Global Research

Everyone who is aware of the US government’s extraordinary criminal actions at home and abroad bears a heavy weight.  The millions of peoples murdered, maimed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced by gratuitous American military aggression comprise a Holocaust of deaths based entirely on lies and false accusations in order to advance secret American and Israeli agendas. I suspect that the heavy burden of responsibility for mass murder and destruction committed in our name is the reason most Americans prefer the fake news fed to them about how good and wonderful and exceptional we are and how hard our government works to protect us from the nasty folks elsewhere.  This storyline converts the illegal brutal war crimes of the US government against women, children, defenseless citizens, schools, wedding parties, funerals, and farmers in their fields into glorious and brave defenses of our liberty and virtue. If you want the truth watch the video leaked by Manning of US troops enjoying themselves while from the air they machine-gun reporters and innocent civilians walking along a street and follow up by machine-gunning a father and his two young children, babies, who stopped to help the wounded bleeding in the street.  The leak of the video that showed the true picture of Washington’s wars is the reason Manning was tortured and imprisoned.  It is the person who told the truth, not the criminals who committed the murders, who was punished.

I agree that the fake story of America’s moral worthiness is much easier to live with than it is to bear the shame of the true story.  But in the end the fake story destroys our liberty even more completely than would conquest by a foreign opponent. People are more suspicious of an occupying power than they are of their own government and are less likely to believe foreign occupiers when they lie to them.  In contrast, a people’s own government can trap them in a false consciousness and keep them there with fake news.

Wherever one looks at the behavior of Americans today, from airline flight attendants to police to national security advisors and secretaries of state, one sees people devoid of moral conscience, integrity, compassion, empathy, and self-control. For unreasonable and petty spite alone, a female airline attendant on a long-delayed Southwest Airline flight called police and had a man to whom she took a dislike arrested and taken off the airplane.  All of the passengers protested to the police that the arrested person had done nothing, but the cops didn’t listen. They had another victim to abuse. Was the victimization of this person the result of Identity Politics teaching women to hate men? See this.

Recently, a black woman pushed an elderly white male off a bus into the street simply because he interrupted her harangue of other passengers by telling her she should be nicer to people. He died from his injuries. Was this murderous act the product of Identity Politics teaching black Americans to hate white Americans? See this.

Trump’s crazed war criminal national security adviser, John Bolton, and the idiot secretary of state, Pompeo, want to cause massive civilian deaths in Iran and Venezuela.  Iran is to be overthrown for Israel, and Venezuela for US oil companies. The motives are blatant and obvious, but Bolton and Pompeo are not denounced and forced to resign for their shameful murderous intentions.  Yet, if they used the n-word or sexually harassed a woman, they would have to resign.  This demonstrates the twisted and sick state of American morality today.  Bombing people is acceptable, but words might really hurt them.

Washington’s case against Julian Assange is so contrived and so weak, that the corrupt US attorney assigned to frame-up Assange has resorted to persecution of Manning in an effort to coerce false testimony against Assange from Manning. After being tortured and serving seven years in prison for revealing a US war crime, as Manning was required to do under the US military code, Manning was pardoned by President Obama. Now Manning is back in prison for a second time after being pardoned, because Manning will not cooperate in the frame-up of Assange by giving false testimony to a grand jury.  Without false testimony, the corrupt US attorney hasn’t a case that could get a conviction from even the typical insouciant American jury, normally a collection of gullible people easily manipulated by the prosecutor. 

When Manning was imprisoned for 63 days for refusing to tell lies about Assange, Manning spent 28 of those days in solitary confinement.  Why?  

A week after Manning was released, the corrupt US attorney called Manning again before the grand jury that the corrupt US attorney is using to contrive a case against Assange.  Again Manning refused to cooperate in the frame-up, and was again held in contempt and again remanded into federal prison.  This time a corrupt US federal district judge, Anthony Trenga, added to Manning’s jail time a daily fine of $500 rising to $1,000 daily after 60 days.  In other words, the corrupt judge is helping the corrupt US attorney to coerce Manning into cooperating in a frameup of Assange.  Americans need to understand that their judges are not judges. They are operatives of the American police state.

When I characterize the US attorney and judge as corrupt, I don’t mean that they are taking money, although that cannot be ruled out.  I mean that they are corrupt in the sense that they have abandoned the rule of law and do not see their function as serving justice.  The US Constitution and its amendments establish law as a shield of the people against coercive and arbitrary actions of government, but the US attorney and judge are using law as a weapon against individuals against whom authorities want revenge.  For years we have been witnessing the rule of law being attacked from every level, from the president to the local police. See Roberts and Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions. See this.

No one has protested the open and highly visible effort to force Manning to commit perjury that can be used to build a case against Assange or otherwise be imprisoned for “contempt” and fined into penury.  The despicable liberal-progressive-left whores that comprise the US print and TV media and NPR will not protest the injustice.  They hate Manning and Assange for having more integrity than all of them together.  The conservative talk radio hosts won’t protest the attempt to coerce Manning, because they love Trump, Washington’s wars, and hate “anti-Americans,” which is everyone who dares tell the truth about the US.  On conservative talk radio on May 17, I heard one popular host say “I am happy Manning is in prison.” 

No US senators or representatives and neither the Senate or House judiciary committee sees anything untoward in forcing an American citizen to produce the needed lies for framing up the world’s best journalist.  Law schools and bar associations are not demanding the corrupt US attorney to be disbarred for violating every precept laid down by US Attorney General, Supreme Court Justice, and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson.  Nor are they demanding the impeachment of the corrupt federal district judge, who perhaps has his eye on appointment to the appeals court for his cooperation in finishing off the First Amendment.

The American people are too insouciant and brainwashed to know what is happening.  Regardless, they are as powerless as third world peasants who have a dictator’s boot on their necks.  

The “Western democracies”—what a joke—have not raised a voice at the US government’s public display of intimidation of a witness, at the US government’s use of imprisonment and coercive fines in a public display of forcing a person to lie in order that the US government can get revenge on a journalist who published leaked materials that show conclusively that the US government is a deranged war criminal, a liar and deceiver of its dumbshit allies and population, and the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world.

Assange might be saved by prosecutors with a guilty conscience in Sweden, the country in which Assange’s troubles began.  Assange’s troubles began in Sweden where two women enthralled with his celebrity separately invited him into their beds. One of them became alarmed when he did not use a condom.  To reassure herself that he did not have a sexually transmitted disease, she asked him to take a test.  He foolishly refused.  She went to the police, not to report a rape but to inquire if Assange could be forced to submit to testing. The other woman found out about the other woman, and was angry that she was not the only woman in his sexual life.

It was the police and a feminist prosecutor taught to hate men who made it into a rape investigation.  But as the women said it was consensual sex, the charges were dropped.  Assange was released and free to leave Sweden.  

His second mistake was to go to England, an American puppet state. Once Assange was in Britain, he was as good as in Washington’s hands.  Washington encouraged a second Swedish feminist prosecutor to reopen the case.  As there were no charges against Assange, all the feminist prosecutor could do was to try to extradite Assange for more questioning.  Once Sweden had him, the expectation was that Washington would pay the bribe for his extradition to the US. Normally, extradition requires formal charges, but Sweden had none.  Normally, there is no extradition for questioning.  But a corrupt British court, perhaps well paid by Washington, agreed to the extradition for questioning and placed Assange under house arrest under a large bond paid, if memory serves, by Sir James Goldsmith’s  daughter. 

Whether or not Sir James’ daughter understood it, Assange and his lawyers understood that he was in line to be delivered to Sweden and from there to the Washington torturers. Therefore, asylum was arranged for Assange in the Ecuadoran Embassy where he lived seven years until a Washington-compliant and corrupt Ecuadoran president, well paid with an IMF loan, gained power and revoked Assange’s asylum. The British police then did Washington’s bidding and dragged Assange out of the embassy and placed him in a maximum security prison as if he were some sort of dangerous criminal.

The second Swedish prosecutor had eventually consented to interviewing Assange in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London and afterward dropped her extradition request, and the case was closed for the second time. But the corrupt British legal system, which is almost as corrupt as the American one, put Assange in jail for 50 weeks based on “bail jumping” despite the fact that the extradition request from Sweden on which the bail was based was withdrawn. 

Now Washington’s British vassal is considering the request from Britain’s Washington master to hand over Assange for torture, confession, and death or long-term imprisonment. But suddenly Sweden has found that there is “still probable cause” that not using a condum could be a sexual offense and have again requested Britain to hand Assange over to Sweden.

Is this a rescue attempt on Sweden’s part to make up for having ruined the life of the world’s best journalist? Or is it Washington’s insurance policy against the British coming to their senses and, on the basis of justice, refusing Washington’s extradition order?

In England the decision is up to the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who is not of British ethnicity. Hopefully, he is an immigrant from one of the abused colonies and will stick his finger in the UK/US eye and turn Assange over to Sweden where he is unlikely to be convicted for engaging in unprotected sex. Hopefully, Assange will not  be so stupid as to then travel to another Washington puppet state. If he does, he will experience his tribulation again.

But Washington pays so well I doubt Assange can escape. The corrupt Western media is against him because Assange  shows them up as devoid of an ounce of integrity and devoid of the practice of journalism. The American presstitutes don’t care about the First Amendment.  As they never tell the truth, they don’t need First Amendment protection.

Washington, which claims to represent the American people, is for war and more war.  Bolton intends that the US will, for Israel, attack Iran and create chaos there as was created in Iraq and Libya, and also in Syria prior to the Russian intervention.

Under neoconserative and Israeli leadership, America has become a deranged country, distrusted by other governments and considered the primary threat to peace and life on earth.

Every American should be ashamed.  But they are not.  At some point, the Russians, Chinese, Europeans, Iranians, and everyone else will finally realize, hopefully before it is too late, that Washington is overwhelmed by evil, capable only of destruction, and a dangerous threat to life on earth. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Simon and Garfunkel, from their 1966 hit song Sounds of Silence, forecast it best:

And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never hear

And no one dared disturb the sound of silence

“Fools”, said I,” You do not know silence like a cancer grows”…

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon God they made

And the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming

And the sign said ” The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls”

And whispered in the sounds of silence

How appropriate that this 50+ year old song lyric resonates within our Amerikan empire today. Look at what our gung ho militaristic, almost (sadly) fascistic nation is currently engaged in for what they disgracefully label as foreign policy. The CIA and other covert operatives have been manipulating for regime change in the sovereign nation of Venezuela. Elections there mean nothing if our puppets cannot win! Economic sanctions cripple that economy, and our banks, along with our lackey ‘trading partners’, freeze Venezuela’s assets.

Then look over at Iran. The ‘chump Trump’ gang follow the bidding of whomever pulls its strings to bang the war drum against them. As the great geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig describes, it’s mostly about the petrodollar and its survival worldwide… and of course about who will control both South America and the Middle East away from the Chinese and Russians. It has nothing to do whatsoever about humanitarian or democracy concerns at those places!

The silence that Simon and Garfunkel’s song relates to is today all about how damn silent most of our fellow citizens are concerning what their country is doing. No, so long as the streets and shops are filled with everyone carrying and using those electronic gadgets to numb them from truth. So long as millions of Amerikan men stay narcotized by 24/7 sports. So long as millions of Amerikans get their news and info from the usual ‘Scandal a day’ mainstream media, with the asinine tweets and tweets back from this current emperor and all the other pretenders to his throne. All that matters to the half of us who actually vote is when the next election cycle appears, disregarding viable ideas and information to perhaps save our republic from the Military Industrial predators.

You walk along your neighborhood and see more and more of the flags that those predators have held hostage. Why do they hang them up on their doorways and garages? Ask them and they tell you it is to honor our troops, who are out there fighting the terrorists. And it makes this writer almost teary eyed to think how this long con has been operating for decades. Honor our troops? Well, if these fools wanted to honor our troops, they would have never  remained silent while we sent those troops  to Vietnam and all the many places they were sent to for over 50 years! There was NO Iraq War as they refer to it. No, it was the ‘War ON Iraq’ with the phony mantra to bring democracy there. It was the illegal occupation of said country (after of course we destroyed most of its infrastructure and civilians) that then sacrificed thousands of our young troops. How many of those lucky enough to return home NOT in a box did return with less of their body parts or less of their right minds? Yet, the minions who remain in silence to it all keep on trucking, as the good Amerikans, good voters and of course good consumers that they are.

Silence is NOT golden… it only allows tyranny to continue.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Featured image is from The Mantle

Sending a “Clear Message” is the favorite phrase of the Trump Administration these days.

The U.S. government with its most lethal military power on the earth politically looks weak in the eyes of people around the world and has nothing to offer except sending fearful Messages to the “bad actors” – like a mobster marking his territory in the city during the trouble times. So far, the shortsightedness of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy advisors has humiliated the Administration. Mr. Pompeo and Bolton’s “diplomacy” has failed miserably. Their ultimatums, coup attempts evaporate like a drop of water on a hot iron as soon as they are announced. The cases of North Korea, Venezuela and Iran are the best indication of these chaotic Imperial situations.

In addition, the “Trade War” with China or unsubstantiated accusations and sanction against Russia not only have not been helpful but more importantly are worrying the American farmers and producers and undermining the trust in the U.S. government and its leadership. On top of that the constant infighting among the American elite has emboldened the dangerous fascistic elements to organize themselves as “Armed Forces” in and outside of the official government agencies.

Meanwhile the American working people find themselves marginalized in making decisions for the future by both ruling parties and only are spoken to when they are needed during elections as voters or during war as cannon fodder. However, they are seeking leadership which generates meaningful changes and a way out of this dead-end political situation.

Today, the vital need for new leadership and a new direction is no longer a clever election campaign slogan but a necessity to avoid a dangerous path that leads to creation of one form of the Police State in the U.S. to ignite a global war. Certainly, the current chaotic political situation in the U.S. has reached a point that is undermining the U.S. governing system and its “constitution”. Radical change is on the horizon, and the American working people have a great opportunity to present their own independent solutions which are not based on profit but the actual day-to-day needs of people.

If one agrees with the above assessment of the current political reality in the U.S., then the question is what is the solution? What has to be done by working people in order to free themselves and their families from this quagmire?

Although the answer is simple, the concept would present itself as complicated and confusing occurrences without having a general knowledge of the history of development of Capitalism. The progress of Capitalism from its inception mainly was due to its ability to turn a single craftsman into an appendage of machinery in the factories. That is how the modern worker was born. The Capitalists did everything in their power to dehumanize the working people. According to the factory owners, it was a privilege for every able member of the working families including children to work in their factories and get paid. However, they knew soon or later, they would face resistance and workers would rise up for better working conditions. Ironically the same factories which were exploiting the laborers became the main factor in forming the workers as a class. Indeed the working class in their struggle won and lost many historical battles since that time. However, in the 21st century the contradictions within the Capitalist system have reached a point that a total collapse is inevitable and not even a World War would be able to save it – as it did in WWI and WWII.

On the economic level, the U.S., as the world’s number one economy is challenged by China. Washington’s tough talk against China regarding trade is nothing but empty rhetoric that will not help the U.S. economically since the U.S. economy has been increasingly dependent on speculative financial parasite and not production. Today the U.S. economy is polluted by the fog of another financial meltdown worse than 2008. The U.S. demand from China (regardless of its President’s ambition) is an impossible proposition. In simple words, the U.S. is asking China to behave like a semi-colony! Meanwhile, China as the second world economy is aiming to link China throughout Eurasia with the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” economic program, enhancing her position in the world, while rushing to advance its military capabilities with draft defense budget of $177.61 billion in 2019, preparing herself in anticipation of a military confrontation from the U.S. government.

On the military level, for the U.S. government, any attempt to engage in a full scale and direct military involvement – like Vietnam – is a difficult and risky task. The European military powers are not following U.S. orders, and NATO is at the stage of disintegration. Also, unlike the 1940s, Americans are not the only nation that has devastating nuclear bombs in their arsenal. These facts so far have been the main reasons that the U.S. is hesitating to start a new World War as an option to gain back its global hegemony. However for the U.S. with a weaken economy, a military option is more and more probable. Today the military provocation against Iran in Persian Gulf indicates that the warmongers have upper hand in directing the U.S. government toward a military option with devastating consequences. It is common knowledge that no one would be able to claim victory after a nuclear war is initiated.

Working people have a window of opportunity to change the gloomy future that all capitalists (Americans, Chinese or Russians) have already planned for us. An independent union and culture of peace must prevail to save humanity and mother earth. Unfortunately working people have been distracted and disarmed for so many years by the politicians and parties who pose as supporters of working people but carry out the agenda of the 1%. Capitalists throughout the centuries masterfully have managed to create different protection shields against working people. In the struggle against capitalists; Stalinists, pseudo-socialists, labor parties and bureaucratic unions have already played their hands and proved time after time that in the final analysis they act as the protectors for the powerful and wealthy elites. These old parties and organizations politically are bankrupt and no longer have influence among working people. However, the most dangerous and elusive shield that still exist today to protect the capitalists interests has been parties that propagate the idea of reformism. The Social Democrats (or also known as Democratic Socialists in the U.S.) are reactionary reformists and main obstacle in the path of working people’s emancipation. Their superficial solutions to the deep social problems; without any challenge to the capitalist state, have distracted generations of revolutionaries and democratic minded people in every country around the world. Today that the class struggle is at its peak, the Democratic and Republican parties look the same to working people. Rejecting the far-right demagogues who boldly are consolidating themselves against the working people mainly in Europe and Americas is an easy task. But while working people are seeking a new political alternative to the current situation, the deceitful “socialists” are the hardest link in the capitalist chain to break.

The “Democratic Socialists” by suggesting that through a series of reforms of capitalist government, claim that working people will be prosperous and would be able to pursue a happy life! Mr. Bernie Sanders and Mrs. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are leading this trend in the U.S. As they say, they want to “create a government that works for all and not just the few.” But creating such a government under the capitalist system is a utopian idea and obsolete. People and Profit, Labor and Capital are not compatible. Capitalists simply need government (through their court system, police force, etc.) to protect their wealth and property which are created by the workers. Therefore, a capitalist government cannot be a common ground that could “work” –as Mr. Sanders claims – for both classes and harmonize the antagonistic forces with the opposite interests. When President Trump in his State of Union address, declared: “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country”, he unintendedly reflected the fear among the 1% of the increasing interest of the American working people in Socialist idea as an alternative to Capitalism. The verbal attack by the both parties’ establishments against Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez is actually aimed to discredit genuine Socialist ideas. They are afraid of working people’s ability to create an independent force with a revolutionary program against the 1% unjust economic policies and their constant wars.

Today the workers, teachers, women, minorities, immigrants, journalists, peace activists and dissents’ democratic rights are under attack. New forms of exploitation of workers by companies like Amazon; passing barbaric laws against women to overturn Roe V. Wade; slashing the education budget; daily militarized raid of immigrant families and inhuman treatment of their children; imprisonment of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and other whistleblowers are just a few facts of life in the U.S. today. Only a conscious and independent leadership of working people is able to expose the reactionary nature of the U.S. government and its fictitious “socialist” agents. Capitalists have nothing to offer except war and misery. Creation of a global union and culture of PEACE is needed to stop the warmongers to drop another nuclear bomb and open the gate of hell on earth.

Stand united against reaction and fascism in all forms; organize for PEACE.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

BREAKING OVERNIGHT
OIL TANKERS ATTACKED
SAUDI ARABIA CLAIMS SHIP HEADING TO US SABOTAGED

– ABC News on-screen headline, May 13, 2019

BREAKING OVERNIGHT
SAUDI OIL TANKERS ATTACKED
ENERGY MINISTER SAYS SHIPS WERE TARGETED IN “SABOTAGE ATTACK”

–CBS News on-screen headline, May 13, 2019

These network stories are examples of fake news at its most dangerous, when it plays into the dishonest manipulations of an administration beating the drums for a war against Iran that has no reasonable basis. Not only do the networks and mainstream media generally fail to question the administration’s rush to war, they also fail to do basic journalism by independently confirming whether a particular story is true or not.

The story of the “oil tanker attacks” appears to have been mostly or entirely false, as any news organization could have known from the start by exercising basic skepticism. Or the story could have been pimped as terrorism, as Debka.com did, asserting on May 13 that: “A special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards marine force carried out the sabotage on 4 Saudi oil tankers outside Fujairah port.” No evidence, anonymous sources only, and wrong number of Saudi tankers.

The first report of something happening in or near the emirate of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came from the Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV, saying that seven to ten oil tankers were burning in the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman (outside the Strait of Hormuz leading to the Persian Gulf). There is no evidence that any tankers were burning there. Available satellite images show no smoke, explosions, or anything else to support the claim of an accident or an attack.

A few hours later, a new story surfaced. On May 12 at 7:38 pm, the UAE foreign ministry issued a statement carried by the state news agency WAM with the headline: “Four commercial ships subjected to sabotage operations near UAE territorial waters, no fatalities or injuries reported.” The report in its entirety offered little detail:

ABU DHABI, 12th May, 2019 (WAM) — Four commercial ships were subjected to sabotage operations today, 12th May, near UAE territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, east of Fujairah, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, MOFAIC, has announced.

The Ministry said that the concerned authorities have taken all necessary measures, and are investigating the incident in cooperation with local and international bodies.

It said that there had been no injuries or fatalities on board the vessels and that there had been no spillage of harmful chemicals or fuel.

The MOFAIC statement said that the carrying out acts of sabotage on commercial and civilian vessels and threatening the safety and lives of those on board is a serious development. It called on the international community to assume its responsibilities to prevent such actions by parties attempting to undermine maritime traffic safety and security.

The Ministry also described as ‘baseless and unfounded’ rumours earlier today, 12th May, of incidents taking place within the Port of Fujairah, saying that operations within the port were under way as normal, without any interruption.

There’s not much here. What sort of “sabotage operations” occurred? Who carried them out? What damage was there, if any? Who were the four ships? When was the sabotage discovered? What’s really going on here, if anything?

The next day the Saudi Press Agency chimed in with a statement from the Minister of Energy that “confirmed that … two Saudi oil tankers were subjected to a sabotage attack in the exclusive economic zone of the United Arab Emirates, off the coast of the Emirate of Fujairah.” The minister claimed structural damage to the two tankers but did not make them available for inspection. Satellite and surface images showed no damage to either tanker.

That’s about all that was known on May 13 as ABC News went on the air acting as if the story was factually clear and larger than supported by any evidence. The lead-in to the story was flush with news-hype and propaganda technique: “we begin with that attack overseas on Saudi ships and oil tankers. One about to head to the U.S. This comes in the wake of that warning about threats from Iran.” Fundamentally dishonest. There were two Saudi tankers, no Saudi “ships.” The other two tankers were from the UAE and Norway. There was no certainty that there was any attack (and there still isn’t). Saying that one tanker was about to head to the US was not only irrelevant, but provocative. It was on its way to Saudi Arabia to load oil bound for the US (according to the Saudis). Putting the misreported “attack” in the context of “that warning about threats from Iran” is pure propagandistic parroting of US government scare-mongering.

But that was just the lead-in to veteran reporter Martha Raddatz – surely she’d bring some sane perspective to bear, right? Wrong. She made it worse, talking in a tone suitable for a “they-just-attacked-Pearl-Harbor” report. Somberly treating the alleged attack as a matter of fact, Raddatz framed it with a conclusion supported by no evidence whatsoever:

This comes at an extremely tense time in the region with the U.S. warning just days ago that Iran or its proxies could be targeting maritime traffic in the oil rich Persian Gulf region. Although we do not know who carried out this morning’s attack on these ships, we know four were sabotaged off the coast in the Persian Gulf and it caused significant structural damage to two Saudi oil tankers. One of the Saudi ships was on its way to pick up Saudi oil for delivery to the U.S. Last week the U.S. urgently dispatched a carrier strike group, B-52 bombers and Patriot missile battery to the region after it said there were unspecified threats to American forces in the region. Iran’s news agency this morning saying the dispatch of the warships was to exaggerate the shadow of war and frighten the Iranian people. But this is a very dangerous development.

Could Sarah Huckabee Sanders have said it better?

Posing as a journalist, Martha Raddatz ratchets up the Trump administration’s scare campaign based on nothing more than fear tactics. The four ships that were supposedly attacked were in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the UAE. Almost all the rest of what Raddatz reports as “fact” comes from government press releases.

And that’s not the most shameful part for ABC News. Worse than botching facts large and small is the willingness of such mainstream media players to team up with elements of the US government seeking war with Iran at almost any cost.

CBS News coverage was little better, not only putting the action in the Persian Gulf, but upping the number of ships “attacked” to six. CBS did manage a small saving grace, concluding: “Whatever the case, the tensions here have only risen since President Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, brokered between Iran and world powers.”

Well, yes, THAT is the crux of the mess. The US unilaterally tries to pull out of a multilateral international agreement that all other parties say is working and we’re supposed to take the US seriously? Seriously? At this point, any reporter who accepts a government press release as authoritative should be summarily fired. At this point, that is inexcusable malpractice. Iran has abided by the nuclear deal, all the inspectors affirm that. The other signatories – China, Russia, GB, France, Germany, and the EU – all affirm that. But they don’t stand up to the US effectively. They allow the US to bully them into joining the American economic warfare against Iran.

Over the next several days after it broke, the “oil tankers attacked” story slowly collapsed. Fact-based skepticism started to catch up with the official story. The UAE kept reporters from getting too close to the ships, which showed no serious damage. An anonymous US official blamed Iran, based on no evidence. US military officials in the Persian Gulf region stopped answering questions about whatever it was, referring questioners to the White House.

At this point, if the oil tanker attacks were either a warmongering hoax or false flag operation, it’s not going to have the same success as the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 or the provocations of US warships in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964. There’s even an off-chance that a suspicious Congress and an even more suspicious public will manage to slow the rush to war, or even stop it. There are signs of some increased media wariness, also known as detachment. Perhaps the most hopeful signs are the leaked anonymous stories that the president really, really doesn’t want to go to war, which of course he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to, if he knows what he wants.

Another leaked story had it that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are confident that they can lead Trump by the nose into the war they want with Iran and that Trump’s too stupid to understand what they’re up to. If Trump sees that, it might give peace a chance.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Featured image: Oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz in 2018. Hamad I Mohammed / Reuters file

An honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors leading to Trump’s victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it’s the lofty but vague accusations of “obstruction of justice” along with renewed dirt digging. To some it is a “constitutional crisis”, but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.

Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues

Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressingissues such as income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police, over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national parks and women’s equality while directing ever more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and related issues.

Immediately after the 2016 Election

In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie Sanders said,

“What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, ‘I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class… I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can’t afford childcare, can’t afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.’…What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.”

Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate.” The author analyzed the results saying,

“Donald Trump’s stunning victory is less surprising when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician.” 

The writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted “there will be years of recriminations.”

Russiagate replaced Recrimination

But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in “Russian Roulette” (p127), when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they “brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack … the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump.”

After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book “Shattered” (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up and up …. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the election.

One Year After the Election

The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled “Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination”. Interestingly, there is not a single reference to Russia. Key conclusions are that “it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from the white non-college-educated voting bloc” and “Democrats must go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition …” It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working class.

A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis. They did this because “the (Democratic) party’s national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster.” The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party’s undemocratic practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says “The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs.”

Two Years After the Election

In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled “Autopsy: One Year Later”. It says, “The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party.”

In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than give up control of the party.

What really happened in 2016?

Beyond the initial critiques and “Autopsy” research, there has been little discussion, debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by Russiagate.

Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course this would influence their thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton’s support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another indication of her policies.

What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with “welfare reform” promoted by her husband. According to this study from the University of Michigan,

“As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month… The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform.”

Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice “reforms” initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it’s understandable why they were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as “bigoted paternalism” by blogger Teodrose Fikremanian who says,

“The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been written by George Wallace.”

How Clinton became the Nominee

Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It’s apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions.

Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least) about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.

Clinton had no response for Trump’s attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party voters. In short, it’s likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?

The Relevance of 2016 to 2020

The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and “horse race” journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased “electability” instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups.

Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article “Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm?” Dionne speaks of the “strength he (Biden) brings” and the “comfort he creates”. In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in his article “Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump”. Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in the working class because he joked about claims he is too ‘hands on’. But while Biden may be tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.

The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US “regime change” foreign policy. She calls out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast with Rachel Maddow taunting John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been denouncing Trump’s collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Netanyahu, saying it’s not in US interests. Gabbard’s anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant support from US troops. A recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.

This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump’s victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As pointed out here,

“Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties.”

Instead of pointing out that Trump has betrayed his anti-war campaign promises, corporate media (and some Democratic Party outlets) seem to be undermining the candidate with the strongest anti-war message. An article at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) says, “Corporate media target Gabbard for her Anti-Interventionism, a word they can barely pronounce”.

Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given them the dubious  belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and foreign policy based on ‘regime change’ interventions.

There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat of that disaster. As indicated in the Autopsy, there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.

Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It’s gone on far too long.

 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco East Bay. He can be contacted at [email protected]

On 4 April 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO, marked the 70^th anniversary of its existence with a conference attended by the foreign ministers of member nations in Washington DC. This will be complemented by a meeting of the heads of state of member nations in London next December.

Coinciding with the anniversary event on 4 April, peace activists and concerned scholars in several countries conducted a variety of events to draw attention to, and further document, the many war crimes and other atrocities committed by NATO (sometimes by deploying its associate and crony terrorist armies – ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries and the US directly or through one or other of its many agencies: see ‘NATO – No Need – NATO-EXIT: The Florence Declaration’), the threat that NATO poses to global peace and security as an appendage of the US military, and to consider ways that NATO might be terminated.

These protests and related activities included several outlined in ‘No To NATO: Time To End Aggressive Militarism’ which also explains how NATO ‘provides a veneer of legality’ when ‘the US is unable to get the United Nations Security Council to approve military action’ and ‘Congress will not grant authority for US military action’ and despite the clearcut fact that NATO has no ‘international legal authority to go to war’, the grounds for which are clearly defined in the Charter of the United Nations and are limited to just two: authorization by the UN Security Council and a response in self-defense to a military attack.

The most significant gathering of concerned scholars was undoubtedly the ‘Exit NATO!’ conference in Florence, Italy, which culminated in the Florence Declaration calling for an end to NATO. See ‘The Florence Declaration: An International Front Calling for NATO-Exit’.

If NATO’s record of military destruction is so comprehensive – in the last 20 years virtually destroying Yugoslavia (balkanized into various successor states), Iraq and Libya, while inflicting enormous damage on many others, particularly Afghanistan and Syria – how did it come into existence and why does it exist now?

The Origin and Functions of NATO

Different authors offer a variety of reasons for the establishment of NATO. For example, Yves Engler argues that two of the factors driving the creation of NATO were ‘to blunt the European Left’ and ‘a desire to bolster colonial authority and bring the world under a US geopolitical umbrella’. See ‘On NATO’s 70th anniversary important to remember its anti-democratic roots’ and ‘Defense of European empires was original NATO goal’.

But few would disagree with Professor Jan Oberg’s brief statement on the origin of NATO: ‘Its raison d’etre… had always and unambiguously been the very existence of the Soviet Union… and its socialist/communist ideology.’ See ‘NATO at 70: An unlawful organisation with serious psychological problems’.

In other words, NATO was established as one response to the deep fear the United States government harbored in relation to the Soviet Union which, despite western propaganda to the contrary and at staggering cost to its population and industrial infrastructure, had led the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

As Professor Michel Chossudovsky elaborates this point: The NATO ‘alliance’ of 29 member states (with Israel also a de facto member), most with US military bases, US military (and sometimes nuclear) weapons and significant or substantial deployments of US troops on their territory, was designed to sustain ‘the de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe’ and to confront the Soviet Union as the US administration orchestrated the Cold War to justify its imperial agenda – global domination guaranteed by massive US military expansion – in service of elite interests (including the profit maximization of the military industrial complex, its fossil fuel and banking corporations, and its media and information technology giants).

While NATO has the appearance of a multinational military alliance, the US controls NATO command structures with the Pentagon dominating NATO decision-making. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) are Americans appointed by Washington with the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg performing merely bureaucratic functions.

In light of the above, Chossudovsky observes: ‘Under the terms of the military alliance, NATO member states are harnessed into endorsing Washington’s imperial design of World conquest under the doctrine of collective security.’ Even worse, he argues, given the lies and fabrications that permeate US-NATO military doctrine, key decision-makers believe their own propaganda. ‘Immediately after the Cold War, a new nuclear doctrine was formulated, focused on the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, meaning a nuclear first strike as a means of self-defense.’ More recently: ‘Not only do they believe that tactical nuclear weapons are peace-making bombs, they are now putting forth the concept of a “Winnable Third World War”. Taking out China and Russia is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.’ See ‘NATO-Exit: Dismantle NATO, Close Down 800 US Military Bases, Prosecute the War Criminals’ and ‘NATO Spending Pushes Europe from Welfare to Warfare’.

So, given the ongoing military threats – with an expanding range of horrific weapons (including, to nominate just two, ‘more usable’ low yield nuclear weapons and technologies on ‘weather warfare’ offered by the military/nuclear corporate war planners) that threaten previously unimagined outcomes – and interventions by a US-led NATO, with Venezuela and now Iran the latest countries to be directly threatened  – see ‘“Dangerous game”: US, Europe and the “betrayal” of Iran’ – as well as a gathering consensus among peace activists and scholars of the importance of stopping NATO (particularly given the many opportunities, beginning with aborting its origin, that have been missed already as explained by Professor Peter Kuznick: see ‘“Obscene” Bipartisan Applause for NATO in Congress’) how do we actually stop NATO?

While several authors, including those with articles cited above, offer ideas on what should be done about ending NATO, Chossudovsky offers the most comprehensive list of ideas in this regard well aware that stopping NATO is intimately connected to the struggle to end war and globalization. Chossudovsky’s ideas range from organizational suggestions such as integrating anti-war protest with the campaign against the gamut of neoliberal economic ‘reforms’ and the development of a broad based grassroots network independent of NGOs funded by Wall Street, objectives such as dismantling the propaganda apparatus which sustains the legitimacy of war and neoliberalism, challenging the corporate media (including by using alternative media outlets on the Internet), providing encouragement (including information about the illegality of their orders) for military personnel to refuse to fight (perhaps like the GI coffeehouse movement during the US war on Vietnam: see ‘The story of the GI coffeehouses’), working to close down weapons assembly plants and many other suggestions. See Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War and ‘NATO-Exit: Dismantle NATO, Close Down 800 US Military Bases, Prosecute the War Criminals’.

Given my own deep interest in this subject of US/NATO wars and in developing and implementing a strategy that ends their war-making, let me elaborate Chossudovsky’s explanation of NATO’s function in the world today by introducing a book by Professor Peter Phillips.

In his book Giants: The Global Power Elite, Phillips observes that the power elite continually worries about rebellion by the ‘unruly exploited masses’ against their structure of concentrated wealth. This is why the US military empire has long played the role of defender of global capitalism. As a result, the United States has more than 800 military bases (with some scholars suggesting 1,000) in 70 countries and territories. In comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia have about 30 foreign bases. In addition, US military forces are now deployed in 70 percent of the world’s nations with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) having troops in 147 countries, an increase of 80 percent since 2010. These forces conduct counterterrorism strikes regularly, including drone assassinations and kill/capture raids.

‘The US military empire stands on hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and continues to support repressive, exploitative governments that cooperate with global capital’s imperial agenda. Governments that accept external capital investment, whereby a small segment of a country’s elite benefits, do so knowing that capital inevitably requires a return on investment that entails using up resources and people for economic gain. The whole system continues wealth concentration for elites and expanded wretched inequality for the masses….

‘Understanding permanent war as an economic relief valve for surplus capital is a vital part of comprehending capitalism in the world today. War provides investment opportunity for the Giants and TCC elites and a guaranteed return on capital. War also serves a repressive function of keeping the suffering masses of humanity afraid and compliant.’

As Phillips elaborates: This is why defense of global capital is the prime reason that NATO countries now account for 85 percent of the world’s military spending; the United States spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

In essence, ‘the Global Power Elite uses NATO and the US military empire for its worldwide security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world, whereby the US/ NATO military empire, advised by the power elite’s Atlantic Council, operates in service to the Transnational Corporate Class for the protection of international capital everywhere in the world’.

In short, ending NATO requires recognition of its fundamental role in preserving the US empire (at the expense of national sovereignty) and maintaining geopolitical control to defend the global elite’s capital interests – reflected in the capitalist agenda to endlessly expand economic growth – and particularly the profits the elite makes by inciting, supplying and justifying the massively profitable wars that the US/NATO conduct on its behalf.

So if you thought that wars were fought for reasons other than profit (like defense, a ‘just cause’ or ‘humanitarian’ motives) you have missed the essential function of US/NATO wars. And while these wars might be promoted by the corporate media as conflicts over geostrategic considerations (like ‘keeping open the Straits of Hormuz’), access to resources (‘war for oil’) or even markets (so that we can have US junk-food chains in every country on Earth), these explanations are all merely more palatable versions of the word ‘profit’ and are designed to obscure the truth.

And this raises another question worth pondering. Given that wars are the highly organized industrial-scale killing of fellow human beings (for profit) as well as the primary means of expanding the number of fellow human beings who are drawn into the global capitalist economy to be exploited (for profit) and the primary method used for destroying Earth’s climate and environment (for profit), you might wander if those who conduct wars are sane. Well, as even posing the question suggests, the global elite – which drives wars, the highly exploitative capitalist economy and destruction of the biosphere – is quite insane. And there is a brief explanation of this insanity and how it is caused in the article ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Stopping NATO

So if war is precipitated and now maintained perpetually by an insane elite that controls and utilizes the US and NATO military forces to secure profits by killing and exploiting fellow human beings while destroying the climate and environment, how can we stop it? Clearly, not without a sophisticated strategy that addresses each dimension of the conflict.

Hence, my own suggestion is that we do three things simultaneously:

1. Invite participation in a comprehensive strategy to end war, of which NATO is a symptom
2. Invite participation in one or another program to substantially reduce consumption to systematically reduce the vital driver of ‘wars for resources’ (which will also reduce the gross exploitation of fellow human beings and humanity’s adverse impact on the biosphere), and
3. Invite participation in programs to increase human emotional functionality so that an increasing proportion of the human population is empowered to actively engage in struggles for peace, justice and sustainability and to perceive the propaganda of elites and their agents, including NATO functionaries and corporate media outlets, without being deceived by it.

There is a comprehensive strategy to end war explained on this website –

Nonviolent Campaign Strategy– which includes identification of the two strategic aims and a basic list of 37 strategic goals to end war. See ‘Strategic Aims’.

There is a strategy for people to systematically reduce their consumption and increase their self-reliance mapped out in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. But if you want a simpler 12-point list which still has strategic impact, see ‘The Earth Pledge’ included in ‘Why Activists Fail’. If you want to better understand why people over-consume, you can find out here: ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

There is a process for improving your own emotional functionality (which will develop your conscience, courage and capacity to think strategically) described in the article ‘Putting Feelings First’. If you would like to assist children to grow up without emotional dysfunctionalities, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. If you want to read the foundation behind these two suggestions, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Complementary to these suggestions, you might like to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ which links people working to end violence in all contexts.

There is one question that remains unaddressed by the suggestions above: How do we mobilize sufficient people (both anti-war activists and others) and organizations (including anti-war groups and others) to participate in the effort to end elite-sponsored war, including its organizational structures such as NATO?

Given the notorious difficulty of mobilizing activists to act strategically in any context (a much more complex version of the basic problem of mobilizing people), my primary suggestion is that individuals within the anti-war movement invite other individuals and activist groups to choose and campaign on one or more of the strategic goals necessary to end war listed in ‘Strategic Aims’. While some activist groups are already working to achieve one or more of these strategic goals, we clearly need to engage more groups to work on the many other goals so that each of these goals is being addressed. War will not be ended otherwise.

One thing that a section of the climate movement does well is to research and report on those banks, superannuation funds and insurance companies that provide financial services, loans, investment capital and insurance cover to fossil fuel corporations and to then invite concerned people to sign standard letters sent to these organizations requesting them to cease their support of fossil fuels. The anti-war movement could usefully emulate this tactic (on a far wider scale than has existed previously) in relation to weapons corporations and to invite individuals and organizations everywhere to boycott banks, superannuation funds and insurance companies with any involvement in the weapons industry.

But this is just one simple tactic (involving no risk and little effort) on a small but important range of ‘targets’ in the anti-war struggle. Unfortunately, there are plenty more targets that need our attention and that will require more commitment than signing a letter given that, for example, essential funding for the weapons industry is supplied by government procurement programs using your taxes.

Similarly, we need individuals and groups working to mobilize people to substantially reduce their consumption, and individuals and groups working to mobilize people to prioritize their emotional well-being (the foundation of their courage to act conscientiously and strategically in resisting war, exploitation and destruction of the biosphere generally). If we do not undertake these complementary but essential programs, our efforts to end war will be endlessly undermined by our own fear and over-consumption.

Because, in the final analysis, it is our fearfully surrendered tax dollars and our dollars spent consuming the resources seized in wars that will ensure that elite-driven wars for profit by the US and NATO will be financially sustained, whatever words we utter and actions we take.

So our strategy must address this fear and over-consumption too if it is to have the sophistication and comprehensiveness necessary to shut down NATO and end war.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

Hysteria reigns supreme. As in the new Jim Jarmusch movie, The Dead Don’t Die, The Return of the Living Neocon Dead, in a trashy rerun of the lead-up to Shock and Awe in 2003, keeps orchestrating the zombie march.

Yet no one in war-cheerleading US corporate media talks about the quadrillion derivative crisis that will gut the global economy if there’s an attack on Iran (I addressed it here.) Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz will bring down the 2.5 quadrillion world derivative market, largely wiping out the economies of all Western nations.

No one talks about the massive arsenal of Iranian anti-ship missiles, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles, some in positions visible to US satellites and drones, deployed all along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf. Those include the Russian SS-NX-26 Yakhont, which travels at Mach 2.9 speed. Iranian – as well as Russian and Chinese – anti-ship missiles can knock out the entire US Aircraft Carrier Task Force before their planes are even in range.

No one talks that it would take the US at least six months to place a proper combat army in Southwest Asia; the Pentagon scenario of a possible 120,000-strong troop deployment does not even begin to cut it.

And no one talks that Tehran won’t crack even under “maximum pressure.”

Saudi tankers are “sabotaged” – and Iran is instantly blamed, evidence-free. Some Brit bureaucrat says war can break out “by accident”. Consul Pompeus Minimus scares European poodles into isolating Iran.

And no one talks about Pompeo’s real target in his flash visit to Baghdad; to apply gangster tactics. Don’t deal with Tehran – or else. Buy “our” Make America Great Again (MAGA) electricity, not Iran’s. Get rid of the People Mobilization Units (PMUs). Or else.

Take me to false flag heaven

The deal between the holy triad – US neocons, Zio-cons and Bibi Netanyahu – is that a false flag, any false flag, must be blamed on Tehran, thus forcing the Trump administration to protect and defend the “rules-based order”. Better yet, an even more elaborate false flag should induce an Iranian response – thus providing the rationale for an attack.

Trump at least is correct that it would take “a hell of a lot more” troops than 120,000 to attack Iran; more like a million troops. There’s nowhere to land them. No one – Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Pakistan – would welcome the “liberators”.

In an extremely hot scenario Tehran could even have instant access to nuclear missiles in the black market.

The bottom line: the neocon threat of war against Iran is a bluff.

Iranian Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi described it as a “theatrical” and “useless” attempt to “magnify the shadow of war.”

IRGC commander of aerospace force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizade famously said,

“a US battleship with 6,000 personnel in the vicinity (Persian Gulf) with 40-50 jets onboard used to be a threat to us. Today it is a target.”

Tehran sent an unmistakable message to all its neighbors, especially the House of Saud and the Emirates; your whole infrastructure will be totally destroyed if the US uses you as a platform for a military campaign.

Then there’s the evolving drone-on-pipeline saga. The Houthis in Yemen targeted two pumping stations along the Saudi East-West pipeline – which carries oil from the Eastern province to the Red Sea. One of the stations caught fire. The hugely strategic pipeline – which allows Riyadh to bypass the Strait of Hormuz – has an enormous capacity, transporting 5 million barrels of crude a day. Operations had to be suspended.

Whether this drone attack was IRGC-directed, independent, or even a false flag is irrelevant; it provides just a taste of what might happen to the whole regional oil and gas infrastructure in case of a hot war.

Conversations with old-time Persian Gulf traders are quite enlightening. They attest, “if a pumping station is destroyed it takes two years to fill an order for a new pump. The Saudis maintain they have pumps in reserve. If all the pumps are destroyed in Saudi Arabia, no oil would flow for two years. The prime target would be Abqaiq. If this processing plant is destroyed, oil prices would soar.”

Abqaiq, with an enormous capacity of 7 million barrels a day, is the primary oil processing plant for Arabian extra light and Arabian light crude oils.

Assuming the drone attack was not a false flag, Persian Gulf traders were impressed with the accuracy of the drone at these distances for a precision hit. This would mean that Abqaiq itself is vulnerable. And there is absolutely nothing the Trump administration can do to stop the oil price from going to $200 a barrel just from Abqaiq being knocked out.

Moreover, no one is talking about insurance rates. As Persian Gulf traders insist, Vito, Trafigura, Glencore and other operators will not buy two million barrels in a tanker at $70 a barrel if there’s no insurance – or the rates go skywards.

It takes basically one single tanker going to the bottom of the Persian Gulf with two million barrels to permanently close the Strait of Hormuz – and interrupt all tanker traffic for 22 million barrels a day of crude, unless governments come in to insure the tankers even though they have no ability to protect them.

It’s all about maximum resistance.

So what does Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei want? Here it is, in his own words;

“There won’t be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance… “We don’t seek a war, and they don’t either.”

On top of it, Tehran won’t talk to Washington – following Trump’s “call me” caper – or sign any sort of modified or post-JCPOA nuclear deal. Khamenei: “[Such] negotiations are a poison.”

If President Trump had ever read Mackinder – and there’s no evidence he did – one might assume that he’s aiming at a new anti-Eurasia integration pivot centered on the Persian Gulf. And energy would be at the heart of the pivot.

If Washington were able to control everything, including “Big Prize” Iran, it would be able to dominate all Asian economies, especially China. Trump even said were that to happen, “decisions on the GNP of China will be made in Washington.”

Needless to add, this would be the icing in the geopolitical cake of destabilizing for good the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the road map for Eurasia integration, of which Iran is a crucial node.

Now cue to President Putin musing on Iran-Russia relations; “I have repeatedly said in conversations with [our] Iranian partners that, in my opinion, it would be more rational for Iran to remain in this treaty, no matter what. Because as soon as Iran takes the first steps in response [to the US’ exit from the JCPOA], declares that it is withdrawing, tomorrow everyone will forget that the United States was the initiator of the destruction, and everything will be blamed on Iran”.

Arguably the key (invisible) takeaway of the meetings this week between Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi, and then between Lavrov and Pompeo, is that Moscow made it quite clear that Iran will be protected by Russia in the event of an American showdown. Pompeo’s body language showed how rattled he was.

There will be much to talk about if Putin and Trump do meet at the G20 in Osaka next month. In the meantime, the dead may even die without going to war.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist.

Featured image is from FAIR

In Vietnam, Agent Orange was dropped by the US to poison a foreign population. In Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, depleted uranium was used. In western countries, things are a bit more complicated because various states have tended to avoid using direct forms of physical violence to quell their own populations (unless you belong to some marginalized group). The pretence of democracy and individual rights has to be maintained.

One option has been to use South American crack cocaine or Afghan heroin to dope up potential troublesome sections of the population. It has been a fine double-edged sword – highly profitable for the drug running intelligence agencies and banks awash with drug money, while serving to dampen political dissent in the most economically and socially deprived areas. Another tactic has of course been the massive growth of the surveillance industry to monitor ordinary citizens.

But drugs, surveillance and direct violence are kind of a last resort to keep a population in check. Ideology via the media has and continues to be the choice of method for population control in western countries.

Modes of thought are encouraged which seek to guarantee integration, rather than forms of critical thought or action that may lead to a direct questioning of or a challenge to prevailing forms of institutionalised power. Oppositional stances are stifled or marginalized and consensus is manufactured both in cultural and political terms. Political discourse and much of the popular mass media is void of proper analytical debate – public theatre, often presented in manipulative, emotive, ‘human-interest’ terms.

It’s infotainment in purest form. From the TV news and commercials to the game-shows and latest instant fame programme, misinformation, narcissism and distraction pervades all aspects of life. Why be aware of the world’s ills and challenge anything when you can live in the dark, watch X-Factor, wear Reebok and shop till you drop? It is a consumer paradise where lies are truth and unfettered desire a virtue.

It’s a world of crass consumerism and gleaming shopping malls bathed in designer lifestyle propaganda where people drown in their Friday night alcohol vomit, shop till they drop for things they don’t really need or indeed want and bask in their emptiness by watching TV with eyes wide shut.

This is  ‘free market’ democracy. And the concept behind it is that the mass of the population are a problem, and any genuine debate or the electorate’s ability to see what is actually happening must be prevented. People must be distracted – they should be watching millionaire footballers kick a ball around, mind numbing soap operas or some mindless sitcom. Every once in a while, at voting time, they are called on to parrot or back some meaningless slogans.

And if ‘serious’ debate does even attempt to rear its head, it is increasingly to be found as part of a standardized, corporate TV news-cum-chat show format that is the same from country to country. There is usually some or other smug, user-friendly couple fronting the show, lying about how we may smooth away the wrinkles, according to the gospel of some grossly overpaid beauty guru to the stars.

But then, moving on to the next topic and with an anguished expression, no doubt well rehearsed in front of the mirror that morning, one of the hosts states: “A recent report says that high street fashion retailers use children to make its clothes in the developing world.”

A light and punchy studio debate among the show’s hosts and a ‘fashion expert’ will ensue, peppered with a certain degree of moral outrage. But only a ‘certain degree’ because hypocrisy abounds: “Stay tuned as next up you will be informed of how you too can dress like the celebs but for a fraction of the price.”

The next day it’s competition time. Win vouchers to go shopping for the latest high street fashion items. “Top of the range stuff… But the prices are so cheap… Just how do they do it?” one of the hosts remarks: the very same person from the day before who fronted the ‘in-depth debate’ about how they actually manage to do it by exploiting poverty and child labour.

It’s all very cosy and comforting, with its sanctimonious world view of sexed up infotainment and bland titillation. It’s TV to inspire. TV to inspire the masses into apathy, fatalism and acceptance.

“Next up, we have a man who swallowed a live rabbit and lived to tell the tale” is sandwiched between “How you can save on your weekly wine bill” and “Knife crime – lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

Forget about informed debate when platitudes, simple emotion and ‘common sense’ outlooks will do. You will rarely find anything radical or challenging here or elsewhere on mainstream TV because that’s not the point of it. The point of it all is to convince the public that their trivial concerns are indeed the major concerns of the day and that the major world events and imperialist wars can be trivialised or justified with a few glib clichés about saving oppressed woman in Afghanistan or killing for peace in Africa.

From Fox to CNN, the BBC and beyond, this mind altering portrayal of the world is devoured as avidly as the health-altering, chemically-laden TV dinner that accompanies it. How about a can of pesticide-ridden, cancer inducing cola to finish off? Feel the spray. It’s all so unrefreshingly toxic. No need for Agent Orange here. So many people are already swallowing the poison (in more ways than one). If that fails and the drugs no longer work, the drones are waiting overhead.

 

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

As a result we presently do not cover our monthly running costs which could eventually jeopardize our activities.

Do you value the reporting and in-depth analysis provided by Global Research on a daily basis?

Click to donate or click here to become a member of Global Research.

*     *     *

Unlawful Arrests of Venezuelan DC Embassy Protectors Symbolic of US Decadence

By Stephen Lendman, May 19, 2019

According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the premises of embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic facilities are inviolable territory — no one permitted inside without head of mission permission.

US ‘Bid to Destroy Venezuela’ Threatens the Foundations of International Law, Ambassador Warns

By Ben Chacko, May 19, 2019

At a press conference in central London, Ms Maneiro said her country was “under siege,” noting that a blockade designed to “break the nation” had already cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and that “if the nation resists the US military stands ready to act.”

United States and Venezuela: A Historical Background

By Prof. James Petras, May 18, 2019

US hostility and efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government forms parts of a long and inglorious history of US intervention in Latin America going back to the second decade of the 19th century.

Trump – from China to Iran to Venezuela – Threats and Sanctions Everywhere – A Chronicle of Disorganized Chaos Foretold

By Peter Koenig, May 17, 2019

Well, in Venezuela “regime change” didn’t work out – so far. Pompeo has been clearly told off by Mr. Lavrov during their recent get-together in Helsinki – and China is in the same line of supporting the government of Nicolas Maduro.

US Illegally Evicts Protectors from Venezuelan Embassy

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, May 17, 2019

For 36 days, the protectors had lived in the embassy to shield it from a raid by U.S. authorities working in concert with opponents of Venezuela’s lawfully elected president, Nicolás Maduro. Since U.S. officers had refused to allow food into the embassy, only four of the some 50 members of the collective had stayed in order to conserve supplies.

Venezuelan Embassy: Peace Activists Put US Mission on Notice

By Lauren Smith, May 16, 2019

The EPC are US peace activists that are presently safeguarding the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC from self-appointed “president”, coup leader and US puppet, Juan Guaido and his agent Carlos Vecchio.

Guaido Requests US Military ‘Cooperation’ to Oust Maduro as US Vessel Violates Venezuelan Waters

By Paul Dobson, May 14, 2019

During a gathering of supporters in the upper middle class Caracas district of Las Mercedes on Saturday, Guaido informed that he was instructing his representative in the United States, Carlos Vecchio, to establish a “direct relationship” with the US Southern Command(SouthCom), which plans, oversees, and controls all US overt and covert military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

America is still discovering itself. The rise of Donald Trump alerted those citizens who held that they alone defined our culture and values to the existence of a significant population holding very different views– and the will to back a candidate who might speak for them. (Thus, the most unlikely candidate entered the White House.) Political pundits, sociologists and media analysts had been wrong. Liberalism was flawed; it meant little to too many Americans.

A bewildered media rushed to embrace that awakened alien America. Hillbilly Elegy was welcomed as a sobering portrait of people viewed as marginal. Strangers in Their Own Land was next. First published in 1995, then reissued with a new forward in 2016; its author, Berkeley sociologist Artie Russell Hochschild, emerged as the new interpreter of those forgotten and angry ‘others’.

With a new right wing administration installed in Washington, liberals and college educated who’d believed that they represented the nation and that they framed the debate dispatched reporters and camera crews to the hinterland to gather further testimonies from what is now identified as Trump’s base.

Laila Lalami’s novel The Other Americans  is very unlike Vance’s memoir or Hochschild’s ethnography of Louisiana’s bayou country. As good creative writing often does, The Other Americans offers a more revelatory slice of contemporary America. Lalami invites us into a fragile, complex web of social and political relations in rural California. Here, everyone is worthy and decent, although all harbor grievances; everyone feels slighted or mistreated at some level, yet all need fulfillment; everyone quietly bears scars yet seeks outlets for frustrations and dreams.

If there were any doubts about Lalami’s remarkable storytelling skills, this, her fourth novel, settles the matter. (The Other Americans also affirms Lalami’s grasp of a range of literary genres, coming after her stunning historical novel The Moor’s Account, an imagined memoir of a 16^th Century Moroccan slave– the first black explorer of America.)

The Other Americans on its surface is a crime investigation. But in Lalami’s hands it’s an absorbing exploration of daily social interactions underpinned by seemingly inconsequential yet persistent racial tensions.

The setting is Mojave, a desert town in California, where on a quiet summer night a man is struck and killed by a vehicle which then speeds away. The story moves through a number of short chapters, each one narrated in the first person by one of ten characters, all local residents. The protagonist is Nora, youngest and favorite daughter of Driss. She is determined to find the truth about her father’s death, believing it was no accident.

A community of characters is brought into play, while the search for the culprit moves slowly forward.

Driss, Nora’s mother Maryam and her sister Salma each play essential but small parts in the story. They help narrate the family’s move from Morocco to the U.S. thirty-five years earlier and how they’ve become an ordinary American family, their lives characterized not by hardship or fear but by modest ambitions, sibling tension and marital compromise. Maryam and Driss, an educated couple– Arabs in this case– left behind middleclass lives and became unassuming shopkeepers in small-town USA, their dreams of success transferred to their children. (Nora aspires to be a musician and composer; Salma became a dentist.)

There’s little sentiment for the missing culture of North Africa, no yearning for Moroccan cuisine. Although, Arab/Muslim values seep into the story in barely perceptible allusions which only an immigrant writer like Lalami can so subtly articulate. Arab readers – perhaps any Asian or African immigrant too– may identify those fleeting references; but Lalami doesn’t allow us to dwell on them.

As for being immigrants, if Nora and her family had been objects of prejudice, they hardly recognize it. Whatever disrespect they might experience is matched by the five townspeople who fill out the plot:–the Black detective Coleman trying to earn the love of her stepson; Efrain, a reticent Hispanic (possibly undocumented) resident who witnessed the death; Jeremy, a novice policeman who after combat in Iraq returns to the town, then falls in love with Nora; Anderson and his troubled son A.J. who are protective of parking space for their bowling alley next to Driss’ restaurant. Bullying, insecurity, racial slurs and financial worries are familiar to them all.

How this manifests in each character is expertly arranged in the book’s structure, with each chapter narrated in the first person by one of these characters.

Author Lalami adroitly moves the story forward; one chapter and one voice continue in the subsequent chapter with another character. The entire story becomes a single dialog, with Lalami adopting a style of narration for each character that itself constructs their personality. Skillfully woven into this are images from the setting but also past memories. Flashbacks from each life show us everyone’s motives, pains, grievances.

The relationship Lalami most thoroughly explores is not that between Driss and the man who killed him; it’s between Nora and Jeremy, her former classmate, around his experience as a marine in Iraq. After they become lovers, she’s aware of lingering violence from his war experience:– his love of guns, his casual attitude of what he did in combat, and the violence he unleashes towards his friend, a fellow veteran. In his narrative, Jeremy recalls ugly, murderous encounters he was part of, the racial epithets he freely used. And although he bears physical scars and is troubled by sleeplessness, he feels no melancholy or remorse. Indeed he fails to understand how being a marine troubles Nora, who in the end rejects him.

Lalami makes this uncomfortable dialog between Nora and Jeremy the core of the story and, I suspect, this is a dynamic she really wants to explore. Doubtless the author is aware over two million Americans, veterans from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, live among us today. We all have to deal with them in their new roles– as our policemen, classmates, neighbors and as our lovers.

Rajia Hassib’s 2015 novel, In the Language of Miracles , is another well crafted moving account of an American Muslim family, this time it’s estrangement from their community following a personal tragedy.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. She is the author of “Tibetan Frontier Families” and numerous articles on Tibet and Nepal, has been working in Nepal in recent weeks. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

If I am to be defined by what I do, then define me as a supporter of civilization, a supporter of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, a supporter of the right to choose, a supporter of secular government and democracy.

Define me as pushing against the wind, because Western governments oppose these things. Our governments oppose democracy in Syria and beyond. They oppose secular governance. They support anti-democratic fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia law, they support terrorism.

Our governments support al Qaeda, ISIS and their affiliates. Our governments willfully destroy countries, create chaos, sectarianism and commit mass murder so they can control, loot, and plunder prey countries. I oppose this. Define me by my opposition to this and I won’t object.

Our governments no longer represent decent people. How could they? Our governments and their agencies demonstrate time and again that they are vassals to NATO and to globalizing trajectories that are anti-Life, anti- democracy, anti- you and me. Define me in my opposition to NATO and to the dictatorship of publicly bailed-out “neoliberalism” and I won’t object.

A fabricated groupthink has poisoned and corrupted us all. I oppose the messaging that makes us cogs in a mindless war machine. Define me by my opposition to the overseas holocaust that our governments create and sustain, and I won’t mind.

But it isn’t just me. We are all being swept across a stormy frothing sea, rudderless, despairing. Not one of us is alone.

When we find a common language of truth and peace, we will find salvation.

The cancerous hands controlling our fates, our thoughts, our minds, keeping us apart, will be no more. Then we will be free.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

---

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

First published on October 30, 2018

Canada’s decision to welcome White Helmets terrorists evacuated from Syria is consistent with Canada’s overall strategy throughout the course of this criminal “Regime Change” war against Syria, a founding member of the United Nations, according to Mark Taliano, the Canadian political analyst and Research Associate at Global research.

Taliano told the Syriatimes e-newspaper that the strategy consists of pretending that the war of aggression using terrorist proxies is “humanitarian” while at the same time supporting all of the terrorists in coordination with a “coalition” that consists of NATO and its allies.

“Some refer to the strategy as a “double game”… Will the consequences of this “double game” imperil Canadians? It is impossible to foresee the future, but these terrorists are “intelligence assets”, and the government will no doubt provide them with adequate remuneration for “services rendered”, he added, raising the question: “ Why would the terrorists bite the hand that feeds them?

The “White Helmets” fit the storyline — eerily evocative of the colonial supremacist euphemism “White Man’s Burden” — perfectly. They are presented as the “good guys” in white rescuing humanity from the mythical “brutal dictator”, Taliano asserted.

He referred to the fact that evidence-based reality contradicts this narrative completely.

“At the very least, the White Helmets are terrorist auxiliaries. More likely, as recently admitted by a White Helmet operative to investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, they are (sectarian) terrorists themselves. Additionally, 50% of the evacuees are said to be terrorist leaders and ISIS.”

The final destinations of those ‘good guys’ are kept secret

 “Interestingly, whereas the Canadian government and the colonial media present the White Helmets as heroes, at the same time, they are keeping their arrival and their final destinations secret. Not much of a hero’s welcome,” Taliano said.

He made it clear that if the government were to disclose the truth about these terrorists, then presumably “Anti-Terror” legislation and public juridicial proceedings would follow.

“This is unlikely to happen, however, since public criminal court proceedings would necessarily disclose the Canadian government’s guilt in supporting the very same terrorists that it claims to be combatting,” concluded the analyst and the author of “Voices from Syria”.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Syria Times.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

---

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

Is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard the only sane voice in both Houses of the US Congress?

She says “War with Iran would make the Iraq War look like a cakewalk.”

.

.

Russian roulette is a game of chance where players spin the cylinder of a revolver with a single bullet in turns, put the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. The player has 16.67% chances of firing a bullet into his head if there is one bullet in the 6-chamber revolver. Each player starts by spinning the cylinder, thus each player has an equal chance of being killed by the bullet.

If there can be a lethal game of Russian roulette in international politics, this is it; what just began on May 8, the first anniversary of the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015.

Iran exercised “strategic patience” for one full year, as President Hassan Rouhani noted, upon the request from the five remaining signatories of the nuclear deal – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. That period has run out.

Not only have the five powers failed to persuade the Trump administration to retract from its decision, but Washington has gone on a warpath of sanctions and deployment of a formidable strike group to the Persian Gulf.

On the other hand, the five big powers couldn’t ensure that Iran got the full benefits out of the nuclear deal as envisaged under the nuclear deal, despite its full compliance with the terms of the deal, which has been acknowledged repeatedly by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Only Russia and China observed the commitments given to Iran as signatories, while the three European powers merely paid lip service.

Against this backdrop, Rouhani announced on Wednesday that if the remaining signatories fail to provide Iran with the merits stated under the deal in the next 60 days, Tehran will stop complying with its nuclear undertakings in consequent phases. For a start, Iran will cease to observe the capping on the volume of enriched uranium and heavy water reserves that it is permitted to hold.

After 60 days, if Iran’s grievances are not still addressed, it will no longer observe the restrictions on the 3.6 percent level of uranium enrichment and will resume work on its heavy water reactor at Arak. Iran has underlined that it is not withdrawing from the nuclear deal but is only taking reciprocal measures as provided under articles 26 and 32 of the agreement regarding the eventuality of one or more of the six powers failing to observe the treaty. Rouhani has specified Iran’s concerns particularly in the oil industry and the banking sector, which Washington has targeted with sanctions.

Rouhani said that after 120 days from now, even if Iran starts enriching uranium beyond the 3.6 level and resumes work in Arak, it will give yet another 60 days for negotiations before taking additional unspecified action (which could be by the yearend). Meanwhile, Iran will react strongly against any move by the western powers to approach the UN Security Council for reimposition of the old UN sanctions.

It’s an insane game that US President Trump started on May 8 last year. With Iran’s response by way of reciprocal measures, round two is complete.

The two immediate measures Iran has announced — non-observance of the capping on the volume of enriched uranium (300 kg limit) and heavy water reserves that it is permitted to hold — is not a unilateral step. It is a fait accompli that the Trump administration created last week by sanctioning other countries against holding Iran’s excess volume of enriched uranium or trading in heavy water reserves.

Trump MUST stop listening to the lies from Israel with their claims that Iran is a strategic and imminent threat to America and Trump MUST sack all NEOCONS in his Administration before June 2019, it’s that simple.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Duran.

John Bolton wants war on all nations the US doesn’t control. His longstanding hostility toward Iran is well known. 

Reportedly he’s been pushing Trump for war on Iran since becoming national security advisor. His notorious 2015 NYT op-ed headlined “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran.” 

Iran has no “bomb,” doesn’t want one, and called or a nuclear-free Middle East numerous times — Israel the only nuclear armed and dangerous nation in the region, its nuke development aided and supported by the US.

Pompeo reportedly favors war on Iran by other means, wanting its economy crushed, falsely believing its authorities will cave to US demands.

Trump reportedly told Joint Chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford he’s against attacking the country militarily.

I believe part of what’s behind his two summits with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, along with saying Kim “wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters…and then we fell in love” is his craving for a Nobel Peace Prize — either by cutting a deal with the DPRK or pulling off his no-peace/peace plan “deal of the century” with the Palestinians.

Although the likelihood of achieving either objective is virtually nil, if he attacks Iran or Venezuela militarily, assuring bloody protracted wars perhaps to last years without resolution, there goes his coveted peace prize, even though warriors win them time and again.

Nobel dreams are reason enough for him not to go this far, besides the madness of war on nations able to hit back hard — in Iran’s case, against US regional facilities, forces and Israel.

Days earlier, Ayatollah Khamenei said

“(t)he Iranian nation’s definite option will be resistance in the face of the US, and in this confrontation, the US would be forced into a retreat. Neither we nor they (want) war.”

He called confrontation with the US “a clash of wills.” On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said

“(t)here will be no war because neither we want a war, nor has anyone the idea or illusion that it can confront Iran in the region.”

At the same time, Bolton and other Trump regime hardliners Zarif called its “B Team” seek “pretexts” for war on Iran. The danger they pose can’t be dismissed.

Senior Iranian military official Rasoul Sanai-Rad said

“(t)he actions of American leaders…speaking of talks is like holding a gun at someone and asking for friendship and negotiations.”

US policy toward Iran has been all about war by other means, hostile rhetoric, and saber-rattling, short of military intervention, the Trump regime following the same script.

War plans were drawn to attack Iran long ago but never implemented. The threat remains, especially with the most extremist  ever US regime in power.

It’s waging inherited wars in multiple theaters, showing no signs of ending down, along with war on Iran and Venezuela by other means, short of naked aggression — so far.

It’s possible ahead but unlikely in my judgment because both countries can hit back hard, a reality cool heads in Washington understand, including by Pentagon joint chiefs.

A Nobel prize Trump likely craves aside, he’s mostly concerned about getting reelected in 2020.

Waging new wars on top of existing ones could weaken his prospect if Dems and establishment media use the issue against him.

Senators Markey, Merkley, Sanders, and Van Hollen wrote Trump, saying: “We are Deeply Concerned by Your Administration’s Growing Confrontation with Iran,” expressing opposition to war on the country.

At the same time, they falsely claimed Iran poses a “nuclear threat.” In its annual assessments of global threats, the US intelligence community states otherwise, saying no evidence suggests the Islamic Republic seeks nuclear weapons.

Since implementation of the JCPOA nuclear deal in January 2016, the nuclear watchdog IAEA repeatedly said Iran is in full compliance with its provisions.

Senators Tom Udall, Richard Durbin, and Rand Paul introduced the Prevention of Unconstitutional War With Iran Act of 2019 — saying war on the country without congressional approval is illegal under the Constitution and War Powers Act.

Other congressional members, including Speaker Pelosi, also oppose war on Iran without congressional approval. On Thursday, she said “I like what I hear from the president — that he has no appetite on this,” adding:

“(T)he responsibility in the Constitution is for the Congress to declare war, so I hope the president’s advisers recognize that they have no authorization to go forward in any way.”

She ignored how all US post-WW II wars began preemptively. The last time Congress declared war was on December 8, 1941 in response to imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor — never again so far.

All US wars since then violated international, constitutional, and US statute laws pertaining to war.

Iran and Venezuela threaten no other countries. The world community opposes war on these nations.

Attacking them would greatly destabilize both regions if the Trump regime goes this far — perhaps alone with no coalition partners.

Attacking either or both countries would be madness, assuring two more wars the US can’t win.

For sure, Pentagon forces can cause mass casualties and vast destruction — short of conquering either country and declaring victory.

Attacking the Islamic Republic especially would be harebrained. If terror-bombed by Pentagon warplanes and ships, jeopardizing its survival, it’ll hit back hard with all its might against US and Israeli targets, making both countries pay dearly for their actions, the Saudis along with them most likely, including their oil fields.

According to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, if the Trump regime attacks Iran, the country “will not be alone in the confrontation, because the fate of our region is tied to the Islamic Republic.”

Hezbollah is part of the region’s anti-imperial “axis of resistance.” It has tens of thousands of fighters and missiles able to rein hellfire on US and Israeli strategic targets if Iran and/or its forces are attacked militarily.

In 2006, its fighters defeated IDF ground forces, giving them a bloody nose, their most embarrassing ever defeat.

Hezbollah is much stronger militarily now than then. The same goes for Iran, why Pentagon commanders want war avoided.

It’s why Israel won’t go it alone against the Islamic Republic, perhaps not even against Hezbollah without US help.

Despite all of the above, will the Trump regime attack Iran and/or Venezuela militarily? While I believe not, it’s foolhardy to believe there’s no chance for US war on these countries.

Hardliners in Washington aren’t known for restraint. The US permanent war agenda makes anything possible, including unthinkable war on Russia or China, a doomsday scenario if things go this far.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Iranian

The U.S. is putting pressure on its many partners across the world to follow its lead and ban Huawei from their national telecommunications networks, with the Trump Administration channeling the Bush one in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by strongly implying that they are “either with us or against us.”

Unlike back then, however, few countries are going along with the U.S. pressure; probably because they understand the huge difference between joining an anti-terrorist military coalition and an anti-Chinese trading one.

Building off of that observation, Huawei’s services are inexpensive and high-quality, which is the exact opposite of what the competition is providing, whether American or otherwise, and it makes sense for countries to purchase its technology in order to help them modernize their telecommunications infrastructure in preparation for the global 5G revolution.

Be that as it may, the U.S. isn’t the one to give up its campaigns of pressure so easily, which is why it’s threatened to stop sharing intelligence with the countries who partner with Huawei on the false pretext that doing so would be tantamount to giving this information to China as well.

This is a startling ultimatum because it suggests that the U.S. is willing to sit back and allow terrorists to strike its partners as punishment for them refusing to toe the line on trade, which isn’t just extremely unethical, but also counterproductively contradicts the spirit behind the Bush Administration’s immediate post-9/11 ultimatum.

Playing games with people’s lives unless their governments go along with their “partner’s” economic demands is a new tactical low in President Trump’s much-touted international deal-making approach and belies strategic desperation to do whatever is needed in order to get other countries to submit to him.

To their credit, most European countries are resisting the U.S.’ security blackmail and bravely going forward with their Huawei partnership plans in parallel with intensifying their military cooperation through the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) initiative that Washington has recently complained about once again.

In fact, it can be said that the more that the U.S. puts pressure on its European partners through this unethical deal-making tactic and others, the more likely it is that they’ll push back and respond by strengthening their cooperation with one another.

This isn’t just a blind reaction either, but part of the bloc’s new policy to adapt to new international conditions, which was just recently elaborated upon by German Chancellor Merkel when the de-facto EU leader proclaimed that “the old certainties of the postwar order no longer apply” and that “Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world.”

The bloc was already moving in this direction prior to the U.S.’ anti-Chinese pressure campaign, but President Trump’s strategy of security blackmail will only accelerate this process. Moreover, it looks likely to widen the existing transatlantic divide on other issues too.

U.S. trade war tactics aren’t just being applied against China, but against the EU as well, and talks on the Obama-era Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have frozen. In response to U.S. economic protectionist policies, EU countries have looked towards China as the new heir of globalization and strengthened their trade ties with it instead, with some influential states such as G7 member Italy recently joining China’s Belt & Road Initiative.

It, therefore, appears as though the U.S. has forgotten that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” and that the policy of pressure that it is putting on its partners to separate them from China is obviously backfiring.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Activist embassy protectors were invited into Venezuela’s Washington diplomatic facility by its legitimate ruling authorities in Caracas.

According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the premises of embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic facilities are inviolable territory — no one permitted inside without head of mission permission.

The illegal seizure of Venezuela’s DC embassy and arrest of activist protectors were unprecedented acts of US diplomatic piracy.

The Bolivarian Republic’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron denounced what happened, calling the Trump regime’s action a flagrant international law violation, adding:

“We do not authorize any of the coup leaders to enter our embassy in Washington DC. We call on the US government to respect the Vienna Conventions and sign a Protecting Power Agreement with us that would ensure the integrity of both our embassy in Washington, DC and the US Embassy in Caracas.”

Activists David Paul, Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese, and Professor of Anthropology Adrienne Pine were unlawfully arrested and charged with “trespassing and interfering with the US Department of State’s protective functions (sic),” adding:

“The individuals were arrested on a criminal complaint charging them with a violation of 18 USC § 118, Interference with Protective Functions of the Department of State (sic), for knowingly and willingly obstructing, resisting, or interfering with a federal law enforcement agent engaged, within the United States (sic)…”

Activists charged face possible imprisonment for up to one year and a $1,000 fine — for lawfully defending the diplomatic property of the Bolivarian Republic, living in the embassy at great personal risk from April 10 until unlawfully arrested on May 16.

President Maduro, Foreign Minister Arreaza, and other Venezuelan officials thanked them for courageously supporting the rule of law the US repeatedly flouts.

On Friday, the four activists appeared before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Conditionally released, their next court date is scheduled for June 12.

US attorney Danielle Rosborough is prosecuting the case for the Trump regime. Zeese said he and fellow activists intend “mak(ing) the case that there is a legitimate government, that the Vienna convention was violated, that this was an inappropriate and unlawful arrest,” expressing confidence of exoneration.

In Police State America, due process and equal justice under law don’t apply when US ruling authorities want their way enforced.

Still, Trump regime hardliners may not want the unlawful embassy takeover and arrests to become a rallying cry for greater activism against their anti-Bolivarian actions.

They may not want the incident to get greater publicity than already, perhaps agreeing to drop charges, subject to conditions imposed.

On Thursday in court, they were ordered to stay away from 10 Venezuelan diplomatic missions controlled by imposter Guaido’s US representatives.

This and other restrictions may be the price for avoiding imprisonment and a fine when prosecutorial proceedings begin.

Though given Trump regime toughness against Chelsea Manning, nothing is certain when the activists return to court in June.

Manning was reimprisoned last week for again invoking her constitutional right to remain silent, refusing to give grand jury testimony, saying she “cannot be coerced,” stressing:

“The government cannot build a prison bad enough, cannot create a system worse than the idea that I would ever change my principles,” adding she’d “rather starve to death” than violate them.

In response to the arrest of Venezuelan embassy protectors, Pine said the following:

“As a scholar and educator, there are times when standard tools of teaching, publishing, and public speaking aren’t enough. There are times when we need to put our bodies on the line” for justice, adding:

“A successful coup in Venezuela would have even broader consequences than those I have witnessed in Honduras. It would lead to civil war, and would most likely quickly escalate to a global conflict.”

“If, by trying to protect the Venezuela embassy, I can help my government from leading the world into this nightmare scenario, it will be well worth the potential damage to my career.”

Pine is a Honduran expert. Under US installed fascist rule, she witnessed firsthand what she called “invisible genocide” in the country.

She called the Honduran “militarized capitalism/neoliberal fascis(t)” model devastating for the rights, welfare, and dignity of its long-suffering people.

A state of siege exists in the country. Human and civil rights violations are horrific. Killings, beatings, disappearances, intimidation, and torture are commonplace.

Human rights workers, trade unionists, independent journalists, environmental activists, and other regime opponents are targeted for elimination.

What’s happening in Honduras and other nations run by US installed despots is coming to Venezuela if the Trump regime’s coup plot succeeds.

The same fate awaits Iran and other nations on the US target list, wanting tyranny replacing the sovereign rights of their people — what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 United States will go to war with Iran if nothing is done to prevent it. This is the assumption that the world’s geopolitical actors have worked off for the better part of two decades, and there has been precious little evidence to the contrary.

In the early 2000s, once it became clear that the War on Terror was, for all intents and purposes, a war without end, Iran loomed in the background of the nightmares that engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq and persist to this day. The fact that this original member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ escaped the heyday of post-9/11 imperial adventurism has stuck in the craw of the United States’ sulking, unrepentant neoconservatives ever since.

The near-incalculable consequences of a potential American military intervention against this defiant, well-resourced, well-defended nation did not bother the late John McCain – a serial loser of both wars and elections – who pulled off the difficult trick of warmongering and insulting the Beach Boys simultaneously in a 2008 call for action. Once again, the monstrous dream was deferred, but would not be denied.

The possibility has endured for so long that complacent observers could almost be forgiven for failing to treat recent developments with sufficient seriousness. That Donald Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton seeks a war of regime change with Iran is not revelatory; it can be filed alongside breaking news concerning the colour of the sky and the wetness of water. Yet the past two weeks give every indication of being the culmination of a bloodthirsty project many years in the making.

As of yesterday [May 15], the US state department ordered the departure of all “non-emergency employees” from Iraq, while Germany and the Netherlands suspended their assistance programs to the Iraq military. The previous day, the US military announced that the threat level for the Middle East had been raised, in response to usefully non-specific ‘intelligence’ concerns over Iran. US air and naval forces – including warships and bombers – have been dispatched to the region, following as-yet-unsubstantiated allegations of sabotage against oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a drone attack by Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels.

If the escalation appears rapid – not to mention finely orchestrated – that is because the groundwork has been laid for some time, and particularly since Bolton – a moustache with a maniac hanging off it – became Trump’s point man on foreign policy in April 2018. Within a month of taking up his new appointment, Bolton easily guided Trump into withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal which had by most accounts successfully stalled any ambitions had towards an independent nuclear program. Irritatingly for Bolton and all others who once dreamed of a New American Century, the absence of even the possibility of Iranian weapons of mass destruction removed the pretext for military intervention that had been so handy in the case of Iraq.

Since Trump – always happy to abandon legacies of the Obama administration without examining the fine print – ended the Iran deal over the objections of almost the entire world barring Israel, the US has pursued a campaign of sanctions – a cheap and brutally efficient means of warfare – combined with increasingly provocative military manoeuvres.

Speaking to CommonSpace, foreign policy writer Robert Somynne commented: “The recent escalation can be seen as a battle within the White House administration between different national security interests. The push from outside forces such as Saudi Arabia and Israel has led to the emboldening of John Bolton and his cadre. Trump and his defence team would rather send a signal of support to regional Sunni allies by strangling Iran’s population and economy. His instincts are still more anti-intervention than the mainstream American hawk; the question is whether Iranians who have been facing sanctions and war-like conditions feel as if they have nothing to lose. In the backdrop of the fight is the talk of a small summer war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon.”

The nature and intent of the escalation became soberingly clear with Bolton’s statement last week, which – in addition to reiterating the United States’ standing policy that it will respond to any alleged attack by Iranian forces, or indeed anyone else who can halfway-convincingly be portrayed as Iran’s proxies – added that it would send “a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime than any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

In other words, should a skirmish occur with the Israeli military or – just a thought –a couple of Saudi oil tankers are trifled with, then Freedonia’s going to war.

Amidst all this, a superficial point of distinction between the present crisis and the drums of war beaten in the early 2000s is a lack of Western consensus. Europe was virtually united in its support for the Iran nuclear deal, and has little appetite for military involvement in further Middle East conflict.

Meanwhile, the UK Government – regardless of the ever-farcical ‘special relationship’ – is still bruised and wary after the failure of its attempts to sell the necessity of intervention in Syria to both parliament and the British public. Though there is no limit to her capacity for self-sabotage, Theresa May likely has little inclination to back a far grander and bloodier endeavour in Iran, particularly when a British general has just announced that – contrary to always trustworthy US intelligence sources – there is no “increased threat” in the region.

Nevertheless, an expectation that Europe or the UK will throw up serious roadblocks to the dark designs of Bolton and the other would-be architects of Iranian regime change has little basis in reality. While war with Iraq was once the defining crisis of the age, turning even the likes of Jacques Chirac into opponents of US intervention, Angela Merkel is today more concerned with building a Western consensus in opposition to Chinese and Russian aspirations, and the EU as a whole has done little to effectively frustrate – or even rhetorically oppose – the US drive to war with Iran.

“The UK and EU have failed categorically to put pressure or stop the US from violating the interests of the international agreement, the JCPOA,” says Somynne. “We have disinisragenuous actors like France and the UK who claim a united Europe position but are in security deals with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. European policy is adrift like flotsam.”

Amidst all this, dissent does exist within the American body politic. Opposition to any war with Iran has already been voiced by the Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and her fellow 2020 contender Sen Bernie Sanders, who has warned that conflict with Iran would commit the US to a war “for decade after decade, which will cost us thousands of lives for our troops, as well as God knows what happens in terms of how many people die in the region.”

Sanders has said that he is “working hard” to remind Trump that it is the US Congress, not the president, who decides whether or not to go to war. Bolton – perhaps based on prior experience with Congress – does not appear particularly worried.

The United States will go to war with Iran if nothing is done to prevent it. The question is: what can be done?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore

Washington’s bid to “destroy Venezuela” is wrecking the international laws governing relations between all states, Venezuela’s ambassador to Britain Rocio Maneiro warned today.

“Nobody really understands the danger” of the precedent set by the decision by some countries to recognise would-be usurper Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s leader in contravention of all international norms, she warned.

At a press conference in central London, Ms Maneiro said her country was “under siege,” noting that a blockade designed to “break the nation” had already cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and that “if the nation resists the US military stands ready to act.”

Ms Maneiro detailed the “net” cast by the US to trap Venezuela, including by oil sanctions that cost the country an estimated $6 billion (£4.7bn) in revenues in the first year from August 2017.

There are even harsher measures on state oil firm PDVSA and its US subsidiary Citgo that have cost $11bn (£8.6bn) in expected revenues.

Sovereign assets have been retained, frozen or confiscated abroad amounting to $5.4bn (£4.2bn) held in 50 banks in 22 countries.

There has also been a mammoth $30bn (£23.5bn) in estimated losses from the financial isolation imposed by the closure of Venezuelan accounts in dollars and euros.

Ms Maneiro documented the history of Washington’s anti-Venezuelan measures from December 2014’s decision to sanction its Central Bank through the decision announced this week to ban flights from or to Venezuela from landing in the US.

The Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research published a study in April detailing the impact of these measures on Venezuela’s ability to import needed goods, especially medicines, and estimated that 40,000 Venezuelans have died as a result of the US blockade.

Access to vaccines for children has also been severely restricted, though Ms Maneiro noted Chinese medicine shipments continued to arrive.

The stranglehold had not begun with President Donald Trump but with “that great Democrat Nobel Prize-winner Barack Obama” as the US tried to re-establish the subservient Latin America it had known “before Chavez, before Fidel, before Sandino,” but that it would fail.

“The Venezuelan people do not accept threats. History shows our response to threats has never been submission.”

She appealed to media organisations and solidarity campaigns present to help tell the truth about the situation, noting that “the great media is spreading stories the superpower wants it to spread. We don’t have the muscle to fight that.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Morning Star

This article was crossposted from Great Transition Initiative under CC BY-NC-ND.

The growth of the military-industrial complex poses an existential threat to humanity. Daniel Ellsberg, peace activist and Vietnam War whistleblower discusses with Tellus Senior Fellow Allen White the continuing existential threat posed by the military-industrial complex—and what needs to be done about it.

***

Allen White: You became a pivotal figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement when you released the Pentagon Papers, a large batch of classified documents that revealed a quarter century of official deception and aggression. What inspired you to take such a risky action?

Daniel Ellsberg: After graduating from Harvard with an economics degree and completing service in the US Marines, I worked as a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. In 1961, in that role, I went to Vietnam as part of a Department of Defense task force and saw that our prospects there were extremely dim. It was clear to me that military intervention was a losing proposition.

Three years later, I moved from RAND to the Department of Defense. On my first day, I was assigned to a team tasked with devising a response to the alleged attack on the US naval warship USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese. This completely fabricated incident became the excuse for bombing North Vietnam, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had wanted to do for some months.

That night, I saw President Lyndon Johnson and my boss, Secretary McNamara, knowingly lie to the public that North Vietnam had without provocation attacked the US ship. In fact, the US had covertly attacked North Vietnam the night before and on previous nights. Johnson and McNamara’s claim that the US did not seek to widen the war was the exact opposite of reality. In short, the Gulf of Tonkin crisis was based on lies. I was not yet moved to leave government, though I had come to view US military action as ineffective, illegitimate, and deadly, without rationale or endgame.

By 1969, as the war progressed under Richard Nixon, I saw such evil in government deceit that I asked myself, “What can I do to shorten a war that I know from an insider’s vantage point is going to continue and expand?” When the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, the extent of government lies shocked the public. The retaliatory crimes Nixon committed against me out of fear that I would expose his own continuing threats––including nuclear threats—ultimately helped to bring him down and shorten the Vietnam War. This outcome had seemed impossible after his landslide reelection in 1972.

Today, similar revelations do not occasion equal shock because in the current administration in Washington, lying is routine rather than exceptional. Whether we are headed for a turning point toward bringing liars to justice will become clear when the investigations of President Donald Trump’s administration are concluded.

Allen White: Since then, you have been a vocal critic of both US military interventions and the continued embrace of nuclear weapons, an issue with which you had first-hand familiarity through your work at RAND and the Pentagon. How did your experience with nuclear policy contribute to your disillusionment with US foreign policy writ large?

Daniel Ellsberg: At RAND, Cold War presuppositions dominated all our work. We were certain that the US was behind in the arms race and that the Soviet Union, in pursuit of world domination, would exploit its lead by achieving a capacity to disarm the United States entirely of its nuclear retaliatory force. We were convinced that we were facing a Hitler with nuclear weapons.

However, in 1961, I learned about a highly classified new estimate of Soviet weapons: four intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). At the time, the US had forty ICBMs, as well as thousands of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Italy, Britain, and Turkey (compared to the Soviet Union’s total of zero). General Thomas Power, head of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), believed that the Russians had 1000 ICBMs. He was wrong by a factor of 250. This early mistaken belief signaled to me that something was very wrong with our perception of the world and, more specifically, with how we perceived the threat posed by the nation viewed as our most formidable adversary.

At the time, I regarded the erroneous “missile gap” as a misunderstanding or cognitive error of some kind. But, in fact, it was very much a motivated error—motivated in particular by the desires of the Air Force and SAC to justify their budget requests for huge increases in the numbers of US bombers and missiles. But why did we at RAND uncritically accept the wildly inflated Air Force Intelligence estimates, rather than the contrary estimates by Army and Navy Intelligence that the Soviets had produced only “a few” ICBMs? Again, a motivated error. Through self-deception, we viewed ourselves as independent thinkers focused exclusively on national security, assuming that our role as contractors on the Air Force payroll had no influence on our analysis.

In retrospect, it is clear that our focus and our recommendations would have been very different had we been working for the Navy. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It was very important to us not to understand that our work was above all serving to justify the exaggerated budget demands by the Air Force.

My distrust of the wisdom of Pentagon planners was also aroused by JCS estimates of the death toll resulting from deployment of our nuclear weapons. I had heard that the JCS avoided calculating this figure because they didn’t want to know how many people they would be killing. To confront them, I drafted a question that appeared in a letter from the White House Deputy for National Security, Robert Komer, transmitted in the name of President Kennedy: “If your war plans were carried out as written and were successful, how many people would be killed in the Soviet Union and China?”

Within a week, I held in my hand a top secret, eyes-only-for-the-president document with an estimate of 325 million fatalities in the first six months. A week later, a second communication added an estimated 100 million deaths in Eastern Europe and another 100 million in our allied nations of Western Europe, depending upon the wind patterns in the aftermath of the strike. Additional deaths in Japan, India, Afghanistan, and other countries brought the total to 600 million.

That killings of this magnitude—100 times the toll of Jewish victims of the Holocaust—were willingly contemplated by our military transcended prevailing notions of crimes against humanity. We had no words—indeed, there are no words—for such devastation. These data confronted me with not only the question of whom I was working with and for, but also the fundamental question of how such human depravity was possible.

Allen White: Your recent book, The Doomsday Machine, describes “a very expensive system of men, machines, electronics, communications, institutions, plans, training, discipline, practices and doctrine designed to obliterate the Soviet Union under various circumstances, with most of the rest of humanity as collateral damage.” How did this system come about?

Daniel Ellsberg: World War II created a highly profitable aerospace sector upon which the US military relied for strategic bombing of cities, thereby setting the stage for the idea of bombers as a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons. As orders precipitously declined by the end of the war, the industry was in dire financial straits, facing bankruptcy within a year or two. Accustomed to the guaranteed profits of the war years, they found themselves unable to compete with corporations experienced in building non-military products for the market, and demand for civilian aircraft on the part of commercial airlines was insufficient to replace the wartime military business.

The Air Force grew concerned that the industry would be unable to survive on a scale adequate to deliver military superiority in future conflicts. In the eyes of the government—and industry lobbyists—the only solution was a large peacetime (Cold War) Air Force with wartime-level sales to keep the industry afloat.

Thus emerged the military-industrial complex. Mobilization to confront a Hitler-like external enemy—a role filled by the Soviet Union—was viewed as indispensable to national security. Government military planning followed, essentially socialism for the whole armaments industry, including but not limited to aircraft production. With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry. That’s what it became after the war, and that’s what we are seeing again today. The contemporary analog is the idea of China as an existential enemy, which, I believe, is the dream and expectation of the US Defense Department.

Allen White: The threat of nuclear conflict persists as a near-term existential threat yet remains muted in political discourse and largely absent in public consciousness. How do you explain this glaring inconsistency?

Daniel Ellsberg: Contemporary US media focuses on contradictions and conflicts between the two major parties. On the issue of nuclear weapons, little difference exists between them. They support the same programs and both receive donations from Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others. They both favor more aircraft than the Pentagon requests, itself an amazing situation given the existing level of spending. Right now, the F35, the largest military project in history, may end up costing $1.5 trillion (an incredible sum even by historical standards of lavish Pentagon spending), yet still unable to achieve the promised performance. This kind of massive pork program is used by senators and representatives to secure political advantage—a “jobs” program that often is a euphemism for a “profits” program.

Allen White: Nuclear weapons and climate change are two quintessential planetary threats requiring a coordinated global response. Do you see potential for alignment and cooperation between the anti-nuclear movement and the climate justice movement?

Daniel Ellsberg: We, as a society, are conscious of the risk of the devastating impacts that could come from climate disruption. In contrast to the absence of public discourse around nuclear conflict since the end of the Cold War, climate has been a subject of intense public debate. Although the danger of the nuclear threat remains undiminished, the proposed $1.7 trillion nuclear modernization program in the US is not a matter of serious debate.

It is difficult to compare climate and nuclear threats. The climate catastrophe toward which we are moving, while uncertain in terms of timing and outcomes, is indisputable. We have survived the nuclear danger for seventy years, although we have come close to conflict more frequently than the public realizes. I am not talking about just the Cuban Missile Crisis; in 1983, for example, we were also at the brink of a nuclear exchange, and there have been other instances. The risk of conflagration remains continuous and potentially catastrophic.

It is true that climate change may totally disrupt civilization as we know it, but how many lives would it cost? Whatever the number, some form of civilization would probably survive. By contrast, a nuclear winter, which has a non-zero possibility of occurring, would occasion near extinction.

That being said, both climate and nuclear threats are existential in nature, even as the degree and type of destruction differ. And both share another critical feature: the role of corporate interests and influence in sustaining the threat. As we speak, a pristine Arctic snowfield is under threat of oil drilling. Will Exxon and the other corporations be content to leave their known oil reserves in the ground, as needs to be done? I think that’s as unlikely as Boeing eschewing military contracts.

To the question of alignment of the nuclear and climate movements, in my view, we cannot deal with the climate problem, globally or nationally, without massive government spending to speed up the production and lower the cost of renewables, and thereby accelerate the transition from a fossil-fuel economy to a renewable energy one. This will also require subsidies to the underdeveloped countries to ease their transitions. In short, we need a new super-sized Marshall Plan combined with government regulation to constrain the most damaging impulses of the fossil-based market economy embraced by Reagan, Thatcher, and other market fundamentalists. We need a national mobilization akin to that achieved during World War II. We confronted Hitler then as a civilizational threat. Climate disruption demands an equivalent response.

And here’s where the climate-nuclear nexus comes into play again. We cannot afford the wasteful and dangerous development of new nuclear weapons that “modernize” the Doomsday Machine at the same time that we need to apply vast sums to reduce the threat of climate disruption. In the face of imminent climate catastrophe, the $700-plus-billion military budget is both untenable and irresponsible. We must convert the military economy to a climate economy. We cannot have both. To do so, we must recognize that the risks posed by the military-industrial complex far exceed those posed by Russia.

Allen White: The Great Transition envisions a fundamental shift in societal values and norms. To what extent does eliminating the nuclear threat ultimately depend on such a shift?

Daniel Ellsberg: Few would disagree that to activate plans for deployment of nuclear weapons leading to a nuclear winter—and thereby killing nearly everyone on Earth—is immoral to a degree that words cannot convey. It is a crime that transcends any human conception or language. But what about the threat of deployment? For many, propagating the threat of an immoral act is itself immoral. But in the nuclear era, the nuclear states have not accepted that as a norm. Our entire nuclear posture, and that of our NATO allies, is based on deterrence of a nuclear war and, if it occurs, responding with our nuclear arsenal.

Revisiting this norm is very difficult. It is deeply embedded in the mindset of the US, Russia, and other nuclear-armed states and reinforced by the interests of powerful corporations. When Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought, they did not say that it cannot be threatened or risked. Both nations continued such preparations and do so to this day. We have been taught that nuclear weapons are a necessary evil. Without a shift in norms and values, this situation will not change.

Allen White: The Great Transition depicts a hopeful future rooted in solidarity, well-being, and ecological resilience. Given the dystopian scenarios you outline in The Doomsday Machine and your other work, where do you see the basis for hope?

Daniel Ellsberg: My intention in addressing the threat of nuclear annihilation is that it will at least open up the possibility of change. While such a shift in values and norms would be almost miraculous, miracles can happen, and have happened in my lifetime. In 1985, the falling of the Berlin wall a mere four years later would have seemed improbable, if not impossible, given decades of nuclear tensions and near conflicts. But then it happened. And Nelson Mandela coming to power in South Africa, without a violent revolution, was impossible. But it happened.

So, unpredictable changes like these can happen, and their possibility inspires my commitment to continue my peace activities against long odds. My activity is based on the belief that small probabilities can be enlarged and that, however remote success may be, it is worthwhile pursuing because so much is at stake.

My experience with the Pentagon Papers showed that an act of truth-telling, of exposing the realities about which the public had been misled, can indeed help end an unnecessary, deadly conflict. This example is a lesson applicable to both the nuclear and climate crises we face. When everything is at stake, it is worth risking one’s life or sacrificing one’s freedom in order to help bring about radical change.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Daniel Ellsberg is a writer, peace activist, former military analyst, and whistleblower known for his release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He is the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision.

A dangerous flashpoint has emerged in world politics at the moment. There is widespread fear that the United States and its allies might launch a military operation against Iran at any time. A US aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers are already deployed in the region. The alleged sabotage of four oil tankers, two of them Saudi, and the attack on a major oil pipeline are being linked in certain circles without an iota of evidence to Tehran. There is no need to repeat that scenarios of this sort are often manufactured to justify military aggression.

For more than a year now since unilaterally repudiating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal forged between Iran and six world powers, the US has not only re-imposed economic sanctions upon Iran but has also forced other states that trade with Iran to reduce drastically their interaction with Tehran. US targeting of Iran is a grave travesty of justice for the simple reason that the UN’s nuclear inspection agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has reiterated over and over again that Iran has complied with the nuclear deal. It should not therefore be punished with old or new sanctions.  This is also the position adopted by the other signatories to the deal, namely, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

But US president, Donald Trump is determined to act against Iran partly because of the growing influence of the Israeli government led by Benyamin Netanyahu and a segment of the Israeli lobby in the US upon his administration.  Though Israel has harbored deep distrust of the Iranian leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution because of the latter’s proven commitment to the Palestinian cause, it is only in recent years that it has begun to sense that a combination of three factors renders Iran and its people a formidable challenge to Israel’s goal of establishing its hegemonic power over West Asia. Iran’s oil and gas wealth has been reinforced by its scientific knowledge and capabilities underscored by a passionate devotion to the nation’s independence and sovereignty derived from both its historical experience and its attachment to a spiritual identity. Besides, the Iranian government is a staunch defender of the Syrian government which refuses to yield to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, in itself a gross violation of international law.  Iran is also linked to the Hezbollah which has successfully resisted Israeli attempts to gain control over Lebanon, thus threatening the tiny nation’s   sovereignty.

There is also perhaps another reason why Israel and the US are hell-bent on targeting Iran at this juncture. Very soon, leaders of these two states will announce the so-called “deal of the century”, a farcical attempt to resolve the longstanding Israel-Palestine conflict. Because the deal from what little is known of it, is so palpably unjust to the Palestinian people, the Palestinians and the majority of the people of West Asia are expected to reject it outright. According to various sources, the deal condemns the Palestinians to perpetual apartheid. Iran and its allies can be expected to spearhead the opposition. It explains to some extent why Iran has to be hobbled immediately.

As an aside, it is ironical that Israel is showing such hostility to Iran when the Iranian Constitution not only recognizes the Jews as a minority but also provides the community with representation in its legislature. This is unique in West Asia. Israel’s failure to appreciate this is perhaps proof that its real commitment is not so much to the well-being of the Jews as the triumph of its Zionist ideology with its goal of expansionism and hegemony.

It is not simply because of Zionism or Israel that the US Administration is seeking to emasculate Iran. Weakening and destroying Iran is foremost on the agenda of another of Trump’s close allies in the region. The Saudi ruling elite also saw the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as a mortal threat to its position and power because it overthrew a feudal monarch, was opposed to US dominance of the region and sought inspiration in a vision of Islam rooted in human dignity and social justice.  As Iranian influence in West Asia expanded especially after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the Saudi elite became even more apprehensive of Iran and wanted the US to curb Iran’s role in the region.  In this regard it is worth observing that if Iran has become more influential in the region in the last 15 years or so, it is not only because of the astuteness of the Iranian leadership but also because of the follies of the Saudi and US ruling elite. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein through an Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 for instance paved the way for the ascendancy of Shia politicians more inclined towards Iran.

How and why Saudi and Israeli elite interests and ambitions are intertwined in the US push against Iran is not highlighted in the media including the news media. Consequently, only a small fraction of the public understands the real causes for the escalation of tensions in West Asia centering on Iran. It is largely because the media conceals and camouflages the truth, that a lot of people see the victim as the perpetrator and the perpetrator as the liberator. Or as Malcolm X once put it, “If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a just World (JUST).

---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s new governor, should be really proud of himself. He recently recalled that when he ran for governor “…[he] promised to be the most pro-Israel governor in America and that the first delegation [he] would lead would be to the state of Israel.”

When he confirmed that he would be taking his entire cabinet with him as part of a 75-person delegation scheduled to leave for Israel on May 25^th, he boasted that “Today I’m pleased to report that I’m keeping that promise. Our delegation will bring business, academic and political leaders to help strengthen the bond between Florida and Israel.”

DeSantis has promised to hold a meeting of his Cabinet in the American Embassy in Jerusalem during his visit, the first time that such a meeting has ever been held by a state government on foreign soil. During the meeting he will ostentatiously sign a legislative bill “combating anti-Semitism.”

DeSantis has been playing the Israel and anti-Semitism cards throughout his political career. Last year, as a Congressman running for governor, he attacked his opponent Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum during their gubernatorial race as not being a “friend of Israel.” He based his charge on reports that Gillum had received support from the Dream Defenders, a group favoring Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, as well as once having given a speech welcoming members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to his city. DeSantis claimed in a video clip that “I can find anti-Semites around him, but it’s almost like ‘we don’t want to discuss that.’”

As a Congressman, DeSantis sponsored in 2013 the Palestinian Accountability Act which called for the withholding of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state. In 2017, he co-founded the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, saying “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, as we share common national interests and possess similar national values. Israel is not the problem in the Middle East; it is the solution to many of the problems that bedevil the region. American policy must ensure that Israel emerges victorious against those who deny or threaten her existence.” Earlier this year, DeSantis drafted a proposal calling on the U.S. to recognize Syria’s Golan Heights as an ‘integral part’ of the State of Israel.

DeSantis boasted about his presence in Jerusalem when the U.S. Embassy was moved to that city one year ago and has promised that on his upcoming trip he will visit Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank, which he refers to by the preferred Israeli usage as “Judea and Samaria.” He has threatened critics that “If you boycott Israel, the state of Florida will boycott you” and threatened to “sanction” the holiday rental company Airbnb when it refused to offer properties located in the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. DeSantis was also the driving force behind recently enacted legislation in his state to punish BDS supporters. The legislation is regarded as the most extreme among U.S. states, including explicit equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Another bill pending in Florida will enable citizens to sue teachers or government employees who in any way criticize Israel.

DeSantis, a former U.S. Navy lawyer, has demonstrated that he reveres Israel even more than his former comrades in arms. In his congressional district there were a number of survivors of the U.S.S. Liberty, which was attacked in international waters by Israel on June 8, 1967, killing 34 crewmen and injuring 171 more. They report that DeSantis has been completely unsympathetic to their requests that a commission of inquiry finally be convened to determine what actually happened on that day.

Regarding the upcoming visit, a local Florida radio station conducted an interview with Israeli Consul General in Miami Lior Haiat, who emphasized the economic benefits to be derived from the strong bilateral relationship, who said “The fact that the huge delegation is going from Florida to Israel is just a symbol that the outcome of this delegation will be seen in the relationship between Israel and Florida for years to come. Because this is just the beginning. We’re signing over 10 memorandums of understandings and agreements between Israeli companies and universities and the Floridian companies and universities. This is a huge bridge that Gov. DeSantis is building. We are happy to be part of it.”

Consul General Haiat also noted that

“There is a lot of new technology based in Israel that is very relevant to Florida both on the red tide and algae, and we are already connecting Israeli companies with local authorities in able to find what is the most useful technology for that part.  But it’s also for the greening of oranges. This is a huge problem here. I think that the connection between Israel and Florida has a lot of potential since Israel has a lot of agricultural technology based on knowledge, and Florida has a huge sector of agriculture that can use that technology.”

The six days De Santis led boondoggle in Israel is funded by taxpayers. A public records request filed by a local newspaper seeking information on how much the trip would cost has not been responded to by the governor’s office. And the idea that the state of Florida and its citizens will benefit materially from the trip is largely an illusion. This mixing of politics and business interests is essentially corrupt and inevitably leads to abuses that do not serve the public interest, particularly as American citizens who stand to benefit both, directly and indirectly, are quite openly promoting the interests of a foreign nation.

The Florida trip is a perfect example of how Israel’s friends go about setting up mechanisms that will benefit the Jewish state. Israel will be selling its products and services to Florida, enabled by a government in place that is promoting the process and will steer contracts in its direction. In return, Florida will get little or nothing as Israel is a tiny market and has no particular need of anything that the Sunshine State produces.

All such trade agreements are designed to enrich Israel. The 1985 United States free trade agreement with Israel has benefitted the Jewish state by $144 billion, which is the U.S. deficit on the trade between 1985 and 2015. An interesting example of how this works at the state level and the abuse that it can produce has recently surfaced in Virginia, where a so-called Virginia-Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) has actually been funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia taxpayers to promote and even subsidize Israeli business in the state, business that currently runs an estimated $500 million per annum in favor of Israel. Grant Smith’s Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP) has done considerable digging into the affairs of VIAB, which was ostensibly “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda” with a charter defining its role as “advis[ing] the Governor on ways to improve economic and cultural links between the Commonwealth and the State of Israel, with a focus on the areas of commerce and trade, art and education, and general government.” Smith has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.”

Florida does not yet have an equivalent of Virginia’s VIAB, but it probably does not need one as the pandering to Israel will be run right out of the governor’s office. So if you want to create jobs and exports for a foreign country at a cost to your own citizens, by all means, follow the DeSantis Florida model and send an expensive trade mission over to Jerusalem to sing the praises of Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of war criminals while also promoting “buy Israel.” But just maybe it would be a better idea to stop shilling for a foreign country. Floridians should insist on keeping the travel money here at home where it might actually do some good while also putting a little pressure on DeSantis, who was elected to serve the people of his state, to stop his unseemly boasting about being the “most pro-Israel governor in America.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on the American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Actions to Affirm Florida’s Support of Israel. Credit: flgov.com

The chemical watchdog group is mandated “to implement the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention…to achieve…a world…free of” CWs.

Its mission includes conducting “credible and transparent” on-site inspections to verify use of and destruction of these weapons.”

Time and again, it flagrantly breaches its mandate, serving US-led Western interests, producing dubious reports with falsified, distorted rubbish, suppressing vital information.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier slammed the group for failing to discharge its duties as mandated by the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Last March, its falsified Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) report on the alleged April 7, 2018 CW incident in Douma, Syria said the following:

“Regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in Douma (Syria)…evaluation and analysis…of information gathered by the FFM (gathered much too late to matter) provide(s) reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on April 7, 2018. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

The incident was a US/NATO false flag, Syria wrongfully blamed for a victimless nonevent – no one killed, hospitalized or ill from exposure to toxins, not chlorine or any other banned substance, nothing. The OPCW lied suggesting otherwise.

Douma eyewitnesses and local medical personnel debunked the falsified narrative. Visiting the site days after the alleged incident, Russian technical experts found no evidence of chemical or other toxins in soil samples and other analysis.

Like many other times, Damascus was falsely blamed for what it had nothing to do with. At the time, Russia’s envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said  testimonies from 17 witnesses, including physicians who were right at the scene on that day…recount(ed) the true story of the (false flag) incident.”

“(W)e had no doubt that the allegations of chemical use in Douma are a fabricated and provocative play staged by the so called White Helmets and Western media outlets.”

“We can prove that the video of the White Helmets is fabricated, and therefore there is no basis or validity to the signals of Western countries that this material is evidence of a chemical attack in the city of Douma.”

Instead of reporting accurately on what happened, the OPCW bowed to US interests, delivering a falsified report months later.

Damascus slammed the report, saying it “does not differ from the previous mission reports filled with distorted facts” — falsely blaming Syrian forces for CW incidents staged by US-supported terrorists.

Regarding the Douma incident, Syria’s Foreign Ministry blasted the OPCW’s “lack of professionalism,” adding:

“(I)t was easy for the Syrian specialists to discover that the OPCW experts were lying when claiming that they investigated the (Douma) incident in the report from various aspects.”

The organization “ignored the possession of toxic chemicals by terrorist groups, although the mission found those substances in the warehouses of terrorists when they visited them.”

The independent Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media obtained an unpublished OPCW report on the Douma incident — indicating it was staged, Damascus having nothing to do with it.

According to the group’s Piers Robinson,

“(w)e have confirmation from multiple sources that (the unpublished OPCW report) is authentic.”

Chlorine cylinders found on the scene were placed next to a pre-existing crater — by Western funded, al-Qaeda connected White Helmets. They were not dropped by Syrian aircraft or helicopters as falsely claimed.

Expert independent evaluation determined that two chlorine cylinders were manually placed at the scene to falsely blame Damascus for what it had nothing to do with.

The OPCW’s unpublished report refuted the findings of its published one last March. Ahead of the April 2018 incident, Moscow and Damascus warned of an impending false flag CW attack by US supported terrorists to be wrongfully blamed on Syrian forces.

On Friday, Russia presented a draft Security Council resolution, calling for the OPCW to fulfill its mandate, saying the following:

The Security Council “emphasizes the need to unite the efforts of States Parties to the (chemical weapons) Convention in order to enhance strict compliance with their obligations under the Convention avoiding politicization,” adding:

The SC “calls on the States Parties to the Convention to cooperate with each other in a constructive manner and seek to restore the spirit of consensus in the OPCW for the sake of preserving the integrity and inviolability of the Convention.”

Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia accused the OPCW of being “hijacked by politics,” adding: “We are trying to get the (organization) back on track because (it’s) off track and now it is so politicized.”

“It was always a technical organ where consensus prevailed, and now we see that it is completely politicized, with politicized agenda from various parties” — its credibility lost.

Throughout years of US launched aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011, not a shred of credible evidence indicates CW use by government forces. Indisputable evidence shows US supported terrorists used banned toxins numerous times, incidents falsely blamed on Damascus.

A Trump regime veto of Russia’s draft resolution is likely, supported by Britain and France, wanting nothing interfering with their ability to manipulate the OPCW to serve their interests.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Hürriyet Daily News

John McCain is looking down on Washington and he is definitely not smiling.

The late senator had very little in common with the anti-interventionist principles of this magazine, but in the brighter moments of his 35-year career in Congress, he was the Senate’s most vociferous watchdog of Pentagon waste and contractor malfeasance. His grilling of military brass in this area was legendary, and his willingness to dress down an E-Ring four star or civilian executive in front of the C-Span cameras makes today’s congressional slobbering before the military high-hats look pathetic, and sad.

That’s why he would be all the more crushed to see how the Blob is apparently prepared to confirm a recent senior executive at Boeing—the second largest contractor in the entire federal government—to the role of secretary of defense. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who McCain, suffering at the time from brain cancer, suggested might be the fox guarding the henhouse, has been idling in the interim SecDef role since James Mattis just before Christmas. Now that a Pentagon Inspector General’s report has quietly cleared him of charges that he was putting his thumb on the scales for billions of dollars of new work for Boeing, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will officially nominate Shanahan for the role of Pentagon chief, starting the clock on Senate confirmation.

This has raised the hackles of defense reformers who always saw Shanahan’s presence at the DoD as the highest form of contempt: even by Washington standards, they see this as is a bald display of industry influence on the levers of power and, ultimately, U.S. national security policy.

“Having promised to change nothing, to simply extend the massive spending policies initiated by Mattis, Mr. Shanahan is sure to be confirmed,” charged retired U.S. Army colonel and defense analyst Douglas Macgregor in an interview with TAC. “Keeping the money flowing without interruption is the sine qua non for success in the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Critics point out that Shanahan has never been anything but a company man. His only experience in military and defense issues was as a program executive of contracts that sink billions of American taxpayer dollars each year into bloated weapons systems and increase shareholder value.

“Shanahan has zero government experience. He’s a defense corporation guy; his track record as deputy secretary is appallingly pro-MIC [military industrial complex],” Pierre Sprey, longtime military watchdog and defense analyst, told TAC.

Armed with advanced degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, Shanahan went straight to Boeing in 1986. After overseeing Boeing’s military rotorcraft (Apache, Chinook, and Osprey helicopters) and missile defense programs, he went onto the commercial side in 2007, where he was known as “Mr. Fix It” for saving the company’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft program. (More recently, he was forced to dodge any connection to 737 Max planes, which were falling out of the sky before a worldwide grounding.)

Shanahan was working at Boeing as a member of the Executive Council and as supply chain & operations vice president. He answered directly to the CEO, all the way up until Trump picked him to be the number two at the Pentagon in 2017.

“This is clear evidence that they are getting more and more brazen about putting in industry shills when they used to be a little leery of doing it,” said Sprey.

Interestingly, Shanahan’s nomination wasn’t altogether guaranteed after Mattis left in opposition to Trump’s announced withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria in December. To start, Shanahan had institutional issues: Senator James Inhofe had earlier cast shade on the interim SecDef, saying he didn’t have as much “humility” as his predecessor.

And while he cannot do anything about it now, Senator McCain gave Shanahan the business during his confirmation hearings for deputy secretary in 2017. That came after what McCain called an “almost condescending”—and altogether weak—written answer to one of his questions, suggesting Shanahan should know more about the issues.

“The answers that you gave to the questions, whether intentionally or unintentionally, were almost condescending, and I’m not overjoyed that you came from one of the five corporations that receive 90 percent of the taxpayers’ dollars. I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the henhouse,” McCain, then Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, told Shanahan.

Later, he underscored a statement he made to the committee, telling the Military Times that he was wary of bringing so many executives into the Pentagon.

“I said I did not want people from the top five corporations,” said McCain. “We’ve had a couple, and that’s okay, but I don’t want [more of] them.”

In the same report, Senator Jack Reed, the ranking member on SASC, said there is “real concern about the concentration of these people.” He stopped short of saying it might derail nominees, calling it “a factor to be considered.”

“If you’re drawing from one sector alone, you get this groupthink possibility, which could be dangerous,” said Reed. While Reed said he believed at the time that no ethics rules were being broken, “it’s hard after working for a major corporation for 30 years to separate the appearance—when you’re making a decision—that you’re being influenced by your prior employment.”

It would take another year for accusations to begin surfacing that Shanahan really was moving the needle for Boeing at the expense of its competitors, namely Lockheed Martin, the government’s top contractor. The Pentagon Inspector General report opened an investigation in March of this year into complaints that Shanahan had been promoting Boeing in its bid to sell the Air Force eight new F-15X fighter planes in 2020 at the expense of Lockheed’s F-35 program. He has denied any undue influence, but after the Air Force budget included plans for 80 new F-15X over the next five years at $7.5 billion—to a mixed response from Congress and even the Air Force itself—charges of Shanahan’s conflict of interest started rolling in.

According to the official report, the IG investigated charges that despite his pledge to remove himself from any Boeing-related business, Shanahan had openly disparaged the company’s direct competitors, including Lockheed Martin CEO Marilyn Hewson, and called the F-35 aircraft “f—ed up” in one meeting. Aside from pushing for the F-15X sale, he was also accused of trying “to force General [Robert] Neller to buy Boeing F/A-18s, and threatened to cut other Air Force programs unless General [David] Goldfein supported buying Boeing F-15Xs.”

He also allegedly “involved himself” in the KC-46 aerial refueling and military transport aircraft by “weighing on” the Air Force to accept it even after technical problems had delayed Boeing’s delivery. The requests for inquiry came from Elizabeth Warren’s Senate staff, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and an anonymous complaint from an attorney with the Senate Armed Services Committee that Shanahan was violating ethics rules.

“Even before he assumed office, we raised concerns about how he would confront financial, programmatic, and policy conflicts of interest,” said Mandy Smithberger, who runs the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight.

“Some reporting indicates he was one of the major forces pushing for a larger Pentagon budget, which certainly benefits his former employer, and his boosterism for the Space Force raises similar conflict concerns,” Smithberger added.

Yes, Space Force. Speaking before an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in March, Shanahan spun the proposed new branch of the military as vital to ensuring that the U.S. has “unquestioned dominance in space.” And why not? The budget would be about $10 billion and would involve huge launch and satellite contracts, mostly with the Air Force. In other words, a boon to Boeing and the rest of the defense titans.

“The only people who are in favor of [Space Force] are contractors who are making money with military space [programs],” said Sprey. “Space Force is a made-to-order money tree for Boeing.”

Considering how long it takes for any official business to happen in Washington, the IG’s office came back with a surprisingly swift conclusion, clearing Shanahan of all charges on April 25.

“We did not substantiate any of the allegations. We determined that Mr. Shanahan fully complied with his ethics agreements and his ethical obligations regarding Boeing and its competitors.”

One might be tempted to think that a super efficient probe and quick acquittal was hastened by forces in Congress—perhaps even new SASC Chairman Inhofe, who despite being struck by Shanahan’s lack of humility, has complained openly over the DoD going this long without a chief. He’s now signaled his support for confirmation, as has Senator Lindsey Graham, and so far there is very little evidence that he won’t be approved by the majority GOP Senate.

So what we see here is an evolution of the MIC, what many call the “self-licking ice cream cone,” says Sprey. In earlier times, the secretaries had military or government experience and their cultivation of industry influence in the Pentagon was more sotto voce. “Over time, though, you can see more and more egregious military industrial complex shills, just some politicians and defense technocrats.” Shanahan is the first to go from a defense industry giant straight into the DoD’s center of power.

“My impression is right now everyone in the armed services, at the top, are like pigs at the trough and their goal is to scarf up every dollar they can get their hands on in Washington because this might be their last hurrah,” said Doug Macgregor. “And Shanahan is going all out for them.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is an executive editor at The American Conservative. Follow her on Twitter @Vlahos_at_TAC

Featured image: Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan during a visit to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in 2017. (DoD photo by Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brigitte N. Brantley/Flickr)

“The worker must get a more equitable share of the wealth of the world. And this Strike has already demonstrated the ability of the workers to get his if he consolidated their forces. Withdraw your labour power from the machine, said he, at once profits cease.” – published in Western Labor News, Strike Buletin (May 20, 1919). [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The period following the end of the first World War was one of considerable labour unrest in North America and around the world. [2]

Revolutions had sprung up in Russia, Germany and Hungary. One in five wage labourers in the United States went on strike in 1919, including a general strike in Seattle, 300,000 striking steel workers, 400,000 striking coal miners, 120,000 striking textile workers, and 50,000 striking men’s clothing workers. General or near general strikes took hold in twenty Canadian cities from Victoria, British Columbia to Amherst, Nova Scotia. [3]

Winnipeg had the distinction of hosting what is now recognized as the largest labour action in Canadian history. More than 35,000 workers in a city of 180,000 walked off the job on May 15, 2019. This included workers in the metal, building, sewing, and manufacturing trades, along with telephone operators, carpenters, electricians, city and government employees, postal workers, and domestic workers. Restaurants were shut down. Print outlets stopped functioning as pressmen left their workplaces. Even city police and firefighters supported the Strike, although they stayed on the job, at the request of the Central Strike Committee to preserve public safety. Soldiers returning from the War demonstrated in support of the Strike as well. The city effectively ground to a halt. [4]

After six weeks, the strike ended following the events of June 21st when the Royal North West Mounted Police together with hired ‘Special Police’ violently attacked a crowd near Portage and Main, leaving two men killed and many others injured. Strike leaders were jailed, some workers were deported, and strike action demands generally unfulfilled. [5][6]

Given this apparent defeat, what significance does the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike have historically, and what instructive lessons are available for today’s organizers? On a week, marking the centenary of the start of the Strike, the Global Research News Hour attempts to address these questions with four special guest analysts.

We start the show with Professor Leo Panitch. In a discussion convened at host radio station CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg, Professor Panitch places the Strike in an historical and international context, he discusses how the rise of the populist xenophobic right is connected to reformist approaches favoured by social democrats as opposed to more transformative struggles rooted in a class analysis, and he speculates on the possibility of social gains being achieved in Canada and around the world in an era of austerity and neoliberalism.

We continue this discussion in our second half hour with three guests: Winnipeg-based academic and author Julie Guard, Winnipeg-based anti-poverty and welfare advocate Harold Dyck, and Toronto-based anti-poverty organizer and crusader John Clarke. In this ‘round table’ conversation, we address the legacy of the 1919 Strike, useful bonds of solidarity beyond the trade unions, some of the failures of labour organizers in recent years, and the prospects for a similar mobilization of the working class in 2019.

Winnipeg-based listeners take note, a number of 1919 Strike commemorations are taking place locally throughout May and June. A complete list, including a May 25th “Solidarity Forever” parade and concert can be found on the Mayworks calendar of events at mayworks.org.

Professor Leo Victor Panitch is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a distinguished research professor and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University and editor of the Socialist Register. He has authored a number of books including The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, co-authored by Sam Gindin.

Julie Guard is Professor of Labour Studies and History at the University of Manitoba. She has authored numerous academic articles and chapters in books. Her research focuses on Canadian labour history, social movement history, history of dissent and repression, history of the Canadian left, women’s history, consumer and food history She is the author most recently of the 2019 book Radical Housewives: Price Wars and Food Politics in Mid 20th Century Canada.

Harold Dyck is a long time anti-poverty and welfare advocate based in Winnipeg. He has played prominent roles with a number of Winnipeg-based anti-poverty organizations including the Manitoba Committee for Economic Justice, the National Anti poverty Organization and the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. He is also the long-time director of the Low Income Intermediary Project which conducts advocacy work for people on social assistance.

John Clarke is a long time organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, a grassroots antipoverty organization based mostly in Toronto that combines collective struggles on behalf of individuals fighting for tenant rights, welfare access, and those threatened with eviction and deportation, with larger political campaigns geared toward policy changes in support of the most marginalized in our society.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 260)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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. Dennis Lewycky (2019) Magnificent Fight: The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, p. 37, published by Fernwood Publishing
2. http://newsocialist.org/the-winnipeg-general-strike/
3. ibid
4. Lewycky op. cit., pg ix, 2, 3, 14
5. Lewycky op. cit., pg 43-45
6. Lewycky op. cit., pg 153, 154

Die weltweiten Militärausgaben überstiegen 2018 – laut den Schätzungen von SIPRI vom 29. April[1] – 1.800 Milliarden Dollar, mit einem realen Anstieg von 76 % gegenüber 1998. Nach dieser Schätzung gibt die Welt jede Minute etwa 3,5 Millionen Dollar für Waffen und Armeen aus.

An erster Stelle stehen die Vereinigten Staaten mit Ausgaben von 649 Milliarden Dollar im Jahr 2018. Diese Zahl stellt den Haushalt des Pentagons dar, einschließlich seiner Kriegsoperationen im Ausland, aber sie repräsentiert nicht die gesamten Militärausgaben der Vereinigten Staaten.

Wir müssen weitere Posten militärischer:

Ø    Art hinzufügen. Das United States Department of Veterans Affairs (oder VA), das sich um pensioniertes Militärpersonal kümmert, hatte 2018 ein Budget von 180 Milliarden Dollar.

Ø Die Gemeinschaft der Geheimdienste, die sich aus 17 Agenturen zusammensetzt (die bekannteste davon ist die CIA), gibt ein Budget von 81,5 Milliarden Dollar an, das jedoch nur die Spitze des Eisbergs ihrer tatsächlichen Ausgaben für geheime Missionen ist.

Ø   Das Department of National Security gab 2018 70 Milliarden Dollar aus, vor allem, um „unsere Finanzinfrastruktur und unsere wichtigsten Führungskräfte mit unseren Geheimdiensten zu schützen“.

Ø   Das Energieministerium hat 14 Milliarden Dollar ausgegeben, was der Hälfte seines Budgets für die Instandhaltung und Modernisierung des US-Atomarsenals entspricht.

Unter Berücksichtigung dieser und einiger anderer Posten stiegen die Militärausgaben der Vereinigten Staaten im Jahr 2018 auf rund 1.000 Milliarden Dollar. In jährlichen Ausgaben pro Kopf, entspricht das dem Gegenwert von 3.000 (dreitausend) Dollar pro Bürger der Vereinigten Staaten. Die Militärausgaben sind die Hauptursache für das Bundesdefizit, das auf 1.000 Milliarden gestiegen ist und rasch zunimmt. Zusammen mit anderen Faktoren lassen sie die US-Staatsverschuldung anschwellen, die 2019 auf mehr als 22.000 Milliarden Dollar gestiegen ist, mit jährlichen Zinsen von 390 Milliarden, die sich 2025 verdoppeln werden.

Das System besteht auf die Hegemonie des Dollars, dessen Wert nicht von der realen Wirtschaftskraft der Vereinigten Staaten bestimmt wird, sondern von der Tatsache, dass es das wesentliche Geld der Währungsreserven und der internationalen Rohstoffkosten ist. Dies ermöglicht es der US-Notenbank, Tausende von Milliarden Dollar zu drucken, mit denen sie die riesige Staatsverschuldung der USA durch finanzielle Verpflichtungen und andere vom Finanzministerium ausgegebene Titel finanziert.China, Russland und andere Länder stellen die Hegemonie des Dollars in Frage – und damit die vom Westen dominierte wirtschaftliche und politische Ordnung. Die Vereinigten Staaten spielen immer häufiger die Kriegskarte, indem sie 25% ihres Bundeshaushalts in die teuerste Kriegsmaschinerie der Welt investieren.

Ø  Die Militärausgaben der Vereinigten Staaten wirken sich treibend auf die anderer Länder aus, die immer noch auf einem sehr niedrigen Niveau sind.

Ø   Die Ausgaben Chinas werden von der SIPRI auf 250 Milliarden Dollar im Jahr 2018 geschätzt, obwohl die offizielle Zahl von Peking 175 beträgt.

Ø  Die Ausgaben Russlands werden auf 61 Milliarden geschätzt, zehnmal weniger als die der USA (wobei nur der Haushalt des Pentagons berücksichtigt wird).

Ø  Nach den gleichen Schätzungen machen sieben NATO-Länder – USA, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Deutschland, Italien, Kanada und die Türkei – insgesamt etwa die Hälfte der weltweiten Militärausgaben aus.

Die italienischen Militärausgaben, die 2018 vom 13. auf den 11. Platz der Welt gehoben wurden, werden von der SIPRI auf 27,8 Milliarden Dollar geschätzt. Diese Informationen bestätigen im Wesentlichen die Schätzung, dass die italienischen Militärausgaben, einschließlich anderer Posten als dem Verteidigungshaushalt, 25 Milliarden Euro pro Jahr erreicht haben und weiter steigen.

Das bedeutet, dass wir bereits in einem Jahr (nach den Prognosen) das Äquivalent von vier Jahren „Bürgergeld“ für militärische Angelegenheiten ausgeben. Im Gefolge der USA wurde eine starke zukünftige Erhöhung beschlossen. Das größte „Bürgergeld“ ist nun dem Krieg gewidmet.

Manlio Dinucci

 

La locomotiva USA della spesa militare mondiale

Il manifesto, 7. Mai 2019

Übersetzung: K.R.

The United Nations recognizes Nicolas Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. It is illegal under international law for the U.S. to facilitate control of the embassy to opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has asserted a claim to the office.

The Embassy Protection Collective released a statement recently saying that eviction and arrests of the individuals, inside the embassy with the approval of the Venezuelan government, would violate international law.

“Today’s action creates a horrific precedent. International law protects foreign embassies” said Margaret Flowers, Green Party of the United States Co-chair, and one of the activists arrested today as part of the nonviolent effort to prevent the takeover. “The Trump Administration is violating the Vienna Convention by not only allowing the illegal seizure of diplomatic premises but by facilitating it. Such action raises concerns for the safety and security of diplomatic staff and embassies, including our own, throughout the world.”

The Green Party platform states that “the U.S. must recognize the sovereignty of nation-states and their right of self-determination.” The Green Party has called for a policy of non-intervention and for sanctions against Venezuela to be lifted.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Green Party

The current crisis atmosphere in U.S.-Iranian relations, in which the risk of open warfare appears greater than it has been in years, is solely and unequivocally due to the policies and actions of the Trump administration. To point this out does not mean that actions of the Iranian regime have not come to be part of the crisis atmosphere as well. It instead means that such an atmosphere would never have existed in the first place if the administration had not turned its obsession with Iran into the relentless campaign of hostility that has become one of the single most prominent threads of the administration’s foreign policy.

Without that campaign, and without the administration’s assault on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program—Iran would continue to comply with its obligations under the JCPOA, and all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon would remain closed. The channels of communication established during the negotiation of the JCPOA would continue to be available to address other issues and to defuse any incidents that threatened to escalate into war (as was done during the previous U.S. administration). Whatever Iran has been doing for years in the Middle East, such as assisting Iraq in defeating the Islamic State and assisting its longtime ally in Syria, it would continue to do. In short, there would be no new threat and no crisis.

Some of the current discourse about Iran nonetheless makes it sound not only as if there were something new and threatening but that the Iranian regime is the initiator of the threat. At least seven reasons account for this misconception.

One is the demonization of Iran rooted in the genuinely nefarious things the Iranian regime did in the past and dates back to when Ted Koppel was talking to Americans every weeknight about U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran. Over the years, other factors have contributed to the demonization, including domestic American political pressures connected to certain regional rivals of Iran that want to keep it weak and isolated. The result is a lasting and pervasive suspicion that colors American perceptions of everything involving Iran, regardless of the facts of whatever is the issue at hand.

Second, and related to the demonization, is sloppiness in the discourse that, as Ben Armbruster has analyzed, infects even the mainstream press. The tendencies include playing back the administration’s formulations without questioning them and the habitual use of such tropes as “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” when the internationally verified reality is that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program years ago.

Third is the gap in time between the Trump administration’s provocations and Iran’s responses. The administration renounced the JCPOA a year ago, when it began waging economic warfare not only against Iran but against anyone else doing normal business with Iran. If Tehran had announced back then that it was no longer bound by the agreement’s restrictions, the connection between provocation and response, and the true source of whatever crisis ensued, would have been more obvious. But the Iranian regime—deeply committed to the JCPOA and hoping to outlast Trump—abided by its obligations for a year, during which the topic fell out of the consciousness of most of the public and most members of Congress. Now, with Iranian leaders saying that their patience is exhausted and talking about exceeding the limits of the JCPOA if the agreed-upon economic benefits do not materialize, it sounds to some inattentive ears as if the Iranians are instigating a nuclear crisis. In short, the Iranians’ patience has worked against them as far as image and messaging are concerned.

Fourth and probably most influential have been the Trump administration’s hints about supposed new threat information, accompanied by deployments of military resources and other U.S. saber-rattling. Details about any immediate new threats have been slow in coming, and the British general who is deputy commander of the anti-Islamic State coalition debunked to reporters the idea that whatever Iran and its militia allies are doing represents a new and elevated threat. The Trump administration quickly tried to play down the general’s comments, and its talk about supposed new threats will continue to shape the discourse.

Persuasive details about new threats may never come, but they aren’t necessary for the administration to have the desired effect on public attitudes about Iran. That gets to the fifth reason, which is that the rhetorical drumbeat about Iran as a threat—even bereft of any threat information—shapes attitudes. The George W. Bush administration got a large proportion of the American public to believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been directly involved in 9/11. The administration induced that belief not so much through specific lies as through a rhetorical drumbeat in which “Iraq” and “9/11” (and “WMD”) were constantly spoken in the same breath. Something similar is happening today.

The sixth reason gets to real, not just imagined, Iranian actions. The Iranians currently face an unmistakable threat of military attack by the United States. They hear a constant stream of hostile rhetoric from Washington, see the U.S. military deployments in their backyard, and realize that people in positions of power in the Trump administration would welcome war with Iran. It is unsurprising and prudent for the Iranians to brace for a U.S. attack and to prepare to respond to it. Indeed, it would be irresponsible, from the standpoint of Iranian security, not to prepare for it. Such preparations may include “targeting” U.S. assets in the sense of planning what to try to hit in response to any U.S. attack. The preparations do not indicate any Iranian intention to initiate hostilities, but information gathered about them gets fed into the U.S. discourse as supposed “threat information.”

The seventh reason is less certain than the rest and involves the possibility of Iran initiating some minor actions, if only to send a message that it cannot be kicked around forever amid the U.S. hostility and pressure. A variation on this possibility, which Trita Parsi raises, is that Iran may practice some of its own brinksmanship to play upon Donald Trump’s desire not to get immersed in a new Middle East war. Tehran’s plan may be “to accelerate matters toward the point at which Trump will have to decide whether he is truly willing to go to war with Iran or if the strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ will not cross that threshold.” Some reporting from Washington suggests that the Iranians have material to work with in the form of Trump being frustrated with the war-seeking John Bolton. For Trump to reclaim control over policy toward Iran may right now be the best, however unreliable, hope for keeping the current mess from escalating into war.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. 

Featured image is from Shutterstock

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has sounded the alarm over a giant concrete dome built 40 years ago in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive waste from Cold War-era atomic tests. 

According to Guterres, the dome – which houses approximately 73,000 cubic meters of debris on Runit island, part of the Enewetak Atoll – may be leaking radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean, as the porous ground underneath the 18″ thick dome was never lined as originally planned. It was constructed in the crater formed by the 18-kt Cactus test.

“The Pacific was victimised in the past as we all know,” Guterres told students in the island nation of Figi while on a tour of the South Pacific. “I’ve just been with the President of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), who is very worried because there is a risk of leaking of radioactive materials that are contained in a kind of coffin in the area.“

Source: DoE Report, 2013

Residents of the Islands were relocated from their ancestral lands shortly after the United States began what would become 67 nuclear weapons tests from 1946 – 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Despite US efforts to move people to safety, thousands of islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout from above-ground tests conducted before a moratorium was enacted in 1958.

The tests included the 15 Megaton Castle Bravo on the Bikini Atoll, which was detonated on March 1, 1954. It was the most powerful ever detonated by the United States – and around 1,000 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima just nine years before.

The effort to clean up the region in the 1970s included approximately 4,000 US servicemen in what was known as the Enewetak Radiological Support Project.

Cracks are visible in the dome’s surface, and the sea sometimes washes over its surface during storms, according to ABC.

View from atop of Runit Dome showing the beach configuration on the north end of Runit Island at low tide (Reference photo, May 2013)

“The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse,” said Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard.

That said, a 2013 DoE report found that the soil outside of the dome is more contaminated than its contents – as the 1970s cleaning operation only removed an estimated 0.8 percent of the total nuclear waste in Enewetak atoll.

Guterres did not propose a solution, however he said that

“a lot needs to be done in relation to the explosions that took place in French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands,” adding “This is in relation to the health consequences, the impact on communities and other aspects.”

And of course, reparations;

 “there are questions of compensation and mechanisms to allow these impacts to be minimised,” Guterres added.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

All images in this article are from Zero Hedge

The intimidation tactics by the pro-coup embassy besiegers not only failed to deter the peace activists around the embassy, they left Venezuela’s D.C.-based opposition with a serious PR problem. After a week of hateful outbursts, a handful of marketing strategists emerged as de facto spokespeople for the mob.

***

After a rough and revealing start, the reins of the campaign to seize Venezuela’s embassy in Washington are being taken over by a group of well-connected marketing and online strategists.

In this article, we will examine the backgrounds of these individuals, the platforms they use to disseminate their message, and the tactics they have employed to clamor for an embassy seizure that violates international law. We will also address how they may stand to benefit directly from an escalation of Washington’s hybrid war and a potential regime-change scenario in Venezuela.

Washington serves as a magnet for many elite and upper-middle-class professionals from countries that have been targeted by U.S. regime-change efforts. In their home countries, some of these elements may function as the shock troops or intellectual beacons of empire, forming the front lines of American-backed color-revolution-style destabilization campaigns. In the U.S., some upwardly mobile members of the diaspora also become lobbyists for regime change. They position themselves as the true voices of “the people” of their nation, while the poor and working class majorities of those countries are left behind, ignored by the corporate media and unable to travel north.

This sensibility is perfectly reflected by the crowd of pro-coup Venezuelan exiles and diaspora members that has besieged the Venezuelan Embassy in a bid to starve out the American activists who have staged a round-the-clock protest inside.

In early April, peace activists were invited by Venezuela’s government into its embassy in D.C., after the Trump administration ordered the country’s diplomats to depart. Over twenty wound up taking up residence in the embassy, hoping to prevent an illegal seizure of the building.

On April 30 – the same day self-proclaimed “president” Juan Guaidó staged a failed military coup – pro-Guaidó Venezuelans initiated their siege of the embassy. As they converged on the premises, some unleashed a wave of violent, misogynistic, and racist attacks on peace activists both inside and outside the building.

Some of the pro-Guaidó militants are believed to have since carried out physical attacks, made death threats, and harassed the family members of embassy defenders. Some are also believed to have committed acts of property destruction, wrecked the tents of activists, and ransacked an embassy office while promoting ultra-Zionism and praising President Donald Trump and the police. TeleSUR’s correspondent Alina Duarte has faced a torrent of threats from some of the pro-Guaidó extremists, returning home one night to find that someone had attempted to break into and enter her apartment.

All was going according to plan for the Embassy Protection Collective, until April 30 when the opposition descended on the building en masse. The Secret Service has allowed them to besiege the embassy, vandalize it and assault embassy protectors.

More: https://t.co/I0yuBrAGf5 pic.twitter.com/s8lVcgC0wO

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) May 7, 2019

The intimidation tactics not only failed to deter the peace activists around the embassy, they left Venezuela’s D.C.-based opposition with a serious PR problem. After a week of hateful outbursts, a handful of marketing strategists emerged as de facto spokespeople for the mob. They are now delegated for interviews with national media outlets, deploying a combination of liberal-sounding language and identity politics to deflect from the presence of violent, sociopathic elements within the mob, some of whom will also be identified in this article.

The well-groomed spokespeople for regime change

Dilianna C. Bustillos (also known as Dillianna Bustillos Vivas) has become a poster child for the pro-Guaidó mob. A senior manager at Oracle, she previously worked for MarketBridge and for the advocate marketing firm Influitive. Oracle, a computer technology corporation and one of the largest companies in the world, also works closely with aerospace and defense companies. In 2018 it had global revenues of $39.83 billion.

Bustillos previously volunteered with Visión Democrática, a pro-opposition Venezuelan lobbying outfit in D.C. that claims to focus on “democracy promotion” — code for regime change. Francisco Márquez, the executive director of Visión Democrática, is the political advisor to Juan Guaidó’s fake ambassador in Washington.

A fellow of the “Democracy in Hard Places Initiative” at Harvard’s Ash School for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Marquez has held meetings with Vice President Mike Pence and is a key figure of the pro-coup Venezuelan lobby in Washington. Visión Democrática also employs Carlos Figueroa, who attended a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) meeting in Washington on the potential for a military invasion of Venezuela.

In her media interviews, Bustillos never reveals her top-level corporate marketing position nor her support for political groups that advocate for sanctions and U.S. intervention.

Rather, she has presented herself as just another concerned Venezuelan citizen, with nothing special to gain and no agenda beyond saving her country from the evildoers. In a media interview outside of the embassy, Bustillos claimed that she was “not for U.S. intervention.” Such claims have been accepted at face value by the New York Times, which wrote: “Mr.

Guaidó’s supporters insist they are not making a case for American military intervention in Venezuela, but only want the Americans to leave a building that does not belong to them.”

A screenshot from the Vice video featuring Dilianna C. Bustillos (AKA Dillianna Bustillos Vivas)

However, Bustillos’s Twitter timeline reveals that she has openly advocated for U.S. sanctions, which we now know collectively punish the country’s population. She also openly supports Guaidó, who himself has suggested he would support a U.S. attack on his own country. Guaidó’s fake ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, has asked the head of the U.S. Southern Military Command to begin “strategic and operational planning” towards intervening in the country.Support for a U.S. invasion has also been voiced by many other pro-coup/pro-GuaidóVenezuelan-Americans outside the embassy including one of the leaders of the crowd, Robert Nasser.

Some in the pro-Guaidó crowd have claimed that they want to see the embassy seized by Guaidó’s forces simply so they can renew their passports. However, an embassy for a government that does not exist and holds no territory in Venezuela would clearly have no ability to renew a passport.

In fact, seizing the embassy is aimed at setting up a parallel government and pushing for U.S. invasion or civil war, but under the guise of diplomatic officialdom. This is where the contradiction of those who express themselves as the authentic voices of “the Venezuelan people” is exposed, as they support the collective punishment of Venezuelans through sanctions, internal destabilization, and U.S. intervention, while demanding that their countrymen and women be delivered from economic crisis.

NOT FIT for public consumption, @askavenezuelan deleted their tweet in which they admitted to me that the escualidos harassing and assaulting embassy protectors and vandalizing the building are members of the Venezuelan upper class #AskAnUpperClassVenezuelanThug pic.twitter.com/4ooK4zy8vA

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 6, 2019

On cue, the pro-coup lobby tells people to follow the hashtag #AskAVenezuelan. Caracas Chronicles, a U.S.-based blog popular with anti-Chavista Venezuelan-Americans, has also promoted the hashtag. This hashtag and the website under the same name (www.AskAVenezuelan.com) have quickly become a marketing mantra for the pro-Guaidólobby in D.C.

Advanced marketing strategies have also been used by others seeking to escalate conflict, such as with the professional Syrian-American activists who called in recent years for U.S. military intervention in Syria. Some Nicaraguan-American groups in D.C. have also successfully promoted the financial strangulation of their country by the U.S. empire through the NICA Act.

#AskAnUpperClassVenezuelan

So who owns the website www.AskAVenezuelan.com? According to a search through godaddy.com, the website is owned by Nelli Romero, a computer repair consultant who also owns a company called MyTeks.com. On Twitter, Romero goes by Nellie Belén Izarza. The company’s site on Zoominfo claims it has an annual revenue of $4.2 million.

On her Linkedin page, under the name Nelli R., she describes herself as an expert in “political and social media engineering” in Washington, D.C.

Romero has also worked as a consultant and lobbyist with the liberal Sunlight Foundation non-profit. Yet, in old social media posts, Romero supported and hyped up the violent guarimba protests that resulted in numerous deaths. One tactic familiar to the guarimbas was the guaira, where pro-coup militants tied razor wire across streets that then resulted in the deaths of motorcyclists and passersby, some by decapitation.

A screenshot of the LinkedIn page of Nellie Romero (AKA Nellie Belén Izarza)

In March of 2019, in apparent outrage that Washington had not yet authorized a military invasion of her homeland, Romero tweeted out (in Spanish): “With no U.S. Marine Corps there is no paradise.”

The pro-Guaidó spokespeople often insist to reporters that the group is neither right-wing nor left-wing in its political ideology, and that they do not want war or intervention. However, a quick glance over the “Ask a Venezuelan” website shows that it has repeatedly promoted Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) calls for U.S. intervention and brutal sanctions. Both Romero and Bustillos have often retweeted and praised Rubio, a neoconservative considered one of the most militaristic members of the U.S. Congress.

In a testament to how astroturfed the #AskAVenezuelan campaign is, the website admits that it was only started in response to a massive mobilization of anti-war activists in Washington who were protesting against Trump’s sanctions and intervention. In the “About” section, they say they “witnessed first-hand the high levels of misinformation about the situation in Venezuela.”

A screenshot from the AskAvenzuelan.com website

With the Republican Party in the U.S. already fully invested in the coup, ensuring support for regime change within the Democratic Party establishment, along with favorable coverage from liberal-leaning media outlets, is at the top of the opposition’s agenda. This is where Romero and Bustillos enter the picture, as both describe themselves as liberal Democrats, even while they support the ultra-militarism of Marco Rubio. Romero has taken on an important lobbying role, meeting recently with Hillary Clinton’s former 2016 running mate, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA).

For her part, Romero advocates for LGBTQ rights even while apparently controlling the #AskAVenezuelan brand. She is clearly not happy with those in the pro-Guaidó mob that have unleashed tirades of vitriolic homophobia against their political foes across the street and in the embassy. Together with Bustillos, she is appearing to do all she can to repackage the angry, entitled roar of a largely right-wing mob into a bipartisan message that appeals to a war-weary U.S. public.

Beyond the PR strategy that governs the embassy siege, D.C.’s pro-Guaidó lobby appears intent on consolidating a new status quo where Caracas is permanently isolated both diplomatically and economically, and an escalation of the conflict is just over the horizon.

The D.C. regime-change crew

Besides the marketing strategists, a number of well-connected Venezuelan exiles and diaspora members from the D.C. area have mobilized alongside some demonstrably violent figures each day outside the embassy.

One pro-coup activist seen on embassy grounds is Emerson Hevia, a Senior Principal Architect at the arms manufacturer Raytheon. The company is considered one of the biggest war profiteers in human history.

"Venezuelans here and in Venezuela want US intervention," reads this opposition activist's sign pic.twitter.com/pFfZxPqwVM

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 1, 2019

Also present at the protests has been Moises Rendon, a fellow at the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies. Backed by NATO, defense contractors, and Gulf monarchies, this D.C. think tank was exposed by The Grayzone for hosting a private roundtable of Trump and Guaidó advisors to discuss the use of military force against Venezuela.

Alejandro Perez Barrios — a former employee of the World Bank and currently a senior manager at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group — has also taken part in the embassy siege.

Another prominent pro-coup activist is Carlos Alaya (also known as Carlos Alfredo Ayala Quintero), a marketing strategist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). One of Washington’s most important international financial institutions (IFIs) promoting neoliberal austerity across the hemisphere, the IDB recently hired a key architect of the coup in Venezuela, Ricardo Hausmann. The son of the President of the Venezuelan Association of Constitutional Law, Alaya has berated peace activists with vile epithets.

In fact, it has been common for many of the pro-coup activists to verbally assault female CODEPINK members, hurl racist invective at black anti-war activists, anti-Semitic slurs at reporters, and play jingoistic Trump speeches on loudspeakers.

My experience so far with Venezuelan opposition has been abuse and hate. This guy and his friends just started calling me a “fucking bitch.” I was just standing with other journalists watching the protest. You’ll never get people on your side talking like that. pic.twitter.com/QhG9sXkVfN

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) April 30, 2019

Another character known as “Mohamed” has aggressively attempted to rip food away from embassy protectors and briefly broke into the embassy, where he ransacked an entire room. He was then allowed by Secret Service police to walk freely among the mob outside, where he was seen providing private security to Guaidó’s faux ambassador Carlos Vecchio.

This woman with the opposition ran up to block a female Embassy Protection Collective member who was delivering food. "No food for anybody," she said.

Secret Service took control of the situation before saying everyone would have to leave the embassy at some point in time. pic.twitter.com/iCqcbDMKZ0

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 1, 2019

Cathy Caminero is a consistent participant of the pro-coup mob. She has been seen openly in public making threatening gestures against embassy defenders.

Her partner, Cesar Caminero, has also taken part in the pro-coup siege. On his Linkedin profile, Cesar Caminero states that he is a senior level IT Engineer with an active Department of Defense (DoD) secret clearance. DoD secret clearances are provided only to either DoD employees or approved employees of a DoD associated contractor. Caminero currently works as a senior Windows engineer team leader for Navstar Inc., a firm that provides IT and other services for U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of State. Video on Twitter shows Cesar together with Guaidó’s fake ambassador Carlos Vecchio.

A screenshot of the LinkedIn page of Cesar Caminero

Perhaps the most prominent non-Venezuelan supporter of the embassy siege is a neighbor of the embassy. He is Jim McCarthy of CounterPoint Strategies. According to its website, CounterPoint has “specialized in an aggressive, combative style of crisis management.” Earlier in his career, McCarthy is said to have “handled a variety of Fortune 500 and foreign government accounts” for two major public relations agencies in Washington. With a slew of wealthy clients, his company has been said to be “often at odds with Greenpeace” while “McCarthy helped pioneer the practice of using Google ads to target journalists.” On Twitter, McCarthy has denounced Venezuela’s elected government and promotes an interventionist position.

Many in the pro-Guaidó mob appear to work for either international financial institutions, hawkish D.C. think tanks, or arms- and military-oriented contractors.

Candid audio of members of the opposition recorded surreptitiously and obtained by MintPress News expresses fear of revealing their identities linked to their professions (including one opposition protester who describes herself as being involved in “national security”).

Hailing from affluent backgrounds and overflowing with entitlement, the regime-change crew besieging the embassy does not mind brutalizing the anti-war activists that stand in their way. As numerous media reports show, the so-called “peaceful” and “pro-democracy” mob enjoys blaring 120 dB air horns just inches away from the eardrums of anti-war activists, and flashing bright strobe and scuba lights directly in the eyes of embassy defenders, even the elderly. Secret Service officers coordinating with Trump’s Department of State have stood by and done little to nothing. Violating international law, electricity has been cut off to the embassy and recently D.C. police themselves began to actively stop food and water from getting to those inside.

Loving school teacher, or just a big bully? @MarlonEcorrea has been intimidating, verbally abusing, and assaulting peace protectors since Tuesday. Don't you have papers to grade? #handsoffvenezuela #nobloodforoil pic.twitter.com/9C4d595gln

— Hasta La Victoria, Siempre (@SanrioSocialist) May 4, 2019

One anti-coup activist often present outside the embassy wondered if the fake ambassador, Vecchio, had hired a top-flight PR firm to control the messaging of the pro-coup mob. He explains:

Between Tuesday and Wednesday [May 7-8] there was a huge, concerted shift. People were seen coaching young Venezuelan-American women on how to cry and to wave their passports. They removed some of the more vitriolic opposition and dressed up some golpistas [coup supporters] in rainbow LGBTQ flags to downplay their rampant homophobia.”

On May 7, oppositionists wrapped themselves in at least a dozen pride flags, but the following day, the flags had totally disappeared.

Wear all the rainbow flags you like, but I've still been called a f*ggot and a sissy more times by the Opposition in the last week than I have in the previous two years, at least. https://t.co/AIe1gVHgAE

— Morgan Artyukhina (@LavenderNRed) May 7, 2019

As national media focuses its lenses on the delegated spokespeople of the pro-coup mob outside the Venezuelan Embassy, the voices of millions of working-class Venezuelans who voted in large numbers for their elected government, or even just those who do not want to see an escalation of the conflict, have been wholly ignored. Instead, Americans are instructed to consult a carefully conceived “Ask a Venezuelan” campaign that was designed by corporate marketing strategists. It is the brainchild of elite members of the diaspora with ties to the U.S. government, the military-industrial complex, and the Guaidó coup administration. And, as with a number of other PR campaigns, it is designed to distract Americans from the deeply unsettling reality unfolding in the heart of their nation’s capital.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jeb Sprague lectures at the University of Virginia and formerly taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Globalizing the Caribbean: Political Economy, Social Change, and the Transnational Capitalist Class (Temple University Press, 2019) and Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti (Monthly Review Press, 2012), and is the editor of Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania (Routledge, 2016). He is a founding member of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism (NCSGC)

Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the United States’ policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.

Featured image is from Embassy Protection Collective

As carbon emissions have been growing at an accelerated rate (Figure 1) and new power plants are under construction (Figure 2) the race to destroy species and civilization is heading toward its critical conclusion (Figure 3), already with fatal consequences (Figure 4).

According to the UNHCR, since 2008 an estimated 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate or weather-related events. According to researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Wisconsin global warming is already responsible for some 150,000 deaths each year around the world. In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that climate change would lead to about 250,000 additional deaths each year between 2030 and 2050, from factors such as malnutrition, heat stress and malaria.

The climate crisis constitutes the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced and nature has suffered since 66 million years ago. From 1870 to 2014, cumulative carbon emissions totaled about 545 GtC (Billion ton/year). Emissions are partitioned among the atmosphere (approx. 230 GtC or 42%), ocean (approx. 155 GtC or 28%) and land (approx. 160 GtCor 29%).

The transfer of additional part of the known fossil fuel reserve of >3000 GtC to the atmosphere is threatening to render large parts of the Earth uninhabitable. Yet, bar lip service and non-binding agreements, world governments are now presiding over the demise of much of the global biosphere and of civilization. As the planet keeps warming and the powers to be are spending $trillions on so-called “defense” and murderous wars, tragically people and nature suffer.

Figure 1. the rise in global carbon emissions to 37.1 GtC per year between 1960-2018

Figure 2. Coal power plants under construction

Every week the internet reports newly discovered and exploited coal, oil and gas fields. Just as often it reports cyclones, floods and fires. The two are intrinsically linked. Whereas any single extreme weather event may not be related to global warming, the trippling of the incidence of extreme weather events heralds the rising warming/energy of the planetary system away from conditions that allowed humans to flourish in the Neolithic, as contrasted with conditions in which stone age people had to struggle to survive.

By 2018 the carbon concentration of the atmosphere exceeded 750 billion tons (GtC) as compared to pre-industrial atmospheric composition of ~620 GtC, representing the largest transfer of carbon from the Earth to the atmosphere since 56 million years ago. Over the last quarter century carbon emissions have risen by almost 63 percent (1990 – 22.6 MtCO₂/year; 2005 – 30MtCO₂/year; 2017 – 37MtCO₂/year; 2017/1990 – +163.5%). Coal production in Australia increased 13.6% between 2005 and 2010 and 5.3% between 2009 and 2010. In 2016 Australia was the fourth-highest producer with 6.9% of global production (503 MtC out of 7,269 MtC total) and was the biggest net exporter of coal, with 32% of global exports (389 MtC out of 1213 MtC total).

As a consequence of global carbon emissions by 2018 mean temperatures reached +0.98C over pre-industrial conditions and rose further by more than +0.5C over the continents. For example in Mongolia reaching +2.2C. The temporary masking effect by human-emitted aerosols potentially accounts for latent additional temperature rise of between 0.5 and 1.0C (as was manifested for example when jet flights contrails were discontinued on 9/11).

In coastal regions and islands the rise in temperature is driving increasingly intense cyclones and flood events, such as hit the Caribbean islands, southeastern Texas, Florida, Mississippi,  southwest Pacific islands, the Philippines, Kerala, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Japan, Queensland, and other regions.

Figure 3. (a) CO₂ concentration rise 1970-2100 and (b) mean temperature rise to 2100 to levels well above the stability limit of the large ice sheets

In terms of the effects of global warming on human life (OECD “Climate change: Consequences of inaction”), a quantitative risk assessment by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests additional climate change-related deaths for the year 2030 would total 241000 people (38000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48000 due to diarrhea, 60000 due to malaria, and 95000 due to childhood under-nutrition). A review of the effects of extreme weather events in 2018 is given in “Deadly weather: the human cost of 2018’s climate disasters – visual guide” by Daniel Levitt et al (2018).

A changing climate not only affects agriculture but also leads to greater food spoilage from heat, leading to diarrheal illnesses and hunger that caused around 310,000 deaths in 2010. Heat and cold illnesses, malarial and vector-borne diseases, meningitis and environmental disasters account for the rest of the almost 700,000 deaths attributable to these direct climate impacts. Pollution, indoor smoke, and occupational hazards related to the carbon economy cause the rest of those 5 million deaths (Figure 4) through ailments like skin and lung cancer.

Figure 4. Numbers of climate related deaths in 2011 and 2030.

The melting of the polar ice sheets, where warming takes place at twice the rate as over the rest of the Earth, heralds a fundamental climate shift. Development of temperature contrasts between cold ocean regions and warming tropical regions (Figure 5) would lead to storminess, costing the lives of millions.

Figure 5. Hansen et al.’s 2016 model of global land and sea climate changes in 2065, 2080 and 2096, according to the IPCC emission scenario AIB. As melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets progress large volumes of cold ice melt water flow into the North Atlantic Ocean and the southern ocean, leading to meters-scale sea level rise and to transient cooling of the oceans. Until near-complete melting of polar ice allows resumed rise of global temperature rise, tropical zones and deep sea continue to warm. Near-complete melting of the large ice sheet would allow the Earth to return to climate conditions such as existed in the Early Eocene.

Life on Earth is controlled by presence of water, insolation, the composition of the atmosphere and oceans, asteroid impacts and large volcanic eruptions. Cyclic and abrupt changes in these factors have affected the climate over billions of years. Sharp rises in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, such as about 66 and 56 million years ago and at present have and are leading to major crises in nature. The current rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration, combining the effects of CO₂, methane and nitric oxide, is now tracking toward 500 ppm CO₂ equivalent, the stability threshold of the large ice sheets. The consequent rise in mean global temperature by of 3 to 4 degrees Celsius over a period as short as a century or so represents one of the largest catastrophes recorded in geological history, posing an existential threat for most species and for civilization. Current manifestations include a growing spate of extreme cyclones, floods, droughts and fires killing large number of people. Inexplicably business as usual persists among the political classes, chief executives and the media, expressing a plethora of half-truths and lies, defying the original definition of the species as “sapiens”.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies in northwestern Hama eliminated at least 45 militants during the past few days, according to pro-government sources.

Lt. Col. Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Shamali of Jaysh al-Nasir, Captain Ahmed Ismail and Mohamad Najar of the Idlib Free Army and Mohammed Abdul Karim and Muayad al-Jasser of Jaysh al-Izza were among the eliminated militants.

Both Jaysh al-Nasir and the Idlib Free Army are a part of the Turkish-backed coalition of militant groups, the National Front for Liberation (NFL), while Jaysh al-Izza is known to be a key ally of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) in this part of Syria.

The SAA is currently developing its advance in the area of Sheikh Sultan.

In own turn, militants targeted a truck armed with a 23mm gun, a battle tank, an ammo truck and a pick-up truck belonging to the SAA around al-Huwayz with anti-tank guided missiles.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham also claimed via its media wing that its members had shelled a “Russian operations room” in northwestern Hama with Grad rockets and artillery rounds. Pro-government source didn’t report any such incident. However, local sources said that several rockets landed in the village of al-Jarniyah injuring at least two children.

In the Homs desert, pro-government forces responded with a local security operation to the May 15 ISIS attack on SAA positions near the town of al-Sawwanah. According to the ISIS news agency Amaq, 21 SAA soldiers were killed in the incident, but this number was not confirmed by visual evidence.

A suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device exploded near a security center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the town of Manbij in the afternoon of May 16. A SDF security officer was killed and ten civilians were injured in the attack, most likely staged by ISIS.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

On Saturday, Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily.

What happens then is the real question. Iraq’s parliament is already being spun as “pro-Iran factions,” and it’s been a long time since US officials, Pentagon or otherwise, gave any indication that they thought staying in Iraq was up to the Iraqi government.

So while the Iraqi Prime Minister is warning the US that they can’t use Iraq to launch a war on Iran, the US is browbeating Iraq over its government-aligned Shi’ite militias, and doing everything they can to try to portray that Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government as effectively in league with the Iranians, and subsequently a threat to US interests. No matter what happens, it seems certain US-Iraqi ties will suffer for it.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Both countries want major outstanding issues resolved, a bilateral deal finalized, ending the longstanding differences on trade and related issues. 

Yet after 11 rounds of talks since China’s Xi Jinping met with Trump at his Mar a Lago, Florida estate in April 2017, followed by US initiated trade war in March 2018, major structural issues remain unresolved.

The Trump regime upped the stakes by blacklisting Chinese tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates on the phony pretext of preventing the company from “potentially undermin(ing) US national security.”

The move made bilateral accommodation all the harder, risking full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

If things go this far, it will negatively affect both countries and the global economy. It also risks direct Sino/US confrontation.

Beijing won’t be pressured, bullied, intimidated or threatened to bend to Washington’s will. In response to blacklisting Huawei and its affiliates, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said his government “emphasized many times that the concept of national security should not be abused, and that it should not be used as a tool for trade protectionism,” adding:

China “will take all the necessary measures to resolutely safeguard (the) legitimate rights” of its enterprises. He slammed the US for “unilaterally and continuously escalat(ing) the trade conflict.”

Are future talks between officials of both countries doomed by this action and other unacceptable US toughness? Will China walk away believing resolution of major bilateral differences are unattainable?

Blacklisting Huawei prohibits it from buying parts and components from US companies without Washington’s approval.

The action shuts the company out of the US market, making it harder for it to sell some of its products that rely on what’s bought from US suppliers.

A second action by Trump bans US companies from purchasing telecom equipment from foreign suppliers “deemed to pose a national security risk” — his order aimed at Huawei and other Chinese firms without naming them.

The action is all about wanting US companies to have a leg up on foreign competition. China is sure to retaliate against shutting out Huawei and its affiliates from the US market.

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

According to its chairman Liang Hua, it intends signing “no-spy” agreements with European and other countries.

Its UK-based representative Nigel Jeffries said targeting its supply chain, hampering its 5G rollout will “limit the US to inferior yet more expensive alternatives, leaving the US lagging behind in 5G deployment and eventually harming the interests of US companies and consumers.”

China’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, responded sharply to the Trump regime’s action against Huawei, calling it “unreasonable bully tactics…cast(ing) a (long) shadow” over bilateral relations, “underestimat(ing) the will and determination of the Chinese people to defend the country’s core interests.”

The broadsheet accused the US of “backtrack(ing) in trade talks,” falsely accusing Beijing of “reneging on promises,” adding:

“It is totally nonsense that disregards facts, and such false accusation on China is nothing but a lie.”

“China will never make concessions on major issues of principle, and its core concerns must be addressed.”

“Washington holds a hegemonic logic that anything goes against its own wills is considered backtracking.”

“The US exploits…treaties, clauses, and organizations that conform to its own interests, and slams those not able to help it maximize its profits.”

“The US went back on its words four times since it started trade talks with China a year ago…The arbitrary acts of the US increased uncertainty for the future development of global economy and disappointed the international community.”

Instead of seeking mutual cooperation with China and other countries, the US demands they subordinate their sovereign rights to its interests — a formula for highteined friction, perhaps making resolution of major differences with China unattainable.

What seemed unlikely earlier is how things may turn out ahead because of unacceptable Trump regime actions.

Economist Richard Wolff slammed its actions, saying it’s costing jobs and money. DJT “initiated a massive tax on Americans. Tariff is just a word for a particular kind of tax” paid by US consumers and businesses.

Wolff believes both countries will reach agreement, each claiming “they prevailed, and we will go on to some other crisis that can keep our president in the news.”

His remarks came before the US blacklisted Huawei. The action isn’t a game-changer so far. The playing field could markedly shift if the Trump regime persuades its European and other allies to adopt a similar policy.

It won’t be easy, given the company’s advanced technology, superior to competition, making it hard to shut the firm out of world markets.

The US and China are competing for which country will be the leader in 5G technology, trillions of dollars of market value at stake.

Bilateral differences are all about the US wanting to undermine China’s aim to become an economic, industrial, and technological powerhouse, matching or exceeding the US, the trade deficit a minor issue by comparison.

Will both countries be able to resolve major differences in the weeks and months ahead? The jury is very much out on this major issue.

According to Chinese state media, its authorities may suspend trade talks with the US if its unacceptable toughness continues, saying:

“If there is no real concrete action by the US, it will be meaningless for you to come and talk” — the remark directed at Treasury Secretary Mnunchin, adding:

“It is better to suspend the consultation completely and return to the normal working track.”

“The US does not show any sincerity in continuing talks. Instead, it is extending its pressure tactics.”

“The US on one hand says it engages in talks, but on the other hand keeps using petty tricks to destroy the atmosphere for talks.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said

“(i)f anyone thinks that China is bluffing, it will only be another major miscalculation…”

Is Beijing bluffing or is it willing to suspend further talks, hoping the Trump regime softens its hardline position.

At a Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations, Xi Jinping said the following:

“If someone thinks their own race and civilization is superior and insists on remoulding or replacing other civilizations, it would be a stupid idea and disastrous act,” adding:

“We should hold up equality and respect, abandon pride and prejudice, deepen our knowledge about the differences between our own and other civilizations, and promote harmonious dialogue and coexistence between civilizations.”

His remarks were directed at the US without naming it. Authorities of both countries are aware of the dangers of deteriorating relations.

That’s where things are heading on issues besides trade. The US wants control over other nations, their resources and populations.

It’s playing with fire by trying to push China and Russia too far, heightening the risk of possible global war.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Terrorist groups in West Africa are dangerously trying to transplant the “Syraq” model of transnational destabilization to the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle in order to turn it into a similarly lawless region like the frontier between those two aforementioned Mideast states used to be during the height of Daesh’s so-called “caliphate”, with this terrifying development proving that France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali has been a total failure as well as threatening to cause another Migrant Crisis to crash into Europe.

The “West African ‘Syraq’”

Terrorists thought to be affiliated with either Al Qaeda or Daesh ambushed Nigerien troops near the Malian border not far from the capital of Niamey and ended up killing at least 28 of them in a horrifying attack which bodes very negatively for the West African region as a whole. Terrorist groups in this part of the continent are dangerously trying to transplant the “Syraq” model of transnational destabilization to the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle after a spree of attacks in this area over the past several months showed that it’s becoming just as lawless as the frontier between those two aforementioned Mideast states used to be during the height of Daesh’s so-called “caliphate”. This terrifying development poses very serious security risks for Europe because of the chance that it could quickly spiral out of control and catalyze another large-scale Migrant Crisis, thus potentially drawing it deeper into mission creep as it seeks to preemptively thwart this scenario.

Different Crisis, Same Origins

The origins of the growing West African terrorist crisis are identical to the Mideast one in that they can both be traced back to a US-led war on a regional leader whose destruction destabilized nearby fragile states and created a fertile ground for unconventional threats to take root. The US’ 2003 War on Iraq preceded the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria that led to Daesh’s rise, just as the 2011 NATO War on Libya triggered the large-scale exodus of highly trained and battle-hardened Tuaregs back to Mali where they quickly got to work carving out the separatist state of “Azawad” that was later hijacked by Islamic militants. The key difference, however, is that the Mideast states were always comparatively more stable than the West African ones, which is why the geographic scope of destabilization in the former was more limited than in the latter. Furthermore, while the Kurds have historically been a transnational issue in the Mideast, their Tuareg structural counterparts in West Africa were more historically successful in their campaigns precisely because of the said state weaknesses.

France’s Failure

France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali was meant to reverse the massive gains made by the region’s proto-Daesh after the destruction of Libya and subsequent hijacking of “Azawad” by Islamic militants, while the follow-up “Operation Barkhane” and attendant assembling of the Paris-led so-called “G5 Sahel” military bloc of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad were meant to sustain these gains and keep terrorist threats in check. That obviously didn’t happen, and not only did the chaos spread to the one-time Burkinabe bastion of regional stability, but it’s also contributing to perennially failed state Niger’s collapse that’s exacerbated by the challenge that Boko Haram simultaneously poses in its east. The “perfect storm” is evidently forming, but extra-regional hegemon France seems powerless to stop it since it already has its hands full dealing with its many domestic problems and protecting its Chadian ally from Libyan-originating rebel invasions.

EuroRealists To The Rescue?

Faced with the credible possibility of rising terrorist threats in the “West African ‘Syraq’” causing an out-of-control Migrant Crisis to crash into the bloc later this summer, the EU might feel compelled to step up is military activities there in order to thwart that worst-case scenario, which might receive a populist boost if EuroRealist parties pull off an impressive performance after the EU Parliamentary elections later this month. Italy has already positioned itself as a “frontline state” interested in actively doing whatever is needed to stop new migrant waves to Europe, so it’s not inconceivable that Salvini might try to use the EuroRealists’ possibly forthcoming mandate after the elections to lobby for the urgent dispatch of a multilateral EU intervention force (possibly through PESCO) to ensure that this scenario never transpires. Such an effort could be paired with a so-called “Marshall Plan for Africa” to satisfy the EuroLiberals’ socio-economic priorities there in exchange for their support of this military mission.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever ends up happening, it’s quickly becoming increasingly clear that the rest of the world is being forced to take notice of the “West African ‘Syraq’” that’s forming in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border triangle after a recent spree of terrorist attacks there drew international attention to the region. The latest one that killed at least 28 Nigerian soldiers comes on the heels of several in Burkina Faso that specifically targeted Christians and finally got the West to wonder what’s going on in this part of the world, especially since the memory of the Easter terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka is still fresh on people’s mind. If the EuroRealists do well in the upcoming EU Parliamentary elections, then there’s a real possibility that the bloc might begin seriously considering more robust multilateral military action in West Africa in order to thwart the worst-case scenario of another Migrant Crisis crashing into its borders, though there’s no telling if it’ll succeed where France has already failed.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Featured image is from Nato Defense College Foundation

As of May 10, Mr. Trump has arbitrarily increased tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US, worth about 200 billion dollars, from 10 % to 25%. It is an action without any foundation. An action that makes no sense at all, as China can and will retaliate – and retaliate much stronger than what the impact of the US’s new “sanctions” may bear – because these arbitrary tariffs are nothing else but sanctions. Illegality of such foreign interference aside, there is hardly any serious economist in this world, who would favor tariffs in international trade among “adults” anywhere and for any reason, and, of course, least as a punishment for a nation. All that such sanctions do is pushing a partner away. In this case it’s not just any partner; China is a key trading partner of the United States.

The new tariffs will hardly harm the American consumer. There are huge profit margins by US middlemen and importers of Chinese goods. They are competing with each other within the US – and the consumer may not even notice a thing. However, the US economy will likely suffer, especially from Chinese retaliatory actions.

A spoiled child, what Trump is, doesn’t get his way – and goes into a tantrum, not quite knowing what he is doing, and knowing even less what he may expect in return.

Back to trading with China. China has a million ways (almost) to retaliate. China can devalue her currency vis-à-vis the dollar, or China can dump some of their almost 3 trillion dollars-worth of reserves on the money market – just take a wild guess about what that would do to the hegemony of the dollar which is already in dire straits – with ever more countries departing from the use of dollars for international trade.

And just hypothetically, China could stop altogether exporting all that Walmart junk that American consumers love so much – just for a while. Or China could stop making iPhones for the US market. Guess what kind of an uproar that would trigger in the US? – Or China could of course, levy herself high tariffs on US imports, or stop US imports altogether. China being part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – actually the co-founder of it – has many alternatives to cover her demand. No need to depend on the west.

Let’s not forget, the SCO which also counts as its members, Russia, India, Pakistan, most of Central Asia, and Iran poised to become a full-fledged member – covers about half of the world population and a third of the world’s economic output, or GDP. No need to look to the west for ‘survival’ – those times are long gone.

But more importantly, what all this looks like to me – is the desperate thrashing around of a dying beast, or in this case a dying empire.

We have the US and Venezuela – threats after threats after threats – Maduro must go, or more sanctions. Indeed, according to a study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), these horrifying, totally illegal sanctions or blockages of imports, most of them already paid for by Venezuela, have killed some 40,000 people in Venezuela. Of course, Washington doesn’t care about legality and killing, also typical for a fading mighty power – no respect for law and order, no respect for human rights and human lives. One only has to see what type of psychopaths are occupying the tasks of “Foreign Minister” and of “National Security Advisor” or of Vice President, for that matter – they are all sick, but very sick and dangerous people.

Well, in Venezuela “regime change” didn’t work out – so far. Pompeo has been clearly told off by Mr. Lavrov during their recent get-together in Helsinki – and China is in the same line of supporting the government of Nicolas Maduro.

Next – Iran. Attacking Iran has been a dream of Bolton’s ever since the US 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq. Bolton and Pompeo are of the same revolting kind: They want wars, conflicts, or if they don’t get wars, they want to sow fear, they enjoy seeing people scared. They want suffering. Now they didn’t succeed – at least so far – with Venezuela, let’s try Iran. Pompeo – “Iran has done irregular things” – not saying what in particular he means – so Iran has to be punished, with yet more sanctions. And any argument is good.

The entire world knows, including the Vienna-base UN Economic Energy Commission, and has acknowledged umpteen times that Iran has fully adhered to the conditions of the Nuclear Deal from which the US exited a year ago. Of course, no secret here either, this at the demand of Trump’s Big Friend Bibi Netanyahu. The European Union vassals may actually turn for their own business interests, not for political ethics, but pure and simple self-interest – towards respecting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Nuclear Deal. China and Russia are already holding on to the Deal, and they are not impressed by Washington’s threats. So, there is very little Trump and his minions can do, other than saber rattling.

Therefore, the nefarious Pence-Pompeo-Bolton trio must invent another warning: Iran or any proxy of Iran shall attack an ally of the US, and Iran will be devastated. In fact, they consider the Houthis in Yemen who fight for their sheer survival against the US-UK-France – and NATO supported Saudis, as a proxy for Iran. So, the US could start bombing Iran already today. Why don’t they?

Maybe they are afraid – afraid Iran could lock down the Strait of Hormuz, where 60% of US oil imports have to sail through. What a disaster that would be, not just for the US but also for the rest of the world. Oil prices could skyrocket. Would Washington want to risk a war over their irrationality? – Maybe, Mr. Halfwit Trump might, but I doubt that his deep-dark state handlers would. They know what’s at stake for them and the world. But they let Trump play his games a bit longer.

Moving the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, loaded with war planes, close to Iranian waters costs hundreds of millions or billions. Just to enhance a threat. A show-off. Bolton and Pompeo will entertain their sadism, enjoying seeing scared people. But the cost of war doesn’t matter – it’s just more debt, and as we know, the US never, but never pays back its debt.

Next – or simultaneously is China. The trade war with China that started last year, then had a respite to the point of the recent joint negotiations – and suddenly the Trumpians are veering off again. They must smash China, wanting to appear superior. But why? The world knows that the US are no longer superior – by a long shot, and haven’t been for the last couple of years, when China surpassed the US in economic strength, measured by PPP = Purchasing Power Parity – which is the only parity or exchange rate that has any real meaning.

Guess what! – All these three cases have one common denominator: The dollar as a chief instrument for world hegemony. Venezuela and Iran have stopped using the dollar for their hydrocarbon and other international trading, already some years ago. And so did China and Russia. China’s strong currency, the Yuan, is rapidly taking over the US-dollar’s reserve position in the world. Sanctioning China with insane tariffs is supposed to weaken the Yuan; but it won’t.

All of these three countries, China, Iran and Venezuela are threatening the US dollar’s world hegemony – and without that the US economy is dead, literally. The dollar is based on thin air, and on fraud – the dollar system used around the globe is nothing but a huge, a very big and monstrous Ponzi-scheme, that one day must be coming crashing down.

That’s what’s at stake. New FED Board member, Herman Cain, for example, is pledging for a new gold standard. But none of these last resort US measure will work, not a new gold standard, not a trade and tariff war, and not threats of wars and destruction and “regime change”. The nations around the world know what’s going on, they know the US is in her last breath; though they don’t quite dare saying so – but they know it, and are waiting for the downfall to continue. The world is waiting for the grand fiesta, dancing in the streets, when the empire disappears – or becomes utterly irrelevant.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites.

He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on 23.12.2016. The resolution passed in a 14–0 vote by members of the U.N.S.C. including four parties having power of veto: China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

It reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.

The Council reiterated its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.  It underlined that it would not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the two sides through negotiations.

It further called for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction. 

The resolution states that all measures aimed at changing the demographic composition and status of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, including construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians are in violation of international humanitarian law, Israel’s obligation as the occupying Power according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and previous resolutions.

This is also the (nuclear-armed) government that is currently inciting the Trump administration of the United States to attack the (non-nuclear) sovereign nation of Iran in a bid to impose Israeli regional dominance.  It must not succeed because that would almost certainly escalate into a global, nuclear conflict that could end in worldwide devastation.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from American Free Press

The New York Times continues to descend further into spewing fiction masquerading as news. Its most recent analysis challenges Judith Miller‘s delusional screed about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as sheer nonsense. Evidently the Times has a propensity for disgracing itself. Now the newspaper’s latest low is William Broad’s essay, “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise,” touting a wild conspiracy theory that 5G technology’s severe risks to human health and the environment is a covert Russian plot intended to sow confusion into the minds of the American public.

As a patriotic loyalist of Russo-paranoia, Broad has dreamed up a hallucination that Russia is preparing to outpace the US’s strategy to dominate the global “internet of everything” in the race to launch 5G technology globally. Aside from Broad’s otherwise corporate friendly stances supporting hydrofracking, genetically modified foods, and the myth that vaccines do not contribute to neurological disorders, he has produced some excellent work about Yoga culture and North Korea. Yet these are hardly topics that would enable a person to speak intelligently about electromagnetic frequency’s (EMFs) biomolecular effects on living organisms. 

Seen in its context, the Time’s article was timely. It was published just days before the National Day of Action to Halt 5G on May 15th.  The event was launched by Americans for Responsible Technology and has earned the support of nearly one hundred organizations including the Environmental Health Trust, the EMF Safety Network, Parents for Safe Technology, Wireless Radiation Education and Defense, among others.  Since the telecom industry and FCC have no viable science to support their claims, through the mouthpiece of the Times it has found a voice to further fuel the nation’s Russia mania. 

Source: The New York Times

Broad argues there is no scientific support for 5G signals contributing to brain tumors, infertility, autism, heart tumors and Alzheimer’s disease. Although the research may arguably offer less than 100 percent certainty, the scientific evidence unquestionably confirms that 5G is assuredly unsafe. Persons already suffering from electromagnetic sensivities will have no means of escape. And tens of thousands of scientists and medical experts agree. Contrast this with the Europa EM-EMF guideline that found “strong evidence that long-term exposure to certain EMFs is a risk factor for diseases such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and male infertility… Common EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) symptoms include headaches, concentration difficulties, sleep problems, depression, lack of energy, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms.”  Seemingly, the Times has never heard of the “precautionary principle,” a recognized standard for avoiding unnecessary risks.  

In January 2019, over 26,000 scientists submitted a petition to the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union, the Council of Europe and world governments opposing the 5G roll out. The letter states,

“Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming.  The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies now collectively confirm 5G’s measurable adverse effects. Oddly, the Times didn’t bother to do its homework. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified EMFs as possibly carcinogenic to humans. This was based on research showing a direct correlation between glioma tumors — a malignant brain cancer — and wireless mobile phone use.  The Agency falls under the umbrella of the WHO, a cesspool compromised by corporate conflicts of interests and biased influence. The WHO’s website, which Broad references, denies EMF’s adverse effects nevertheless acknowledges the IARC’s classification.  A former chair of the IARC group responsible for evaluating the epidemiology and carcinogenicity of mobile phone radiation was Anders Ahlbom, co-founder of Gunnar Ahlbom AB, a Belgian lobbying firm providing public relations services to the telecom industry. Hence, the IARC is completely biased.

The letter continues,

“If the telecommunication industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.”

Between August 2016 and September 2018, over 400 new studies on electromagnetic radiation risks were compiled by public health Professor Joel Moskowitz at the University of California at Berkeley. These studies cover earlier generation technologies, whereas 5G will be everywhere and far less safe. Compared to 4G technology in common use today, every 5G base station will contain hundreds of thousands of antennas each aiming laser like microwave beams to all devices. In an urban area, base stations could be installed as little as 100 meters (328 feet) apart.

Today, nations with the highest EMF technological use are witnessing a dramatic increase in male sterility. Researchers at the National Academy of Medical Sciences in Ukraine, placed study participants’ sperm samples in incubation conditions either with our without Wifi mobile phone exposure. Sperm exposed to EMF showed substantial DNA fragmentation and loss of motility. More comprehensive in vitro and in vivo studies out of Hanyang University in Seoul concluded that EMF exposure dramatically altered reproductive endocrine hormones, gonadal function, embryonic development, pregnancy and fetal development. In addition, pineal gland measurements observed a decrease in melatonin, which would contribute to either sleeplessness or poor quality of sleep that is commonly noted by persons with EMF sensitivities. 

Nor should we neglect other nations now aligning with the scientific consensus outside of private industry. France now bans mobile phone use from its primary and secondary schools. It is also against the law to advertise cell phones to children. Israel’s Minister of Health has called for banning all Wifi installations in schools; the city of Haifa has already done so. Ontario schools label Wifi transmitters as “hazardous.”  Mumbai, India’s largest city with over 18 million residents, has banned all cell towers from being erected in the vicinity of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and juvenile detention homes. Before any cell tower can be installed on building roofs, it must have 100 percent approval from residents.  And Russia, which Broad is intent to isolate with a phantasmagorical conspiracy, started removing Wifi from schools back in 2012. 

Nowhere in the Times’ piece does Broad provide credible references to the thousands of published papers warning about the likely injurious consequences once we are all exposed endlessly to 5G frequencies.  Rather, the author finds an “expert” voice in Marvin Ziskin, an emeritus professor of radiology at Temple University’s School of Medicine. Broad quotes Ziskin arguing that “5G emissions, if anything, should be safer than previous generations.” 

Ziskin happens to be a co-chair at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE. The organization is not scientifically impartial. It provides 5G training through the telecommunications industry. Its former president during the Obama Spectrum Frontier initiative spent three decades with telecom giants AT&T and Lucent Technologies. And its current Executive Director and COO held senior leadership positions at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA is the brain initiative for the military’s future use of 5G.  Its website IEEE Spectrum outlines its full support for colonizing the new frontier with 5G technology.

For an excellent example of Broad’s nonsensical fear-mongering, he writes, “hundreds of blogs and websites appear to be picking up the network’s [Russia TV] 5G alarms, seldom if ever noting the Russian origins.”  Frankly, nobody needs to turn to Russia for information about 5G’s threats to animal and human health and the environment. We can simply listen to our own American scientists. In fact, Broad could have looked into the CIA’s own records. Russia knows a little something about EMF’s and microwave’s health risks. In 1985, the CIA declassified its “Soviet Directed Energy Weapons” report detailing 878 long-term studies the former Soviet Union conducted on microwave particle and electromagnetic frequency effects on the human body. To avoid confusion, 5G transmission is within the microwave band frequency. 

An overview of the Soviet’s research thoroughly frightening. Its researchers determined the degree and amount of time required from exposure for developing sensory somatic disorders, autonomic nervous disorders, cardiovascular disease, circadian rhythm interruption, hypoglycemia, sensory motor disorders and chronic fatigue, depression and memory loss. 

Consequently there have been no secrets about the health threats from microwave frequency exposure. They have been known for several decades yet federal officials, the tech companies and the media such as the New York Times has made a concerted effort to bulldoze aside the evidence. If 4G technology had been categorized and regulated as a pharmaceutical drug, it would have been black boxed and removed from the market long ago. And 5G will be far more toxic and there will be no escape from it.

As a journalist, in our opinion, Broad has displayed gross negligence. Anyone could have spent less than an hour searching the peer-reviewed literature and technological safety organization’s websites and walk away convinced that something is disturbingly awry with the institutionalized version of 5G safety.  The fact that the New York Times would promulgate such conspiratorial foolishness is even more unsettling. 

Nevertheless, to say that there are serious conflicts of interest in the Times’ public projection of 5G would be an understatement. Instead, the newspaper has been directly colluding with the telecommunications industrial complex. Last January, the Times CEO Mark Thompson, alongside Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestberg, appeared at the Consumer Technology Conference in Las Vegas to announce the news outlet’s partnership with the telecom giant Verizon to launch a 5G Journalism Lab. The Times will now have an advantage over other mainstream media by gaining “early access to the 5G network” as the news goes increasingly digital.

Furthermore, Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of communications at New York University, has pointed out that the Time’s top shareholder is the Mexican billionaire and mobile phone business magnate Carlos Slim. Slim is positioned to reap billions beyond his own fortune with the 5G roll out south of the border. “He therefore stands to profit hugely off 5G,” writes Miller, “although he’s rich enough already to live far from any of the cell phone towers  that will have millions of us battling tumors, or dropping dead from  heart attacks—about which “Mr. Slim” is also (obviously) rich enough  already not to care.”

Have we learned nothing from history? Phony corporate-funded tobacco science instilled in us the belief that tobacco was beneficial to our health. Synthetic hormone replacement therapy was marketed as the perfect antidote for menopausal symptoms despite the most comprehensive study to date by the Nurses Health study that led to the FDA’s black box warning on women’s hormone replacement therapy.

Monsanto is now tanking under the weight of lawsuits because its flagstaff glyphosate herbicide or Roundup has been proven to be carcinogenic in the courtroom. Nevertheless Monsanto has generated many tens of billions of dollars in revenue while deceiving  populations and nations for over three decades about its safety record. Our military personnel are indoctrinated into the illusion that depleted uranium exposure in the Middle East poses no health risks. Hence, soldiers should not worry from the radiated particulate matter being inhaled on the battle field. Lead in paint and gasloline and asbestos were likewise presented as harmless. 

How much further down this rabbit hole must we go? 5G is as bad as all of these earlier marketing fabrications and much worse. We can choose not to smoke or drink. We can decide on the foods we wish to eat. We have a choice to take a medication or not.  But no one will be able to have a choice to aovid 5G exposure. Borrowing a term from Times columnist Thomas Friedman, 5G is the “golden straightjacket” for the elite and military that simply won’t come off.

With every public health threat, such as the one Americans will face with 5G, it required years to decades before a toxic product was removed from the market. And that was before our federal agencies and the media became fully captured by private industry and special interest groups. We must not expect to find a single negative report regarding 5G technology released by any federal health agency, and certainly not by the telecom industry. If we do not act now, it will be too late after the planned 20,000-plus satellites are launched to drape the planet in EMF radiation. 

There is urgent reason to be concerned about 5G, especially for our children and their future children who will live in a sea 5G radiation.  Dr. Lennart Hardel, an oncology professor at University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, has even considered the horrible thought that the telecommunication industry’s plans to launch 5G globally may violate the Nuremberg Code.  Mr. Broad, your employer is already a quagmire of falsehoods. Are you ready to accept your responsibility for this sorely delinquent experiment that awaits us?  We certainly hope you are. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.

Featured image is from End of the American Dream

On May 1, the US Department of Defense sent a letter to the European Union warning that plans for an independent EU army could lead to a collapse in the NATO alliance between the United States and the EU powers. The letter, sent by the US undersecretaries for defense Ellen Lord and Andrea Thompson to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, was leaked to the Spanish daily El Pais.

El Pais reported on it on May 13, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived uninvited at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels to demand EU support for US war moves against Iran.

“The United States is deeply concerned by the approval of rules for the European Defense Fund and the general conditions of PESCO,” the letter states, referring to the EU army’s technical name, the Permanent Structured Cooperation.

The EU army, the letter added, is leading to “a dramatic step back in three decades of growing integration of the trans-Atlantic defense industry.” It warned of the danger of “unnecessary competition between NATO and the EU.”

The “very harsh” letter, El Pais reported, “is full of more or less veiled threats of possible political or commercial retaliation if Brussels maintains its intentions to develop European weapons projects without consulting with outside countries, like the United States.”

The Pentagon letter objects to provisions in the European Defense Fund mandating that European firms control the technology employed in European weapons systems, and threatens to take similar measures to exclude European firms from Pentagon weapons contracts. It states,

“It is clear that similar reciprocally imposed US restrictions would not be welcomed by our European partners and allies, and we would not relish having to consider them in the future.”

Referring to the conflicts that erupted when European powers led by Berlin and Paris opposed the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the letter states that the current EU plans “could not only hurt the constructive relationship between NATO and the EU, but could also potentially revive the tense discussions that dominated our contacts 15 years ago on European defense initiatives.”

The seriousness with which threats of a breakdown of the US-European alliance are taken in ruling circles in Europe was reflected in the publication this week of a study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in London. The report, titled “Defending Europe: scenario-based capability requirements for NATO’s European members,” estimated the costs to Europe to rebuild NATO’s military capacity if the United States abandoned the alliance. The document called for a massive $110 billion naval build-up and $357 billion to prepare for war with Russia.

The publication of these documents point to the advanced state of collapse of alliances and arrangements that have governed the international relations of world capitalism for decades. It puts paid to the European imperialist powers’ attempts to present their plans for a major escalation of their military spending and operations as a supplement intended to aid NATO. The Pentagon views these plans as a threat to develop the EU as a rival to the US-led NATO alliance, founded in 1949 after two world wars between the United States and Germany.

The strategic aims underlying the deployment of US warships and troops for war with Iran, which Washington is justifying with unsubstantiated and non-credible allegations of an Iranian military threat to the United States, go well beyond that oil-rich region. Washington in engaged in a ferocious military campaign not only to defend its fading military hegemony in the Middle East and Eurasia. One of its main aims is to stamp out the danger of a potential challenge from its great power rivals, including its nominal European allies.

The massive military build-up underway in Europe, as the EU powers pour billions of euros into their militaries and wage bloody wars of plunder such as the Franco-German occupation of Mali, underscore the class nature of these conflicts. They are bitter struggles between rival imperialist powers over the spoils to be obtained from the world economy, amid growing working class opposition to war and the austerity measures used to finance the military build-ups.

Washington viewed the temporary alliance between Berlin, Paris and Moscow at the UN in opposition to the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, justified by lies about non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as a serious threat. Now that Brexit has deprived London of its ability to veto plans for an EU army on Washington’s behalf, these conflicts have vastly escalated. Under cover of an agreement of all the NATO powers to boost military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, strategic and commercial rivalries continue to rise between Washington and the EU powers.

On May 13, US Senators Ted Cruz and Jeanne Shaheen introduced bipartisan legislation to sanction European and Russian firms working on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany. Using against Europe methods Washington previously used to target Iran and Russia, the bill would ban travel and financial transactions involving employees and physical assets of firms building the pipeline, which Trump denounced last year. Firms targeted could include Germany’s BASF, British-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, and France’s ENGIE.

Tensions are growing as well over EU relations with China, after Italy formally signed in March a memorandum of understanding endorsing Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a vast Eurasian infrastructure plan, over US objections. Since then, Washington has threatened Germany and Britain with a suspension of intelligence cooperation for allowing the Chinese firm Huawei to participate in building their telecommunications network.

Bitter conflict has above all been provoked by the US campaign against Iran since the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear treaty and reimposed US sanctions, which cut across multi-billion-dollar deals signed in Iran by European oil and industrial firms.

Last week, after visiting Britain to demand London’s support for Washington against Iran, Pompeo abruptly cancelled a visit to Berlin, citing “pressing issues,” and flying to Baghdad instead. There, he promoted US oil deals and demanded that the Iraqi puppet state set up after the 2003 war protect US interests from alleged Iranian threats. Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote on Pompeo’s snub to Berlin that “much of that which for a long time was lauded as the German-American friendship now lies in pieces.”

Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron complained of the US torpedoing of the Iranian nuclear deal. At an EU summit last week in Romania, Macron said,

“Firstly, Iran did not withdraw from this deal. Secondly, if Iran withdraws from this deal, it will be the responsibility of the United States.”

And yesterday, Spain withdrew its frigate Méndez Núñez from the US-led naval battle group anchored by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which is sailing to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran. Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles blandly stated:

“If the North American government intends for the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to go to a certain zone for a certain mission that it never agreed with Spain, we are provisionally leaving the battle group.”

Despite taking a move indicating real fears that the naval battle group will launch military action against Iran, Madrid sought to downplay the decision and mask its significance to the public. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said there had been

“no formal complaint” from Madrid to Washington over this event, adding, “It is not something to get too worked up about.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

American media still refer to Juan Guaidó, America’s hand-picked “legitimate leader” or “legitimate president” of Venezuela, as having an “administration.”

The truth is that his “administration” — consisting of advisors and other opposition leaders — are all either arrested and being held by the government, hiding, seeking asylum in various foreign embassies (Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Argentinian) in the capital of Caracas, or have fled to other countries like Brazil and Colombia.

Guaidó, apparently a government of one, has so far avoided arrest probably because the elected Venezuelan President Maduro doesn’t want to give the US an excuse to try and rescue him, or to launch military actions of some kind against Venezuela as the White House keeps threatening to do.

Clearly, in calling for US military intervention, Guaidó has both demonstrated almost his total lack of backing among the masses of Venezuelan people, as well as his desperation, given Latin American’s visceral resentment of US interventions in their country, all of which have been designed to put autocrats or even military juntas in power, and many of which have openly overthrown popularly elected governments, as in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and elsewhere.

None of this gets reported in the US. Only recently has the New York Times, always a reliable backer of US imperial policy in Latin America, at least hinted at the possibility that the reason Maduro remains president and that Guaidó’s efforts to oust him are failing  so abysmally could be that the Venezuelan people want him to stay president, and do not want a US-backed coup or a US military intervention to replace him.

At this point the huffing and puffing coming from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and especially from the White House National Security Advisor and chief militarist blowhard John Bolton, are looking pretty pathetic, with Bolton trying to sow dissension and distrust by hinting that Maduro “better not trust” his own generals’ loyalty, and by offering rewards to those generals willing to abandon Maduro.

It is an indication of the United States’s declining power and influence in Latin America that few outside the US with its insular mass media believe that the US would or even could successfully invade Venezuela and impose a government on that country of 32 million (a number that keeps declining as the upper middle class and rich flee).

If anything, US sabotage and threats and US backing for a government of the wealthy are probably galvanizing support for Maduro. While people in the US, if they are paying any attention at all to events in Venezuela, may believe that Maduro is a corrupt thug, people in Venezuela itself, and in most of Latin America know full well that the main problems in that oil-rich country have to do with the collapse in oil prices since the heady days of Hugo Chavez when it was going for $100 a barrel, to American efforts to block Venezuela from exporting its oil now, and to freeze or even seize Venezuelan assets and oil receipts from the oil it does manage to export, and to other forms of economic warfare engaged in by the United States. As in Cuba, this kind of strategy by the US only works to build support for the country’s existing government.

At some point Guaidó is going to go. He will either be written off by the US media — his main backer — or will be arrested. Probably the latter will follow the former since once he’s recognized as an impotent charlatan, his arrest will not make him a martyr for the opposition. Already he has lost what public support he had as Venezuela’s wealthy abandon the country for Florida. As well, the “50 countries” that we in the US keep hearing about which supposedly back Guaidó as Venezuela’s “legitimate leader” are realizing that they were hoodwinked by the US. The are now mostly calling for a calmer response to the crisis in Venezuela, and are refusing to buy into US military threats against the Maduro government. Meanwhile nobody in the US media mentions that over 140 countries in the world support Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. 

In truth it’s impossible to find that list of “more than 50 countries” backing a self-proclaimed and unelected Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. The closest I could come by running google searches was a map produced by Bloomberg News listing 13 countries besides the US as supporting Guaidó. These included Canada, the UK, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. That is 13 plus the United States. Listed as supporting Maduro as elected President are Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia, and Cuba, though I believe Bloomberg neglected to mention Nicaragua, a strong Maduro backer, which would make it six. All of Africa and much of Asia was left as “no opinion,” though in fact that means they are continuing to recognize the current Maduro government. 

For a time, most of the countries of Europe were lining up behind Guaidó, particularly after Germany announced that it was recognizing him as the new interim leader of Venezuela in late January, and after it ousted the country’s ambassador, but then by late March Germany was having second thoughts, and rejected the person sent there by Guaidó to assume the position of Venezuelan ambassador. At this point, except for the UK, the countries of Europe, along with Mexico and Uruguay, are simply calling for a dialogue and a negotiated solution to the Venezuela political crisis, and in addition to opposing any talk of military action or a coup, are seeking nothing more than a new election (which Maduro would probably win, given the alternative of the return of a government of the rich). The Europeans are no longer really backing Guaidó.

The reporters who continue to refer to “more than 50 countries” calling for Maduro’s ouster all must be using the same wrong or outdated news clip or some exaggerated and dated State Department press release.  (I asked the State Department for an updated list today but so far none has been forthcoming, though it would appear such a list shouldn’t take long to compile given how short it must be.)

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from This Can’t Be Happening!

This article was written by Anne Ramberg, who happens to be the Secretary General of the Swedish Bar Association, the professional body of lawyers in that country.  The article has been translated by Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology and doctor of psychiatry. Anne Ramberg reveals her concern over the breech of legal principles, the treatment of Assange in general and the moral obligation to reveal wrongdoing, just as Julian Assange has done.

My knowledge about this matter, now an almost unique one, is not entirely in-depth.  It is a matter featured by everything from prodigal conspiracy theories deprived of any reality support, to a deplorable legal handling from both Swedish and British side.

The right to a fair trial within a reasonable time is established both in the Swedish legal system [Regeringsformen, 2 kap. 11 § andra stycket 1) and in the European Convention (Article 6). This legal right also applies during the preliminary investigation stage.

To this has to be added the so-labelled presumption of innocence.

It may well be questioned whether the result of the Swedish managing [of the case] was done in accordance with the principle of proportionality. I have previously stated that I find it remarkable that the Prosecutor did not implement the preliminary investigation forward at the pace and with the care one could have demanded.

In this context, the courts have a very great responsibility. They could have put tougher demands on the prosecutor, to move the preliminary investigation forward. The conclusions that the prosecutor had as ground to dismiss the case [the pre-investigation], should also have been communicated considerably earlier than what happened. This leads to the conclusion that Sweden has a great responsibility for the situation that has arisen.

Now the question is whether Sweden should resume the preliminary investigation that prompted Assange’s asylum request to Ecuador –and his subsequent involuntary lock-in and demand his extradition to Sweden.

I fear that the treatment of Assange has damaged the reputation of the Swedish judicial system, even though Assange did not actively contribute to participate to any significant extent.

That being said, I have sympathy for Assange’s concern that Sweden would acquiesce with the United States in the event of a request for his extradition. One can only speculate on this. I am of the personal opinion that the Supreme Court would not extradite Assange to the United States. If my assumption is correct, a Supreme Court review [of the extradition case] would result in that Assange could not be extradited, even if the government so wished.

Let us not forget that whatever we may think of Assange or the deeds he is suspected of, this is about much more. It is about freedom of speech and the rule of law principles.

It is ultimately about the right and the moral obligation to expose war crimes. Assange and Wikileaks did it. The revelations about US abuse were necessary and particularly important.

Should we extradite to Germany’s Hitler someone who has revealed the existence of concentration camps and genocide, regardless to how that information was obtained?  I don’t think so.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

1. Iraq is 168,754 mi² and Iran is 636,400 mi²; that is, Iran is geographically 3.77 times bigger than Iraq, almost 4 times as big.

2. Iraq’s population when invaded was 26 million. Iran’s population today is 81 million.

3. General Eric Shinseki testified before Congress prior to Bush’s invasion that based on the US military’s experience in the Balkans, 800,000 troops would be needed to provide security to Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted on 100,000 troops, wrongly believing he could pull them out in 6 months. Bush’s viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, later admitted that “we never had enough troops” in Iraq.

4. Since Iran is 3 times as populous as Iraq, by Shinseki’s correct calculation, the US would need 2.4 million troops to occupy Iran.

5. The US total military personnel count is about 2,141,900, of whom 1, 281,900 are active duty and the rest reservists.

6. Iraq’s army was a conventional military force with four powerful tank divisions, which the US Air Force turned to black carbon dust. The US only ran into trouble when Iraqis opposed to the invasion turned to guerrilla tactics, which the US never was able to deal with effectively.

7. Iran can already mobilize at least 1.5 million paramilitary “Basij” forces for guerrilla warfare. This is in addition to over 500,000 active duty military personnel.

8. Iraq was largely ruled by a small Sunni minority of perhaps 17% of the population. Iran is ruled by the Shiite majority that makes up 90% of the population. That Iraq had a minority government allowed the Bush administration to make friends in the majority Shiite community by putting them in power. This step alienated and angered the Sunnis, but they were a minority and so could not do much about it. In Iran, the Shiite majority would mount a massive struggle against the US invaders.

9. Bush found international allies for his war on Iraq, including Britain and Spain. No one in Western Europe would join Trump in a war with Iran, making the US isolated and causing it to look like a unilateralist bully.

10. Whereas Iraq’s neighbors– Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular– had been mauled by Saddam and so did not strongly oppose Bush’s invasion, Shiite Iraqis, many Syrians, the Hazaras of Afghanistan, and the some 40 million Shiites of Pakistan would support Iran.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

All images in this article are from Informed Comment

An Israel-based campaign to meddle in the elections of several African, Asian and Latin American countries has been uncovered by social media giant Facebook.

Facebook announced today that it had deactivated dozens of accounts found to be spreading disinformation by posing as local journalists and influencers. The social media giant traced these accounts to Archimedes Group, a private company based near Tel Aviv which had engineered the campaign.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, told reporters that the platform had deleted 65 accounts, 161 pages and dozens of groups linked to the misinformation campaign, noting that this activity had garnered 2.8 million followers and hundreds of thousands of views. Gleicher also told reporters that Archimedes has now been banned from Facebook, Haaretz reported.

For its part, the Times of Israel quoted Gleicher as saying that

“these are actors that were essentially facilitating deception, and they appear to be commercially engaged to do this”.

He added:

“That type of business does not have a place on our platforms so we are removing them from the platform and our teams will continue to investigate to look for other instances of this type of behaviour, [whether] for commercial or other strategic purposes.”

Archimedes’ operations are thought to have focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia, as well as a handful of Asian and Latin American countries. It is thought that the campaign has spent over $800,000 on Facebook adverts since 2012.

Relatively little is known about Archimedes Group. The Washington Post noted that the group presents itself as “a consulting firm involved in campaigns for presidential elections,” using the slogan “winning campaigns worldwide”. The website also features a vague description of the group’s “mass social media management” software, which it claims can enable the operation of an “unlimited” number of online accounts.

The Washington Post added that Archimedes is headed by Elinadav Heymann, citing Swiss negotiations consultancy Negotiations.CH. Heymann is also reported to have been Executive Director of the European Friends of Israel since 2012 and an “advisor to various parties [in] the Israeli Knesset for 3 terms”.

Facebook’s Gleicher said he could not speculate as to whether Archimedes’ motives were political, and as yet it is not known who solicited and paid for the group’s services. However, given the campaign’s focus on predominantly central and west African countries – a region in which the Israeli state has recently tried to increase its influence – questions to this effect are likely to be raised going forward.

In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Chad to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries, which were severed in 1972. Speaking at a press conference before his departure, Netanyahu said that the visit was “part of the revolution we are doing in the Arab and Muslim world,” claiming that such an initiative “greatly worries, even greatly angers” Palestinians and the wider Arab world.

Though Israel’s normalisation drive in Africa has material benefits – often including lucrative arms deals, memorandums for economic cooperation and the use of airspace which will significantly shorten flight paths for commercial Israeli airlines – the initiative is also pursued for its propaganda value. Netanyahu has long been keen to emphasise these diplomatic successes, particularly in the run up to Israel’s general election which took place last month.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Black Agenda Report

The New York Times reported earlier in the week that top Trump administration national security officials asked for and received a briefing on military plans that would send some 120,000 US troops to the Middle East should Iran take aggressive actions against American forces there or resume work on nuclear weapons. That article set off furious tweetstorms from national security policy experts suggesting that National Security Adviser John Bolton was once again (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003) steering the United States into war in the Middle East on false pretenses.

.

https://t.co/vFrVDH2My7

There is no legal authority to use military force against Iran. US officials have been clear they want depose the Iranian regime. Anything they say should be suspect and not taken at face value.

— 🇺🇸 Jon B. “Globalist” Wolfsthal (@JBWolfsthal) May 14, 2019

I oversaw Iran policy and planning at the Pentagon from 2009-2011, at the height of concerns over Iran’s nuclear progress, and no plausible contingency except invasion and regime change would require sending 120,000 US forces to the Middle East. https://t.co/tBbpEVzddM

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 14, 2019

President Trump denied the Times report the next day, in a way that, as has often been the case, made a foreign affairs situation more rather than less confused:

“I think it’s fake news, OK? Now, would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we’re not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying.

The confusion continued as the Trump administration repeated claims that it had sent a carrier task force and other military assets to the region to counter unspecified threats to American troops and facilities in the region. These claims were subsequently downplayed by British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, the deputy commander of the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, who, according to the Times, said:

“No, there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria.”

The US Central Command responded almost immediately by saying Ghika’s comments run “counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region.”

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that

“three distinct Iranian actions have triggered alarms: information suggesting an Iranian threat against US diplomatic facilities in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Irbil; US concerns that Iran may be preparing to mount rocket or missile launchers on small ships in the Persian Gulf; and a directive from Khamenei to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Iranian military units that some US officials have interpreted as a potential threat to US military and diplomatic personnel.”

But in a stunning addition to a week of speculation about war with Iran, the Post article was headlined “Trump, frustrated by advisers, is not convinced the time is right to attack Iran” and quoted a senior unnamed administration official to the effect that Trump is frustrated with Bolton’s martial approach. The president, the official said, “wants to talk to the Iranians; he wants a deal,” not war.

Of course, some social media observers noted an obvious implication of the Post headline—there is a right time to attack Iran, it’s just not now. And others demanded what they see as another obvious implication of the situation: Bolton needs firing.

Fire John Bolton then: Trump, frustrated by advisers, is not convinced the time is right to attack Iran https://t.co/BG8E8E9MRm

— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) May 16, 2019

In general, while reporting the chaotic and shifting signals about the possibility of war with Iran—a possibility that seemed to spring from nowhere this week, supported only by vague assertions of Iranian threats—the major news media have not done a particularly good job of explaining why major US military action in Iran would be, in practical terms, so likely to end in disaster. David Frum takes a stab at such explication in a piece for The Atlantic, but his blade largely misses the target, with Frum, a former speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, spending most of the article explaining and apologizing for his support of the Iraq War of 2003.

For those interested in understanding why the probability of a successful US military effort against Iran is so horribly low, I recommend a reading (or re-reading) of this 2004 article by Atlantic correspondent James Fallows. Though not the most scintillating prose Fallows has ever written (sorry, Jim), the article lays out clearly and completely what a fool’s errand a US attack on Iran—a country that has been girding itself to thwart a US invasion for decades—would quickly become. The article details a carefully conducted war game of options in regard to Iran, played out by top experts. A concluding quote from the article says much about the options available to a US president, then—and now.

“After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers,” retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner said of the exercise. “You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune (since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focused on research-based solutions to major policy problems.

This article was first crossposted in February 2017.

Introduction

Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years. This has won them widespread support.  However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations contributing to bloody and disastrous actions. One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington DC to influence the public and Congress. 

A more recent example is from 2011 where false accusations were being made about Libya and its leader as Western and Gulf powers sought to overthrow the Gaddafi government. AI leaders joined the campaign claiming that Gaddafi was using “mercenaries” to threaten and kill peacefully protesting civilians. The propaganda was successful in muting criticism. Going far beyond a UN Security Council resolution to “protect civilians”, NATO launched sustained air attacks and toppled the Libyan government leading to chaos, violence and a flood of refugees. AI later refuted the “mercenary” accusations but the damage was done.

The Sensational New Amnesty International Report

On 7 February Amnesty International released a new report titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison”. It has received huge uncritical review in mainstream and liberal media.

Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan ‘mercenary’ story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. The consequences of the AI report are to accuse and convict the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians.  AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action”.

As will be shown below, the AI report is biased and partial. To the extent that it is resulting in a widespread kangaroo conviction of the Syrian government, the AI release can be called a “Kangaroo Report”.

Problems with the Report

1) The Amnesty International report on Syria violates their own research standards.  As documented by Prof Tim Hayward here, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, claims that Amnesty does its research ‘in a very systematic, primary, way where we collect evidence with our own staff on the ground. And every aspect of our data collection is based on corroboration and cross-checking from all parties, even if there are, you know, many parties in any situation because of all of the issues we deal with are quite contested. So it’s very important to get different points of view and constantly cross check and verify the facts.’ As documented below, the Amnesty report fails on all counts: they rely on third parties, they did not gather different points of view and they did not cross-check.

2) The report conclusions are not based on primary sources, material evidence or their own staff; they are solely based on the claims of anonymous individuals, mostly in southern Turkey from where the war on Syria is coordinated.

3) Amnesty gathered witnesses and testimonies from only one side of the conflict: the Western and Gulf supported opposition. For example, AI consulted with the Syrian Network for Human Rights which is known to seek NATO intervention in Syria. AI “liased” with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. This organization is funded by the West to press criminal charges against the Syrian leadership. These are obviously not neutral, independent or nonpartisan organizations. If AI was doing what the Secretary General claims they do, they would have consulted with organizations within or outside Syria to hear different accounts of life at Saydnaya Prison.  Since the AI report has been released, the AngryArab has published the account of a Syrian dissident, Nizar Nayyouf, who was imprisoned at Saydnaya. He contradicts many statements in the Amnesty International report. This is the type of cross-checking which Amnesty International failed to do for this important study.

4) Amnesty’s accusation that executions were “extrajudicial” is exaggerated or false. By Amnesty’s own description, each prisoner appeared briefly before a judge and each execution was authorized by a high government leader. We do not know if the judge looked at documentation or other information regarding each prisoner. One could argue that the process was superficial but it’s clear there was some kind of judicial process.

5) Amnesty’s suggestion that all Saydnaya prisoners are convicted is false.  Amnesty quotes one of their witnesses who says about the court: “The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted.” This assertion is contradicted by a former Saydnaya prisoner who is now a refugee in Sweden. In this news report the former prisoner says the judge “asked him how many soldiers he had killed. When he said none, the judge spared him.” This is evidence that there is a judicial process of some sort and there are acquittals.

6) The Amnesty report includes satellite photographs with captions which are meaningless or erroneous. For example, as pointed out by Syrian dissident Nizar Nayyouf, the photo on page 30 showing a Martyrs Cemetery is “silly beyond silly”. The photo and caption show the cemetery doubled in size. However, this does not prove hangings of prisoners who would never be buried in a “martyrs cemetery” reserved for Syrian army soldiers. On the contrary, it confirms the fact which Amnesty International otherwise ignores:  Syrian soldiers have died in large numbers.

7) The Amnesty report falsely claims, based on data provided by one of the groups seeking NATO intervention, “The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government.”  While it’s surely true that innocent civilians are sometimes wrongly arrested, as happens in all countries, the suggestion that Saydnaya prison is filled with 95% “ordinary civilians” is preposterous. Amnesty International can make this claim with a straight face because they have effectively “disappeared” the reality of Syria. Essential facts which are completely missing from the Amnesty report include:

a) western powers and Gulf monarchies have put up billions of dollars annually since 2011 to fund, train, weaponize, provide salaries and propaganda in support of a violent campaign to overthrow the Syrian government;  b) tens of thousands of foreign fanatics have invaded Syria;

c) tens of thousands of Syrians have been radicalized and paid by Wahabi monarchies in the Gulf to overthrow the government;

d) over 100 THOUSAND Syrian Army and National Defense soldiers have been killed defending their country. Most of this is public information yet ignored by Amnesty International and other media in the West. They have done a massive distortion and cover-up of reality.

8) Without providing evidence, Amnesty International accuses the highest Sunni religious leader in Syria, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, of authorizing the execution of “ordinary civilians”. The Grand Mufti is a personal victim: his son was murdered by terrorists near Aleppo. Yet he has consistently called for reconciliation. Following the assassination of his son, Grand Mufti Hassoun gave an eloquent speech expressing forgiveness for the murderers and calling for an end to the violence. What does it say about Amnesty International that they make these kind of specific personal accusations, against people who have personally suffered, yet provide zero evidence?

9) Amnesty uses sensational and emotional accusations in place of factual evidence. The title of the report is  “Human Slaughterhouse”. What goes with a “slaughterhouse”?  Why of course ….. a “meat fridge”!  The report uses the expression “meat fridge” seven separate times, presumably in an attempt to buttress the association.  Even the opening quotation is hyperbolic: “Saydnaya is the end of life – the end of humanity”.  This report is in sharp contrast with fact-based objective research and investigation; it is closer to perception management and manipulation.

10) Amnesty International accusations that the Syrian government is carrying out a policy of “extermination” are contradicted by the fact that the vast majority of Syrians prefer to live in government controlled areas. When the “rebels” were finally driven out of East Aleppo in December 2016, 90% of civilians rushed into government controlled areas. In recent days, civilians from Latakia province who had been imprisoned by terrorists for the past 3 years have been liberated in a prisoner exchange. The following video shows the Syrian President and first lady meeting with some of the civilians and gives a sense of the joy.

11) The Amnesty report is accompanied by a 3 minute cartoon which gives the false narrative that Syrian civilians who protest peacefully are imprisoned and executed. The cartoon is titled “Saydnaya Prison: Human Slaughterhouse”. Apparently Amnesty International is in denial of the fact that there are many tens of thousands of violent extremists in Syria. They set off car bombs, launch mortars and otherwise attack civilian areas every day. While there are mistakes from time to time, and also cases of corruption and bribery, it makes no sense that Syrian security or prison authorities would be wasting time and resources with non-violent civilians when there are tens of thousands of foreign sponsored actual terrorists in the country. The AI accusation is also contradicted by the fact that there are many opposition parties in Syria. They compete for seats in the National Assembly and campaign openly for public support from both the right and left of the Baath Party.

12) The Amnesty claim that Syrian authorities brutally repress peaceful protest is also contradicted by the Syrian reconciliation process. For the past several years armed opposition militants have been encouraged to lay down their weapons and peacefully rejoin society. This is largely unreported in western media because it contradicts the false stereotype presented by Amnesty International and western media in general. A recent example is reported here.

13) The Amnesty report cites the “Caesar” photographs as supporting evidence but ignores the fact that nearly half the photographs show the opposite of what was claimed. The widely publicized “Caesar photographs” was a Qatari funded hoax designed to sabotage the 2014 Geneva negotiations as documented here .

14) The Amnesty report makes many accusations against the Syrian government but ignores the violation of Syrian sovereignty being committed by western and Gulf countries. It is a curious fact that big NGOs such as Amnesty International focus on violations of “human rights law” and “humanitarian law” but ignore the crime of aggression, also called the crime against peace.  According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, this is “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister and former President of the U.N. General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, is someone who should know. He says, “What the U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State.” Amnesty International ignores this.

Background and Context

The co-author of this Amnesty International report is Nicolette Waldman (Boehland). She was uncritically interviewed on DemocracyNow on 9 February. The background and previous work of Waldman shows the inter-connections between influential Washington “think tanks” and the billionaire foundation funded Non Governmental Organizations that claim to be independent but are clearly not. Waldman previously worked for the “Center for Civilians in Conflict”. This organization is directed by leaders from George Soros’ Open Society, Human Rights Watch, Blackrock Solutions and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS may be the most significant indication of political orientation since it is led by Michele Flournoy, who was predicted to become Secretary of Defense if Hillary Clinton had won the election. CNAS has been a leading force behind neo-conservatives plan to escalate war in Syria. While past work or associations do not always define new or future work, in this case the sensational and evidence-free accusations seem to align with neoconservative political goals.

Conclusion

Amnesty International has previously published false information or “corroboration” which justified western aggression against Iraq and Libya. This seems to be the same role they are playing now in Syria.

The Amnesty International report is a combination of accusations based on hearsay and sensationalism. Partially because of Amnesty’s undeserved reputation for independence and accuracy, the report has been picked up and broadcast widely.  Liberal and supposedly progressive media outlets have dutifully echoed the dubious accusations. In reality this report amounts to a Kangaroo court with the victim being the Syrian government and people who have borne the brunt of the foreign sponsored aggression. If this report sparks an escalation of the conflict, which Amnesty International seems to call for, it will be a big step backwards not forward ….just like in Iraq and Libya.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the SF Bay Area. He can be reached at [email protected]

There was little pretense that when former UN Ambassador John Bolton became President Trump’s National Security Adviser and former Rep. Mike Pompeo moved into the Secretary of State position, that either would bring a professionally credible and respectable presence to  world diplomacy or foreign affairs.

It is fair to say that both have surpassed any of the bleak expectations and proven to be more extreme in their ideology, more personally amoral and malevolent than previously feared.  What we are seeing now is as if all constraints have been removed with free rein to fulfill their zio-neocon agendas specifically against Venezuela and Iran.

• While speaking to a student audience recently at Texas A&M University, Pompeo revealed his utter contempt for a democratic government based on the rule of law when he bragged about “lying, cheating and stealing” as CIA Director. To an audience of undergraduates which clapped and laughed throughout, Pompeo offered

“What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. (laughing as if he had said something humorous) We had entire training courses. (Audience applause and cheers) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” (emphasis added)

First in his class at West Point and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Pompeo prides himself on having “come to an understanding of Jesus that fundamentally changed“ his life as a cadet and today claims to  be a “man of faith.”  It is not clear who Pompeo thinks he is kidding with the religious fervor schtick but for sure it is not any divine deity which will one day sit in Judgment on his character and integrity.  The Texas A&M exchange reveals an unscrupulous bully who knows no limit to his omnipotence and a willingness to condone war crimes on behalf of the disreputable Empire he serves.

• Keynote speaker at AIPAC’s 2019 conference, Pompeo proved where his fidelity lies when he declared “Let me go on record: Anti-zionism is anti-semitism” which has become the new rallying cry for the poor, beleaguered state of Israel.
• As the State Department is now defining the term ‘anti Zionism,’ Pompeo appointed Elan Carr as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism with the ultimate goal to intimidate and criminalize critics of Israel’s foreign policy objectives.

In describing his responsibilities, Carr’s stated priorities will be to “reduce the feelings of insecurity”, review “indoctrination of anti semitic textbooks” and “focus relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti Zionism and anti-semitism.”  It takes living in a simulated reality to not grasp the distinction between criticism of Israel’s apartheid policy toward the Palestinians and its belligerent foreign policy in the Middle East and a genuine prejudice or discrimination based on one’s religious preference or ethnic differences.

At his press briefing, Carr was immediately in the weeds and lost total control of the narrative before being shut down by the State Department official spokesman.

As a one dimensional thinker,  Mr. Carr never described who or how anti-semitism will be identified. Will the State Department issue a weekly list of anti-Semitic offenders and what will  be the penalty?  Will State provide a list of forbidden anti-semitic words? How will deliberate intent be determined?   If a non-jew utters words like apartheid, yenta, yarmulke or illegal settlements, will they be considered proof of anti-Semitic?   Will the Nazis still be permitted to march in Skokie?  Will the tech giants rewrite their algorithms to search for ‘banned’ words?

• On April 10^th, Omar Barghouti (image on the right), a prominent Palestinian human rights defender and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement was denied entry by the US Consulate before departing Ben Gurion Airport despite having valid travel documents and having visited the US previously. Barghouti responded that

“Supporters of Israeli apartheid in the US are desperately trying to deny US lawmakers, media, diverse audiences at universities, a bookstore and a synagogue, their right to listen, first-hand, to a Palestinian human rights advocate calling for ending US complicity in Israel’s crimes against our people.”

• In a 2016 report, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda initiated an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan involving the torture of 61 prisoners committed by the US Army and the torture and rape of 27 prisoners committed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at CIAprison sites in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

In response to the ICC inquiry in 2018, Bolton warned

“We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans,”

In March 2019, Pompeo repeated the ICC threats with no apology in a straight forward defense of torture and war criminals.

“Since 1998, the US has declined to join the ICC because of its broad unaccountable prosecutorial powers and the threat it poses to American national sovereignty.  We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation.   I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel. These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis without allies consent. These visa restrictions will not be the end of our efforts.We are prepared to take additional steps, including economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change course,”

After the Court responded that itwould continue its investigation with “war crimes and crimes against humanitywere, and continue to be, committed by foreign government forces in Afghanistan,”  Reference to ‘allied” personnel and Israeli involvement in US war crimes remains impenetrable.  True to his word, in early April Pompeo revoked the visa for Bensouda (image on the left).

In a devastating setback for the ICC, its pre-trial chamber recently refused to approve the investigation from moving forward citing a lack of US cooperation.  Certainly the Pompeo – Bolton threat to criminally prosecute and personally sanction the Court’s judges or that the US would ‘use any means necessary ” had nothing to do with that decision.  Bensouda says she will appeal the chamber’s decision.

• After the January meeting with North Korea ended in failure, NK’s Deputy Defense Minister, who took part in the meeting, revealed that while Trump had shown a willingness to lift some sanctions based on NK’s moratorium on missile tests, he was later overridden by Pompeo and Bolton who brought “an atmosphere of hostility and mistrust” to the table with their “gangster like behavior.”

As the zio-neocons continue to move on Venezuela and/or Iran as uncontrollable malevolent fiends, loose cannons with no concept of international law or the need for global harmony, men of no conscience and no morality, it is only a matter of time before cosmic law balances the scale.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Here’s how the Canadians will deal with citizen journalism and narrative debunking—they’ll force the taxpayers to subsidize corporate news rackets. 

“Federal agencies will publish an A-list of newspapers and websites deemed reliable under a multi-million dollar subsidy program, the Department of Finance yesterday told the Senate national finance committee,” reports an Ottawa website, Blacklock’s Reporter. 

Bill C-97 the Budget Implementation Act proposes a 15 percent tax credit to a maximum $75 for subscribers of websites operated by a “qualified Canadian journalism organization”. Criteria are not known. The tax credit is projected to cost $11 million in 2020. It expires in 2024.

The bill also amends the Income Tax Act to offer lucrative payroll subsidies for news organizations “primarily engaged in the production of original written news content”. A total $360 million would be paid over four years through a 25 percent payroll tax credit for publishers, the equivalent of a maximum $13,750 per newsroom employee, retroactive to January 1, 2019.

Not only will Canadians be forced at gunpoint to pay the salaries of official government script readers described as journalists, but the government is now in the process of making sure the average citizen will be prevented from viewing “misinformation” on social media. 

From Global News:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said social platforms were “failing their users” on Thursday, while speaking at the Viva Technology conference in Paris.

He said his government would hold companies to account for fake news, and that they had to make major improvements to their means of dealing with the issue or there would be “meaningful financial consequences…”

Speaking about Canada’s upcoming federal election, he said the government was taking steps to eliminate fake news and that a new task force had been created in order to identify threats to the election and prevent foreign interference.

Singapore’s parliament approved the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) on May 8, 2019.

Activist Post reports:

Under the law, any government minister can compel website administrators, internet service providers, and even private chat groups to immediately correct or remove ‘fake news’ from their domains. But the law’s definition of what counts as fake or false is remarkably vague.

The “Christchurch Call” is helping to push forward a campaign to sanitize the internet of all content government characterizes as dangerous. 

The Christchurch Call is a commitment by Governments and tech companies to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. It rests on the conviction that a free, open and secure internet offers extraordinary benefits to society. Respect for freedom of expression is fundamental. However, no one has the right to create and share terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Of course, the definition of terrorist and violent extremist content online is remarkably vague, thus allowing the state to attach it to any individual or group it wants to discredit and target for elimination. 

“The term extremist refers to someone adhering to an ideology that is considered far outside the acceptable mainstream attitudes of society. Not all extremists are terrorists—some people hold extremist beliefs but do not resort to violence in an attempt to enact those beliefs. Some extremists hold extreme versions of views that could be considered normal,” explains the Anti-Defamation League. 

In other words, if you deviate from state-generated narratives, you are “considered far outside the acceptable mainstream attitudes of society” and will be denied access or—in the case of France, Germany, and now New Zealand and Canada—fined and possibly jailed for the crime of unapproved and therefore extremist and dangerous speech. 

The corporate media has done a fairly effective job of conflating populism and nationalism with white supremacy. It has also managed to portray antiwar activists both right and left as supporters of terrorism and either willing or unwilling propaganda tools for the likes of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, the mullahs in Iran, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin who is working to undermine democracy. 

The cancer of authoritarian censorship increases with every suspicious terrorist attack. Islamic terror now competes with white nationalism for headline space. 

Any criticism of the financial elite and their Ponzi scheme economy is considered antisemitism, and therefore hate to be censored and ultimately punished.  

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 davidduke.com

It’s not enough to want untold thousands to die and the country destroyed, now neocons in Congress want to steal more than a billion and a half dollars from Iran as compensation for something somebody else did or didn’t do. 

From the Daily Caller:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to make $1.68 billion worth of Iranian funds available to the families of 241 American servicemen killed in the 1983 suicide bombing on a Marine base in Beirut, Lebanon.

In Trump Bizarro World, as in the Obama and Bush versions of the same, reality and facts are only applicable when they serve the agenda. 

For instance:

The Iranian regime founded and supported the terror group responsible for the attack, Hezbollah. Multiple court decisions have authorized that Iranian funds be seized and given to the victim’s families.

It looks like The Daily Caller is going for The Washington Post Fake News Award, or one similar handed out by The Atlantic Council with the help of the Rockefeller Bros. 

First and foremost, Hezbollah was not founded by Iran. It is certainly funded by Iran in much the same way the US funds Israel. 

If Israel hadn’t invaded Lebanon in 1982, there would today be no Hezbollah. Hezbollah began as a Shia resistance to Israel’s invasion and mistreatment of Shias in Southern Lebanon. 

Second point. It is not conclusively known what group or country is responsible for the bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut back in 1983. 

At the time, Reagan’s Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane decided to blame Iran and Syria for the attack and a second on the US embassy in Lebanon. The US later said elements that would become Hezbollah were responsible. 

“Hezbollah’s track record on terror is largely speculative,” I wrote in April. “There is no evidence the group kidnapped the president of the American University in Beirut, Davis S. Dodge, or is there conclusive evidence it attacked the US embassy in Beirut or truck bombed a US military barracks in Lebanon.”

The US said the Islamic Jihad, a little-known group that claimed responsibility for the attacks, was actually Hezbollah, an organization that did not yet exist. Hezbollah formed in 1985. 

The attacks allowed the US and France to collaborate on attacking Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. The USS New Jersey fired hundreds of shells at Druze and Syrian positions. 

“In a nine-hour period, the USS New Jersey fired 288 16-inch rounds, each one weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. In those nine-hours, the ship consumed 40 percent of the 16-inch ammunition available in the entire European theater,” write Martin and Walcott in Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism. 

The target was Syria. If the US-Israeli plan for the Middle East was to be realized, Hafez al-Assad’s influence in Lebanon would need to be terminated. 

The first step was to kill Syrian commanding officers by lobbing 30 or more shells at a command center in the Shouf mountains. 

Many Shia and Druze civilians were killed in the effort by the US, France, and the Lebanese Army to eliminate the influence of Syria in the artificially created state of Lebanon carved out of Syria decades before by the French. 

All of the above historical information is easily available on the internet. Is it too much to ask corporate media journalists to do their homework? Or is putting things in their proper historical and political context a conspiracy theory? 

At the absolute minimum, they should mention the fact the Marine barracks and US embassy bombings have not been conclusively linked to Hezbollah, a group that did not exist at the time. 

Of course, I don’t expect this to happen under the current propaganda system imposed by the state and its corporate media. 

If a professional journalist wants to keep his or her job, they read the script. 

It’s not the truth, at best half-truth. It is deception. 

It’s the manipulation of millions of people to gain their acquiescence for the unimaginable—bombing sorties, cruise missiles, the drones of Hell unleashed, and the mangled and dismembered bodies of men, women, and children Mike Pence and John Bolton will never see. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Today, law enforcement agents broke into the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., and arrested the four remaining members of the Embassy Protection Collective.

“We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions,” Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron said.

For 36 days, the protectors had lived in the embassy to shield it from a raid by U.S. authorities working in concert with opponents of Venezuela’s lawfully elected president, Nicolás Maduro. Since U.S. officers had refused to allow food into the embassy, only four of the some 50 members of the collective had stayed in order to conserve supplies.

The Trump administration has been trying to engineer an unlawful coup and regime change in Venezuela. After U.S. puppet Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela on January 23, high Trump officials quickly ratified his declaration. The U.S. government seeks to illegally install Guaidó and a new ambassador in the D.C. embassy as part of its coup attempt.

After cutting off electricity and refusing to allow food and water to the protectors, agents from the Secret Service, State Department and Washington, D.C., police tried to raid the embassy on May 13. They read from an unsigned piece of paper titled “Trespassing Notice,” which stated that the U.S. government recognized Guaidó as president of Venezuela and Carlos Vecchio as Venezuelan ambassador to the United States.

The paper, which had no official letterhead or insignia, threatened that “anyone who refuses to obey the demands and orders to vacate the property will be in violation of federal and District of Columbia law, and could be arrested and criminally prosecuted.” After speaking with the protectors’ attorney, who told them they needed a warrant, law enforcement authorities left the premises.

While demonstrating outside the embassy this week, retired U.S. Army Reserve Col. Ann Wright told Truthout in an email:

“The attempt of the Guaidó faction and the U.S. government to seize the embassy of the government of Venezuela should be of concern to everyone. As a former diplomat,” she said, “I am particularly disturbed by the U.S. government’s recognition of Guaidó, who has undertaken three failed coup attempts and is calling for military intervention in Venezuela. Guaidó and the United States share a dangerous agenda which has little support in Venezuela.”

On April 30, Guaidó tried unsuccessfully to convince the Venezuelan military to seize power from Maduro. Six days prior to Guaidó’s foiled effort, the State Department posted a fact sheet bragging about the United States’s central role in the attempted coup, but quickly removed the posting.

Since 2017, the U.S. government has imposed illegal sanctions on Venezuela, which have caused 40,000 deaths and a 36 percent reduction in oil production.

Moreover, the Trump administration is moving dangerously close to an illegal military intervention in Venezuela.

U.S. Eviction of Protectors From Embassy Violates U.S. and International Law

On May 13, the National Lawyers Guild posted a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secret Service, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Idriss Jazairy, U.N. special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. The signatories, including this writer, condemned the law-breaking by U.S. agents at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C. The letter cited violations of the U.N. Charter and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and demanded that immediate action be taken.

“[T]he United States government, through various law enforcement agencies, have condoned and protected violent opponents in support of an attempted siege of the Embassy,” we wrote. Those actions are “creating a dangerous precedent for diplomatic relations with all nations,” the letter continued, which “are not only illegal, but they put embassies around the world at risk.”

Citing the Secret Service’s actions in “permitting violent opposition demonstrators to physically attack the Embassy, assault the peaceful invitees and prevent them from entering the Embassy with supplies of food and water,” the letter also decried “the hurling of racist, sexist and homophobic slurs at those expressing to support the peace activists inside the Embassy.” The letter noted that Gerry Condon, president of Veterans for Peace, was tackled, bloodied and arrested by Secret Service agents to prevent him from delivering food to the invitees.

Today’s raid of the embassy and eviction of the protectors violates two treaties the United States has ratified. When the U.S. ratifies a treaty, its provisions become part of domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) states,

“The premises of the mission shall be inviolable.”

U.S. agents are forbidden from entering the embassy without the consent of the Maduro government. The U.S. is also “under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.” The premises, furniture and other property “shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.”

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) states in Article 33,

“The consular archives and documents shall be inviolable at all times and wherever they may be.”

Article 27 provides,

“In the event of the severance of consular relations between [the U.S. and Venezuela], the [U.S.] shall … respect and protect the consular premises, together with the property of the consular post and the consular archives.”

Article 31 of the VCCR says,

“The authorities of the [U.S.] shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of [Venezuela].” Furthermore, “the [U.S.] is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity.”

Embassy Protection Collective Proposed a Protecting Power Agreement

On May 13, the Embassy Protection Collective wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry proposing a lawful resolution to the standoff: A mutual Protecting Power Agreement “would avoid a military conflict that could lead to war.” The letter stated that the United States wants a Protecting Power for the U.S. embassy in Caracas and Venezuela wants a Protecting Power for its embassy in Washington, D.C. “Such agreements,” the collective noted, “are not uncommon when diplomatic relations are severed.”

Indeed, Article 45 of the VCDR provides that if diplomatic relations are broken off between the U.S. and Venezuela, the U.S. must respect and protect the premises of the mission, including its property and archives. It also provides that Venezuela may entrust the custody of the embassy, including its property, archives and interests, to a third country acceptable to the U.S.

There is precedent for a third party taking charge of an embassy.

“This has happened in the case of Iran, Cuba and North Korea,” CODEPINK co-founder and embassy protector Medea Benjamin said on Democracy Now!. “The U.S. has often used the countries such as Sweden and Switzerland to protect its embassies. And this could be easily done in the case of the U.S. and Venezuela right now.”

Time reports that representatives of the Maduro government and the opposition are meeting in Oslo, Norway, to attempt a resolution of the conflict.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving toward the use of military action in Venezuela. Guaidó has organized a meeting with the U.S. Southern Command to get “strategic and operational” cooperation in removing Maduro.

Team Trump and Guaidó are playing with fire and plotting to violate the law in the process. The United Nations Charter forbids one country from using military force against another except in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council, neither of which has happened in this case.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

Featured image is from CodePink

US media reports suggest that President Donald Trump is considering replacing his hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton over his plans to push the United States towards a military conflict with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Bolton “is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea,” The National Interest magazine reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior Trump administration official told the magazine.

There is speculation in Washington “that there’s now daylight between Trump and Bolton,” the report added.

The fighting has also expanded to include US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officials say. A State Department official and a former White House official both report that Bolton and Pompeo are “fighting all the time.”

A former senior official in the State Department said Pompeo is enthusiastic about isolating Iran, but fearful of an actual war that might engulf much of the Middle East.

“John Bolton is the problem … Trump’s national security adviser is getting dangerous…particularly to the president’s ideals,” Douglas Macgregor, a Bolton rival and would-be successor, writes in Spectator USA.

Trump ran his election campaign on the promise to pull the US military out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — unwinnable post-9/11 wars that have consumed American lives and military budgets.

That partial retreat remains one of Trump’s strongest points in his pitch to be the so-called outsider president.

But Bolton is working in exactly the opposite direction.

The United States has been ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran, with Trump recently urging Tehran to talk to him.

“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

But then he said he would not rule out the possibility of military action in Iran amid escalating tensions before slamming former secretary of state John Kerry for his involvement in the issue.

His remarks came after Bolton said on Sunday that the United States was sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran.

The Pentagon announced on Friday that the US was deploying an amphibious assault ship and a Patriot missile battery to bolster an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers already sent to the Persian Gulf.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

On May 14, Saudi Arabia halted pumping on its 1,200km-long East-West pipeline after it had been targeted by suicide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The kingdom’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih confirmed the attack on the pipeline, which carries crude oil from the country’s main eastern oil fields to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu in the western part of the country. He described the attack as “an act of terrorism” and said that it “proves the importance of confronting all terrorist organizations.”

The targeted facilities were located in the towns of al-Duwadimi and Afif. No casualties were reported.

The energy minister stressed that Saudi oil production and exports will still continue uninterrupted. Despite this, global oil prices rose after the incident.

On the same day, Yemen’s Masirah TV, loyal to the Ansar Allah movement [also known as the Houthis], reported that seven drones had been employed against vital Saudi installations. According to the report, the drone strikes were carried out in response to Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen. The TV station quoted an official from the Ansar Allah government, who said that Yemeni forces are ready “to execute more of these significant and tough strikes as long as the siege continues.”

The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia blame any operations carried out by Ansar Allah against Saudi Arabia on Iran.

Another situation, which fueled concerns over oil supply disruptions and nearing conflict between the US-led bloc and Iran, is developing over the reported “sabotage attack” on four commercial vessels off the UAE’s Fujairah on May 12. Initially, the UAE denounced reports about this situation, but then was forced to admit that some kind of “sabotage” incident took place. The targeted vessels were identified as very large crude carrier (VLCC) tanker Amjad and crude tanker Al Marzoqah, both owned by Saudi shipping firm Bahri. The other two were UAE-flagged fuel bunker barge A Michel and Norwegian-registered oil products tanker MT AndreA Victory.

Thome Ship Management said its Norwegian-registered oil products tanker MT Andrew Victory was “struck by an unknown object”. Jaber Al Lamki, an executive director at the UAE’s National Media Council, claimed that the attack was “aimed at undermining global oil supplies and maritime security.”

Despite the lack of clear evidence, Western mainstream media outlets as well as many pro-UAE and pro-Saudi sources immediately blamed Iran. In turn, Teheran distanced itself from the attacks and claimed it was a false flag. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that the country expected such “suspicious sabotage acts” designed to “create tensions in the region”.

In the meantime, the US deployed the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Arlington amphibious transport dock, which carries marines, amphibious vehicles, and rotary aircraft, as well as the Patriot missiles, near the Persian Gulf. An additional strategic bomber task force arrived at the US airbase Al Udeid in Qatar. In all cases, the US cited the growing Iranian threat and possible Iranian attacks on US forces and infrastructure as the reason for the deployment.

At the same time, reports are surfacing that the US is actively drawing up plans for a military action against Iran. While Trump denounced NYT reports on the plan to deploy 120,000 troops to the Middle East, his administration repeatedly confirmed that it is ready for active measures in the event of the escalation or even in the event of Iran’s withdrawal from its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal accord. The irony is that the US itself has done more that any side to destroy this deal thus de-facto pushing the region toward the new crisis.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

It was way back when, right before our nation performed the most horrific act of preemptively attacking and invading Iraq… which was not only illegal, but highly immoral.

I was at the video store rapping with my friend Kenny the mgr. Now Kenny the mgr. was such a nice guy, despite his very conservative views. He enjoyed reading my columns, yet still would always comment “Your views are really waaaay out there- but on some of them I actually do agree.”

Like what I asked? “Well, I agree that we could have and actually need some sort of national healthcare for all of us, if the gov’t would cut down on excess spending… like giving money to all those regimes throughout the world that care diddlysquat about us!”

We got to the subject of conducting a war vs. Iraq. I stated the underlining fact that is rarely discussed on the mainstream media-. That being that such a war would cost us taxpayers over 100 billion smackeroos.

Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, this young mother, on line with two young sons swinging from her arms,  shouted with such vigor “He’s got it now! We cannot wait any longer! He has the uranium and he’s a danger!” Kenny assured her that ‘I myself do not like or support someone like a Saddam Hussein, but’… She cut him off with “He can make the big one pretty soon-. He’s got to go before he uses it!”

I asked the two of them why would this guy, if and when he had “The Bomb”, why would he risk losing his power, his country and, more importantly, his LIFE? Why would he use this bomb as a preemptive strike (sound familiar Georgie Jr.?) when it would be the LAST thing he would do alive? I concluded that men like him want to live as much as the next guy (or despot) especially since they live so well. They want to die of old age in a nice warm bed with their power under their pillow, and not go up in flames just to say “gotcha first”. Finally, I intimated that the only way this clown would use any “weapon of mass destruction” (seemed to be the phrase of the day )would be if he were cornered and trapped like the proverbial rat that he is. Isn’t that usually when rats attack?

Mother in War was already swinging her kids, movies in hand, out the door, shouting back that I was crazy to ever trust this madman. I tried to answer her about which country had the greater madman, but she was already climbing into her Land Cruiser with (I kid you not) license plates that read Support Education. I wanted to tell her that the $100 billion we would save could go pretty far in supporting education, as well as better healthcare for me, her and her swinging kids. Too late, she was off into the Friday traffic, getting her 12 miles per gallon. I guess this “War” with Iraq could go a long way for her. Perhaps the 112 billion gallons of oil under Saddam’s bed would help lower gas prices.

Finally, I scratched my head in wonder. Isn’t it so easy for any of us to send troops into war, like they did in the 60’s when many of my schoolmates returned in “zipped bags”? So easy to send some other mother’s son to fight and die. I wondered if a) Mother in War’s boys were 18 and 19, not 3 and 4 and b) we had a military draft in place. I wondered how “gung ho” Mom would then be. Perhaps she’d load her boys into the Land Cruiser and gasguzzleit to Canada instead of some troop transport.

Once again the John Boltons, Elliot Abrams, the ghost of good old hero John McCain (he of ‘Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran’ to the tune of the Beach Boy’s song Barbara Ann) and all the other war mongering cowards are once again banging the drum. Before we ‘sign off” on giving this (or any) President the power to wage war without a Congressional declaration, as  what transpired regarding the Iraq invasion, we and our politicos should have investigated all the facts, and all the options. Hear that Mother in War? Your boys could now be ready to land in Tehran.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

A British general threw a wrench into the Trump administration’s narrative that Iran is plotting attacks on American troops in the Middle East by telling reporters gathered at the Pentagon Tuesday that “there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces” in the region.

“We monitor them along with a whole range of others because that’s the environment we’re in,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, speaking via video from Baghdad. “If the threat level seems to go up then we’ll raise our force protection measures accordingly.”

Apparently eager to squash the general’s remarks, the U.S. Central Command issued a statement just hours later disputing Ghika’s comments and repeating national security adviser John Bolton’s unsubstantiated claim that American intelligence has “identified credible threats” from “Iranian-backed forces” in Iraq and Syria.

UK vs US: Top British general says NO increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Mideast; directly contradicts US claims used to justify regional military buildup.

US military spokesman slams the statement by top UK ally within hours. #Iran
https://t.co/H16P6dRgJN

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) May 15, 2019

The public dispute came as anti-war voices and foreign policy analysts warned that the United States, led by Bolton, may be attempting to manufacture a false pretext to justify launching a war with Iran.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, U.S. officials are—without any concrete evidence—attempting to blame Iran for attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

The effort to pin the tanker attacks on Iran came just over a week after Bolton used the planned deployment of an American aircraft carrier and bomber task force to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran with military action and warn—again, without evidence—of “escalatory indications” from Iran.

According to the New York Times—which reported Monday that President Donald Trump has reviewed a Bolton-crafted plan to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East to threaten Iran—Trump administration officials are having a difficult time convincing America’s European allies to join them on their march to war.

As the Times reported Tuesday:

Intelligence and military officials in Europe as well as in the United States said that over the past year, most aggressive moves have originated not in Tehran, but in Washington—where John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, has prodded President Trump into backing Iran into a corner.

One American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal planning, said the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was “small stuff” and did not merit the military planning being driven by Mr. Bolton. The official also said the ultimate goal of the yearlong economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.

The anonymous American official’s assessment aligns with that of foreign policy observers, who have urgently warned in recent days that the Trump administration is escalating tensions with Iran in an effort to provoke an attack and spark an all-out war.

“John Bolton is methodically setting the stage for war with Iran—forcing Iran into a corner and then readying war plans for when Iran takes the bait,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement on Monday.

Iran has thus far acted with restraint in the face of U.S. belligerence, urging diplomacy and attempting to restart negotiations with Europe over the terms of the Iran nuclear accord.

With tensions between the two nations reaching dangerous levels, U.S. Democratic presidential candidates have joined progressive anti-war groups in vowing to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to start a military conflict with Iran.

In a speech streamed online Tuesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said “a war with Iran would be an absolute disaster.”

“The United States Congress must do everything it can,” said Sanders, “to prevent the Trump administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran that could lead to even more deaths than the Iraq War.”

The United States Congress must do everything it can to prevent the Trump Administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran. https://t.co/n2Wbzcj2Pq

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 14, 2019

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Sanders in a tweet Tuesday night, announcing her decision to co-sponsor a bill aimed at stopping a war with Iran.

“We cannot let the Trump admin drag us into yet another war in the Middle East,” Warren wrote. “This is exactly why the president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to declare war. That’s Congress’s job—and that’s why I’m supporting this legislation to prevent a war with Iran.”

*

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

Remaining promoters of the concept of Donald Trump as President of the United States cite the fact that he has started no new shooting wars while Russiagate has turned out to be a flop and the economy seems to be doing well. He also seems serious about leaving Syria and Afghanistan, though those initiatives are currently on hold pending the approval of his consigliere “Defender of Israel” award winner John Bolton.

The Trump supporters however choose to ignore that the president has been unable to secure the southern border, which was a significant campaign pledge, and has initiated a series of trade and economic wars supplemented by a heavy dose of sanctions that have possibly killed more people and destroyed more American jobs collaterally than if he deliberately gone out and sought to do so. And also on his watch relations with Russia, the most important country in the world with respect to national security, have gotten worse, not better. Far worse.

I voted for Trump because he was not Hillary Clinton and he presented himself as the peace and reconciliation candidate. Almost everyone I know from my national security and moderate conservative background did the same, but now few of those supporters are enthusiastic about Trump based on his record of war-crime cruise missile attacks on Syria and his shameful and never ending pandering to Israel, which has included withdrawal from a highly beneficial nuclear agreement coupled with almost weekly piling on Iran. Venezuela, which is a sideshow, has merely confirmed that the Trump Administration has a lot of loose cannons on deck and the least tethered of all just might be the president.

At this point, people I know are completely disillusioned by what is going on – or not going on – in the White House and would only vote for Trump if he again runs against Hillary in 2020. But that is a Clinton thing that actually has little to do with what Trump is or represents and it begs the question why America tends to produce such terrible presidential candidates.

Unfortunately, when one thinks about Donald Trump the words “boorish” and “uncouth” come immediately to mind, followed by “possibly insane.” Some observers suggest that the crudeness is a ploy on Trump’s part, the kind of language that his supporters expect, something that excites them, but I tend to think that he has lost more than he has gained by his demeanor. And then there is the tweeting. It is so far beneath the dignity of the office that Trump holds to tweet insults far and wide that it is difficult to imagine what he thinks he gains by doing it. It is perhaps an indication that his self esteem is so fragile that he has to be on the attack constantly and his chosen method for dealing with critics is ridicule.

A recent Trump target was putative Democratic presidential candidate Pete Butteig, whom he nicknamed Alred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine’s perennial cover nerd. In an interview, Trump declared to Politico that “Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States,” an insult presumably based on Trump’s assessment of Buttigieg’s appearance. Buttigieg, for his part, did not know who Neuman was as the “What, me worry?” boy was a humor magazine staple well-known half a century ago in the 1960s and 1970s. He responded that he was “surprised” Trump wasn’t “spending more time trying to salvage this China deal.”

Donald Trump is much given to lashing out with insults to his opponents, but denigrating Buttigieg on his appearance, who, as mayor of South Bend Indiana, is only recently on the national political map, might be considered a new low. Other Democrats in Congress have been subjected to phrases like “pencil-neck” and have been derided for their height or physical appearance. Or for being stupid, which recalls Trump’s own assertions that he is a “very stable genius” and possibly the most brilliant of all presidents. And then there was the Pocahontas label attached to Senator Elizabeth Warren, though she probably in fact was somewhat deserving of a put down as she had clearly faked her native American roots for personal gain in academia.

Buttigieg, however, may be a fairly conventional liberal but he is not a lightweight. He is a genuinely religious former Rhodes scholar and Navy Reserve intelligence officer who actually served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Donald Trump famously avoided the draft for Vietnam in the nineteen-seventies because of an allegedly phony claim that he had “bone spurs.” The thrice married Trump once described how he had experienced his own “personal Vietnam” during the war by avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while sleeping with random women. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

The point is that Donald Trump was elected because many American people realized that the Establishment politicians had failed them while other voters took his commitments to secure borders and a less aggressive foreign policy seriously. But his tweeting and insults plus his frequently unhinged assertions quite plausibly make him unworthy of the office he holds, regardless of whether it all amounts to an impeachable offense or not. Citizens entering the voting booth in 2020 should consider Trump’s character and demeanor as well as his record, such as it is, before casting their ballots.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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].

Once again, Marco Rubio is trying to tell us Trump’s neocons are not interested in a war with Iran, despite the fact they have loudly and persistently called for one for two decades. 

.

.

.

URGENT: 1/5
These actions are not the prelude to a U.S. attack against #Iran

There is clear & persistent evidence,supported by observable movements on the ground,that Iran’s proxy forces in #Iraq & #Yemen plan to attack Americans with the intent of inflicting mass casualties https://t.co/NqQB3R8tXD

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 15, 2019

Rubio’s intelligence on a devious Iranian plan to kill Americans (in Iraq illegally and against the will of the Iraqi people) is nothing but horse feathers. 

It doesn’t get a passing grade in the effective use of propaganda. It is relatively easy to debunk everything they tell us. The first reaction to any corporate media news story should be skepticism. It should be assumed they are lying, especially about foreign policy directed by inveterate liars and accomplices in mass murder and other war crimes. 

Now we’re told Iran moved missiles into Iraq this week in response to threats by Bolton and Pompeo. In fact, it was almost a year ago Iran “transferred short-range ballistic missiles to allies in Iraq,” Reuters reported on August 31, 2018. 

“If Iran duplicates its formula from Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen by sending long-range missiles to Iraq, then future conflicts with Israel would likely include military action on Iraqi soil,” writes The Washington Institute, which is an AIPAC cutout. 

In July 2018, Seth J. Frantzman posted the “Arabic website Al-Jarida reported on July 21 that Israel will bomb Iraq and that it has obtained a list of Iranian targets.”

Al-Jarida learned from informed sources that Israel has set a list of targets inside Iraqi territory, in preparation for hitting them, claiming that they were Iranian military sites used to transport weapons, equipment and elements to Syria.

Israel has conducted numerous attacks on Syria, primarily conducted in Lebanese airspace in violation of international law.

Frantzman cites the source as saying the newspaper “obtained exclusive aerial photographs of the targets that Israel intends to hit, including border crossings with Iran…”

The sources pointed out that in recent years, Israel has frequently monitored Iranian attempts to create a land corridor from Tehran through Baghdad to Syrian territory, adding that some of these Iraqi positions now controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were under the control of the US military in Iraq.”

The part of this “land corridor” in Iraq has existed for centuries. Shia Muslims from Iran have taken a religious pilgrimage to holy sites in Najaf and Karbala (the main center of Shia scholarship) in Iraq. 

There are also major Shia religious sites in Baghdad. Lebanon is more than half Shia Muslim and home to Hezbollah, while Syria has a ruling Alawite minority led by the al-Assad family. Syria has a debt of gratitude to Iran and Russia for mostly eliminating the Saudi-US Salafist Islamic State threat. 

Saudi Arabia has demonstrated its capacity for psychotic viciousness by attacking the marginally-Shia (Zaidi sect) Houthi in Yemen. Intense centuries-long hatred of the Shia inspires murderous rage in the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and his family, the keeper of Islam’s most sacred holy sites. This is a particular sore spot for the Wahhabi Saudis because Yemen is located on the Arabian Peninsula. 

Marco Rubio has yet to tell us how going to war against Iran benefits the United States and the American people. All he can do—all any neocon can do—is talk in clichéd generalities about democracy and freedom for the Iranian people. It’s all cover for the real benefactor—Israel. 

Rubio is a creation of Sheldon Adelson, Normal Braman, Paul Singer, and Larry Ellison—all mega-donors to the cause of Israel in the United States. 

Back in 2015, Republican candidate Trump tweeted:

Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015

Fast-forward four years. Sheldon owns Trump. The Donald’s Orthodox Jewish (and good friend of Likudnik Bibi Netanyahu) son-in-law dictates policy for the administration. 

Jared Kushner’s influence shaped his father-in-law’s decisions to move the US embassy to Jerusalem while also signing off on the illegally annexed Golan Heights and the possible annexation of large areas of the West Bank set aside for Zionist settlers, all in direct violation of international law.  

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Representatives from the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) and the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change have been holding talks with the Transitional Military Council (TMC) for several weeks since the coup against ousted President Omer Hassan al-Bashir on April 11.

An announcement on May 14 indicates that the two sides have reached a settlement on the establishment of a joint civilian-military administration which will govern the country until national elections are held within a yet to be designated time period.

Sudan has been wracked with mass demonstrations since December when the economic crisis inside the nation escalated pushing up prices of bread and other consumer goods. The demands of the protesters quickly escalated beyond the call for lower prices to insisting upon the resignation of al-Bashir and his cabinet.

Demonstrators began marching in the streets challenging the security forces consisting of police, the vast intelligence apparatus and the military. Violence has erupted on numerous occasions since December leaving dozens dead and hundreds more injured.

Thousands of opposition supporters began a sit-in on April 6 outside the military headquarters in Khartoum challenging the authority which has been the underpinning of the al-Bashir government since it took power in a coup in 1989. Al-Bashir is a former military official and after seizing power the military was highly politicized through the creation of the National Congress Party (NCP) in 1998, which has been the dominant entity in the administration for over two decades.

Sudan demonstrations led to the ouster of President al-Bashir

Even though the president was forced to resign by his top military generals on April 11 as the social conditions worsened, there was no agreement over the composition of a transitional regime until May 14. The internal pressure has prompted the African Union (AU) to set a timetable for the resumption of what they consider civilian rule.

After the announcement of the agreement between the TMC and the opposition groupings, security forces were said to have opened fire on demonstrators outside military headquarters leaving at least five people dead, including one police officer. There are conflicting reports over who initiated the clashes. Some say it was a lone gunman who targeted protesters while others claim it was the authorities.

An article published by the Independent said of the incident that:

“One policeman and three protesters were killed in Khartoum and many other demonstrators were wounded, state TV said. Heavy gunfire was heard in the capital late into the evening, but Reuters could not immediately confirm the scale of casualties or who triggered the violence.” (May 14)

This same report went on to emphasize:

“The Transitional Military Council (TMC) blamed saboteurs. ‘Behind this are groups that… are working hard to abort any progress in negotiations.’ Early on Tuesday the TMC said it would not allow citizens’ safety to be jeopardized. ‘Neither the (paramilitary) Rapid Support Forces or the army will fire one shot at our protesting brothers, but we repeat: we do not allow chaos,’ it said.”

The Role of the United States in Sudan

The country has been suffering immensely since the partition of the former British colony in 2011, creating the neighboring Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest state. A large proportion of the oil resources were taken out of the control of the government in the capital of Khartoum. Washington, London and Tel Aviv were major supporters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the ruling party now governing in Juba.

After the breaking up of the Republic of Sudan, once Africa’s largest geographic nation-state and the founding of the Republic of South Sudan, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) was forced to adjust to the new international situation. South Sudan was immediately recognized by both the United Nations and the African Union (AU) as a sovereign state.

There were disagreements over the border demarcations in the aftermath of the partition particularly as it related to petroleum resources. A brief skirmish erupted creating a crisis in 2012 between Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and Khartoum.

Since late 2013, the SPLA/M government in Juba has been split resulting in a civil war. A recent peace agreement is yet to be fully implemented between President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Reik Machar, now of the SPLM/A in Opposition.

After the ascendancy of former leader al-Bashir, the country moved closer to the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Relations worsened in August of 1998 when the U.S. under President Bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum claiming it was a chemical weapons factory. There was never any prove that the facility was producing chemical weapons and was in fact manufacturing medicines.

China began to play a leading role in oil exploration and marketing in Sudan controlling 80 percent of petroleum concessions by the end of the first decade of this century. Iran developed economic and military links with Khartoum as well, leading to accusations that Sudan was serving as a conduit for the funneling of weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

Nonetheless, since 2015, Sudan has shifted its foreign policy due to pressure from the economic crisis. Al-Bashir sent troops to fight alongside Saudi Arabia and its allies against the Ansurallah resistance forces in Yemen. Diplomatic relations with Tehran and Damascus (Syria) were severed while overtures aimed at normalizing relations with Washington have been ongoing. Sudan has since reestablished relations with Damascus.

After a ceasefire agreement was signed with the SPLM/A and the transition to independence began in the south, another insurgency broke out in the western Darfur region. The NCP government responded to the armed rebel groupings with force in an effort to re-establish order in the region.

Allegations of human rights violations and genocide were made against al-Bashir by the U.S. and other imperialist powers. The International Criminal Court (ICC) based in the Netherlands indicted the former president and other leading officials of the NCP administration and sought their extradition to The Hague to stand trial on the charges.

Although Washington is not a signatory to the Rome Statue which created the ICC and therefore not bound by its ostensible jurisdiction, the charges against the Sudanese government were used to foster instability internally and the isolation of al-Bashir internationally. Since the removal of al-Bashir, some within the opposition have demanded the former head-of-state be placed on trial for repressive tactics used against demonstrators since December. It is not clear whether al-Bashir will be tried inside the country or sent to The Hague under the outstanding warrants issued by the ICC.

U.S. embassy officials have been quick to blame the TMC for the outbreak of violence on May 14. U.S. and other western embassy delegations of diplomats have visited protesters to express their support. These actions angered the Sudanese Foreign Ministry which took offense at what they perceived as another unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of the country.

In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on May 12, it said:

“All the visits by Western ambassadors, including the head of the EU mission to the sit-inners were carried out without coordination with the Foreign Ministry, which should be notified of movements in dangerous sites so as to be able to provide protection in accordance with its international obligations.”

When U.S. Charge d’affaires Steven Koutsis visited the protesters’ site outside the Defense Ministry he was protected by the Red Vest security team appointed by the opposition leaders. Sudan’s military and other security forces have no official presence at the sit-in.

Future of Sudan Uncertain

Even with the possibility of the creation of a joint civilian-military governing council, there are still many more unresolved issues which will impact the Sudanese people. It is obvious that Washington is attempting to influence the future direction of the government.

It remains unclear what political line the joint civilian-military council will take on relations with China, Iran and other neighboring states within Africa. Also the role of other opposition parties which have had substantial support in Sudan historically and are not a part of the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change may differ significantly with the those interests now considered the leading opposition groupings. These parties will have to be allowed to contest any upcoming election.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Sudan protests chants led by women opposition forces

First Nations in Ontario have run out of patience. For 43 years, the forest industry has been conducting aerial spraying of glyphosate herbicide on Indigenous lands – a “rain of death” used in forest management practice that has slowly been killing off a wide range of animals, plants, fish and insects. First Nations have tried to stop this practice since the 1990s through a variety of measures including meetings with logging companies and government officials, protests and reports, but all to no avail. The “rain of death” keeps coming.

Now, members of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Elders of the North Shore of Lake Huron say they will be going to court to force the Canadian federal government to live up to Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. That treaty guarantees First Nations in the area the right to hunt, fish, gather berries and use plant medicines in traditional territories. The TEK Elders say that by allowing the aerial spraying to continue, the Trudeau government is violating this treaty and the Constitution Act of 1982, which reaffirms those rights.

“We’re done waiting,” Raymond Owl, one of the founding members of TEK, told the press in April. [1] Formed in 2014, the TEK Elders group is comprised of Elders from 21 bands in the area.

Sue Chiblow, a Garden River First Nation Councillor assisting the TEK Elders, has stated:

“We went to the Ministry of Natural Resources and they said ‘well no we just issued the license so that’s not our problem; it’s Health Canada’s problem’ … So we went to Health Canada and they said ‘we don’t actually do the spraying; we’re just saying that’s it’s ok and it’s up to the companies to use or not use it’.” [2]

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry recently provided a statement to APTN News which said in part:

“Herbicide use is very limited in Ontario and they are only used when absolutely necessary – usually amounts to less than 0.2 per cent of Ontario’s forested area in any given year … Health Canada recently re-evaluated the use of glyphosate, finding no unacceptable risks to human health or the environment when used as directed.” [3]

Health Canada is taking this stance even as Bayer-Monsanto has been losing court case after court case in the U.S. to juries awarding billions in damages to individuals harmed by the pesticide. Some 13,000 more cancer victims’ cases against Bayer-Monsanto await trial.

The TEK Elders’ website (tekelders.weebly.com) states that “In Ontario, the forest management planning process begins with Crown approval for aerial spraying already in place.” There has never been any consultation with First Nations on this issue. As TEK Elder Raymond Owl has stated on the website,

“The announcements for spraying are printed in local newspapers to say when and where – and that’s it. We are told by Health Canada that the chemicals are safe, not harmful to humans, yet we are witness to absolute destruction of natural habitat and ecosystems.”

Creating a Monoculture

The forest industry across Canada (and in parts of Oregon and Washington) has relied on aerial herbicide spraying for more than 40 years, in line with its practice of clear-cutting, followed by replanting for monocultures.

The purpose of the glyphosate and other herbicides is to wipe out the so-called “weed” species that start re-growing after clearcutting. Those species include aspen, alder, birch, oak, maple, willow and other broad-leaf plants and shrubs – all considered of less commercial value than needle-leaf softwoods like Lodgepole Pine and Douglas Fir.

Forester and Forest Ecologist Herb Hammond told me by email,

“the presence of dense ‘brush’ following logging is a sign of ecological degradation from logging, which is dominated by clearcutting. There is nothing natural about clearcutting,” he noted, but it is “the cheapest, fastest way to turn forests into money.”

So after the clearcutting, “natural processes activate restoration procedures for soil and microclimate, resulting in high densities of herbaceous and woody vegetation other than coniferous trees.” These so-called “weed” species “are vital for biological diversity, building soil nutrient capital, slowing the spread of wildfire, and [they are] superior to conifers in sequestering and storing carbon – an important forest assist in this climate change world,” Hammond told me.

The irony is that “conifers will emerge from under the other vegetation and will grow better over time than those trees where ‘competing vegetation’ was removed” by aerial spraying. But, noted Hammond, “people prescribing pesticides give little value to other life that depend upon the plants being sprayed, or the water, soil and air affected by pesticide treatments.”

Also a BC Problem

According to The Prince George Daily News,

“timber companies are required by government legislation to eliminate the so-called weed trees in area they have logged or face penalties. A preferred way to accomplish this is to dump herbicide in massive doses on the land base. Manual, non-spray brushing could potentially create many more seasonal jobs in the forest. Yet that method is little utilized today.” [4]

According to the NGO Stop The Spray BC, between 10,000 and 20,000 hectares of BC forests are sprayed with glyphosate and other herbicides every year, mostly in the Central Interior.

“This vast conversion of our forests from bio-diverse stands with many broadleaf species to conifer monocultures is required by law, signed off on by Registered Professional Foresters, and is supported by the Association of British Columbia Professional Foresters.”

Stop the Spray BC spokesman James Steidle states that wildlife are “incredibly dependent” on the broadleaf trees considered “weeds” by industry and government. And those same trees in a mixed forest are better at sequestering carbon and controlling wildfires. Steidle notes,

“As our planet continues to warm, biodiversity fades and forest fires grow worse, does it make sense to keep eliminating the trees with the highest biodiversity values, lower probability of flammability, and best ability to sequester CO2 and reflect solar radiation from our forests? Obviously not.” [5]

But timber companies and our provincial governments are actually spending millions every year to do precisely that.

Quebec, however, is the exception. Chemical herbicides were banned on Crown forest lands in Quebec in 2001 – about 90% of the provincial forest land base. In 2008, the Quebec government reaffirmed its commitment to ecosystem-based management of public forests. [6]

In March, the Prince George Citizen reported that B.C. MLA Mike Morris is working on a private members bill to ban the use of glyphosate on provincial forests. [7]

Stopping the Rain of Death

Clearly, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Elders of Ontario have raised a huge issue with their pending lawsuit. SumOfUs is raising funding for their legal fees and helping to alert the wider community. The TEK Elders are also planning to contact the World Health Organization (WTO) for assistance. The WTO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has already classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. [8]

Information about the TEK Elders’ pending lawsuit also comes just days after the UN’s shocking biodiversity report, warning that one million species are at risk of extinction. That report was issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). UBC professor Kai Chan, one of the lead authors of the report, told the Toronto Star that “…the scale of change now requires us to pressure political systems and other institutions to overhaul national and global economies. ‘Nature isn’t broken. But you could say that our institutions are not fit for purpose,’ Chan says. ‘Really, what we need to do is fix them’.” [9]

That comment may be applicable to Health Canada, which seems to have been captured by Bayer-Monsanto and the pesticide industry.

The UN biodiversity report also specifically urged policy-makers “to recognize and respect Indigenous institutions, values, innovations, practices and knowledge, and to engage with and consider Indigenous communities, something they note is currently sorely lacking.” [10] The Traditional Ecological Knowledge Elders of Ontario know the brutal truth of this, and now they’re going to court. That seems to be the only way to stop the “rain of death”.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca

Notes

[1] Helen Morley, “TEK Elders will take government to court,” Mid North Monitor, April 4, 2019.

[2] Quoted in Christopher Read, “Trappers in Robinson Huron treaty want aerial herbicide spraying to end,” APTN News, March 22, 2019.

[3] Quoted in Ibid.

[4] Peter Ewart, “Death from the sky in northern B.C.,” The Prince George Daily News, March 31, 2018.

[5]http://stopthespraybc.com/

[6] Dave Mance III, “The Great Glyphosate Debate,” Northern Woodlands, Spring 2012.

[7] Mark Nielsen, “Morris calling for ban on glyphosate in B.C. forests,” Prince George Citizen, March 7, 2019.

[8] Read, op. cit.

[9] Quoted in Kate Allen, “One million species face possibility of extinction, report warns,” Toronto Star, May 6, 2019.

[10] Ibid.

Featured image is from Maui Independent