part of the agreement, Lithuania’s Defense Ministry will provide all necessary support for the deployment of U.S. forces.

“U.S. foreign military programs should complement Lithuanian national funds to build anti-tank, air defense and intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance capabilities,” the Pentagon statement said. “The programs also will help Lithuania gain maritime domain awareness and look to replace Soviet/Russian-made equipment and platforms.”

NATO maritime surveillance activity along the Russian border is also not falling far behind.

On April 30^th, the HMS Echo surveillance ship arrived in Georgia for the 2^nd time within 5 months.

Commanding Officer, Commander Matthew Warren, said he was looking forward to working with the Georgian Coastguard once more, towards their “common aim of peace and stability within the Black Sea.”

The previous time the HMS Echo visited the Black Sea was in December 2018, to reinforce UK and NATO’s support for Ukraine, which was suffering following the incident in which Ukrainian warships were seized by the Russian coastguard in November south of the Kerch Strait.

On April 18^th, Sweden – a NATO partner nation, infamous for its detection of “Russian submarines,” launched a 74-metre-long, 14-metre-wide spy ship, officially named the HMS Artemis.

“The Swedish Armed Forces and the Navy, together with the National Defence Radio Establishment, will receive a qualified and modern signals intelligence vessel that will increase their capacities,” Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) Director General Göran Mårtensson said.

“Compared with the HMS Orion, which was launched in 1984, its replacement has a great technical edge and also an improved working and living environment on board, increased operational reliability and improved electromagnetic compatibility properties, that is how the equipment in the vessel affects other surrounding electronic equipment and how sensitive the equipment is for external electronic interference”, FMV’s project manager Peter Andersson said.

Separately, NATO member countries attempt to use civilians for intelligence work. A Norwegian national – Frode Berg, 62, was arrested in 2017 by the Russian Security Service – the FSB.

He was accused of involvement in an elaborate spying operation, dating back to 2015, to obtain information about Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet in the far north.

In spring 2018, Berg himself added a new layer of intrigue when he admitted, through his lawyer, that he had actually been working with Norwegian military intelligence. He was unaware of the scope and purpose of the operation, he was simply a courier.

According to scarce details, he was mailing envelopes with cash and spying instructions to a woman called Natalia in Moscow, in return for information about Russia’s nuclear submarines in the Kola Peninsula.

Lt. Col. Tormod Heier, a former military intelligence officer, suggests that Berg’s arrest is the result of sloppy tradecraft.

“Norway’s intelligence service is a world leader when it comes to technical intelligence, but we are relatively inexperienced in human intelligence,” Heier said. “[Berg’s] case looks very amateurish to me. It looks like we were caught while trying something outside our core competence.”

Norway further hosts a US radar, located on the tiny Arctic island of Vardo. The shrinking island has one successful business – its electric company, which supplies a US Globus 3 radar overseeing the Kola Peninsula, a Russian territory filled with high-security naval bases and restricted military zones.

“This place is very, very important for America and for the Western world so that they can keep an eye on what the Russians are doing,” said Lasse Haughom, a former mayor of Vardo and a veteran of Norway’s military intelligence service.

“Russia wants to look into our secrets, and the United States and Norway want to look into their business,” Mr. Haughom added. “That is the way the game is played.”

The Russian ambassador in Oslo, Norway’s capital, warned Norway that it should “not be naïve” about Russia’s readiness to respond.

“Norway has to understand that after becoming an outpost of NATO, it will have to face head-on Russia and Russian military might,” the ambassador, Teimuraz Ramishvili, told Norway’s state broadcaster, NRK. “Therefore, there will be no peaceful Arctic anymore.”

The US is actively partaking in combating alleged Russian interference by advanced cyber reconnaissance.

Since, the US fears to become a victim to an attack similar to the 2007 one in Estonia, which was blamed on Russia.

In September 2018, it was announced that the UK would invest £250m to establish a joint cyber task force between the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ.

Developing cyber security skills strategy should be the government’s first priority, the committee said. “It is a pressing matter of national security that it does so,” it added.

In July 2018, a government spokeswoman said: “We have a £1.9 billion National Cyber Security Strategy, opened the world-leading National Cyber Security Centre and continue to build on our cyber security knowledge, skills and capability.”

Despite those massive investments, accusations that Russian hackers and security service personnel still allegedly continue to successfully carry out cyber-attacks is puzzling.

The NATO Joint Intelligence and Security Division (JISD), in conjunction with the Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (DDIS) hosted the 20th annual NATO Warning Intelligence Working Group and Symposium, in Amsterdam between March 26 – 28th.

“In recent years, NATO has stepped up its efforts in Intelligence by creating an Assistant Secretary General position and a NATO Intelligence Division to better understand the security threats. NATO continues to optimise NATO intelligence to facilitate timely and relevant support to Allied decision-making and operations, including through improved warning and intelligence sharing, particularly on terrorism, hybrid, and cyber.”

The NATO Communications and Information Agency, which is responsible for the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JISR), which is the synchronization and integration of Operations and Intelligence capabilities and activities, geared to providing timely information to support decisions in NATO member and partner states. It has two offices in Norway, one in Poland and none in the Baltic states.

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The United States Navy wants to archive 350 billion social media posts in order to conduct “research.” What exactly does the military want to study? “Modes of collective expression.”

The Department of the Navy has posted a solicitation asking contractors to bid on a project that would amass a staggering 350 billion social media posts dating from 2014 through 2016. The data will be taken from a single social media platform – but the solicitation does not specify which one. -RT

“We seek to acquire a large-scale global historical archive of social media data, providing the full text of all public social media posts, across all countries and languages covered by the social media platform,” the contract synopsis reads. The Navy said that the archive would be used in “ongoing research efforts” into “the evolution of linguistic communities” and “emerging modes of collective expression, over time and across countries.”

This is simply spying and the research will be used for propaganda purposes, and that is blatantly obvious at this point. The intentions are far from benign.

The archive will draw from publicly available social media posts and “no private communications or private user data” will be included in the database. However, all records must include the time and date at which each message was sent and the public user handle associated with the message. Additionally, each record in the archive must include all publicly available meta-data, including country, language, hashtags, location, handle, timestamp, and URLs, that were associated with the original posting. -RT

So basically, most of your information is going to be stored by the U.S. military. The data must be collected from at least 200 million unique users in at least 100 countries, with no single country accounting for more than 30 percent of users, according to the contract.

The U.S. government has previously expressed interest in collecting social media data for more tracking and spying on Americans. Last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a notice asking contractors to bid on a database that tracks 290,000 global news sources in over 100 languages. The contract also mentioned the ability to keep tabs on“influencers,” leading some reports to speculate that the proposed database could be used to monitor journalists.

There is no way anyone could say we live in the land of the free anymore. It’s delusional to think we have any power at all. Freedom of speech is almost gone, gun rights are on the chopping block, and journalists will soon be punished by the military for not toeing the line and reporting on the official narrative (some have already been.)  Censorship and manipulation are completely out of control.  We are rapidly heading toward the dystopian nightmare George Orwell warned about.

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Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

Colonialism Reparation welcomes that the European Parliament has approved by a large majority the resolution on the “Fundamental rights of people of African descent” recognising the current situation of structural racism and asks that the former colonising Member States follow the call for apologies and compensations for the colonial period, bearing in mind its lasting impact in the present.

On March 26, 2019 the European Parliament adopted by 535 votes to 80 with 44 abstentions the resolution P8_TA(2019)0239 on “Fundamental rights of people of African descent”, recognizing at point S that […] the racism and discrimination experienced by people of African descent is structural […] and at point B […] whereas this correlates to historically repressive structures of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade […].

Concerning the reparations of colonialism at point 7 […] recalls that some Member States have taken steps toward meaningful and effective redress for past injustices and crimes against humanity – bearing in mind their lasting impacts in the present – against people of African descent […], at point 8 […] calls for the EU institutions and the remainder of the Member States to follow this example, which may include some form of reparations such as offering public apologies and the restitution of stolen artefacts to their countries of origin[…], at point 9 […] calls on the Member States to declassify their colonial archives[…] and at point 20 […] encourages the Member States to make the history of people of African descent part of their curricula and to present a comprehensive perspective on colonialism and slavery which recognises their historical and contemporary adverse effects on people of African descent […].

This resolution, which represents a great step forward compared to the resolution “Durban World Conference against Racism” approved by the European Parliament on October 3, 2001, has been, obviously, unfortunately ignored by the European media with few exceptions (The Guardian, European Interest, The Voice, The Sofia Globe, Anadolu Agency, EU Reporter, Mail Online, Sputnik, SaphirNews, Público).

Colonialism Reparation welcomes that the European Parliament has approved by a large majority the resolution on the “Fundamental rights of people of African descent” recognising the current situation of structural racism and asks that the former colonising Member States (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, etc.) follow the call for apologies and compensations for the colonial period, bearing in mind its lasting impact in the present.

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After a quarter of a century of legal battles, indigenous communities in the Amazon are still awaiting justice for the damage inflicted on their environments and health by Texaco, which was taken over by US oil giant Chevron. Civil society organisations from around the world are standing in solidarity with the victims.

Tuesday 21 May 2019 is the International Day of Action Against Chevron, during which 260 civil society organisations, representing an estimated 280 million people, have come together to express their outrage at the impunity the American oil giant continues to enjoy and to voice their solidarity with the indigenous communities affected by Chevron’s toxic environmental practices.

“Chevron not only ignores a ruling by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court ordering it to clean up the toxic mess Texaco left behind in the Amazon that is still killing and poisoning people and to compensate the victims, it also attacks those who defend the victims with shock-and-awe lawfare,” said Nick Meynen, environmental and economic justice policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

On hell’s ice rink

Indigenous peoples affected by decades of leaks and dumping in the Amazon from the Lago Agrio oil installation in Ecuador have been seeking justice and compensation from Texaco, the field’s then operator, since 1993. Evidence gathered during the investigation shows that Texaco dumped some 68 billion litres of toxic wastewater and hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the rainforest during its operations in north-east Ecuador.

“We will fight this until hell freezes over, and then fight it out on the ice,” a company spokesperson said at the time the litigation was first brought, and the oil giant has stayed true to its word.

Over the past quarter of a century, the class action lawsuit has shifted through numerous jurisdictions, including the United States, Ecuador, the Netherlands and Canada.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Ecuador ordered Chevron, which had since acquired Texaco, to pay $18 billion in compensation to the victims, later reduced to $9.5 billion, down from the original estimate of $27 billion. Chevron, which has no substantial assets in Ecuador, has refused to pay for the restoration.

Beyond the reach of the law

Even though it was the oil company which had insisted on moving the case from the United States to Ecuador, Chevron later alleged that the Ecuadorian court’s ruling was acquired through corruption, an allegation which Ecuador rejected and environmental groups are convinced was a ploy to escape liability. But Chevron did then return to the US court system to launch a counterattack.

“Chevron used a US law designed to attack the Mafia in an effort to criminalise human rights advocacy. This allowed Chevron to claim to be a victim of the very villagers it had poisoned,” said Steven Donziger, the American human rights lawyer representing the affected indigenous communities, who experienced the full force of Chevron’s legal army.

Not only did a New York judge who reportedly owned shares in Chevron refuse to consider the mountain of evidence of contamination acquired by environmental experts, Donzinger related, but Chevron’s witness in the case against Donziger later admitted to lying in his testimony and receiving large payoffs from Chevron.

Last year, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which is not actually a court of law but a tribunal to arbitrate between states, ruled in favour of Chevron.

“This epic case of injustice involving three decades of struggle is a very good example of why we need a legally binding UN Treaty on transnational corporations and human rights,” Meynen explains.

While Chevron has used its global reach and deep pockets to evade its responsibility to clean up the jungle it polluted, the villagers who paid the price for its negligence continue to suffer without compensation.

“The EEB believes that polluting companies should pay to clean up the mess they leave behind. It is high time for Chevron to stop evading justice and start delivering it,” concludes Meynen.

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Khaled is a senior communications officer, with a particular focus on the sustainable development goals, economic transition and environmental justice. Khaled is a veteran journalist with over 20 years of experience gathered in Europe and the Middle East. He is also the author of two books.