Global Research

This video was originally published in May 2018.

Over the past few years, Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.

Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies.

Narrated by Roger Waters / Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally.

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United States activists stand with President Maduro and the people of Venezuela in resistance to Washington’s attempts at regime change. Departing Venezuelan diplomats, ordered out of the country on April 15th by the Trump administration, gave the keys to its Washington DC embassy to activists, now called the Embassy Protection Collective (EPC), along with permission to remain until a permanent protectorate can be found. President Nicolas Maduro has extended his support to the lawful occupants which consist of veterans, senior citizens and students, and are members of CODEPINK, Popular Resistance.org, People’s Dispatch and the ANSWER Coalition.

The EPC stands guard against the infiltration and capture of the embassy by supporters of the self-proclaimed interim president, right-wing US puppet, Juan Guaido. In February, Guaido’s supporters seized the Venezuelan embassy in Costa Rica and blocked its lawful delegation from entry. According to Article 22 of the Vienna Convention, host countries are required by international law to protect foreign embassies.

The US Secret Service and DC Police continue to block the Venezuelan embassy’s egress with barricades, while Guaido’s supporters surround the building’s perimeter. Both actions taken together render freedom of entry and exit impossible.

Guiado’s supporters assault and verbally abuse defenders of the EPC. Defenders are routinely pushed, punched, sexually assaulted, and tortured by the use of painfully blinding high intensity laser, strobe and flash lights, as well as deafeningly loud noises generated by bullhorns, air-horns, and the clanging of pot and pans at close range. Despite law enforcements’ extensive presence, this violence continues with little censure. Their taunts are misogynistic, homophobic and racist.

Guaido’s supporters have attempted multiple break-ins and were successful once. The entire time law enforcement stood idly by, despite the embassy and its security cameras sustaining damage.  The EPC’s lawyer made calls and sent a letter to the Secret Service demanding action against these illegal activities.  To date, they have received no response. On Friday, May 3rd, activists reached out to the DC police commissioner and elected officials to make these same demands.  As of Saturday, these illegal activities have stopped.

However, Guaido’s supporters repeatedly block food and medical supplies from reaching the EPC, including those raised up in baskets. An attempt to throw food to those legally inside resulted in arrest for the charge of “throwing missiles”.  Nonetheless, EPC and their defenders say they will persevere until their mission is accomplished.

While Guaido’s supporters are unimpeded as they assemble tents around the embassy to seize control over the building’s perimeter, activists face different treatment.

On May 4th, Guaido’s supporters swarmed EPC defenders when they tried to erect a tent. Tighe Barry, a CODEPINK member of the Embassy Protection Collective says he was pushed so hard that he backed into a secret service agent. However, instead of arresting the perpetrators, police arrested the victim. He remains in custody at this time. CODEPINK has asked that its supporters contact the DC US Attorney to demand that the charges against him be dropped and that he be immediately released.

US activists recognize that Venezuela’s fight against Yankee Imperialism places it at the epicenter of their fight against fascism. Venezuela’s struggle to remain autonomous, like Cuba and Nicaragua, protects all countries and people from Washington’s tyranny, both abroad and domestic.

While activists worldwide support different struggles, all share the same imperialist enemy and its police state, military industrial complex and intelligence community.  So come to DC to lend your support or be active where you are and be a part of liberation history!

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Lauren Smith is an independent journalist. Her work has been published by Counterpunch, Common Dreams, Telesur, Monthly Review, Alliance for Global Justice and Global Research, CA amongst others. She holds a BA in Politics, Economics and Society from SUNY at Old Westbury and an MPA in International Development Administration from New York University.  Her historical fiction novel based on Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is due out this year.

Images and video are from the author

“Freedom of expression,” and the pitfalls of the market as it is playing out in Cuba these days, provides us with some valuable lessons. Cuba’s Decree 349 on culture officially came into effect on December 7, 2018. However, it is being implemented gradually while the Ministry of Culture consults with artists across the country about how the law will be enforced through complementary rules. This consultation is still taking place as these lines are being written.

It replaces a previous Decree on culture which could not have taken into account new forms of foreign influence. The concern deals with the spreading of banality, vulgarity, violence, rudeness, discrimination against women, sexism and racism. (Coming from Canada and especially Quebec where we have a strong popular cultural tradition, which is however increasingly being swamped in Montreal by American stars and their banality, my first gut reaction was: “we need this type of law in Canada!”)

The Cuban Ministry of Culture claims that this trend is eating away at the cultural policy of the Revolution. These phenomena can be seen in state, private, and public spaces, some of which do not even have the legal permits. With the spread of private business, some interests are taking advantage of the new situation to promote a group of artists who defy the norms of Cuban culture as well as the laws of the land.

The complementary laws are not intended to be draconian in nature. The government inspectors created by the Decree will only be able to shut down cultural events in extreme cases such as public obscenity, racist content or sexist content. All other decisions will be made by a group of inspectors. In addition, inspectors cannot inspect any studio or home that is not open to the public.

The Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas said the new law was designed to respond to public complaints about the misuse of patriotic symbols and vulgarity in popular culture. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that:

“Artistic creation is not the target…. I can assure you that this Decree has only one objective: to protect national culture from false artists, unqualified professional practice, and the pseudo-culture generating anti-values, issues denounced in multiple spaces by our creators, writers and artists.”

There is a wide-open debate in Cuba regarding Decree 349 on culture and the drafting of the rules for its future application. The controversy is also stirring on the international scene, especially in North America, Europe and Latin America. In Cuba, there are those who are in favor of the new code. Others are critical, and indeed some of these are very critical, but they are participating in the Ministry of Culture-led consultation to draft the enabling regulations. There are others who are completely against the new legislation and its regulations, even while the consultations with people in the cultural field are still under way.

However, some of those Cubans who are militantly opposed to any implementation of the decree are protagonists of an orientation actively promoted by  the U.S. The method employed is the usual disinformation campaign. It hopes to capitalize on preconceived notions such as the catch-all American “freedom of expression” mantra as applied to political systems in countries other than the U.S. This is nothing new, but there is a novel twist. It is now applied to artistic endeavors. The campaign targets the sector of the Cuban society dedicated to culture, hoping to win over those who critically support the new statute in order to create division among individuals involved in culture. Be that as it may, this article deals only with the extremist opponents to the legislation and regulations, both in Cuba and internationally, especially in the United States.

Careful reading of a wide, representative spectrum of opposition articles, social media posts and comments reveals a common point of reference. The U.S. Embassy in Havana tweeted in favor of “artistic freedom” with a very undiplomatic slogan: “No to Decree 349.” The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs recently stated that the “Gov[ernmen]t of Cuba should celebrate, not restrain, the artistic expression of Cuban people.” Among the shades of “left,” “centrist” and openly right-wing hard-core opposition, including some academics, a common thread stands out.

The U.S. Takes the Moral High Road of Freedom of Artistic Expression – for Cuba

Whether in Cuba or the U.S., the fundamentalist opposition to the Cuban government takes the moral high road of “freedom of artistic expression” for Cuba. However, they are viewing Cuba with U.S. blinders. They take it as a given that in the U.S., there is freedom of artistic expression (along with other types of expression) in the cultural realm. The logic goes that there are no cultural restrictions in the U.S. like the ones being brought in Cuba. They would also argue that in the U.S. there is no restriction to freedom of the press. Yet, when it comes to U.S. imperial international policy, all the press is expected to close ranks. This is what they are doing against Julian Assange. The same logic is fostered in favor of the U.S. model of democracy and pluralism. Yet, the very embodiment of pluralism in the U.S. political scene today, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are both silent on Assange.

Furthermore, according to these talking points, there is no Ministry of Culture in the U.S. that would control and guide cultural expressions in that country. The U.S.-centric outlook insinuates, either openly or covertly, that everyone in the U.S. is free to express their artistic talents. The United States is presented as the cultural model for the world, in the same way that it boasts about other features of its society, such as its economy and political process. Many people around the world, and in the U.S. itself, are all too familiar with the U.S. superiority complex. This built-in psyche finds its origins in the “chosen people” notion emerging from the very birth of the U.S. at the time of the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century.

For someone who comes from the Global North and has direct experience of American mainstream artistic expression, such as music, it is obvious that what sells is what is promoted. If the elites can successfully market banality, sex, and violence, then so be it. Profit is the chief criterion. Those very few artists who are willing and able (because of their physical appearance above all) to compete in this market are highly rewarded. They then pay back their sponsors by standing out explicitly or implicitly as the expressions of the American Dream come true. Furthermore, U.S.-style extreme individualism is paraded as a value to be worshiped, to which social and international concerns must be completely sacrificed. In sum, the fairy tale narrative pretends that anyone from the slums of America can make it.

However, this process is presented as being spontaneous, without the state’s involvement. It is supposedly the law of supply and demand as applied to the arts. The rationale of the “invisible hand” of capitalism determines what is appropriate in the artistic realm.

Can culture be considered just another commodity?

In the course of social media interaction during the December 8, 2018 Cuban TV Mesa Redonda program, Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas retweeted and commented on one of my tweets. He mentioned UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the U.S. position counter-posing this agreement to the free market.

An investigation ensued, as I was not sufficiently familiar with this controversy. In 2000 in Paris, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It stipulates that culture is not just another commodity and recognizes the sovereign right of states to promote and protect their tangible and intangible cultural production, using the measures they deem appropriate. The convention allows states to protect their cultural creation. The U.S. opposed it, claiming to promote true cultural diversity by working for individual liberties, so that everyone has “cultural freedom” and can enjoy his own cultural expressions, not those imposed by governments. But the convention was adopted by a vote of 148 to 2. Guess which countries opposed it? The U.S. and Israel.

Should each country have the right to defend its own culture?                                                                               

Looking at this superficially, it may seem that that the U.S. government does not impose any norms on culture. Indeed, as “freedom of artistic expression” is assured only in the U.S. (and in Israel), according to this tale, once again the U.S. has the “burden” of exercising its role as the chosen people responsible for teaching everyone on the planet about culture, as it does for democracy and human rights. In fact, taking a page out of that literary classic the Bible (let’s give credit where credit is due), the U.S. has evolved as a “city set upon the hill” to which everyone in the world must look for guidance. Thus, goes the logic, it is all the other countries of the world, except for the U.S. and Israel, who are the violators of artistic freedom.

However, in opposing the Convention’s attempt to save artists’ creative activity from market values by emphasizing the government’s role as a protector of culture, the question arises as to the role played by the U.S. government in this sphere. By default, and by its own admission (as indicated above), in pleading for the supremacy of the market under the guise of “individual freedom” in Paris, one can conclude that the U.S. model imposes the capitalist market as the overriding norm for artists.

Thus, the U.S. government not only protects the market economy within its own country, but by opposing the sovereign right of other countries to form shields to defend a traditional, healthy culture, Washington’s position also constitutes a road map for the U.S. to extend its cultural tentacles into other countries. This is something that we in Canada are very aware of. UNESCO’s defense of sovereign the right to protect and promote cultural production was probably something that irked Washington in Paris in 2005.

Some history

To better grasp the issue, a look at the underlying historical context is warranted. Cultural hegemony, on a par with economic expansion and military and ideological warfare, is part of the U.S. imperialist goal of world domination, irrespective of who occupies the White House. Let us recall Frances Stoner Saunders’s groundbreaking book Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, first published in English in 1999, then in Spanish in 2001 under the title La CIA y la Guerra Fría cultural. The book presents a detailed report on the methods whereby the CIA influenced a wide range of intellectuals and cultural organizations during the Cold War.

Since then, and in the wake of similar revelations occurring both before and after Saunders’s book, the U.S. has had to adopt a more subtle way to influence events. It has since funneled support through front groups not openly tied to the CIA. For example, American journalist and U.S. democracy promotion expert Tracey Eaton, in his December 2018 report, wrote that “over the past three decades, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion for broadcasting to Cuba and for democracy programs on the island.”

Democracy promotion, free expression and individual rights are so all-inclusive that they encompass the cultural issue, which is even listed as one of the goals of this funding. Furthermore, if one clicks on the links to the activities of the front groups, such as the one with the innocent-sounding title “Observa Cuba,” one finds this: “Artists stage four-day sit-down at Culture against 349.”

Now, this is not to say that all or most of the hard-line opponents to 349 are financially linked to the United States. That would be an unfair assertion. However, living just about in the belly of the beast, we know that one cannot have illusions about U.S. foreign policy. The situation is admittedly very complex. For example, one of the most prominent critics of 349, Silvio Rodríguez, drew a clean line of demarcation between critics such as himself, who are participating in drafting the regulations to the law, and the position of the U.S. Embassy and its acolytes.

This situation calls for serious reflection and research before writing, while at the same time seeing the urgency and duty to deal with the disinformation campaign led by the West.

Thus, it was of great help to get the December 16, 2018 “Postcard from Cuba,” circulated by U.S. journalist Karen Wald, who has five decades of experience with Cuba. She writes from Havana with regard to her initial investigation on the controversy over 349: “My guess is that some of what’s behind this [opposition to 349] may be the fact that lots of pseudo ‘artists’ of all kinds make up a strong component of what the U.S. extols as ‘dissidence’ here… Most of those ‘dissident artists’ reported in U.S. press aren’t even known here…”

It seems to me that Cuba not only has every right to defend its culture and the process that is involved in working out its policy, but also that if it does not, it will sink. According to Fidel Castro, culture is the nation’s shield, and is therefore the first thing that must be saved in order to guarantee the progress of the revolutionary process.

The manner in which the U.S. and the hard-line opponents in Cuba, the United States, Europe, and Latin America are zeroing in on 349 and the government officials involved is an indication that culture is indeed a shield to defend the Cuban Revolution. It is a sine qua non if the Revolution is to continue along the path it has followed for 60 years.

The U.S. and its allies know full well that the preferred weapon for subverting the Revolution is the cultural war in the wide sense of the term, including ideological, political, and artistic aspects.

Thus, we can see the hollowness of the “invisible hand of the market.” Let us recall that in the Julian Assange case, the mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and the Economist originally “supported” Assange by leaking his documents. Why is that? It was a money-maker. The market was there to be taken advantage of. Today these same media are in the front ranks of denouncing Assange, assisting his persecution. Why? The current discourse against Assange led by the U.S. elite is so powerful and all encompassing – “popular” – that it has become a source of profit for the U.S. and other Western mainstream media. A second reason is that MSM’s default position is to tow the political line of U.S. exceptionalism, as they did in paving the way for the U.S. war in Iraq and are doing presently to justify Washington’s aggressions against Venezuela, Yemen, and Iran. Today, Washington’s attack on investigative journalism that exposes its misdeeds as well as market considerations drive these media to take advantage of this “popular” cause and join in the crusade against Assange.

Thus, Cubans have every right to be wary of the market when it comes to culture or any related activity such as journalism. Nevertheless, let us give the last word to Samir Amin, the outstanding Egyptian-French scholar, who recently passed away. He produced a long-standing analysis of how the state in capitalist countries, such as the U.S., far from letting the free market take its course, has a direct hand in its operation. We saw this with the U.S. position on the Convention on Cultural Diversity and we are seeing it again as the empire strives to punch holes in Cuba’s cultural shield. Amin wrote that, when necessary, the “visible fist” helps the “invisible hand” of the free market.

Bucking the international tide, the Cuban state press is fully supporting Assange. If the press were to be in private hands, as the same opponents to Decree 349 demand, would this situation prevail?

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist, he collaborates with many websites in North America, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Twitter and Facebook. His website is www.arnoldaugust.com

All images in this article are from COHA

The Idlib de-escalation zone and the northern part of Aleppo province are now two main sources of instability in Syria.

On May 4, the pro-Turkish National Syrian Army (NSA), backed by Turkish special forces, launched a surprise attack on positions of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Aleppo. The NSA briefly captured the town of Ma’arnaz, but then were forced to retreat under pressure from the YPG.

Later on the same day, the so-called Afrin Liberation Forces (ALF) released a statement claiming that at least 40 NSA members were killed and 30 others were injured in clashes for Ma’arnaz. These claims are not based on any visual evidence.

Pro-Turkish sources claimed that multiple mines and IEDs set up in Ma’arnaz were among the key reasons of the NSA withdrawal. Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV also reported citing own source that at some moment the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) intervened in the situation to allow a surrounded Turkish special unit to withdraw from the area as a “gesture of goodwill”.

The ALF is a brand used by the YPG in order to hide its military activities against Turkey and its forces. The YPG is a core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are a de-facto proxy of another NATO member state, the US.

In a separate development, the SAA reportedly shelled a Turkish observation post near Shir Mughar in northwestern Hama. According to reports, the Turkish position accidentally came under fire because of its close proximity to positions of terrorists. Over the past few days, Syrian and Russian forces have delivered over two hundreds of strikes on terrorists positions in the provinces of Hama and Idlib. The strikes came in response to an increased shelling of government-held areas by militants hiding in the Idlib de-escalation zone.

Following the Shir Mughar incident, Turkish helicopters entered Syria and landed near the observation post. Opposition sources said that the helicopters evacuated several injured Turkish service members.

In the late hours of May 4, the Turkish Defense Ministry said that 2 of its soldiers were injured in a mortar attack near the town of Shir Mughar. The official statement didn’t identify the side responsible for the shelling.

The Russian Defense Ministry came with a warning that militants led by members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham are massing in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone. Militants are building up their forces near Latamina and Kafr Zita. According to the Russian side, this strike group may soon launch a large-scale attack on the government-held part of Hama.

These developments came amid circulating speculations that the SAA is preparing for a military action in the Idlib de-escalation zone. However, this scenario remains unlikely if no significant incidents involving large-scale civilian or personnel casualties happen soon.

The SDF and its political leadership are working to strengthen their grip on northeastern Syria. On May 2, the US-backed group held the “Syrian clans conference” in Ein Essa. It was attended by senior officials of the SDF and other local figures affiliated with the US-led coalition.

During the event, the SDF Commander-in-Chief, Ferhat Abdi Sahin, revealed that the group is involved in “indirect talks” with Turkey in order to settle the existing differences.

The Damascus government described the event as “a meeting of treason, treachery, and subjugation.”

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According to Bolton’s statement, an attack launched by a “proxy” of Iran on not just assets but “interests” of the U.S. in the region or “interests” of a U.S. ally in the region, would now be sufficient to trigger a U.S. attack on Iran, even if Iran itself was not directly responsible.

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In a late Sunday press release, National Security Advisor John Bolton announced the deployment of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (ABECSG) and a bomber task force to U.S. Central Command as a “clear and unmistakable message to Iran.” The press release claims that the move was made “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings,” which were left unspecified.

The statement further claims that

“any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force” and that, while “the United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” the Trump administration is “fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

Last month, in a move that many viewed as a set-up for a war with Iran — which has long been sought by Bolton as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, even prior to their posts in the current administration — the Trump administration labeled the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran as a terrorist organization. Iran’s government subsequently responded in kind, labeling U.S. soldiers of Central Command as terrorists and designating the U.S. government as a state sponsor of terrorism.

While Bolton framed the latest move as a “warning” to Iran, it turns out that the deployment of the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to U.S. Central Command was actually announced last month with no mention at all of Iran. Indeed, a Navy press release published on April 8 stated that “the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (ABECSG) departed Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, April 1, for a regularly scheduled deployment.” The fleet has already been stationed in the Central Command region since at least April 15, when the U.S. Naval Institute announced that it was anchored off the coast of Spain.

However, the New York Times subsequently clarified that the strike group had been ordered to move from the Mediterranean Sea to the Middle East in relation to Bolton’s announcement. The Times also noted that the validity of the “warnings” of an alleged imminent attack on American or allied assets in the region by Iran or its alleged proxies was unknown because, “as of late Friday, military analysts were not tracking any new, imminent or clearly defined Iranian or Iranian-backed threats against Americans in Iraq or the region.”

As MintPress has previously reported, Bolton has an extensive record of distorting or falsifying intelligence if it serves his political ends. Given that Bolton has long been an advocate for regime change by force in Iran as well as the pre-emptive bombing of Iran, the intelligence on these alleged “warnings” should be heavily scrutinized. Yet, because there is no permanent secretary of defense or secretary of homeland security, Bolton has more control over national security policy and intelligence now than at any time since he became national security advisor last April. As a result, this much-needed scrutiny is unlikely to materialize.

A sneeze could trigger war

The real danger of Bolton’s announcement is not the framing of the deployment of military assets or the validity of the “threats” it cites, but rather its sweeping vagueness. Indeed, Bolton’s press release states that any attack “whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces” would justify an aggressive U.S. military response. Thus, an attack launched by a “proxy” of Iran on not just assets but “interests” of the U.S. in the region or “interests” of a U.S. ally in the region, would now be sufficient to trigger a U.S. attack on Iran, even if Iran itself was not directly responsible.

Given that the Trump administration has defined Iranian proxies rather loosely to include any Shia-dominated militia in the entire region — including those that have no provable connection to Iran — it is hard to interpret Bolton’s statement as anything other than a set-up for war.

This concern has only been augmented following statements made by Pompeo about Bolton’s recent press release. Pompeo told reporters late Sunday that the deployment of the strike group was “something we’ve been working on for a little while,” continuing:

It is absolutely the case that we’ve seen escalatory action from the Iranians, and it is equally the case that we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. The fact that those actions take place, if they do, by some third-party proxy, whether that’s a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the Iranians — Iranian leadership — directly accountable for that.”

As MintPress and other outlets have previously noted, even the U.S. government’s own documents admit that the Houthis in Yemen are not a proxy of Iran and that Iran has no direction over their military actions. In addition, Pompeo’s claim that any actions taken by any “Shia militia group” will be blamed on Iran shows that the Trump administration is now building a foundation to attack Iran for actions that include those over which Iran has no control whatsoever.

Furthermore, given the vagueness of the press release, military action may not even be necessary to trigger a response, as the press release says that “any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” For instance, if Iran makes good on its promise to blockade the Persian Gulf in response to U.S. efforts to place a total embargo on its oil efforts, such a move could now be interpreted as an attack on U.S. interests or those of its regional allies even though it would not expressly involve an offensive attack.

In addition — given that the Trump administration also considers Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, a proxy of Iran — future hostilities between Hamas and Israel, the U.S.’ main ally in the region, could also be interpreted as an “attack” on the U.S. or allied (i.e., Israeli) interests launched by an alleged Iranian proxy. However, in the case of Israel and Hamas, an unnamed U.S. official told the New York Times that the recent strike group deployment was unrelated to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, which saw Israel pound the Gaza Strip with airstrikes over the weekend.

Furthermore, it is also worth considering that the execution of a “false flag” operation attributed to any militia even claiming to be Shia against a target deemed important to U.S. or allied interests could be used to justify war with Iran.

The vagueness of Bolton’s press release, as well as subsequent statements made by Pompeo, clearly show that the war hawks in the Trump administration are laying the foundation for an aggressive military attack against Iran, one that will inevitably lead to war with the Islamic Republic and likely engulf much of the Middle East — and potentially much of the world.

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Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

With over a billion dollars pledged so far to rebuild Notre Dame de Paris, another monument to what Western civilization has accomplished enacts a daily tragedy before the forests and villagers trying to stay alive in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Still ignored in the Euro-American press is a current Ebola epidemic in particularly Kivu province ¹ : the second largest outbreak of Ebola on record and the first where medical care givers are being attacked.

Previously Ebola was difficult to contain without quarantine and research into the ill person’s contacts. Currently the disease is being attacked by large scale vaccination programs relying on U.S. pharmaceuticals. But the vaccination and treatment programs are disrupted in Eastern Congo due to multiple conflicts forcing a hundred thousand people this April alone, into flight, some taking refuge across borders with other countries.

While not declared a global emergency by the UN World Health Organization, the potential is there. A report by the High Commissioner for Refugees notes its work in the RDC is hampered by lack of funding with 47 million USD allocated but only 6.2 million USD received in contributions. ²

Rececently Dr. Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, head of the Ebola team in Butembo, a Camerounais working for WHO, was attacked and killed at a medical conference; two of his staff were wounded. The killers’ motivation is unknown. Some local groups say that Ebola doesn’t exist and its threat is used as a means of control, or money raising. ³

Others say Ebola was brought to the region by white people. Marburg disease which is a kind of hemorrhagic fever much like Ebola and 88% fatal first appeared in 1967 in a laboratory in Marburg Germany, and like Ebola is considered a biological warfare agent (a note).

The Ebola virus (Zaire ebolavirus) first identified in Zaire in 2010 may be a strain of the Marburg virus. The area where Ebola is proliferating has been contested with arms for several decades due to its natural resources sought by Rwandan, Euro-American and Asian markets. Buyers of desired metals are often forced to buy from the militias which control various mines or access to mines even when these are registered with the government. The DRC government army does not control the region. Regional militias represent breakaway units of the government’s army, Rwandan forces, Hutu refugee forces, Tutsi Congolese among other distinct Congolese tribes. The United Nations has peacekeeping troops committed to the region which regularly take casualties.

The recent murder of Dr. Mouzoko is one of 119 attacks so far this year on medical personnel attempting to counter the epidemic, most often under the auspices of the World Health Organization. In researching the causes of the murders press accounts are not helpful. Eleven men were recently arrested in response to the killing of Dr. Mouzoko, but no mention of their motives or allegiances is given. Logic suggests the killers of medical personnel serve the interests of the Ebola epidemic itself, causing panic flight and spread of the disease which could cause widespread death. 33 medical workers have died from contracting the disease.

There is some chance that medical personnel are being killed tactically in a biological war effort to depopulate the region of its inhabitants. But that would be an extreme tactic to accomplish more quickly what continues under corrupt policies the government and corporation boards have furthered for years. While depopulation would deprive mining enterprises of local workers it would favor technologically advanced companies using modern mining equipment. International corporations in the area (whether they are mining with license from the government or without), are involved in acts of plunder, taking what belongs to the region’s people without bettering their lives. It is a monstrous ongoing crime dating in the Congo back to the days of King Leopold.

Over a thousand verified Ebola deaths have been counted so far. Massive vaccination by a Merck produced drug are apparently effective. WHO is expecting new pharmaceuticals from Johnson & Johnson which await federal approval. ⁴ There is no suggestion in the press that U.S. corporate vaccine products are supplied at cost.

The UN’s emergency management plan for the epidemic is operational but requires 71.5 million USD. ⁵

Questioning a Euro-American media which has proven so faithful to the state in its propaganda against Venezuela, is not likely to provide answers. Media silence on Eastern Congo supports fears of illegal operations waged to the interests of major western corporations. Aside from pharmaceutical companies, according to Global Witness in 2009, the principle corporate buyers of minerals in the region were: “Bangkok-based THAISARCO (a subsidiary of British metals group AMC), UK-based Afrimex, and Belgium-based Trademet” (“Global Witness uncovers foreign companies’ links to Congo violence,” July 21, 2009). ⁶

Since informative reports in 2008 and 2009 by Keith Harmon Snow ⁷, Global Witness ⁸ and Roger Miller ⁹, updated reports of corporate involvement are not easily available.

The current political situation in the Congo doesn’t offer much hope of the government addressing the emergency. While Kabila promised to step down and hold elections which he did after some delay, the power of the country may have remained his. An article by Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo reports that former President Kabila’s party won 342 of the Parliament’s 500 seats in the election, and controls 22 of the 26 provinces, 91 of 108 senate seats with a similar percentage of governors; the Congo’s “elected” president Félix Tshisekedi, is considered installed as a Kabila compliant president while the Catholic Church Observer Mission found that Martin Fayulu won the election. ¹⁰

In sum the change in Presidency isn’t likely to change the policies of the state as allied with corporate needs, which have allowed the conflicts and mining practices in the East Congo for many years.¹¹. An ongoing genocide warning for the peoples of the Eastern Congo continues. Background. ^{12   13}. Night’s Lantern first noted a genocide warning for peoples of the Eastern Congo, among others affected by resource theft in 2004, followed by others.

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This article was originally published on nightslantern.ca.

Notes

1 “Ebola virus disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo: Disease outbreak news. Update,” WHO, May 2, 2019, World Health Organization.

2 “RDC : Des attaques au Nord-Kivu poussent des dizaines de milliers de personnes à fuir,” UN High commissioner for Refugees, May 3, 2019, reliefweb.

3 “The Doctor Killed In Friday’s Ebola Attack Was Dedicated — But Also Afraid,” Nurith Aizenman, April 23, 2019, npr: Goats and Soda.

4 “Congo Ebola deaths surpass 1,000 as attacks on treatment centers go on,” May 3, 2019, Health News.

5 “RD Congo – Sud-Kivu et Maniema : Plan Opérationnel d’Urgence (Janvier – Juin 2019),” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, April 10, 2019, reliefweb.

6 “Faced with a Gun What Can You Do? War and the Militarisation of Mining in Eastern Congo,” Global Witness 2009; “Global Witness uncovers foreign companies’ links to Congo violence,” Press release, July 21, 2009, Global Witness.

7 “Merchants of Death: Exposing Corporate Financed Holocaust in Africa,” Keith Harmon Snow, Dec. 7, 2008, Global Research.

8 Global Witness, ibid.

9 “How British Corporations are Fuelling War in the Congo,” Robert Miller, Nov. 10, 2009, www.zcommunications.org/.

10 “Hijacking the Congolese people’s victory,” Kambale Musavuli, April 30, 2019, New Frame.

11 “Crisis in the Congo: uncovering the truth,” Friends of the Congo. Jan 19, 2011, [access:< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV9szEu9Ag >.

12 “Civil War in The Congo: Template for Neo-Colonialism,” J.B.Gerald, Dec. 4, 2012, Global Research.

13 “North Kivu: the background to conflict in North Kivu Province of Eastern congo,” Jacob Stearns, U.K.: Rift Valley Institute, 2012.

The Following text is Section 11 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

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Contents 

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO War to Demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11.  Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty
14. The Western American Empire plays the war card
15. The US/NATO planetary war system
16. Exiting the war system of NATO

***

1. The U.S. Armed Forces have in Italy (according to the official report of the Pentagon Base Structure Report) more than 1,500 buildings, with a total surface area of over 1 million m², and they rent or have been granted permission to use a further 800 buildings, with a surface of approximately 900,000 m². In total, there are over 2,300 buildings with an area of approximately 2 million m² scattered over fifty sites. But this is only part of the U.S. military presence in Italy.

2. The U.S. military bases are joined by the bases of NATO under U.S. command and the Italian bases available to U.S./NATO forces. It is estimated that, in total, there are over 100 bases. The entire network of military bases in Italy is, directly or indirectly, under the command of the Pentagon. It is part of the “area of responsibility” of the United States European Command (EUCOM), the European Command of the United States, headed by a U.S. general, who at the same time holds the office of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The “area of responsibility” of the EUCOM, one of the six “unified combat commands” with which the US covers the globe, includes the entire European region and all of Russia (including the Asian side), plus some Western and Central Asian countries: Turkey, Israel, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

3. The 31st Fighter Wing is deployed at the Aviano Air Base (Pordenone). The U.S. squadron maintains constant attack readiness with about 50 B61 nuclear bombs (number estimated by the FAS, the Federation of American Scientists, before 2020).

4. On the Ghedi Air Base (Brescia), the 6th Italian Air Force is deployed, ready to attack under U.S. command with about 20 B61 nuclear bombs (number estimated by the FAS before 2020). That Italian pilots are trained in nuclear attack – writes FAS – which is demonstrated by the presence in Ghedi of one of the four units of the U.S. Air Force deployed in European bases (along with units in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) “where U.S. nuclear weapons are destined to be launched by aircraft of the host country”. The pilots of the four European countries, along with Turkish pilots, are trained in the use of nuclear bombs in NATO’s annual nuclear war exercise. In 2013, it took place in Aviano and in 2014 in Ghedi.

5. To the U.S.nuclear weapons stationed on Italian territory, the actual number of which is secret, are added those aboard units of the Sixth Fleet, whose main base is in Gaeta in Lazio. The Sixth Fleet depends on the US Naval Forces Command in Europe, whose headquarters is in Naples-Capodichino.

6. The 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army is based in Vicenza. It provides rapid intervention forces to the European Command, African Command and Central Command (whose “area of responsibility” includes the Middle East and Central Asia). Forces of the 173rd Brigade, which were employed in Iraq in 2003, are sent on a rotation basis to Afghanistan, the Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

7. In the Pisa/Livorno area, there is Camp Darby, which has the largest US arsenal in the world outside the U.S. itself. It is the logistics base for the U.S. Army that supplies U.S. and allied land and air forces in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In its 125 bunkers are projected artillery shells, bombs for airplanes and missiles in a number that can be estimated at over 1.5 million. It cannot be excluded that there have been and may currently be nuclear bombs among the aerial weapons stored at Camp Darby. Together with the artillery ammunition, it is estimated that over 2,500 tanks and other military vehicles are stored at the base along with over 11,000 military materials of various types. The base holds the entire equipment for two armored battalions and two battalions of mechanized infantry, which can be quickly sent to the area of ​​operations through the airport of Pisa(a nationalmilitary air hub) and the Port of Livorno (to which they can also dock nuclear-powered units). Huge ships of private companies that carry arms on behalf of the Pentagon make monthly stops here, connecting U.S. ports to Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian ports.

8. A unit of the Italian Army Special Forces Command (COM.FO.SE) from the Gamerra barracks of Pisa will be transferred in 2019 to an area of Camp Darby that was formerly used for recreational activities and will formally be returned to Italy. This will enable them to better train and be integrated with U.S. Special Forces for secret operations in war zones.

9. As a result of the investigations by the judges Casson and Mastelloni, it emerged that Camp Darby, since the 1960s, played a basic role in the coup network formed by the CIA and the SIFAR for “Operation Gladio”. Camp Darby was one of the U.S./NATO bases that – according to Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Cassation – provided the explosives for the Operation Gladio massacres from Piazza Fontana to Capaci and Via d’Amelio. The U.S./NATO bases were where “black terrorists, NATO officials, mobsters, Italian politicians and Masons met on the eve of attacks”.

10. Camp Darby was also involved in the tragedy of the Moby Prince ferry, which collided with the Agip Abruzzo tanker on the evening of 10 April 1991 in the harbor of Livorno. 140 people died after waiting for hours for help in vain. That evening in the Livorno harbor there was intense traffic of United States military ships engaged in the transfer of U.S. weapons, part of which were secretly sent to Somalia, Croatia and other areas. It included arms that were a par of Operation Gladio. When the collision occured, the manager of the operation – under the US command of Camp Darby – immediately tried to get rid of any evidence.

11. The headquarters of the Allied Joint Force (JFC Naples) is located in Lago Patria (Naples). Its new headquarters, inaugurated in 2012 has a covered area of 85,000 m², surrounded by a large fenced area suitable for future expansion. The staff, on the rise, is composed of over 2,500 military and civilians. NATO’s JFC Naples is under the command of an American admiral, who at the same time commands the US Naval Forces in Europe (on which the Sixth Fleet depends) and the US Naval Forces for Africa.

12. Every two years the JFC Naples assumes the operational command of the “NATO Response Force” (NRF), a “highly flexible and capable” joint force of 40,000 men, which has the task of conducting military operations in the “area of responsibility of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and beyond that area”. The spearhead of the NRF is its “Joint Task Force with very high operational readiness”, which is composed of 5,000 men who can be deployed in two to three days in an intervention area “before the crisis begins”.

13. At the headquarters of Lago Patria, since September 2017, the “NATO Strategic Direction Hub for the South”, an intelligence center primarily used for espionage, has been in operation and has been “focused on the southern regions including the Middle East, North Africa and Sahel Sub-Saharan Africa and adjacent areas “.

14. In Sicily, the Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella, with a staff of about 7,000 military and civilians, constitutes the largest U.S. and NATO naval and air base in the Mediterranean region. In addition to providing logistical support to the Sixth Fleet, it forms the basis for launching military operations (mostly secret) mainly, but not exclusively, in the Middle East and Africa. The NAS, the official introduction reads, “hosts U.S. and NATO aircraft of all types”, including Global Hawk spy drones, which from Sigonella carry out reconnaissance missions on the Middle East, Africa, eastern Ukraine, Black Sea and other areas. For targeted attacks (almost always secret), Predator drones take off from Sigonella, armed with laser and satellite-guided missiles and bombs.

15. The Naval Air Station Sigonella is supplemented by the Italian base in Augusta, which supplies fuel and ammunition to the U.S. and NATO naval units, and the port of Catania, which can accommodate up to nine warships. For fire drills, U.S. special forces have the Pachino range (Syracuse) granted to them for their exclusive use.

16. The other major US installation in Sicily is the MUOS station in Niscemi (Caltanissetta). The MUOS (Mobile User Objective System) is a very high-frequency military satellite communications system, consisting of four satellites and four earth stations: two in the U.S., in Virginia and in Hawaii, one in Australia and one in Sicily, each with three large parabolic antennas of 18 meters in diameter. This system allows the Pentagon to connect to a single network of command and communications for submarines, warships, fighter-bombers and drones, military vehicles and terrestrial departments while they are in movement wherever in the world they are.

17. In Sardinia, there are the largest polygons for the training of Italian and NATO military forces: in particular those of Salto di Quirra, Capo Teulada, Capo Frasca and Capo San Lorenzo. Here, around 80% of the bombs, missile warheads and bullets used in military maneuvers taking place in Italy are used in fire drills, with serious consequences for the health of the population.

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Sections 12-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

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According to Pompeo, US presidents have constitutional authority under Article II to preemptively attack other nations.

The article states the following: “The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States…”

Nothing in the Constitution gives the executive power to declare war — authority afforded solely to Congress.

It was last exercised on December 8, 1941 following imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, never since then. All US wars post-WW II were and remain illegal.

Article I, Section 8 states: “The Congress shall have power…(t)o declare war” — not the president or US courts.

International law supersedes the above. Under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), international laws, treaties, conventions, and other agreements “constitute the supreme law of the land.”

The UN Charter (binding international law for all member states) mandates that Security Council members alone have power to declare war — authorized only in self-defense if a nation is attacked or an attack is imminent.

In the post-WW II era, every time the US went to war, it acted extrajudicially, including against North Korea, Southeast Asia, the rape of Yugoslavia, and all post-9/11 wars.

In all of the above cases, US forces preemptively attacked nations threatening no one. That’s what naked aggression and imperialism are all about — a scourge threatening nuclear war, the ultimate doomsday scenario.

Given US rage for dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations, what’s unthinkable is clearly possible, maybe inevitable.

On ABC News Sunday, Pompeo lied saying:

“The president has his full range of Article 2 authorities, and I’m very confident that any action we took in Venezuela would be lawful” — clearly not so!

Trump earlier said military force is an option against Venezuela “if that’s what’s required.” DJT, Pompeo, Bolton, and Abrams all said: “All options are on the table.”

Fact: Preemptive wars, color revolutions, and old-fashioned coups flagrantly violate international, US constitutional and statute laws pertaining to military action. There’s no ambiguity about it.

The Trump regime “ha(s) a full range of options (against Venezuela) that we’re preparing for,” according to Pompeo — to try replacing democratically elected and reelected President Maduro with US-controlled puppet rule, by his reasoning.

Ahead of meeting with Pompeo on Monday in Rovaniemi, Finland on the sidelines of an Arctic Council ministerial meeting, mainly to discuss events in Venezuela, Sergey Lavrov  denounced “an unprecedented campaign led by the US…aimed at toppling Venezuela’s legitimate government,” adding:

“Attempts to stage a violent upheaval in Caracas have nothing to do with the democratic process, and only disrupt any prospects of political settlement.

International law is clear and unambiguous. Under no circumstances may nations interfere in the internal affairs of others — except in self-defense if attacked.

On Sunday in Moscow, Lavrov and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza discussed the Trump regime’s threat to Bolivarian Republic sovereignty — ahead of Lavrov’s Monday meeting with Pompeo.

There’s virtually no chance that Russia’s foreign minister will convince his US counterpart to keep Washington’s hands off Venezuela.

Calling on the Trump regime to cancel its “irresponsible” aim to topple Maduro fell on deaf ears at the White House.

The die is cast for continued hostile US actions, including possible aggression, though proxy war is most likely.

Millions of Venezuelans and the nation’s military are prepared to defend Bolivarian sovereignty.

What’s going on is likely to continue without letup. The next shoe could drop at any time, including Trump possibly ordering a blockade of Venezuela, an act of war if declared.

Good faith Russian efforts aren’t enough to convince Trump regime hardliners to abandon their imperial aims against the Bolivarian Republic.

Lavrov/Pompeo talks on Monday won’t change a thing. Separately, GOP Senator Todd Young called for Foreign Relations Committee involvement on Venezuela.

Expressing concern about “possible US military intervention,” he called on committee chairman James Risch and minority ranking member Bob Menendez “to hold immediate hearings with key (Trump officials) next week to discuss their plans for Venezuela and to explain any plans to deploy US forces to the country.”

The vast majority of House and Senate members are hostile to Maduro and Bolivarian social democracy.

It remains to be seen if they’ll support whatever actions Trump regime hardliners plan to pursue.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from LobeLog

The Embassy Protection Collective formed on April 10, the day after the Trump administration manipulated the Organization of American States (OAS) to change the rules so they could recognize their puppet, Juan Guaido, as president of Venezuela. The OAS could not get the required two-thirds vote to recognize a government so they changed the rules to a mere majority and barely got that. By then, the US had allowed their Guaido coup forces to take the Venezuelan military attaché building in Washington, DC and three diplomatic offices in New York City.

The Trump administration is allowing extreme violent right-wing Guaido supporters to blockade the embassy. Despite a standoff in the last week, we had a series of victories over those forces and remain steadfast protectors of the embassy.

We adopted a theme song for the Embassy Protection Collective, “We’re Still Here” by Holly Neer. The chorus begins with:

We’re Still Here
Choosing Love Over Fear
When the Lines Are All Drawn
We’re Still Here

Challenges and Victories

We woke up on April 30 to the news that Juan Guaido was going to attempt a coup again, which made us wonder why he needs to conduct a coup if he is the “president.” We were alerted by our Venezuelan allies that this second coup attempt would be easily defeated, which it was, but to expect coup-supporters in the US to protest at the embassy.

In fact, the extremist Venezuelan coup supporters showed up that morning and tried to take over the steps in front of the building. A team of embassy protectors took a stand on the steps and stopped them from taking over the entry. More violent extremists showed up throughout the day, causing police to erect a barricade between us in front of the embassy. We sang almost non-stop to keep ourselves from engaging with them while they blew sirens and other loud noises and insulted and threatened us shouting racist and misogynist comments and using lewd gestures. Police refused to pass food and water to us or to allow our allies into the space in front of the embassy. We held that space through the night by taking shifts.

In the courtyard behind the embassy, the pro-coup forces harassed, intimidated, threatened and assaulted our allies outside who bravely prevented them from entering the building while folks inside set up reinforcements to stop them from coming in the door. This lasted until 1:00 in the morning.

The next day, May 1, we agreed to cede the front steps if the police would protect the front porch and doors from damage. We moved inside to focus on protecting the embassy from within, thinking the police would honor their duty to protect the embassy from harm. That afternoon, Carlos Vecchio, Guaido’s fake “ambassador” showed up, with the intention of taking over the embassy.

We were ready for him to enter and be forced to remove us. As he came to the front porch to speak, we stood resolute behind him holding signs and chanting, ‘No Coup.’ When he began to speak, we cut off the power to his sound system and out-shouted him. Vecchio was forced to flee, chased by reporter Anya Parampil who asked him, “Where are you going next, the White House?”  A representative vaguely told the crowd they were “working on a process to evict us.” The coup failed in Venezuela on April 30, and failed again in Washington, DC on May 1.

Watch @carlosvecchio’s staff fail to answer what they plan to do from within the Maduro government’s embassy, considering they won’t even be able to issue visas.

Also can’t answer why their colleagues attended a DC think tank meeting to plan for the invasion of Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/xHXWc7bRua

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) May 1, 2019

The coup supporters started setting up tents around the embassy that night and blocking our people from entering the building as police stood by and did nothing. When members of CODE PINK brought food the next day, surrounded by clergy, they were stopped from delivering it. Two allies, Ariel Gold of CODE PINK and Chris Herz tossed bread and other foods onto a patio to us. They were arrested and charged with “hurling missiles” at a building.

We pushed back at police for not allowing the food in, and they provided a blockade for our members to come down and get the groceries. Coup supporters stole hundreds of dollars worth of the food. We were also able to get some medications in that day for people who required it. Since then, we have struggled to get supplies. When we lowered a rope from a window and successfully brought up four bags of food, the coup supporters rushed a barricade and assaulted our allies. It was our people who were threatened with arrest even though they were the ones who were knocked to the ground.

An older gentleman from the neighborhood wanted to bring us toothbrushes and toothpaste. He was swarmed by the violent extremists. When he tried to pass between two people to get to the door, he was thrown to the ground violently and seriously injured. He was arrested, not the ones who threw him down. It has become common for police to arrest the victims of assault, not the people who committed the assault.

These seem to be US-trained regime change operatives who use violence, psy-ops and and intimidation against us. Some are Nicaraguans and Cubans, not Venezuelans. They have unlimited resources. They are constantly bringing in more supplies. From early in the morning, we are surrounded by them and subjected to their sirens, banging of pots and pans, loud music, taunts and threats of physical harm.

They have tried to break in numerous times. They drilled through a door to the garage and damaged the lift gate with a sledgehammer. On Friday night, they banged on the doors so hard for hours that they were damaging them. We had to fortify the old wooden doors so they would not break through. The Secret Service watched while they did it and not only let them but refused to say they would protect our safety. When we called them, they said we should ask the Venezuelan government for help. It took hundreds of calls from supporters to get them to stop.

The Secret Service is allowing them to do all they can to intimidate us very likely under orders from the White House. They want the extremists to frighten us so we leave the embassy. Their actions have had the opposite effect. They have united us in our determination to protect the embassy.

Despite being barricaded in the building and cut off from access to supplies, we are victorious. We are still here and there is little chance of eviction because we are violating no laws. We have built a powerful and united community that works together to protect the embassy and to keep the violent extremists and Trump administration out.

Surrounding the Embassy with Love and Resistance

The Trump administration realizes that entering the Venezuelan Embassy in violation of the Vienna Convention would set a precedent that could put US embassies around the world at risk. As a result, they are allowing right-wing extremists to harass and threaten us and try to starve us out. That is their only hope of taking over the embassy.

We refuse to give in no matter what they do. Our lawyers are making sure there is a record of the incidents, which we have in large part due to our embedded media, Anya Parampil of The Grayzone Project and Alex Rubinstein of Mintpress News. We also have to give a shout out to TeleSur, who was embedded with us until the pro-coup forces arrived and now is providing coverage from the outside. Allies outside are identifying the pro-coup actors. We wrote to the State Department and Secret Service about the violence and have told them we will hold decision-makers and police officers responsible for their actions.  But mostly, we have responded to these intimidation tactics in solidarity and have strengthened our resolve to protect the embassy.

A highlight of the week for us, after many difficult days, was to see hundreds of Embassy Protectors show up outside yesterday. They chanted with us and sang. We ended the night with revolutionary music blasting from the second floor embassy windows and dancing together even though they were on the sidewalk across the street and we were inside the embassy. The extremists’ banging of pots, strobe lights and blasting sirens at us only added to the festive atmosphere.

Today, more Embassy Protectors returned to show solidarity and express their love. We also started receiving many messages of solidarity and appreciation from individuals and social movements in Venezuela. This means the world to us. We are surrounded by violent, right-wing, regime change forces who are trying to wear us down. These are the same actors who held violent protests in Nicaragua and Venezuela. They are making death threats, threatening women with rape and mocking us, all in a posh Georgetown neighborhood. It is surreal.

We recall the mass mobilizations in Charlottesville, Boston and New York when right-wing, racist, misogynist hate-filled people came there and urge that mass resistance to join us now. This is a critical struggle. If the embassy is overtaken, it will set us on a path to war in Venezuela, and chaos and devastation to the region. If we can continue to protect the embassy, Venezuela and the United States will have time to negotiate with third countries to serve as protectorates for their embassies and this could begin a path to peace. Perhaps Trump will even see that the Bolton-Abrams-Pompeo team has misled him and reverse the disastrous policy course he is on. There is no reason to steal Venezuela’s resources, the US should respect Venezuelan sovereignty and negotiate agreements as has been done previously.

We are asking people to come to DC to surround this embassy with love and resistance. Let’s show that love will prevail.

If you absolutely can’t come to DC, please contact your member of Congress to make them aware of the situation. Tell them:

1. The US is required to protect embassies under the Vienna Convention, but is allowing the Venezuelan Embassy to be damaged when the Secret Service could easily protect it.
2. The United States’ coup in Venezuela has failed. Maduro is the legitimate elected President of Venezuela and is recognized by the United Nations and over 140 countries.
3. The Secret Service is violating the human rights of the Embassy Protectors by failing to ensure safe passage in and out of the embassy and access to supplies. We are literally under siege.
4. Review the Declaration of the Embassy Protection Collective and sign on to show your support.

And finally, please make a donation as we have incurred many unexpected costs for this mobilization.

Venceremos!

*

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image: Plato’s Cave reimagined for the Hollywood era  (Photo by: Derek Swansonn)

When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts.

How ignorant we were.

More appropriately, how misled we had been.

We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.

These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.

The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows.

The CIA’s role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Meet the Parents.

 

Jon Voight in Transformers — in this scene, just after American troops have been attacked by a Decepticon robot, Pentagon Hollywood liaison Phil Strub inserted the line ‘Bring em home’, granting the military a protective, paternalistic quality, when in reality the DOD does quite the opposite. (Source: Medium)

Alongside the massive scale of these operations, our new book National Security Cinema details how US government involvement also includes script rewrites on some of the biggest and most popular films, including James Bond, the Transformers franchise, and movies from the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.

A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV, which ranges from Hawaii Five-O to America’s Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars, along with numerous documentaries by PBS, the History Channel and the BBC.

National Security Cinema also reveals how dozens of films and TV shows have been supported and influenced by the CIA, including the James Bond adventure Thunderball, the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games and more recent films, including Meet the Parents and Salt.

The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?

James Bond and Domino are rescued via a plane and skyhook that was loaned to the production by CIA front company Intermountain Aviation — Thunderball (Source: Medium)

The Military’s Political Censorship of Hollywood

When a writer or producer approaches the Pentagon and asks for access to military assets to help make their film, they have to submit their script to the entertainment liaison offices for vetting. Ultimately, the man with the final say is Phil Strub, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) chief Hollywood liaison.

If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD don’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts — Production Assistance Agreements — which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.

This can lead to arguments when actors and directors ad lib or improvise outside of this approved screenplay.

On set at Edwards Air Force base during the filming of Iron Man, there was an angry confrontation between Strub and director Jon Favreau.

Favreau wanted a military character to say the line, ‘People would kill themselves for the opportunities I have’, but Strub objected. Favreau argued that the line should remain in the film, and according to Strub:

‘He’s getting redder and redder in the face and I’m getting just as annoyed. It was pretty awkward and then he said, angrily, “Well how about they’d walk over hot coals?” I said “fine.” He was so surprised it was that easy.’

In the end, this compromised line did not appear in the finished film.

One of several scenes for Iron Man filmed at Edwards Air Force Base (Source: Medium)

It seems that any reference to military suicide — even an off-hand remark in a superhero action-comedy adventure — is something the DOD’s Hollywood office will not allow. It is understandably a sensitive and embarrassing topic for them, when during some periods of the ever-expanding and increasingly futile ‘War on Terror’, more US servicemen have killed themselves than have died in combat. But why shouldn’t a movie about a man who builds his own flying suit of armour not be able to include such jokes?

Another one-line quip that was censored by the DOD came in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

When Bond is about to HALO jump out of a military transport plane they realise he’s going to land in Vietnamese waters. In the original script Bond’s CIA sidekick jokes ‘You know what will happen. It will be war, and maybe this time we’ll win.’

This line was removed at the request of the DOD.

Strangely, Phil Strub denied that there was any support for Tomorrow Never Dies, while the pre-eminent scholar in the field Lawrence Suid only lists the DOD connection under ‘Unacknowledged Cooperation’.

But the DOD are credited at the end of the film and we obtained a copy of the Production Assistance Agreement between the producers and the Pentagon.

The DOD-approved version of the HALO scene in Tomorrow Never Dies

Vietnam is evidently another sore topic for the US military, which also removed a reference to the war from the screenplay for Hulk (2003). While the military are not credited at the end of the film, on IMDB or in the DOD’s own database of supported movies, we acquired a dossier from the US Marine Corps detailing their ‘radical’ changes to the script.

This included making the laboratory where the Hulk is accidentally created into a non-military facility, making the director of the lab an ex-military character, and changing the code name of the military operation to capture the Hulk from ‘Ranch Hand’ to ‘Angry Man’.

‘Ranch Hand’ is the name of a real military operation that saw the US Air Force dump millions of gallons of pesticides and other poisons onto the Vietnamese countryside, rendering millions of acres of farmland poisoned and infertile.

They also removed dialogue referring to ‘all those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation, and germ warfare’, an apparent reference to covert military experiments on human subjects.

The documents we obtained further reveal that the Pentagon has the power to stop a film from being made by refusing or withdrawing support. Some movies such as Top Gun, Transformers and Act of Valor are so dependent on military cooperation that they couldn’t have been made without submitting to this process. Others were not so lucky.

The movie Countermeasures was rejected by the military for several reasons, and consequently never produced. One of the reasons is that the script included references to the Iran-Contra scandal, and as Strub saw it ‘There’s no need for us to… remind the public of the Iran-Contra affair.’

Similarly Fields of Fire and Top Gun 2 were never made because they couldn’t obtain military support, again due to politically controversial aspects of the scripts.

This ‘soft’ censorship also affects TV. For example, a planned Louis Theroux documentary on Marine Corps recruit training was rejected, and as a result was never made.

It is impossible to know exactly how widespread this military censorship of entertainment is because many files are still being withheld. The majority of the documents we obtained are diary-like reports from the entertainment liaison offices, which rarely refer to script changes, and never in an explicit, detailed way. However, the documents do reveal that the DOD requires a preview screening of any project they support and sometimes makes changes even after a production has wrapped.

The documents also record the pro-active nature of the military’s operations in Hollywood and that they are finding ways to get involved during the earliest stages of development, ‘when characters and storylines are most easily shaped to the Army’s benefit.’

The DOD’s influence on popular culture can be found at all stages of production, granting them the same kind of power as major studio executives.

Agencywood: The CIA and NSA’s Influence on Movie Scripts

Despite having far fewer cinematic assets the CIA has also been able to wield considerable influence on some of the projects they have supported (or refused to support).

There is no formal CIA script review process but the Agency’s long-serving entertainment liaison officer Chase Brandon was able to insert himself into the early stages of the writing process on several TV and film productions.

The new recruits arrive at CIA training facility The Farm in The Recruit

Brandon did this most prominently on the spy thriller The Recruit, where a new agent is put through CIA training at The Farm — an obvious vehicle for inducting the audience into that world and giving them a glimpse behind the curtain. The original story treatment and early drafts of the script were written by Brandon, though he is only credited on the film as a technical advisor, covering up his influence on the content.

The Recruit includes lines about the new threats of the post-Soviet world (including that great villainous justification for a $600 billion defense budget, Peru), along with rebuttals of the idea that the CIA failed to prevent 9/11. And it repeats the adage that ‘the CIA’s failures are known, but its successes are not’. All of this helped to propagate the idea that the Agency is a benevolent, rational actor in a chaotic and dangerous world.

The CIA has also managed to censor scripts, removing or changing sequences that they didn’t want the public to see. On Zero Dark Thirtyscreenwriter Mark Boal ‘verbally shared’ his script with CIA officers, and they removed a scene where a drunk CIA officer fires an AK-47 into the air from a rooftop in Islamabad, and removed the use of dogs from the torture scenes.

In a very different kind of film, the hugely popular romantic comedy Meet the Parents, Brandon requested that they change a scene where Ben Stiller’s character discovers Robert De Niro’s (Stiller’s father-in-law to be) secret hideaway. In the original script Stiller finds CIA torture manuals on a desk, but Brandon changed that to photos of Robert De Niro with various dignitaries.

Ben Stiller discovers that Robert De Niro is working for the CIA — Meet the Parents (Source: Medium)

Indeed, the CIA’s ability to influence movie scripts goes back to their early years. In the 1940s and 50s they managed to prevent any mention of themselves appearing in film and TV until North by Northwest in 1959. This included rejecting requests for production support, meaning that some films were never made, and censoring all references to the CIA in the script for the Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Spy.

The CIA even sabotaged a planned series of documentaries about their predecessor, the OSS, by having assets at CBS develop a rival production to muscle the smaller studio out of the market. Once this was achieved, the Agency pulled the plug on the CBS series too, ensuring that the activities of the OSS remained safe from public scrutiny.

While very little is known about the NSA’s activities in the entertainment industry we did find indications that they are adopting similar tactics to the CIA and DOD.

Internal NSA emails show that the producers of Enemy of the State were invited on multiple tours of NSA headquarters. When they used a helicopter to film aerial footage of Fort Meade, the NSA did not prevent them from using it in the movie.

According to a 1998 interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they changed the script at the NSA’s request so that the wrongdoings were the actions of one bad apple NSA official, and not the agency in general.

Bruckheimer said:

‘I think the NSA people will be pleased. They certainly won’t come out as bad as they could have. NSA’s not the villain.’

This idea of using cinema to pin the blame for problems on isolated rogue agents or bad apples, thus avoiding any notion of systemic, institutional or criminal responsibility, is right out of the CIA/DOD’s playbook.

NSA headquarters at Fort Meade — Enemy of the State (Source: Medium)

In all, we are looking at a vast, militarised propaganda apparatus operating throughout the screen entertainment industry in the United States.

It is not quite an official censor, since decisions on scripts are made voluntarily by producers, but it represents a major and scarcely acknowledged pressure on the kind of narratives and images we see on the big and small screens.

In societies already eager to use our hard power overseas, the shaping of our popular culture to promote a pro-war mindset must be taken seriously.

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Tom Secker and Matthew Alford are co-authors of the new book, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood.

Secker is a British-based writer who covers the security services, Hollywood and the history of terrorism. He runs the SpyCulture blog which can be supported via Patreon.com. His work has been covered by The Mirror, The Express, Salon, TechDirt and elsewhere.

Dr Alford is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics, Language and International Studies at the University of Bath. His documentary film based on his research, The Writer with No Hands, was premiered in 2014 at Hot Docs, Toronto and won runner-up at the Ammar Popular Film Festival, Tehran.

Published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project for people and planet. Support INSURGE to keep digging where others fear to tread.

Israel plans to construct the world’s longest underwater gas pipeline together with Cyprus and Greece to carry Eastern Mediterranean gas on to Italy and the EU southern states. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just endorsed the project. It will run smack up against a competing Turkish-Russian gas pipeline, Turk Stream, against a potential Qatari-Iran-Syria pipeline, as well as de facto undercut the Washington attempt to get more US LNG gas to the EU to reduce Russian dependency.

The project, under discussion for several years since Israel discovered major gas reserves in the offshore Leviathan Field, is known as the East Med Pipeline Project. Natural gas will flow from Leviathan via Cyprus, Crete and Greece to reach its terminal at Otranto on the southeast heel of Italy. Plans call for a pipeline of 2,100 kilometers running three kilometers deep under the Mediterranean. Cost is estimated at $7 billion with a five year construction period.

New Fault Lines

The East Med is part of a complex of new geopolitical fault lines across the entire Middle East. Notable is the fact that the Gulf Arab Emirate, UAE, has already invested $100 million in a project the Jerusalem Post calls, “a covert cornerstone underpinning the change in relationship between parts of the Arab world and the Jewish State.” This would seem to be a reference to the 2017 proposal of the US to create an “Arab NATO” with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states, backed by Israeli intelligence input, to counter the influence of Iran in the region. Little is said today about any Arab NATO, but ties between Netanyahu’s Israel and key Sunni Muslim Arab countries remain strong.

One regional player definitely not happy about the proposed Israeli East Med pipeline is Erdogan’s Turkey. When Israel first proposed East Med two years ago, Erdogan quickly turned to Russia to sign a deal to build the Gazprom’s Turk Stream to rival Israel. East Med would tie into gas fields in the Greek EU part of Cyprus. In recent months Erdogan has moved Turkey closer to Iran and especially Qatar, home to key figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, as tensions with Saudi Arabia and Israel increase. The Sunni vs Shi’ite conflict seems to take a back seat to geopolitical power and control of pipelines.

In summer 2017 there was a dramatic split among Gulf Arab countries with Saudi Arabia declaring an embargo against Qatar for its “support of terrorism.” In reality, the move was aimed at cutting growing back-channel talks between Qatar and Iran, both of whom share the world’s largest natural gas field in the Persian Gulf. The Qatari section is called North Field and its LNG is said to be the world’s cheapest to extract, making Qatar in recent years the largest LNG exporter. The adjoining Iran section is called South Pars.

After spending a reported $3 billion financing anti-Assad and anti-Iran terrorist groups in Syria, in a futile try to get a pipeline through Syria to Turkey and on to the huge EU gas market, it seems that the shifty Qataris at some point, after Russia’s decisive entry into the Syria war in late 2015, realized it might gain more by shifting sides and covertly working with Iran and Assad and Erdogan to bring both Qatari and Iran gas to market. That was the real reason for the sharp break between Qatar and the Saudis. Notable is the fact that both Iran and Turkey came to the aid of Qatar when the Saudis tried to embargo them into submission.

Russia’s Turk Stream

Adding to the geopolitical cocktail of competing interests, the Black Sea sections of the Russia-Turkey gas pipeline were completed at the end of 2018 with full operation to begin later in 2019, offering 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually, half, some 16 bcm, available for the EU markets. Turk Stream, as does North Stream, both allow Russian gas to the EU independent of politically hostile Ukraine pipeline routes. From the Kiyikoy terminal in Turkey, the Russian gas can go either to EU member Bulgaria or Greece or both.

Non-EU member Serbia has just begun construction of its section of the TurkStream pipeline to carry Russian natural gas to Europe. Serb Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic recently in Moscow said Serbia’s plans for the construction of the gas conduit did not hinge on Bulgaria’s own work. TurkStream will carry Russian gas through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. Brussels is not overjoyed.

Now comes Israel into play, in a closer friendship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, backed by Washington, with financing also from a French company, IGI Poseidon, a subsidiary of Edison, offering another rival option to Qatar and Iran and Turkey as well as to Russia. Turkey is threatening to drill for oil and gas in the Turkish part of Cyprus while Lebanon disputes the offshore claims of Israel’s pipeline to Cyprus. And ExxonMobil just announced a major gas discovery in the offshore Cyprus waters disputed between Turkey and Greek or EU Cyprus.

It doesn’t need a crystal ball to see that future geopolitical energy conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean are being pre-programmed. Watch this space…

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

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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

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

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

Last Wednesday, Senior U.K. Cabinet ministers were hauled before a leak inquiry to determine who was responsible for the unprecedented reporting of highly secret discussions concerning national security.

Gavin Williamson was found to be guilty by an investigation of Theresa May’s instigation. Her letter to Williamson was not unambiguous – it categorically stated he was guilty. There was no margin for misunderstanding. As Williamson heads to the backbenches, May has made a new enemy – one who was a party whip – with all the secrets that role comes with.

But as Politico reported just a few days ago, there’s more to this story than a simple leak – even if it was about national security.

“There is another potentially culpable: former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Through reforms that he institutionalized, Cameron has inadvertently brought the American political culture of leaking highly classified information into British politics. Britain’s NSC is the “holy of holies.” Attended by a small core of politicians and the heads of the intelligence, security and military services, it is the ultimate decision-making forum in Britain’s national security architecture.”

It’s also a little-remarked fact that, unlike many British arrangements, the NSC is a relatively recent innovation, for which Cameron is responsible. Cameron argued in 2010 that Britain needed to formalize its national security decision-making after the freewheeling “sofa government” of Labour’s Tony Blair.

By appointing a national security adviser and instituting the NSC, partially modelled on the U.S. equivalent, Cameron gave structure to what had previously been the province of informal groups largely composed of officials. By instituting a formal entity of which he was the chair (of course), Cameron not only increased the power of the prime minister’s office in the process but brought senior Cabinet ministers into the heart of national security policymaking, giving them access to sensitive intelligence, therefore significantly raising the prospect of leaks.

The National Security Council (NSC) discussed the role of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in Britain’s future 5G telecoms network and concluded some months ago that the Chinese company should be allowed to be involved. As for the mainstream media, the leak and end of Williamson’s role, that is the end of the story.

However, there is more information about this story that is worthy of note. These dots may or may not be connected, the point being, there’s more to understand about the motivation of Williamson’s demise.

Dot One. Since stepping down as PM after the Brexit result in 2016, David Cameron now has the role of putting together a $1bn investment fund between Britain and China. The idea was to formalise a closer working relationship between the two countries. The fund was formally approved of by both Westminster and Beijing.

Dot two. Back in 2011, former government Chief Information Officer John Suffolk joined China-based IT company Huawei as global head of cybersecurity. Read those words again – former Tory government Chief Information Officer now works for Huawei as head of global cybersecurity. Suffolk was the most senior civil servant to have access to sensitive matters of government, particularly as he was also head of security risk. It was Cameron who gave Suffolk his blessing to join Huawei.

This should not have happened. It is simply too sensitive a role for someone at the heart of government and the civil service to be loyal to a foreign state business with access to the most sensitive information regarding Britain’s cybersecurity. At the time, a Cabinet Office spokesman was keen to add that an “unprecedented number of conditions” were attached to Suffolk’s appointment – as if that means anything in today’s ruthless geo-political cybersecurity environment.

In the meantime, Suffolk has been defending Huawei to the hilt who said about the cybersecurity risk to Britain just two weeks ago that – “There’s no such thing as a zero-risk connected business.”

Dot three. Some months earlier in 2011, Sir Andrew Cahn stepped down after five years in charge of UK Trade & Investment, the government department that promotes exports and attracts foreign direct investment. He is currently a non-executive director of Nomura. Sir Cahn also just happens to be the Chairman of the UK Advisory Board of Huawei – a very ‘comfy’ connection between Huawei and the British government.

Dot four. Despite concerns about Huawei that included America forcing other ‘five-eyes’ nations to abandon plans to allow Huawei access to critical infrastructure projects, the UK decided to forge on ahead with Huawei. However, a recent government report concluded that Huawei’s “basic engineering competence and cybersecurity hygiene was poor, which could be exploited further down the line.” It went further – the HCSEC (Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre) continued to find serious vulnerabilities in the Huawei products examined. Several hundred vulnerabilities and issues were reported to inform their risk and remediation in 2018. Some vulnerabilities identified in previous versions of products continue to exist.”

Dot Five: In 2012, TechRadar magazine spoke to Derek Smith, a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, who explained that the UK government has no concerns about Huawei at all. Since then Smith has become part of the National Security Council [NSC] Head of Counter-Terrorism, Security &Intelligence Communications. He was David Cameron’s Senior Press Officer on foreign policy and defence and was promoted to his current role by Cameron. Smith also disclosed in that interview – “The long-standing relationship the UK government has with Huawei, and the continued work between the two parties, means the Cabinet Office is confident that there are no security concerns.”

Dot Six: In 2009, America’s spy agency the NSA hacked into the Huawei router network in a programme called ‘Shotgiant’ which was unearthed by the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013. The project was designed to spy on the Chinese government and other companies there. In the end, the NSA was itself trying to find out how it “could exploit the equipment to spy on end users.” Britain’s GCHQ was involved. At the time, BT routers in the UK extensively used Huawei products and Britain’s GCHQ set up a special facility for testing Huawei equipment to make sure it wasn’t quietly offering access of some kind to Chinese spies and hackers. Unbelievably, GCHQ was found to have allowed “The Cell” to be staffed by Huawei employees!

Dot Seven: The UK’s recent implementation of the so-called ‘porn-block’ was a contract that was originally given to Huawei, which would have allowed it to control the “Homesafe” filter, which David Cameron praised back in 2013 during his push for tighter controls on adult content. The BBC discovered that UK-based Huawei employees were able to decide which sites were blocked on the service and that even users who opted out of Homesafe would have their internet usage data routed through Huawei’s system. Even if that system is now served by another company, the point is that the government wants access to the information of who is accessing porn.

Dot Eight – In the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks, it was revealed that the British security services GCHQ in Cheltenham had Huawei constractors working on its networks (Image above). The file wording stated – “oddly enough, has Chinese Huawei contractors operating on their networks.”

Dot Nine: A senior Conservative politician has emerged as one of Huawei’s leading advocates in Brussels. Some dodgy dealings have recently emerged including hiding payments made by Beijing for many business class trips and luxury hotel stays along with ‘subsidence’ payments.

Conclusion

The point about these individual bits of information is this. The mix of ex-senior ministers, members of the national security council, counter-terrorism officers, GCHQ, America’s NSA, senior members of Britain’s ‘establishment’ with deep connections into the Huawei top brass, including David Cameron himself who is currently promoting a Beijing/UK trade collaboration and MEP’s being bought off all sounds very ‘muddy waters’ when considering the nature of Theresa May’s motivations for Williamson’s sacking. We must also consider that British spooks have been working very closely with Huawei and their employees.

Williamson has strenuously denied the leak. He has encouraged on multiple occasions a police investigation. He has even sworn on his children’s lives he is innocent – a genuinely suicidal thing to say from a career point of view if caught lying.

You don’t have to like Williamson to defend him. This whole matter which has elements of the government, unaccountable security services, the decidedly murky world of geopolitical cyberwarfare and the current political conflict that Britain finds itself in – smacks of something other than we have been told. Is Williamson simply a convenient ‘patsy’ to demonstrate Theresa May’s fortitude and power at a crucial time or is there something more insidious going on?

If Williamson is guilty of serious breaches of national security, the argument that the law has not been broken is nonsense. That is the sole reason he has been fired. Why has he not been thrown out from politics completely given the seriousness of the crime? Surely, if he was guilty of breaching national security as defence secretary he would be charged or silenced, not put back on the benches. Why has Theresa May repeatedly refused to release a copy of the findings of their investigation to Williamson himself?

There’s more to this than we’ve been told.

And why would anyone believe Theresa May?

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The Grayzone has obtained a list of “key outcomes” on Venezuela deleted out of apparent embarrassment by the State Department. It boasts of wrecking the nation’s economy, destabilizing its military, and puppeteering its political opposition.

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On April 24, six days before self-proclaimed Venezuelan “interim president” Juan Guaido’s attempt to violently overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected government alongside a handful of military defectors, the U.S. State Department published a fact sheet that boasted of Washington’s central role in the ongoing coup attempt. After realizing the incriminating nature of its error, the State Department quickly acted to remove the page.

The Grayzone has obtained a full copy of the expunged report. The deleted page puts to bed any claims of Guaido’s independence from Washington, as the State Department emphasizes the fact that he “announced his interim presidency… in January” at the the top of a section dedicated to breaking down “key outcomes” of U.S. efforts with regard to Venezuela.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Kimberly Breier recently took to Twitter to claim that “since he became acting president, Juan Guaido has given tangible results to the people of Venezuela.” Her tweet was accompanied with an infographic detailing alleged accomplishments of the powerless coup administration based on data compiled by the legally defunct National Assembly, the only governing body actually controlled by Guaido.

But the Venezuela fact sheet posted and then deleted days earlier by the State Department told a dramatically different story.

Read the entire expunged fact sheet here [PDF] and at the end of this article.

The State Department’s economic hit list

Entitled “U.S. Actions on Venezuela,” the document boasted that U.S. policy had effectively prevented the Venezuelan government from participating in the international market and has led to the freezing of its overseas assets. It read like a sadistic celebration of Washington’s retribution against the Venezuelan population as a whole, the kind of collective punishment which is illegal according to Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions.

The State Department gloated in the deleted fact sheet that its policy had ensured that the Maduro government “cannot rely on the U.S. financial system” to conduct business, noting “key outcomes” of U.S. actions include the fact that “roughly $3.2 billion of Venezuela’s overseas are frozen.” It went on to boast that “Venezuela’s oil production fell to 736,000 barrels per day in March… substantially reducing” government revenue.

“If I were the State Department I wouldn’t brag about causing a cut in oil production to 763,000 barrels per day — which is a 36 percent drop, in just the two months of February and March this year,” Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director at the Center For Economic and Policy Research, told The Grayzone. “This means even more premature deaths than the tens of thousands that resulted from sanctions last year.”

Weisbrot recently co-authored a bracing report which found that 40,000 Venezuelans died between 2017 and 2018 as a direct result of U.S. sanctions. The State Department patted itself on the back for announcing its preparedness “to provide an additional $20 million in initial humanitarian assistance” to Venezuela, however, the CEPR report concluded that Trump Administration sanctions implemented in August 2017 resulted in “a loss of $6 billion in oil revenue over the ensuing year” alone.

While the State Department praised the opposition for “providing medical and hygiene attention to over 6,000” Venezuelans, those numbers dwarf in comparison to the 300,000 people CEPR “estimated to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment… [including] 80,000 people with HIV who have not had antiretroviral treatment since 2017, 16,000 people who need dialysis, 16,000 people with cancer, and 4 million with diabetes and hypertension.”

In other words, the supposed “Venezuela Crisis Response Assistance” touted by the State Department is not even a band-aid over the gaping wound that US unilateral coercive measures have inflicted on the country.

In Weisbrot’s view, the “policy” and “outcomes” promoted by the State Department in the disappeared document will merely lead to “more cuts in imports of medicine, food, medical equipment, and inputs necessary to maintain water, health, and sanitation infrastructure.”

Having denied the Venezuelan government the ability to provide for its own population, the U.S. has essentially promised that thousands more deaths will occur.

The State Department did not respond to The Grayzone’s request for a comment on the fact sheet it deleted.

“A list of confessions”

In a recent interview with The Grayzone, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations Samuel Moncada characterized the deleted State Department fact sheet as “a list of confessions.”

“Imagine if any other country says… it’s proud of saying that we are destroying the economy of our neighbor; we are proud that we destroyed the political system of our neighbor; we are proud that they are suffering. They are saying we are waging war against Venezuela,” Moncada emphasized.

The ambassador went on to accuse the U.S. of engaging in “bullying” rather than international diplomacy.

The State Department’s own fact sheet appears to support this accusation, as it asserts “diplomatic pressure resulted in fewer markets for Venezuelan gold.” The document further highlighted U.S. actions that have supposedly led “more than 1,000 members of the military [to recognize] Juan Guaido as interim President” and defect to Colombia, as well as stranding “an estimated 25 crude oil tankers with 12 million barrels” off Venezuela’s coast.

“They [say] it’s our ‘key’ achievements,” Moncada commented. “They are saying that they are causing trouble in our military and inducing a military coup, [which] so far they haven’t achieved, but they are working towards.”

“If any other person says that themselves,” the ambassador concluded, “and you take that confession to court, they would be in prison.”

The State Department’s fact sheet even frames recent decisions by the Organization of American States, Lima Group, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Union to either recognize or support Guaido’s shadow administration as a U.S. achievement, highlighting Washington’s outsized influence within each of these supposedly international governing bodies. The decision to mention the E.U. and Lima Group is particularly noteworthy considering the United States is not a member of either organization.

“They are so far out of any normal parameters of decency, morality, legality, reason, that really they are dangerous,” Moncada said of the Trump administration. “They are a real threat to international peace, and they are a real threat to my people.”

US Department of State Deleted Venezuela Hit List by Max Blumenthal on Scribd

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Anya Parampil is a Washington, DC based journalist. She previously hosted a daily progressive afternoon news program called In Question on RT America. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on the ground reports from the Korean peninsula and Palestine.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

Eight years on from Nato’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war.

The number is at least 14. The legacy of David Cameron’s, Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Barack Obama’s overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans.

Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever.

Ungoverned space

The 2011 conflict, in which Nato worked alongside Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist groups to thrive.

But it was Syria that suffered first.

After civil war broke out there in early 2011, at the same time as in Libya, the latter became a facilitation and training hub for around 3,000 fighters on their way to Syria, many of whom joined al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State-affiliated Katibat al-Battar al-Libi (KBL), which was founded by militants from Libya.

In Libya itself, a rebranding of existing al-Qaeda-linked groups in the north-eastern area of Derna produced Islamic State’s first official branch in the country in mid-2014, incorporating members of the KBL.

During 2015, IS Libya conducted car bombings and beheadings and established territorial control and governance over parts of Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west. It also became the sole governing body in the north-central city of Sirte, with as many as 5,000 fighters occupying the city.

By late 2016, IS in Libya was forced out of these areas, largely due to US air strikes, but withdrew to the desert areas south of Sirte, continuing low-level attacks.

In the last two years, the group has re-emerged as a formidable insurgent force and is again waging high-profile attacks on state institutions and conducting regular hit-and-run operations in the southwestern desert.

Last September, UN Special Representative to Libya Ghassan Salame told the UN Security Council that the IS “presence and operations in Libya are only spreading”.

Terror in Europe

After the fall of Gaddafi, IS Libya established training camps near Sabratha which are linked to a series of terrorist attacks and plots.

“Most of the blood spilled in Europe in the more spectacular attacks, using guns and bombs, really all began at the time when Katibat al-Battar went back to Libya,” Cameron Colquhoun, a former counterterrorism analyst for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, told The New York Times.

“That is where the threat trajectory to Europe began – when these men returned to Libya and had breathing space.”

Salman Abedi, who blew up 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester in 2017, met with members of the Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a faction of IS, several times in Sabratha, where he was probably trained.

Other members of the KBL were Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attacks on the Bataclan nightclub and sports stadium, which killed 130 people, and the militants involved in the Verviers plot to attack Belgium in 2015.

The perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin truck attack, which left 12 people dead, also had contacts with Libyans linked to IS.

So too in Italy, where terrorist activity has been linked to IS Libya, with several individuals based in Italy involved in the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis in 2015, which killed 22 people.

Libya’s neighbours

Tunisia suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in 2015 when a 23-year-old Tunisian armed with a machine gun mowed down 38 tourists, mainly Britons, at a beach hotel in the resort of Port El Kantaoui.

The perpetrator was reportedly an adherent of IS and, like Salman Abedi, had been trained in the camp complex at Sabratha from where the attack was staged.

Libya’s eastern neighbour, Egypt, has also been struck by terrorism emanating from the country. IS officials in Libya have been linked to, and may have directed, the activities of Wilayat Sinai, the terrorist group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has carried out several deadly attacks in Egypt.

After the fall of Gaddafi, the Western Desert became a corridor for the smuggling of weapons and operatives on their way to the Sinai.

Egypt conducted air strikes against militant camps in Libya in 2015, 2016 and again in 2017, the latter following the killing of 29 Coptic Christians near Cairo.

Into the Sahel

But Libya has also become a hub for jihadist networks stretching south into the Sahel. Libya’s 2011 uprising opened a flow of weapons into northern Mali, which helped revive an ethno-tribal conflict that had been brewing since the 1960s.

By 2012, local allies of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken control of day-to-day governance in the northern Mali towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

After France intervened in Mali, the ongoing lack of governance in Libya precipitated several groups to relocate their operational centres to Libya, including both AQIM and its offshoot, Al-Mourabitoun, from where these groups could acquire weapons more easily.

With Libya as its rear base, Al-Mourabitoun under its leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar was behind the attack on the Amenas hydrocarbon complex in eastern Algeria in January 2013, which left 40 foreign workers dead; the gun attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali in November 2015, which killed 22 people; and for the attack on Hotel Splendid in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which killed 20 people in January 2016.

Al-Mourabitoun has also attacked a military academy and French-owned uranium mine in Niger.

Disastrous foreign policy

The fall-out from Libya spreads even wider, however. By 2016, US officials reported signs that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadists, responsible for numerous gruesome attacks and kidnappings, were sending fighters to join IS in Libya, and that there was increased cooperation between the two groups.

The International Crisis Group notes that it was the arrival of weapons and expertise from Libya and the Sahel that enabled Boko Haram to fashion the insurgency that plagues north-western Nigeria today.

There have even been claims that Boko Haram answers to IS commanders in Libya.

In addition to these 14 countries, fighters from several other states have joined IS militants in Libya in recent years. Indeed, it is estimated that almost 80 percent of IS membership in Libya is non-Libyan, including from countries such as Kenya, Chad, Senegal and Sudan.

These foreign fighters are potentially available to return to their own countries after receiving training.

The true extent of the fall-out from the Libya war is remarkable: it has spurred terrorism in Europe, Syria, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Islamic State, although now nearly defeated in Syria and Iraq, is far from dead.

Indeed, while Western leaders seek to defeat terrorism militarily in some places, their disastrous foreign policy choices have stimulated it in others.

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Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.

Nature is decreasing worldwide at an alarming rate – it is time to look to indigenous peoples to help find the solution. This was one of the key conclusions reached in the first global assessment of nature and biodiversity, released today (6 May) in Paris.

“We are at a historical crossroads for humanity,” said Cristiana Paşca Palmer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Biodiversity Convention, speaking in Paris this week at the closing of the IPBES 7 plenary session.

“We are counting on everyone everywhere and especially indigenous peoples & local communities who are closest to the land, whose survival is most at risk, and whose traditional knowledge and practices can show us all the way forward,” she said.

The report shows that the situation of global nature looks dire, but there are glimmers of hope that could lead to a reverse in this trend. Scientists, governments and civil society agree – the answer lies in knowledge, both in ‘traditional’ science and also with knowledge generated by indigenous peoples and local communities, who have safeguarded nature for millennia.

“The combination of scientific evidence and indigenous and local knowledge makes this report much richer,” said Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of IPBES.

In the largest and most comprehensive attempt to assess the state of our living planet, governments, scientists, civil society and indigenous peoples and local communities came together at IPBES7 and agreed that we are exploiting nature faster than it can renew itself.

“This report shows that our global home is under threat, and nature is in decline,” said Aroha Te Pareake Mead, who attended IPBES 7 as a member of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IIFBES).

“This decline is driven by a predominant economic and political system that favours increasing consumption and growth over living in harmony with nature,” she added.

In New Zealand, Maori use the term ‘kaitiaki’ to describe their intergenerational guardianship responsibilities to their ancestral lands, environment, and rich cultural heritage.

“If we can adopt a global political model that focuses on the concept of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) we might still have a chance to save our planet and all of its biodiversity” said Te Pareake Mead.

Traditional knowledge is key in understanding nature.

More than a quarter of the global land area is traditionally owned, managed, used or occupied by indigenous peoples, and some of the world’s most biodiverse areas are found within lands that have been owned and managed by indigenous peoples and local communities for centuries, and in some cases millennia.

Image on the right: Lakpa Nuri Sherpa of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) delivers the indigenous caucus’ closing intervention at IPBES7

The global assessment reports that nature managed by indigenous peoples and local communities is under increasing pressure…but declining less rapidly than in other areas of the world. Increasingly, these ‘islands’ of great natural diversity found on indigenous lands are increasingly being surrounded by vast tracts of the earth in natural decline.

One reason for this difference in diversity could be down to the value systems that societies place on nature.

“Indigenous peoples don’t see nature as separate from people,” said Lakpa Nuri Sherpa of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) and representing IIFBES.

“We interact with nature every day, and we think carefully how we manage our resources – we have spiritual and sacred relationships with our natural resources, which means we must manage our lands in a sustainable way so we can pass it on to the next generation.

“For this reason, we must continue to fight for the rights to our lands, territories and resources – if we don’t have rights, if we are attacked, we cannot protect our forests – they take the resources from our lands, but we care for these lands. Without security for our collective land rights, the land can be exploited, nature loses out, and there’s nothing to pass on to the next generation,” he said.

“The Indigenous caucus (IIFBES) appreciates greatly the evidence generated by the global assessment highlighting the important contributions of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and nature’s gifts,” said Lakpa.

Action is now required. The Global Assessment states ‘The positive contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities to sustainability can be facilitated through national recognition of land tenure, access and resource rights in accordance with national legislation, the application of free, prior and informed consent, and improved collaboration, fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use, and co-management arrangements with local communities.’

“We look forward to working with all governments, scientists, citizens and all stakeholders involved in this quest for a solution over the coming years,” said Lakpa.

“Indigenous understanding encompasses practice, knowledge, spirituality and deep relationships with ancestral lands and sacred places, and it is good to see that this has now been recognised and included in this global assessment,” he said.

Representatives of the indigenous caucus and friends with IPBES Chair Sir Robert Watson 

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Featured image: Cristiana Paşca Palmer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Biodiversity Convention, speaking in Paris this week at the closing of the IPBES 7 plenary session.

Avremmo raggiunto questo momento cruciale in cui l’iperpotenza declinante comincia a dubitare di se stessa? La stampa nordamericana ha appena raccontato quello che l’ex-presidente Jimmy Carter ha detto a Donald Trump durante l’ultimo incontro. L’inquilino della Casa Bianca aveva invitato il predecessore a parlargli della Cina, e Jimmy Carter (il 15 aprile scorso-ndr.) ha pubblicamente riferito del discorso durante una riunione battista in Georgia. Una vera pepita.

“Temi che la Cina va avanti e sono d’accordo con te. Ma sai perché la Cina ci supera? Normalizzai le relazioni diplomatiche con Pechino nel 1979. Da quella data, sai quante volte la Cina è stata in guerra con qualcuno? Neanche una. Noi siamo costantemente in guerra. Gli Stati Uniti sono la nazione più guerriera nella storia del mondo perché vogliono imporre i loro valori ad altri Paesi. La Cina, da parte sua, investe in progetti come le ferrovie ad alta velocità invece di spendere per le spese militari. Quanti chilometri di ferrovia ad alta velocità abbiamo in questo Paese? (1) Abbiamo sprecato 3 trilioni di dollari in spese militari. La Cina non ha sprecato un centesimo per la guerra, ed è per questo che ci supera in quasi tutto. E se avessimo preso 3 trilioni per le infrastrutture statunitensi, avremmo una ferrovia ad alta velocità. Avremmo ponti che non collassano. Avremmo strade che vengono mantenute correttamente. Il nostro sistema d’istruzione sarebbe buono come quello della Corea del Sud o di Hong Kong”. (Jimmy Carter, ex presidente USA 1977-1981)

Che tale senso comune non abbia mai toccato la mente di un capo nordamericano, lo dice la natura del potere in questo Paese. È senza dubbio difficile, per uno Stato che rappresenta il 45% della spesa militare mondiale ed ha 725 basi militari all’estero, dove i produttori di armi controllano lo Stato profondo e decidono una politica estera responsabile di 20 milioni di morti dal 1945, per mettere in discussione il proprio rapporto patologico con la violenza armata.

” La guerra in Vietnam”, disse Martin Luther King, “è sintomo di una malattia dello spirito nordamericano i cui pilastri sono razzismo, materialismo e militarismo”. Ma questa domanda riguarda principalmente il futuro. Per colpa dei loro capi, gli Stati Uniti sono condannati a conoscere il destino degli imperi che affondarono per le loro eccessive ambizioni, letteralmente asfissiati dal peso esorbitante della spesa militare? Alla fine del suo mandato, nel 1959, il presidente Eisenhower denunciò con accenti profetici il complesso militare-industriale che gravava pesantemente sulla società nordamericana. Non più a Donald Trump o Barack Obama, non gli importa del destino delle persone affamate, invase o bombardate dallo zio Sam in nome della democrazia e dei diritti umani. Ma come oggi Jimmy Carter probabilmente percepisce, la corsa agli armamenti sarà la causa principale del declino dell’impero.

Perché i neoconservatori e altri “Dottor Stranamore” del Pentagono per diversi decenni non hanno solo hanno usurato la democrazia liberale e massacrato Vietnam, Laos, Cambogia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libia e Siria, per non parlare degli omicidi orchestrati nell’ombra dalla CIA e suoi rami, dallo sterminio della sinistra indonesiana (500.000 morti) alle tragedie degli squadroni della morte guatemaltechi (200.000 morti) attraverso bagni di sangue eseguiti a nome dell’impero dalla jihad planetaria lobotomizzata. Gli strateghi del contenimento del comunismo a colpi di napalm, e poi gli apprendisti stregoni del caos costruttivo che importano terrore, infatti, non solo hanno infiammato il pianeta. I burattini dello Stato profondo nordamericano, guerrafondai stabilitisi al Congresso, Casa Bianca e think tank neo-con che facevano precipitare la società statunitense nella depressione interiore che maschera a malapena l’uso frenetico della zecca. Perché se il belluismo degli Stati Uniti è l’espressione del loro declino, ne è anche la causa. Ne è l’espressione, quando di cerca di fermare questo declino, brutalità dell’interventismo militare, sabotaggio economico ed operazioni sotto falsa bandiera sono il segno distintivo della politica estera statunitense. Ne è la causa, quando la folle inflazione delle spese militari sacrifica lo sviluppo di un Paese dove i ricchi sono più ricchi e i poveri sempre di più.

Mentre la Cina investe in infrastrutture civili, gli Stati Uniti le abbandonano a vantaggio delle industrie delle armi. Washington sbraita, ma lascia che il Paese si disintegri all’interno. Il PIL pro capite è enorme, ma il 20% della popolazione vive in povertà. Le prigioni sono piene: i detenuti statunitensi sono il 25% dei prigionieri nel pianeta. Il 40% della popolazione è colpita dall’obesità. L’aspettativa di vita degli americani (79,6 anni) è superata da quella dei cubani (80 anni). Come può un piccolo Paese socialista, soggetto a embargo, fare meglio di una gigantesca potenza capitalista coronato dall’egemonia planetaria? Si deve credere che negli Stati Uniti la salute della plebe non sia la principale preoccupazione delle élite.

Abile concorrente, Donald Trump vinse le elezioni del 2016 promettendo di ripristinare la grandezza degli Stati Uniti e impegnandosi a ripristinare i posti di lavoro persi a causa della globalizzazione sfrenata. Ma i risultati ottenuti, in assenza di riforme strutturali, infliggono una doccia fredda all’ardore incantatore. Il deficit commerciale col resto del mondo è esploso nel 2018, battendo un record storico (891 miliardi di dollari) che frantuma quello del 2017 (795 miliardi). Donald Trump ha completamente fallito nel cambiare la situazione, e i primi due anni della sua amministrazione sono i peggiori nella storia economica degli Stati Uniti. In tale deficit globale, lo squilibrio degli scambi con la Cina grava pesantemente, raggiungendo nel 2018 un record storico (419 miliardi) che supera il record disastroso del 2017 (375 miliardi). La guerra commerciale di Donald Trump ha particolarmente aggravato il deficit commerciale degli Stati Uniti. Mentre le importazioni di merci cinesi verso gli Stati Uniti hanno continuato a crescere (+ 7%), la Cina ha ridotto le importazioni dagli Stati Uniti. Donald Trump voleva usare i dazi per riequilibrare il bilancio degli Stati Uniti. Non era illegittimo, ma irrealistico per un Paese che lega il suo destino a quello della globalizzazione dettato dalle multinazionali degli Stati Uniti. Se aggiungiamo che il deficit commerciale con Europa, Messico, Canada e Russia è anche peggiorato, si misurano le difficoltà che affliggono l’iperpotenza in declino. Ma non è tutto. Oltre al deficit commerciale, il deficit fiscale federale si è ampliato (779 miliardi, contro 666 miliardi nel 2017). È vero che la spesa militare è impressionante. Il bilancio del Pentagono per il 2019 è il più alto nella storia degli Stati Uniti: 686 miliardi di dollari. Lo stesso anno, la Cina spende 175 miliardi, con una popolazione quattro volte superiore. Non sorprende che il debito federale abbia battuto il nuovo record di 22175 miliardi. Il debito privato, quello delle aziende e dei privati, dà le vertigini (73.000 miliardi).

Certo, gli Stati Uniti beneficiano di una situazione eccezionale. Il dollaro è ancora la valuta di riferimento nel commercio internazionale e nelle riserve delle banche centrali. Ma questo privilegio non è eterno. Cina e Russia sostituiscono le riserve in dollari con lingotti d’oro e una quota crescente degli scambi è ora denominata in yuan. Gli Stati Uniti vivono a credito a spese del resto del mondo, ma per quanto? Secondo l’ultimo studio della società di revisione PwC (“Il mondo nel 2050: come cambierà l’economia globale nei prossimi 30 anni”), i “Paesi emergenti” (Cina, India, Brasile, Indonesia, Messico, Russia, Turchia) potrebbe rappresentare il 50% del PIL globale nel 2050, mentre la quota dei Paesi G7 (Stati Uniti, Canada, Regno Unito, Francia, Germania, Italia, Giappone) scenderebbe al 20%. La caduta dell’aquila è vicina.

Bruno Guigue

Articolo originale in francese :

La chute de l’aigle est proche, 23 aprile 2019

Traduzione italiana : amicuba.altervista.org

(1) L’unico servizio AV (secondo la definizione statunitense) oggi esistente è gestito da Amtrak, con l’Acela Express tra Boston e Washington, D.C. per un totale di 724 km. (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_velocit%C3%A0_ferroviaria#Stati_Uniti_d’America)

To protect its culture Québec has decided veiled women shouldn’t be allowed to teach. But the crucifix adorning the National Assembly can stay, as well as a large cross atop the highest point in Montréal, not to mention the streets named after Catholic saints. The government has decided laïcité (secularism) should be pursued on the backs of the most marginalized immigrants.

Underlying support for this cultural chauvinism is a blindness to power relations that has long been part of Québec’s self-image and is especially evident in international affairs.

The week the governing party, Coalition Avenir Québec, announced it would prohibit public workers in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols, Québecer Catherine Cano was confirmed in the No. 2 position at la Francophonie. After former Governor General Michaëlle Jean failed to win a second term as leader of L’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), Ottawa/Québec City secured a return to the organization’s previous leadership structure. Between 2006-15 Québec diplomat Clément Duhaime was No. 2 at the Paris based OIF.

Second biggest contributor to la Francophonie, Ottawa gives $40 million annually to OIF and the other institutions of la Francophonie. A member in its own right, Québec says it provides “over 10 million dollars per year … to international solidarity activities in developing countries that are members of La Francophonie.” Québec’s international affairs ministry is named Le Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie.

La Francophonie seems to stir linguistic chauvinism within Québec nationalist circles. During the 2016 OIF Summit in Madagascar Le Devoir bemoaned the decline of la langue de Molière in the former French colony. Titled “Quel avenir pour le français?: À Madagascar, la langue de Molière s’étiole”, the front page story cited an individual calling the post-independence focus on the country’s majoritarian, Indigenous language “nothing less than a ‘cultural genocide.’” According to the head of OIF’s Observatoire de la langue française, Alexandre Wolff, it was “urgent to show French can be useful” in the island nation. The progressive nationalist paper’s hostility to Malagasy wasn’t even presented as a battle with the dominant colonial language. The story noted that “English is practically absent” there.

OIF reinforces cultural inequities in former French and Belgian colonies. While OIF is largely designed to strengthen the French language, is there any place aside from Québec where French has been the language of the oppressed?

Even more than the English, French imperialists used language as a tool of colonial control. Schooling in French African colonies, for instance, was almost entirely in French, which stunted the written development of local languages as well as the rise of a common national or regional language. It also oriented the intellectual milieu towards the colonial metropole.

At the same time newly independent African countries attempted to promote indigenous languages, Ottawa channeled hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to link Québec with “French” countries. Efforts to strengthen the ‘common’ linguistic heritage between Québec and Algeria stunted its post-independence moves towards strengthening Arabic. Though less stark, the same dynamic played out in the Congo with Lingala, in the Central African Republic with Sango and in Senegal with Wolof. In Haiti Québec’s large (linguistically inspired) presence has reinforced the stark French-Creole linguistic/class divide. While basically everyone speaks Haitian Creole, less than 10 per cent of Haitians speak French fluently. French is the language of Haiti’s elite and language has served as a mechanism through which they maintain their privilege. (In terms of Haitians adopting a more useful common second-language, Spanish would facilitate ties with the eastern half of the island while English would enable greater relations with other parts of the Caribbean.)

Ottawa greatly expanded its aid to “Francophone” nations to weaken the sovereignty movement in the mid-1960s. In an influential 1962 internal memo, long time External Affairs official Marcel Cadieux argued that channeling foreign aid to “French” Africa was the most politically expedient means of demonstrating concern for Quebecker’s nationalist aspirations. Canadian aid to former French colonies skyrocketed through the late 1960s and Canada provided as much as a third of the budget for the institutions of OIF.

Ottawa/Québec’s interest in former French colonies isn’t only about culture of course. Namesake of the 1965 Doctrine that made projecting French the objective of Québec’s international relations, Paul Gérin-Lajoie built up Québec-based companies as head of the Canadian International Development Agency in the 1970s. SNC Lavalin was hired to manage CIDA offices in Francophone African countries where Canada had no diplomatic representation. Six years after Algeria won its independence from France, SNC’s vice president of development Jack Hahn described their plan to enter Algeria: “They might be interested in North American technology offered in French.”

In February Ministre des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec Nadine Girault spoke to the SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Rio-Tinto, etc. sponsored Conseil des relations internationales de Montréal on “Le Québec à la conquête des marchés étrangers: tirer profit de 50 ans d’affirmation à l’international” (Québec seeks to conquer foreign markets: profiting from 50 years of international affirmation). Girault focused on employing Québec’s substantial linguistically inspired presence in Africa and elsewhere to benefit corporations, noting “we will take advantage of 50 years of affirmation to conquer foreign markets.”

While framed as a defence against English domination in North America, promoting French in Haiti, Senegal or Algeria can appear progressive only if you ignore imperialism and international power relations. But many Québecers have been willing to do just that.

Like Canadian cultural chauvinists who never let the truth stop them from claiming their country is a benevolent international force, nationalism has blinded many Québecers to their oppression abroad and at home. Protecting Québec culture by targeting the most marginalized immigrants is a similar type of cultural chauvinism.

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This article was first crossposted in July 2018.

Since the overwhelmingly nonviolent demonstrations in Gaza began on March 30, 2018, the international community has strongly condemned Israel’s armed attacks.A UN General Assembly resolution “deplore[d] the use of any excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by the Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians,” while the UN Human Rights Council denounced Israel’s “disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.” After Israeli snipers killed Razan al-Najjar, a twenty-one-year-old unarmed Palestinian paramedic, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process warned Israel that it “needs to calibrate its use of force.” In a devastating report, Human Rights Watch concluded that “Israeli forces’ repeated use of lethal force in the Gaza Strip … against demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life may amount to war crimes.”

Welcome as these condemnations are, the question nonetheless remains whether they go far enough. Simply put, does Israel have the right to use any force under any circumstances against the people of Gaza?

The current legal debate has focused on a pair of interrelated questions:

• Did Israeli snipers resort to “excessive” or “disproportionate” force against demonstrators (as critics allege), or was the amount of force they deployed necessary to prevent protesters from breaching the perimeter fence (as Israel alleges)?
• Is Israel’s conduct toward the Gaza protests governed by human rights law (as critics allege) or by international humanitarian law (as Israel alleges)? International humanitarian law applies in situations of armed conflict, whereas human rights law regulates domestic law enforcement. The difference matters, as human rights law imposes more stringent constraints on the use of force.

All parties to both these controversies proceed from a common premise: that Israel has the right to use force in order to prevent Gazans from breaching the fence. The dispute comes down to: how much? Critics who allege “disproportionate” or “excessive” force tacitly legitimize Israel’s use of “proportionate” or “moderate” force, while those who insist upon the applicability of human rights law acknowledge that Israel’s resort to force is legitimate if demonstrators pose an “imminent threat” to a sniper’s life.

This presumption holds even at the most critical pole of the debate on Gaza. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselemcondemned as “illegal” Israel’s resort to lethal force against unarmed persons “approaching the fence, damaging it, or attempting to cross it.” But it conceded that “[o]bviously, the military is allowed to prevent such actions, and even to detain individuals attempting to carry them out.” A senior Human Rights Watch official argued that Israel’s use of live ammunition in Gaza was “unlawful.” But she suggested that “nonlethal means, such as tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets” would have passed legal muster. The International Committee of the Red Cross cautioned Israel that “lethal force only be used as a last resort and when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” Even the major Palestinian human rights organizations characterized Israel’s use of force as “excessive,” “indiscriminate,” and “disproportionate” rather than inherently illegal.

But the fact is, Israel cannot claim a right to use any force in Gaza — whether moderate or excessive, proportionate or disproportionate; whether protesters are unarmed or armed, don’t or do pose an imminent threat to life. If it appears otherwise, that’s because the current debate ignores critical caveats in international law and abstracts from the specific situation in Gaza.

What International Law Says

To justify its use of force in Gaza, Israel claims the right to prevent alien intrusion into its sovereign territory. An Israeli legal commentator observesthat this professed concern for the sanctity of the Gaza “border” is opportunistically selective. Israel invades Gaza at will; only when Palestinians seek to cross in the other direction does the fence become sacrosanct. Setting this hypocrisy aside, Israel’s purported right to self-defense still lacks any legal basis. On the contrary, Israel’s resort to force contravenes international law.

The Palestinian people in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza are struggling to achieve their internationally validated “right to self-determination” (International Court of Justice). As preeminent legal scholar James Crawford notes, international law prohibits the use of military force “by an administering power to suppress widespread popular insurrection in a self-determination unit,” whereas “the use of force by a non-State entity in exercise of a right of self-determination is legally neutral, that is, not regulated by international law at all.”

Demonstrators in Gaza have chosen to use nonviolence in pursuit of their internationally validated rights — a tactic that, of course, international law also does not prohibit. But this prudential decision is not a legal requirement. Even if Gazans opted to use weapons against Israeli snipers who obstruct their right to self-determination, Israel’s resort to military force would still be legally debarred.

The allocation of rights and obligations in standard Western discourse — which effectively accords Israel the right to use violent force in self-defense against Gazans, even as it obliges the people of Gaza to wage nonviolently their self-determination struggle — upends international law.

It might be objected that inasmuch as Israel is a belligerent occupier in Gaza, it has the right, under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to use force in order to maintain public order. But this objection falls on three counts.

First, the Fourth Geneva Convention obliges a belligerent occupier to provide for and ensure the welfare of the occupied population. Indeed, “Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” is the convention’s raison d’etre. Israel, however, has subjected Gaza’s civilian population to a protracted siege that amounts to illegal “collective punishment,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and that has rendered Gaza physically “unlivable,” according to the UN. The Fourth Geneva Convention does not sustain Israel’s right to preserve order in Gaza even as it flagrantly breaches its complementary obligation to guard the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population. In fact, the disorder Israel claims the right to suppress directly springs from the criminal blockade it has imposed.

Second, even if Israel qualified as a belligerent occupier in Gaza, the right of a people to self-determination is a peremptory norm (jus cogens) of international law from which no derogation is permissible. If, as in this case, the law of belligerent occupation overlaps with the right to self-determination, then Gaza’s right to self-determination trumps Israel’s right to maintain order; and if, as in this case, the struggle for self-determination is being waged nonviolently, then Israel’s purported right to use armed force to maintain order is manifestly ill-founded.

Third, in point of fact, Israel’s occupation of Gaza has by now become illegal, and it has consequently forfeited its rights as a belligerent occupier. The International Court of Justice ruled in 1971 that since South Africa had refused to conduct good-faith negotiations to end its occupation of Namibia, that occupation had become illegal. Israel’s refusal over a full half-century to conduct good-faith negotiations on the basis of international law to withdraw from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza has likewise delegitimized its occupation.

There is also another critical legal dimension that has been ignored. It is a fundamental principle of international law that no state may resort to forceful measures unless “peaceful means” have been exhausted (UN Charter, Article 2). This principle is as sacred to the rule of law as the analogous Hippocratic oath, primum non nocere (first, do no harm), is to medicine. The impetus behind the protests at Gaza’s perimeter fence is Israel’s illegal siege, and their objective is to end it. Even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu conceded: “They’re suffocating economically, and therefore, they decided to crash into the fence.”

If Israel wants to protect its border, it need not resort to either lethal or nonlethal coercion. It merely has to lift the siege. US president Donald Trump’s A-Team on Middle East diplomacy — son-in-law Jared Kushner, former bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, former Trump Organization legal advisor Jason Greenblatt, and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley — allege, on the contrary, that it is Hamas that “is holding the Palestinians of Gaza captive” and bears “primary responsibility … in perpetuating the suffering of the people of Gaza.” But if they’ve tumbled down Alice’s rabbit hole, it’s not incumbent on the rest of us to follow them. “Israel, as the occupying power,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs authoritatively observed, “must lift the blockade, which contravenes … the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting collective penalties and prevents the realization of a broad range of human rights.”

Hamas has also consistently offered Israel a long-term truce(hudna) in exchange for an end to the siege, and it reiterated this proposal throughout the current demonstrations. On May 7, a week before Israel shot dead more than sixty protesters in Gaza, Ha’aretz reported that “Hamas leaders” had “conveyed to Israel messages indicating their willingness to negotiate a long term cease-fire” in exchange for, among other things, “easing … the siege.” “Hamas keeps relaying messages to the defense establishment that it’s still interested in a ‘hudna,’” a veteran Israeli military correspondent revealed several days later. “Hamas itself has conveyed to Israel in the past year different versions of a restricted or wider hudna, which include not only Gaza but the West Bank as well.”

The Israeli military took these cease-fire offers seriously: “Hamas, according to the intelligence services, is willing to reach an agreement.” Indeed, a senior army officer urged that “now is the time to reach an agreement with Hamas” in order to “prevent further rounds of fighting.” But Israel’s government was uninterested: Hamas’s “demands and conditions have never been discussed, as Israel refuses to talk to Hamas.” Israel’s rejection of this preliminary peaceful step puts it in double breach of international law: the imposition of an illegal blockade and the unlawful resort to armed force when peaceful means have not been exhausted.

A Right to Poison Children?

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says Professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

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Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Featured image is from The Ecologist

US President Trump tweeted that he will impose tariffs of 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods by Friday and possibly even do the same to another $325 billion of them too if the ongoing trade talks between the US and China don’t conclude on America’s terms.

He also said that progress on this front is going too slowly for his liking and accused his counterparts of trying to renegotiate, something that he’s totally opposed to. These public messages are an unfriendly negotiating tactic intended to humiliate China by causing it to “lose face”, which is an important cultural concept in the East that most Westerners are unaware of or at the very least don’t properly understand. Trump’s threatened tariffs therefore undermine China’s trust in America as a reliable negotiating partner who can be spoken to in discretion without fear of the details of their sensitive talks being revealed to the global press by none other than the US President himself.

He’s of course not doing this in order to deliberately degrade his country’s international reputation and deal damage to American-Chinese relations but apparently believes that his tough stance towards China will win him more domestic political support ahead of the heated 2020 elections. Trump wants to differentiate himself from his Democratic rivals whose pragmatic stance towards China is considered by him to be inappropriate at best and treasonous at worst. After all, he won election in the first place partially because of his nationalist promise to “Make America Great Again”, and as is known, nationalism feeds off of an external enemy that can be blamed for the country’s problems. China, in this case, is portrayed as the US’ main rival, not only in Trump’s campaign rhetoric but also in his administration’s official policy as articulated by the National Security Strategy and other related documents that have been released under his tenure.

Words have consequences, however, and the American people can expect prices to increase if Trump’s tweets ultimately derail the ongoing trade talks, but he’s gambling that the nationalist revival taking place in the country will distract the masses from any adverse impact this could have on their country’s economy and therefore succeed in winning him re-election next November. This is a very risky strategy that’s fraught with many pitfalls and could easily backfire, but Trump has earned a reputation as a high-stakes gambler since entering into office and seems ready to apply this approach towards the ongoing trade talks with China. Regardless of their eventual outcome, the trust between the two parties will probably deteriorate after what the American leader just did in trying to publicly humiliate his counterparts on Twitter, which was a self-interested and undiplomatic move.

It’s understandable that Trump wants to advance his nation’s interests as he understands them, which is what every head of state is entrusted by their people to do, but he also has a responsibility to maintain stable relations with his international peers and to not disrespect them. He regularly remarks about his very close relations with President Xi, but his words are beginning to appear very insincere since he doesn’t have any restraint when it comes to insulting the negotiating team that represents the Chinese leader. Trump thinks that China needs the US more than the reverse and is basing this logic on the trade deficit between the two countries that he wants to rectify through the ongoing talks, but he should always keep in mind the concept of “face” and how China might be willing to accept the consequences that could come with the failure of the ongoing negotiations in order to protect its international reputation after Trump’s twitter attacks.

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

Two recent electoral regime changes in Central America pose serious challenges for China’s regional strategy since the incoming leaders of El Salvador and Panama have pledged to take a tougher stance towards the People’s Republic than their predecessors and thus appear poised to reach out to the US in an effort to play it off against China as they seek to maximize their countries’ strategic positions in the New Cold War.

The “Reverse-South China Sea” Strategy

Central America has suddenly become an undeclared battleground in the New Cold War between the US and China after two recent electoral regime changes there seem set to have far-reaching strategic repercussions for the region. The president-elects of El Salvador and now Panama have pledged to take a tougher stance towards the People’s Republic than their predecessors who surprisingly recognized Beijing over Taipei, with incoming Salvadoran leader harshly criticizing China during his trip to the US back in March while his Panamanian counterpart just said that the US must cultivate better relations with the region or risk losing out to its Asian rival. Both countries play important roles in China’s Central American grand strategy to turn the region into a “reverse-South China Sea” for the US through the inroads that Beijing has been quietly making in Washington’s soft underbelly after Panama and El Salvador decided to recognize the People’s Republic.

Panama + El Salvador = Pro-Chinese Central America

The southern isthmus state irreplaceably facilitates Chinese exports to the US’ East Coast, the Caribbean region, and Brazil, though the planned Trans-Oceanic Railroad (TORR) will revolutionize South American geopolitics if it’s ever constructed and render the latter purpose of the Panama Canal redundant for China. In addition, Panama joined China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and is supposed to be host to a high-speed railway connecting the capital with the Costa Rican border, which could conceivably one day continue northward all the way to Mexico in becoming the “Central American Silk Road”. As for El Salvador, its strategic position in the migrant-originating Northern Triangle imbues this tiny country with outsized significance because of the fears (whether founded or not) that the US has of China exploiting “Weapons of Mass Migration” there to undermine its national security. Together, both countries form indispensable components of China’s regional strategy.

“Fortress America”

The US’ rolling campaign of hegemonic domination in the hemisphere (“Fortress America“) has seen the most success in resource-rich and more strategically important South America but is finally beginning to expand to Central America as Trump seeks to strengthen his country’s grip on this region. The so-called “Troika of Tyranny” that National Security Advisor Bolton declared late last year crucially includes the centrally positioned country of Nicaragua smack dab in the middle of the region, while the electoral regime changes that recently took place in El Salvador and Panama “bookend” the isthmus and complete the US’ strategy of pressure in Central America that’s intended to squeeze out Chinese influence. It’s too early to say whether either of those two aforementioned states will reconsider their recognition of Beijing, but they’re more than likely to try to play it off against Washington as they seek to maximize their strategic positions in the New Cold War.

“Balancing”

Neither the Salvadoran nor Panamanian president-elects seem content with being Old Cold War-like stooges of the US without at least receiving something tangible in return for their people since both were elected on promises of fighting corruption (which they implied was exacerbated in their countries since the commencement of their new partnerships with China) and bringing real dividends to their populations. As such, it’s predictable that they’ll likely scale back their Silk Road cooperation with China in exchange for more American aid or replacement projects by the US, though without cutting off ties with China in order to avoid becoming overly reliant on their “big brother”. This might expectedly see some setbacks for China but importantly probably won’t lead to the complete eradication of its influence by any means even though the US’ will likely increase at its expense.

Winning Hearts And Minds

It’s therefore not an exaggeration to say that it’s crunch time for China in Central America and that it’ll need to step up its strategy of engagement if it wants to compete with the US there under these much more difficult conditions. It would be advantageous to its interests if China proactively initiated the renegotiation of some of its Silk Road contracts as an “inaugural gift” to those countries’ new leaders, which would improve its standing among the public who might have been influenced by those incoming presidents’ unfriendly rhetoric towards Beijing. In addition, announcing socio-humanitarian projects such as scholarships and aid would show that partnering with the People’s Republic involves many more benefits than just low-interest loans and large-scale infrastructure projects. If China is to retain its influence in Central America, then it must work on winning “hearts and minds” so that people end up voting for its implied candidate of choice during the next elections like they just did for the US’ and consequently counteract some of the gains that America will likely make there during the next couple of years.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

The Israeli forces escalated their attacks against the Gaza Strip and continued to carry out intense airstrikes and shelling throughout the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the Israeli warplanes continue until the moment to target residential buildings in central Gaza neighborhoods in a serious escalation forewarning of more casualties.

This wave of escalation came after a bloody day in which the Israeli forces killed four Palestinians.  Two of them were civilians, including a person with a disability, who were targeted with live ammunition during their participation in the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege, east of Khan Younis and al-Bureij refugee camp.  Meanwhile, the other two were members of the Palestinian armed groups who were in a military site that was targeted in eastern Maghazi refugee camp shortly after the Israeli forces announced that two Israeli soldiers were wounded in a Palestinian shooting, east of al-Bureij.

According to PCHR’s fieldworkers, the Israeli airstrikes began at 09:45 on Saturday, 04 May 2019, in an airstrike on Al-Qarman Street in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, under the pretext of responding to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip and fell on an open area in the Israeli ”Shaar HaNegev” compound adjacent to the Gaza Strip, According to the Israeli forces’ Statement.

The Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling then continued across the Gaza Strip. According to our fieldworkers (until 21:30), the Israeli forces fired 50 artillery shells and 78 missiles at 76 targets, including two residential buildings, 11 agricultural plots, and the Palestinian armed groups’ military sites and checkpoints that were previously targeted more than once.

At approximately 17:55 on the same day, an explosion of still-undetermined origin occurred in al-Zaytoun neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.  As a result, a 14-month-old toddler, Saba Mahmoud Hamdan Abu ‘Arar , and a 5-month pregnant woman, Falastine Saleh Abu ‘Arar (37) as well as her fetus were killed.  Moreover, Ma’azouzah Mohammed Abu ‘Arar (72) and Hussam Adnan Abu ‘Arar (2 years) were wounded.  Meanwhile, PCHR’s staff is still investigating the circumstances of the explosion.

The airstrikes also resulted in the killing of a member of the Palestinian armed groups in the northern Gaza Strip while 12 other Palestinians were wounded, including a woman.

Simultaneously with the preparation of this press release, the Israeli forces destroyed two buildings, which included residential apartments, offices and media offices in Al-Remal neighborhood in Gaza City.  As a result, the building was completely destroyed and the residents were displaced.

In addition to the destruction caused by the Israeli airstrikes against the targeted locations and the damage to nearby houses and facilities, the explosions caused widespread panic and fear among the Gaza population, especially women and children, recalling their harsh experiences in the 3 last offensives on Gaza (2008-2009, 2012 and 2014.)

While preparing this press release, the Israeli airstrikes and shelling continued to target residential buildings in densely-populated neighborhoods, inflicting more casualties and destruction.  All of this has been followed up by PCHR’s staff spread all over the Gaza Strip to document and investigate the circumstances of those crimes.

As part of their ongoing policy of collective punishment, the Israeli forces declared the closure of the Kerem Abu Salem Crossing, east of Rafah, the only commercial crossing in the Gaza Strip, and Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing for individuals in the northern Gaza Strip. It also announced completely closing the Sea, and prevented fishermen from sailing and fishing, starting at 16:30 today, depriving thousands of fishermen of their livelihoods.

In light of the continued strikes and indicators of escalating the aggression, PCHR warns that civilians are paying dearly and the successive airstrikes have turned more than two million Palestinians into hostages to aggression, fear, anxiety and direct targeting.

PCHR condemns the ongoing wave of escalation and fears the possibility of further deterioration. PCHR emphasizes that the Israeli ongoing airstrikes against the densely-populated areas and use of weapons on the basis of collective reprisal constitute grave violations of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949,and amount to war crimes.

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All images in this article are from PCHR

The ignorant warmonger masquerading as an American Secretary of State should be arrested for his impersonation of an American government official.  Mike Pompeo cannot possibly be the US Secretary of State, because not even Donald Trump would appoint “an idiot” to this high position who thinks that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president the authority to declare war and invade other countries.

Here is what imposter Pompeo said:

“The president has his full range of Article 2 authorities and I’m very confident that any action we took in Venezuela would be lawful.”

This was Pompeo’s answer when asked if President Trump could intervene in the country’s power struggle without congressional approval. (See this) Of course, it is not “the country’s power struggle.” It is Washington’s effort to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution and regain control over Venezuela’s resources.

Pompeo is twice idiot.  The US Constitution gives the power to declare war only to Congress. Moreover, under the Nuremburg laws laid down by the US government after World War 2, it is a war crime to commit of war of aggression, which is what US military intervention in Venezuela would be.  

I should have said that Pompeo is three times idiot, because he asserts that countries that are diplomatically defending the democratically elected government of Venezuela are “interfering with the Venezuelan people’s right to restore their own democracy.”  Someone should tell Pompeo that it is the Venezuelan people and the Venezuelan military that have refused Washington’s financial bribes and threats who are supporting Venezuelan democracy, not Washington whose failed coup might be followed up with another Washington war crime invasion.  

Lavrov and Putin have found it difficult in the past to put down a hard foot in order to deter more illegal war crime aggression from Washington.  Lavrov is too civilized of a person to have to confront Pompeo.

Putin should send Shoigu to deal with Pompeo. The time for polite, accommodating talk is long past.  A country and its people are at stake.

Let’s hope Russia and China do not permit another Libya.  

Someone needs to inform RT  about the US Constitution.  RT incorrectly reported that: “Article 2 of the US Constitution grants the president the right to declare war and act as commander in chief of the country’s armed forces.”  Utter nonsense!

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

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

Brothers and Sisters:

My name is Ken Stone and I am the treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War. I wish to thank the organizers for the privilege of speaking to you on the occasion of May Day.

On May Day, it is traditional for working people to rant and rail against war and militarism. We rant and rail against war and militarism for two important reasons. First, it is we working people who suffer the most from wars. It is our sons and daughters who come home in body bags. It is our family members who become widows, widowers, and ophans. It is our homes, or the homes of our brothers and sisters in distant lands, which are burned to the ground. It is we who bear the scars, phyiscal and emotional of the permanent war of terror raging around the globe. Secondly, all the public funds lavished on wars and militarism are funds that are denied to the social programs on which we depend.

This speech is about guns and butter. Bismarck, the Prussian aristocrat credited with unifying Germany in the 19^th century, was attributed with remarking that, in a country which spends a lot on war and armaments, the people will suffer. And that’s how it’s turning out in Canada today.

Let me give you some examples.

On February 4 of this year, Canada’s Minister of Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, shamefully hosted a meeting of the Lima Group, an unofficial group of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela. On that very same day, she announced she was giving 53 million dollars of your tax money, brothers and sisters, to a guy in Caracas named Juan Gauidó in order to help overthrow the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Now, brothers and sisters, what could we do with 53 million dollars? I’ll tell you what we could do with 53 million dollars. For 15 months, we could make payments to 4000 recipients of the Basic Income Pilot Project, which was recently cancelled by Premier Doug Ford of Ontario, because he said it was not an efficient use of public funds. There are people in this rally who are the victims of the cancellation of that pilot project. I personally know some of the people culled from that project. These people can no longer afford butter. They are in danger of going hungry or homeless!

Another example: the Trudeau government of Canada is current engaged in a so-called “peace-keeping mission” in Mali, a country in West Africa. But this mission has nothing to do with peace at all. It is a neo-colonial operation to protect the interests of Canadian gold-mining companies in Mali, companies which extracted $1.2 billion dollars of pure gold from Mali in 2016 and left that country in tatters. Canada’s one-year “peace-keeping” mission on behalf of Barrick Gold and other Canadian miners cost 400 million dollars of your tax money, brothers and sisters. What could we do instead with 400 million dollars? I’ll tell you, brothers and sisters. For 392  million dollars, we could pay for the processing and resettling of each and every refugee and asylum-seeker in Canada for one year, many of whom had to flee their homes in distant lands where Canada and its NATO allies have made wars which turned whole populations into refugees.

Guns and butter indeed!

The Hamilton Spectator recently published an article detailing the never-ending cost to the Canadian taxpayer of the war in Afghanistan. Why? Because more and more of the 40,000 Canadian veterans of that illegal NATO operation are requiring treatment for PTSD for the things they did, the terrible things they did – just following orders – to the Afghani people, such as regular midnight raids on the homes of Afghani famers and workers, seizing “suspects”, and then turning the ”suspects” over for torture to Afghan authorities. How would we like it if foreign soldiers burst into our homes at midnight and seized our fathers, our husbands, our sons? The scandal about the torture of prisoners went right up to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper who went so far as to prorogue parliament to avoid an enquiry.

I am NOT saying that the vets don’t deserve to receive treatment for their PTSD. They were just pawns in a grand international game of chess. I AM saying that making war on Afghanistan was a criminal act which we Canadians should not have to pay for. So far, we have paid, according to some estimates, between 18 and 25 billion dollars and that figure will rise continuously over the next forty years. What could we buy instead for 25 billion dollars? I’ll tell you, brothers and sisters. For 20 billion dollars, we could build a high-speed rail line running between Windsor and Toronto. And for the longer-term cost of the war in Afghanistan, we could probably extend it all the way to Quebec City.

Which do you prefer? High-speed, environmentally-friendly public transit or war? Guns or butter?

Finally, last year US President Trump demanded of his NATO allies that they all spend a full 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on armaments. Immediately Chrystia Freeland and Harjeet Singh, Canadian Minister of Defence, piped up promising that they would increase Canadian military spending from .9 per cent of GDP to 1.5 per cent of GDP. That’s a whopping 70% increase in military spending that works out to 12 billion dollars a year. What could we buy instead for 12 billion dollars a year? I’ll tell you, brothers and sisters. For 12 billion dollars a year, according to The Leap, we could pay for most of the 15 billion dollars required for a Green New Deal for Canada. In other words, for almost the increase in military spending projected by the Trudeau government, we could transition Canada from an economy based on fossil fuels to an economy based on renewable energy.

Which do you prefer, brothers and sisters, guns or butter? The chaos of war or environmental justice?

On May Day, we working people need to let the power brokers in this country know that we will no longer stand for their wars and militarism. We have to develop an independent foreign policy for Canada. We have to get out of NATO. We have to see to it that our tax dollars go to healthcare, childcare, pharmacare, education, infrastructure, environmental protection, anything but warfare.

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Ken Stone is a veteran antiwar activist, a former Steering Committee Member of the Canadian Peace Alliance, an executive member of the SyriaSolidarityMovement.org, and treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War [hcsw.ca]. Ken is author of “Defiant Syria”, an e-booklet available at Amazon, iTunes, and Kobo. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

A high level Pentagon official has admitted that US forces will be in Syria for “the long haul” and coupled his statement by declaring the territory contains “a lot of the oil resources and arable land.”

The unusually frank remarks were made this week by Michael Mulroy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, while addressing a conference at the D.C. based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), months after President Trump appeared to have caved to his advisers, reversing course earlier this year from his stated goal of a full and rapid US troop exit from Syria.

Mulroy said “we have a very capable partner” — in reference to the primarily Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — and quickly noted the US-trained SDF happens to occupy key regions in eastern Syria with “a lot of the oil resources and arable land,” and added that, “we are there with them”.

The Pentagon official further vouched for the think tank’s new feature policy recommendations on Syria which call among other things for continuing to “maintain a presence in over one-third of the country.”

Referencing the CNAS’ new policy report entitled “Solving the Syrian Rubik’s Cube,” regional Iraqi media outlet Kurdistan 24 reported:

Nicholas Heras, one of the study’s co-authors, spoke with Kurdistan 24. He explained that of the six scenarios considered in the report, “The option that we supported is that the United States should continue to maintain a presence in over one-third of the country” and “should invest more, both in terms of financial resources and personnel to stabilize” that region of Syria.

U.S. is in Syria for the long haul, says Michael Mulroy, Dep Ass Sec for Def. The US is “not in a bad situation” in Syria, Mulroy said, the country has “ a very capable partner,” & the territory contains “a lot of the oil resources & arable land.” https://t.co/X4ajRef49t

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) April 30, 2019

Earlier this month the SDF and western coalition forces declared total defeat over ISIS after fully securing the last ISIS holdout town of Baghouz.

Meanwhile, the majority of Syria’s population is now under the Syrian government, now reeling from the worst fuel shortage in the nation’s history as a result of new oil sanctions targeting Damascus and its ally Iran.

Even with the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate now long gone, major oil and gas sites like al-Omar oil field in Deir Ezzor province in Syria’s east remain controlled by the SDF and its US backers, something which Damascus has repeatedly condemned before the United Nations as an illegal violation of its sovereignty.

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All images in this article are from Zero Hedge

Despite what United States government officials and the deluded groupies of President Donald Trump like to proclaim, the U.S. is not now and never has been the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave.’ Attempting to identify its most disgraceful action in a long history of disgraceful actions, or its most shocking behavior in 243 years of such abominations, is impossible; there are simply too many to choose from.

This writer attempted to determine the nation’s worst actions just since World War II. The choices seemed endless:

• The McCarthy witch hunts.
• The Korean War
• Police brutality against people of African descent who were demanding equal rights.
• The Vietnam War.
• Police brutality against people protesting the Vietnam War.
• Any of the following invasions:
  • Dominican Republic
  • Angola
  • Cambodia
  • Nicaragua
  • Laos
  • Lebanon
  • Grenada
  • Panama
  • Iraq (twice)
  • Afghanistan
  • Libya
  • Syria
  • Yemen
• Any of the following situations, where the U.S. orchestrated anti-Communist ‘interventions’, overthrew democratically-elected governments, or supported brutal dictators:
  • Ghana
  • Indonesia
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
  • Brazil
  • Chile
  • Argentina
  • El Salvador
  • Yugoslavia
  • Colombia

These lists could go on.

Today, however, the focus of this writer’s attention is another shocking, brutal and inhumane policy currently being perpetrated, and which the populace seems either to be unaware of, or simply doesn’t care about. He is referring to the separation of families at the U.S. – Mexico border, and the caging of children.

Does not this offend the sensibilities of any human being? Families are being torn apart and children as young as infancy are being snatched from their mothers’ arms and put in cages. Several have died in U.S. custody.

Does not the phrase ‘children in cages’ shock everyone?

Occasionally, a sensational news story will appear about some family that kept their children caged. Sometimes the story only comes to light when a child dies. The perpetrators are arrested, charged with a variety of crimes and shamed by everyone. Their victimized children are placed in foster care, where they will hopefully receive better treatment.

Yet when the same behavior is performed by the U.S. government it is perfectly acceptable. Kidnap children by seizing them from their parents’ arms, don’t let their parents know where they are, and cage them. If they die, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?

This is typical for the U.S., and other nations as well. Something done on an individual basis is a shocking crime, but done by the government, it is perfectly legal and acceptable. Let us take murder as an example. The murder rate in the U.S. is high, but pales in comparison to the rate of murder committed by the United States. As long as someone is wearing a uniform, and the victim isn’t a U.S. citizen (although there are certainly exceptions to this bizarre rule), killing someone is not only not a crime, it is an act of heroism and patriotism. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. is estimated to have caused the deaths of 20,000,000 people worldwide. When hijackers rammed jets into three sites in the eastern U.S., killing about 3,000 people, the U.S. began two wars in retaliation. The number of people who died as a result of those wars is, to date, about 1000 times the number who died on September 11. Yet the U.S. populace doesn’t seem to care.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed nearly 200 people when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This was a shocking and unspeakable action that resulted, ultimately, in his execution (capital punishment is a topic for another discussion). Yet when the U.S. government bombs buildings around the world, or finances and supports the bombings of homes, hospitals, United Nations refugee centers and other buildings in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other nations, no one is charged with terrorism or murder. McVeigh’s death toll is nothing compared to that of the U.S. government.

But let us get back to the caged children of the U.S. The idea of caging human beings is not new for the U.S. government; during World War II, American citizens of Japanese descent were put into cages by the thousands; they, like Mexican children, were somehow considered less than human, and therefore caging them, like stray dogs, was acceptable.

Where is the outrage? One should ask oneself: why am I not demonstrating in the streets against a U.S. policy that seizes innocent children from their parents and puts them in cages? Why am I content to look the other way as these children are maltreated in their caged environments? What is wrong with me that I condone this by my silence?

This is how Donald Trump ‘makes America great again.’ These are actions that have the support of his ignorant, racist, misogynist, homophobic, Islamophobic base. This is how the U.S. government makes racism fashionable again, pitting the white, European-descended, uneducated, often older citizens against everyone else. This is why hate crimes are increasing, not only in the U.S., but around the world. The U.S. influence, for better or worse (usually for much worse) is felt globally, and racism approved by the U.S. president gains some legitimacy everywhere.

But it is no more pronounced then right in the so-called ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’. It is there that the government officially cages Mexican children, allows and finances the imprisonment for up to 15 years of Palestinian children accused of throwing rocks at heavily-armed, Israeli occupation soldiers. It is the U.S. that condones and finances the slaughter of school children in Yemen, with a U.S.-supplied bomb dropping on a school bus of young boys a few months ago, killing 40 of them, and another bomb killing 13 school-aged girls this a few weeks ago.

And yet, Trump supporters, both within the citizenry and within Congress, get teary-eyed as the president hugs an American flag. They cheer as he attempts to force Congress to pay for the multi-million-dollar boondoggle of a wall across the southern border. They support him as he proclaims that, in a conflict between avowed white nationalists and anti-racists, there are ‘good people’ on both sides.

What will it take for the U.S. citizenry to awaken from the profound sleep of apathy? If they haven’t done so yet, this writer cannot imagine what will be necessary.

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Featured image: Children in immigration detention facilities are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, according to the Washington Post. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)

Increasingly, groups and even foreign governments have pandered to Israel and its supporters in the United States because they have come to understand that success in dealing with Washington can be dependent on Jewish support.

Last week, Raed Saleh, the leader of the so-called White Helmets, also referred to as the Syrian Civil Defense, a terrorist-affiliated group, was in the United States to “…receive the Elie Wiesel Award from the Holocaust Memorial Museum for his organization’s work in Syria.” He was also dropping by to pick up a check for $5 million courtesy of the U.S. government “…to help us with acquiring ambulances and help us with search and rescue operations.”

During his visit, Saleh was treated to a nauseatingly obsequious interview courtesy of National Public Radio, which, inter alia, described how the Helmets “were the subjects of an Oscar-winning documentary two years ago, which captured images of them carrying broken and bloody Syrians from dust and rubble.”

Saleh claimed that the alleged victory of the Syrian regime in the yet to be completed war is an illusion as President Bashar al-Assad presides over a broken country, yet reports from inside Syria indicate that the return of the government to areas formerly controlled by terrorists has been welcomed and refugees from the fighting are now eager to return home. Saleh also claimed, falsely, that his organization has been

“providing services to all Syrians and to providing support to all Syrians. Now after six years of war, we have saved more than 116,000 people from under the rubble. We have not asked any of these 116,000 people who did they belong to? Is he a Kurd? Is he a Christian? Is he a Muslim? Is he with Assad? Is he against Assad? Is he with the Kurds? Is he against the Kurds? We have never asked anyone these questions.”

Saleh, whose group has only operated in terrorist-controlled areas, could not, however, maintain his approved narrative. He fairly quickly abandoned his non-partisan quasi-humanitarian rhetoric when asked about how he sees the Syrian conflict developing, saying

“We do not call this a civil war, but we rather call it a revolution against a dictatorship…the revolution still goes on. We have not lost.”

Those who are unfamiliar with the White Helmets should understand that the group has been praised by those who hate the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and want to see it removed, which includes the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The White Helmets have played a leading role in the propaganda campaign that seeks to instigate violence or use fabricated information to depict the Damascus government as guilty of slaughtering its own citizens. The propaganda is intended to terrorize the civilian population, which is part of the definition of terrorism.

Favorable media coverage of the group has largely derived from the documentary The White Helmets, which was produced by the group itself and tells a very convincing tale promoted as “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” It is a very impressive piece of propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary Short two years ago and the White Helmets themselves were even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding of what is going on in Syria, describing the government in Damascus in purely negative terms.

Nine months ago, with the Syrian Army closing in on the last White Helmet affiliates still operating in the country, the Israeli government, assisted by the United States, staged an emergency “humanitarian” evacuation of the group’s members and their families to Israel and then on to Jordan. It was described in a BBC article that included

“The IDF said they had ‘completed a humanitarian effort to rescue members of a Syrian civil organization and their families’, saying there was an ‘immediate threat to their lives.’ The transfer of the displaced Syrians through Israel was an exceptional humanitarian gesture. Although Israel is not directly involved in the Syria conflict, the two countries have been in a state of war for decades. Despite the intervention, the IDF said that ‘Israel continues to maintain a non-intervention policy regarding the Syrian conflict.’”

All of the Israeli assertions are nonsense, including its claimed “humanitarianism” and “non-intervention” in the Syrian war, where it has been bombing almost daily. The carefully edited scenes of heroism under fire that have been filmed and released worldwide conceal the White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and its participation in the torture and execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets only operate in terrorist-held territory, which enables them to shape the narrative both regarding who they are and what is occurring on the ground.

The White Helmets were accustomed to traveling to bombing sites with their film crews trailing behind them. Once at the sites, with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even stage what is filmed to conform to their selected narrative. Exploiting their access to the western media, the White Helmets thereby de facto became a major source of “eyewitness” news regarding what was going on in those many parts of Syria where European and American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go, all part of a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war crimes directed against civilians, an effort that has led to several attacks on government forces and facilities by the U.S. military. This is precisely the propaganda that has been supported both by Tel Aviv and Washington.

Perhaps the most serious charge against the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in the atrocities, to include torture and murder, carried out by their al-Nusra hosts. There have been numerous photos of the White Helmets operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating over the bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group’s jihadi associates regard the White Helmets as fellow “mujahideen” and “soldiers of the revolution.”

For those interested in further details, White Helmet activities have been thoroughly exposed by Maxim Grigoriev of the Russian NGO Foundation for the Study of Democracy. Grigoriev presented his findings at a special meeting of the United Nations just before Christmas 2018. A video prepared based on the U.N. meeting includes interviews with actual witnesses of White Helmet atrocities and participants in the staged chemical attacks that were blamed on the government.

So Raed Saleh was in Washington to pick up his award and his multi-million dollar check on top of the tens of millions that his organization has already received from Congress and the White House. He also met with a number of Congressmen who support his initiatives and was praised by New Jersey’s own seriously corrupt Israel-firster Senator Robert Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who observed “that Saleh’s group of about 3,000 volunteers has ‘saved almost 100,000 lives’ doing ‘courageous work on the ground in Syria, while being targeted by Russia.’” Yes, Russiagate is alive and well.

There is considerable irony in the fact that the National Holocaust Museum, which is taxpayer funded, has given an apparently prestigious award to a terrorist group, something which could have been discerned with even a little fact checking. And the museum also might have been sensitive to how the White Helmets have been used in support of Israeli propaganda vis-à-vis Syria. Perhaps, while they are at it, the museum’s board just might also want to check out Elie Wiesel, for whom the award is named. Wiesel, who was a chronicler of Jewish victimhood while persistently refusing to acknowledge what Israel was doing to the Palestinians, notoriously mixed fact and fiction in his best-selling Holocaust memoir Night. Ironically, the award and recipient are well matched in this case as mixing fact and fiction is what both Elie Wiesel and the White Helmets are all about.

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This article was originally published on 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.

Featured image: Raed Alsaleh of the “White Helmets” received 2019 Elie Wiesel Award from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Credit: Wolf Blitzer/ Twitter

Juan Guaido’s coup attempt failed.

The United States is re-tooling.

Yet a battle rages at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., where activists living inside at the invitation of the Maduro government have been under siege. They have been assaulted by blaring bullhorns, sirens, strobe lights, and a violent opposition that has been drilling holes into the building and attempting to knock down the embassy door. The opposition also reared its racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQIA+ head, with its members spewing slurs at activists and journalists, and stalking a journalist.

All this while the Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police Department have looked away and arrested more embassy activists than opposition members.

Opposition members who support Guaido first held a rally in front of the embassy on April 30, the day Guaido’s failed coup took place outside an air base in Venezuela. But Guaido’s fake ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, who claimed he was taking over the embassy that day, was driven away by activists who drowned out his words with their speaker system.

Since then, the opposition has dwindled, but remains combative.

Yesterday, Black Alliance for Peace member organizations such as Friends of the Congo and Pan-African Community Action stood in solidarity with the Embassy Protection Collective and against the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. As African/Black internationalists, we stand with the colonized peoples of the world. We also condemn the Trump administration’s attempt at a coup. Read our official statement.

As you see below, Paul Pumphrey, co-founder of Friends of the Congo, was assaulted with the blare of a megaphone. Fortunately, he was wearing earplugs.

Our folks have shown up regularly to support what has developed into another battlefield in the struggle against the U.S. attempt at a coup in Venezuela, and the larger struggle against U.S. imperialism. The opposition, dressed in polo shirts and dresses, looked like they were ready for Saturday brunch instead of a protest. The opposition appears to be well-funded, as a truck has been noticed dropping off a speaker system and other items. The opposition’s members don’t even seem interested in the opposition’s political position as they sway their hips to the revolutionary beats emanating from the embassy’s speakers. Activists inside the embassy say opposition numbers have dwindled, having dropped from a peak of 100 oppositionists on Tuesday to about 20 yesterday. A person on Twitter found out where some of these opposition members work and surprise: Current and former employers include the World Bank, Raytheon and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All are involved in the exploitation and destruction of the Global South.

In Colombia, our allies, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), had a close call yesterday. Armed men launched an attack on PCN’s leadership while they held a meeting. The perpetrators fired automatic weapons and a grenade was thrown. Goldman Environmental Prize-winning grassroots activist Francia Márquez’s guard returned fire, driving the perpetrators off. The leadership was unharmed. Two of the guards sustained minor wounds. Colombia has taken a sharp turn to the right with the support of the United States. Last month, its president changed his mind and turned around when he was only 200 meters away from signing a peace agreement with the most marginalized people. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians remain under siege in their territories. PCN represents the most sophisticated African/Black organization in South America. We must connect this attack to the struggle of Afro-Venezuelans, who are in the cross-hairs of repression at the hands of U.S. and European capital and their local class collaborators.

Back in the United States, BAP members have appeared in the press this week. Margaret Kimberley, a BAP Coordinating Committee member, told TeleSUR English the U.S.-backed fascist coup in Venezuela has long been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo, discussed U.S. priorities on the continent of our ancestors on RT after a new report uncovered 36 code-named U.S. military operations in Africa. Margaret also wrote a piece in Black Agenda Report about how the United States has crippled Venezuela.

BAP members Vanessa Beck, Erica Caines and Glen Ford, and Rebecca Bonhomme of Pan-African Community Action, will speak on panels Saturday at the Ujima People’s Progress Party’s 2019 statewide conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

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All images in this article are from BAP

… we’re the party of love, we’re the party of compassion, we’re the party of inclusiveness. What we are fighting for is not for the few, but for the many. Every single one, just this week, when we’ve had the attack in California on a synagogue, it’s the same person who’s accused of attempting to bomb a mosque. So I can’t ever speak of Islamophobia and fight for Muslims, if I am not willing to fight against anti-Semitism. We collectively must make sure that we are dismantling all systems of oppression. – Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, April 30, 2019

Of the 435 members of Congress elected in 2018, Ilhan Omar won her race with more votes than 428 of her colleagues of both parties won theirs. She is a black woman born in Somalia, an immigrant, a Muslim, intelligent and outspoken. From her first moment in Congress, right-wing bigots have targeted her with whatever smear seemed useful. The most effective has been the bogus claim that she’s anti-Semitic, rooted in imaginary evidence. Democrats failed to understand the fraud and still haven’t rallied around a party member whose life has been endangered by the occupant of the White House. Media reports routinely include comments referring to the accusations of anti-Semitism as if they were real, giving continuing credence to political lies. All in all, it is a massive cluster-fiasco of incompetence and bad faith from a huge portion of the supposed “leadership” class in the US.

On April 30, Black Lives Matter organized a rally on Capitol Hill calling for “Hands Off Ilhan Omar.” More than a hundred African American women leaders in and out of Congress gathered in Omar’s support, issuing a call to Congress to censure President Trump for endangering the life of a sitting member of Congress. There is no doubt that a Trump tweet on April 12 constituted reckless endangerment with an incendiary but false incitement against Ilhan Omar. The tweet sparked a sharp increase in death threats against the congresswoman by tying her to the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, with no basis in fact.

WE WILL NEVER FORGET!

– Tweet from Pres. Trump, 6:35 p.m., April 12, 2019, accompanying a 43-second fraudulent attack video dishonestly suggesting that Rep. Ilhan Omar was somehow accountable for the attacks of 9/11, a fascistic meme of Islamophobic demagoguery of the first order.

The 43-second video is a polished production, with the same manipulative slickness as the Nazi propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl. This was more than just another apparently casual tweet from the White House. This tweet required production and planning. It was apparently inspired by an April 9 tweet from Rep. Dan Crenshaw,  Texas Republican, who once called for toning down political rhetoric. Crenshaw supports Trump’s border wall, denies climate change, opposes any ban on assault weapons, and voted against the election reform act of 2019. His tweet about Rep. Omar used an out-of-context quote to create a political lie based on a racist trope:

First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as “some people who did something”.

Unbelievable. https://t.co/IKtoZWWmIT

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) April 9, 2019

Omar’s choice of words is similar to President Bush’s language in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and both require context to determine meaning. Crenshaw’s policing of right-wing political correctness had its own problems, since he forwarded, without qualification, a tweet that called CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “a terrorist organization” – another lie.

Piling on in the endless demonization of Ilhan Omar, GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called on Democrats to enforce dishonest Republican perceptions. Well, Democrats had done it before, right?

Ilhan Omar isn’t just anti-Semitic – she’s anti-American.

Nearly 3,000 Americans lost their lives to Islamic terrorists on 9/11, yet Omar diminishes it as: “Some people did something.”

Democrat leaders need to condemn her brazen display of disrespect.pic.twitter.com/k3meEbUOAk

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) April 9, 2019

The next day, Omar responded to Crenshaw:

This is dangerous incitement, given the death threats I face. I hope leaders of both parties will join me in condemning it.

My love and commitment to our country and that of my colleagues should never be in question. We are ALL Americans! pic.twitter.com/foTZMpiZKv

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 10, 2019

Two days later, the president raised the ante with his unconscionable 9/11 Big Lie. For the Democrats, whether they liked it or not, this was a moment of truth.

Establishment Democrats have failed dismally to react responsibly to the dishonest attacks on Ilhan Omar, mustering neither courage nor coherence in the face the latest form of McCarthyite bullying over the past four months. The president’s over-the-top tweet using 9/11 as a bludgeon gave Democrats another chance to behave honorably. Some of the presidential candidates did, but the first response appears to have come from New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [The Twitter date stamps are mysterious. There are two sets, an hour apart. I have followed the same sequence for all the tweets, so while the exact time may be wrong, the interval seems correct.]

Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today.@IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress.

We must speak out.

“First they came…” pic.twitter.com/ygOX1vhE9j

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 12, 2019

The first Democratic presidential candidate to respond was Bernie Sanders, with prompt and unambiguous support:

Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won't back down to Trump's racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 13, 2019

A few minutes later, Elizabeth Warren issued an even stronger condemnation, with a direct rebuke to the president and a direct challenge to her fellow elected officials:

The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It's disgusting. It's shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 13, 2019

As the evening wore on, Gov. Jay Inslee tweeted that Trump was jeopardizing Omar and all Muslims. Former congressman Beto O’Rourke tweeted that Trump’s action was “incitement to violence” without mentioning Omar. Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s tweet accused Trump of using 9/11 “to incite his base against a member of Congress, as if for sport,” without mentioning Omar. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s tweet tried to have it both ways, referring to an arrest for a threat on Omar’s life but noting that she had disagreed with Omar before. And that was reportedly all the significant Democratic response to a president deliberately putting a congresswoman in the cross-hairs. The next day’s responses were generally weaker or absent. There was no word of note from Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the rest of the House “leadership.”

Since April 13, there has been no effort to censure the president for reckless endangerment of a Congress member’s life. The president committed this crime in plain sight and House Democrats do nothing. By doing nothing, House Democrats signal that as far as they’re concerned, Ilhan Omar is fair game. Most of the presidential candidates are no better. This is shameful. My guess is that most Trump supporters look at Democrats with greater scorn than ever for their unwillingness to defend one of their own. As far as Ilhan Omar is concerned, most Democrats have acted and continue to act without principle, without courage, without integrity. This doesn’t seem like a really great way to win an election in 2020. Standing up to bigots should be one of the easier things to do politically. If Democrats can’t do that, what can they do?

It looks like the Democratic establishment has been doing things the Washington way for so long they can’t see themselves clearly in the mirror anymore. No matter who Ilhan Omar truly is, no one has a right to lynch her, and those who stand by and watch the lynching happen are just despicable. Here’s the way Ilhan Omar described herself to her supporters on April 30:

Here’s the thing that really offends a lot of people and the reason that we are here. I was born—I was born as a very liberated human being, to a country that was colonized, that recognized that they can colonize the land but they can’t colonize your mind, to people who recognized that all of us deserve dignity and that no human being was ever, ever going to tell you that you are less than them. Thirteen people organized for our independence in Somalia. So I was born in that breath of recognizing that they might be more powerful than you are, that they might have more technology than you have, they might think that they are wiser than you, they might control all of the institutions, but you control your mind, and that is what sets you free.

… the thing that upsets the occupant of the White House, his goons in the Republican Party, many of our colleagues in the Democratic Party, is that—is that they can’t stand—they cannot stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she’s equal to them. But I say to them, “How else did you expect me to show up?”

… So, I know my place in this society. All of you know your place in this society. And it’s one that is equal to every single person that walks in it.

Protecting Ilhan Omar should be a reflexive no brainer. Protecting Ilhan Omar is so obviously the right thing to do, it should come easily to anyone of conscience. This is not rocket science. This is not morally ambiguous. The Democratic Party doesn’t seem to have a clue that it is in the midst of an existential litmus test. Does the Democratic Party actually stand for anything anymore? There’s still time to figure it out, if they start soon. A good starting place would be to stop going for the bait of trolling Republican bigots. Is it some perverse political calculation that brings on timidity, silence, cowardice, a betrayal of the best American values to appease the values of the worst Americans? If the Democratic Party lacks the strength to defend and protect Ilhan Omar just because she’s human, then all the talk of American values and freedoms and principles and “the soul of the nation” is just more political garbage.

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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.

The Following text is Section 10 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

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Contents 

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO War to Demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11.  Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty
14. The Western American Empire plays the war card
15. The US/NATO planetary war system
16. Exiting the war system of NATO

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1. The “new mission” of NATO was made official by the September 2014 Summit in Wales, launching the “Readiness Action Plan”, the official purpose of which was “to respond quickly and firmly to new security challenges” attributed to “military aggression of Russia against Ukraine “and to the growth of extremism and sectarian conflict in the Middle East and North Africa”. The Plan was defined by the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, as “the greatest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War”.

2. In just three months, NATO quadrupled the fighter-bombers, with both conventional and nuclear capabilities, deployed in the Baltic region (once part of the USSR), sent AWACS radar aircraft to Eastern Europe and increased the number of warships in the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas, deployed US, British and German land forces in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and intensified joint exercises in Poland and the Baltic countries, bringing them to over 200 during the year.

3. From 2014, the US/NATO pressure on Russia grew in geometric progression. In four years, from 2014 to 2018, the United States spent US$10 billion on the “Europe Reassurance Initiative” (ERI), the official aim of which was “to increase our ability to defend Europe against aggression Russian”. Almost half of the expenditures were used to strengthen the US “strategic prepositioning” in Europe. The armaments that were placed in an advanced position allowed “the rapid deployment of forces in the war theater”. Another large segment of funds were destined to “increase the presence on a rotating basis of US forces throughout Europe”. The remaining funds served to develop the infrastructure of bases in Europe to “increase the readiness of US actions”, and to strengthen military exercises and training in order to “increase the readiness and interoperability of NATO forces”.

4. The funds of the European Defense Initiative (EDI) – formerly known as the European Reassurance Initiative of the United States – were only a part of those targeted for the “Operation Atlantic Resolve that demonstrated the USA’s ability to respond to the threats against the allies”. In the framework of this operation, the 3rd Armored Brigade, comprising 3,500 men, 87 tanks, 18 self-propelled howitzers and other means, was transferred to Poland from the USA in January 2017. It was subsequently replaced by another unit so that US armed forces could be permanently stationed on Polish territory. From there, their departments were transferred, for training and exercises, to other Eastern countries, especially Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and also Ukraine. In other words, they were continuously deployed close to Russia.

5. Also in the framework of this operation, the 10th Combat Air Brigade was transferred to the Storck Barracks/Illesheim Kaserne United States Army facility (Germany) along with 100 war helicopters. The Combat Air Brigade’s forces are sent to  “advanced positions” in Poland, Romania and Latvia. In the bases of Ämari (Estonia) and Graf Ignatievo (Bulgaria), US and NATO fighter-bombers are deployed, including Italian Eurofighters, for the Baltic air patrol. The operation also provides for “a persistent presence in the Black Sea” along with the Mihail Kogalniceanu Base (Romania) and the Novo Selo Training Area (Bulgaria).

6. General Curtis Scaparrotti, head of the European Command of the United States and at the same time Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, has assured Congress that “our forces are ready and positioned to counter the Russian aggression”. A US contingent is positioned in eastern Poland, in the so-called “Suwalki Gap”, a stretch of flat land about a hundred kilometers long which, NATO warns, “would be a perfect gateway for Russian tanks”. The propaganda paraphernalia of the old cold war is thus revived: that of the Russian tanks ready to invade Europe. Waving the specter of a non-existent threat from the East, the US tanks arrived in Europe instead.

7. The plan is clear. After provoking a new confrontation with Russia in the Maidan Square protests, Washington (despite the change of administration from President Obama to President Trump) has pursued the same strategy: transforming Europe into the forefront of a new cold war to the advantage of US interests and their balance of power with the major European powers.

8. The European powers of NATO participate in the deployment on the eastern flank – including armored forces, fighter-bombers, warships and even nuclear missile units – as evidenced by the dispatch of French troops and British tanks to Estonia. In this period, we talk about “a European army, but in the meeting with the defense ministers of the EU, in April 2017 in Malta, NATO general secretary Stoltenberg explained in what terms.” It was clearly agreed by the “The European Union that its purpose is not to build a new European army or competitive structures in competition with those of NATO, but something that is complementary to what NATO does.”

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Sections 11-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

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5G: The Big Picture

By Dr. Jeremy Naydler, April 29, 2019

There are at present approximately two thousand fully functioning satellites orbiting the Earth. Some beam down commercial GPS (or “SatNav”), some provide TV, some provide mobile phone services, and some bounce radar back and forth to produce images for meteorologists and military surveillance. The Earth is thus already comprehensively irradiated from outer space.

What You Don’t Know About 5G but Will Find Out When Its Too Late

By Claire Edwards, April 27, 2019

The first eight months of WWII with no fighting – was called The Phoney War. Using millimetre waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phoney war of another kind.

The Dangers of 5G to Children’s Health

By Children’s Health Defense, April 27, 2019

The enthusiasm with which the public has embraced each new mobile and wireless technology—most of which have never undergone any appropriate safety testing or standards development—suggests that consumers rarely stop to consider the health implications of the infrastructure shoring up their ability to browse, stream and download anytime and “on the go.”

5G Wireless Technology Is the “Stupidest Idea in the History of the World”

By Arjun Walia, April 25, 2019

It’s clear that we are not being protected, and politicians are simply abiding to the the will of their masters, the big corporations, who in turn act as slaves to their ‘financial overlords,’ the big banks. We continue to see products and services being approved and implemented without ever going through any safety testing.

5G Health Effects: Swiss Telecom Ignores Official Laws and Launches 5G; Rule of Law Under Attack

By Josh del Sol, April 24, 2019

It is deeply ironic that within a nation historically recognized for its higher-minded values to not engage in war, wireless companies have now effectively declared war on all people living in this nation, by deploying 5G against consent and directly in violation of both official moratoria and independent science.

Will 5G Cell Phone Technology Lead to Population Reduction as Large Numbers of Men Become Sterile?

By Michael Snyder, March 06, 2019

The big cell phone companies will be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to install hundreds of thousands of new 5G antennas, and every single one of those antennas will be constantly emitting very powerful electromagnetic radiation.  Since we can’t see the radiation, to many people the threat does not seem real, but the truth is that if you live in a major urban area you are constantly being bombarded by it.

International Appeal: Stop 5G on Earth and in Space

By Arthur Firstenberg, January 27, 2019

Telecommunications companies worldwide, with the support of governments, are poised within the next two years to roll out the fifth-generation wireless network (5G). This is set to deliver what is acknowledged to be unprecedented societal change on a global scale.

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The just released report on April jobs on first appearance, heavily reported by the media, shows a record low 3.6% unemployment rate and another month of 263,000 new jobs created. But there are two official US Labor dept. jobs reports, and the second shows a jobs market much weaker than the selective, ‘cherry picked’ indicators on unemployment and jobs creation noted above that are typically featured by the press.

Problems with the April Jobs Report

While the Current Establishment Survey (CES) Report (covering large businesses) shows 263,000 jobs created last month, the Current Population Survey (CPS) second Labor Dept. report (that covers smaller businesses) shows 155,000 of these jobs were involuntary part time. This high proportion (155,000 of 263,000) suggests the job creation number is likely second and third jobs being created. Nor does it reflect actual new workers being newly employed. The number is for new jobs, not newly employed workers. Moreover, it’s mostly part time and temp or low paid jobs, likely workers taking on second and third jobs.

Even more contradictory, the second CPS report shows that full time work jobs actually declined last month by 191,000. (And the month before, March, by an even more 228,000 full time jobs decline).

The much hyped 3.6% unemployment (U-3) rate for April refers only to full time jobs (35 hrs. or more worked in a week). And these jobs are declining by 191,000 while part time jobs are growing by 155,000. So which report is accurate? How can full time jobs be declining by 191,000, while the U-3 unemployment rate (covering full time only) is falling? The answer: full time jobs disappearing result in an unemployment rate for full time (U-3)jobs falling. A small number of full time jobs as a share of the total labor force appears as a fall in the unemployment rate for full time workers. Looked at another way, employers may be converting full time to part time and temp work, as 191,000 full time jobs disappear and 155,000 part time jobs increase.

And there’s a further problem with the part time jobs being created: It also appears that the 155,000 part time jobs created last month may be heavily weighted with the government hiring part timers to start the work on the 2020 census–typically hiring of which starts in April of the preceding year of the census. (Check out the Labor Dept. numbers preceding the prior 2010 census, for April 2009, for the same development a decade ago).

Another partial explanation is that the 155,000 part time job gains last month (and in prior months in 2019) reflect tens of thousands of workers a month who are being forced onto the labor market now every month, as a result of US courts recent decisions now forcing workers who were formerly receiving social security disability benefits (1 million more since 2010) back into the labor market.

The April selective numbers of 263,000 jobs and 3.6% unemployment rate is further questionable by yet another statistic by the Labor Dept.: It is contradicted by a surge of 646,000 in April in the category, ‘Not in the Labor Force’, reported each month. That 646,000 suggests large numbers of workers are dropping out of the labor force (a technicality that actually also lowers the U-3 unemployment rate). ‘Not in the Labor Force’ for March, the previous month Report, revealed an increase of an additional 350,000 added to ‘Not in the Labor Force’ totals. In other words, a million–or at least a large percentage of a million–workers have left the labor force. This too is not an indication of a strong labor market and contradicts the 263,000 and U-3 3.6% unemployment rate.

Bottom line, the U-3 unemployment rate is basically a worthless indicator of the condition of the US jobs market; and the 263,000 CES (Establishment Survey) jobs is contradicted by the Labor Dept’s second CPS survey (Population Survey).

For a more detailed discussion and explanation of these, and other, contradictory facts about the current US labor market, released by the Labor Dept., listen to my May 3, 2019 Alternative Visions radio show podcast accessible below at the end of this print contribution.

GDP & Rising Wages Revisited

In two previous shows, the limits and contradictions (and thus a deeper explanations) of US government GDP and wage statistics were featured: See the immediate April 26, 2019 Alternative Visions show on preliminary US GDP numbers for the 1st quarter 2019, where it was shown how the Trump trade war with China, soon coming to an end, is largely behind the GDP latest numbers; and that the more fundamental forces underlying the US economy involving household consumption and real business investment are actually slowing and stagnating. Or listen to my prior radio show earlier this year where media claims that US wages are now rising is debunked as well.

Claims of wages rising are similarly misrepresented when a deeper analysis shows the proclaimed wage gains are, once again, skewed to the high end of the wage structure and reflect wages for salaried managers and high end professionals by estimating ‘averages’ and limiting data analysis to full time workers once again; not covering wages for part time and temp workers; not counting collapse of deferred and social wages (pension and social security payments); and underestimating inflation so that real wages appear larger than otherwise. Independent sources estimate more than half of all US workers received no wage increase whatsoever in 2018–suggesting once again the gains are being driven by the top 10% and assumptions of averages that distort the actual wage gains that are much more modest, if at all.

Ditto for GDP analysis and inflation underestimation using the special price index for GDP (the GDP deflator), and the various re-definitions of GDP categories made in recent years and questionable on-going GDP assumptions, such as including in GDP calculation the questionable inclusion of 50 million homeowners supposedly paying themselves a ‘rent equivalent’.

A more accurate ‘truth’ about jobs, wages, and GDP stats is found in the ‘fine print’ of definitions and understanding the weak statistical methodologies that change the raw economic data on wages, jobs, and economic output (GDP) into acceptable numbers for media promotion.

Whether jobs, wages or GDP stats, the message here is that official US economic stats, especially labor market stats, should be read critically and not taken for face value, especially when hyped by the media and press. The media pumps selective indicators that make the economy appear better than it actually is. Labor Dept. methods and data used today have not caught up with the various fundamental changes in the labor markets, and are therefore increasingly suspect. It is not a question of outright falsification of stats. It’s about failure to evolve data and methodologies to reflect the real changes in the economy.

Government stats are as much an ‘art’ (of obfuscation) as they are a science. They produce often contradictory indication of the true state of the economy, jobs and wages. Readers need to look at the ‘whole picture’, not just the convenient, selective media reported data like Establishment survey job creation and U-3 unemployment rates.

When so doing, the bigger picture is an US economy being held up by temporary factors (trade war) soon to dissipate; jobs creation driven by part time work as full time jobs continue structurally to disappear; and wages that are being driven by certain industries (tech, etc.), high end employment (managers, professionals), occasional low end minimum wage hikes in select geographies, and broad categories of ‘wages’ ignored.

Listen to the audio below for the On the Jobs Report for April.

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Jack is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, Summer 2019, and ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’, Lexington Books, March 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, tweets at @drjackrasmus, and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network on Fridays, 2pm eastern time.

As I discussed yesterday, nobody should be using the term “booming” to describe the state of the U.S. economy until we have a full year when GDP growth is 3 percent or better, and at this point we haven’t had that since the middle of the Bush administration.  And as you will see below, the latest numbers are clearly telling us that the U.S. economy is not even moving in the right direction.  Economic conditions are getting worse, and they weren’t that great to begin with.  According to the calculations that John Williams has made over at shadowstats.com, the U.S. economy is already in a recession, but of course the Federal Reserve will continue to tell us that everything is just fine for as long as they possibly can.  Unfortunately for them, they can’t hide the depressingly bad numbers that are coming in from all over the economy, and those numbers are all telling us the same thing.

The following are 19 facts about our current economic performance that should deeply disturb all of us…

#1 In April, U.S. auto sales were down 6.1 percent.  That was the worst decline in 8 years.

#2 The number of mortgage applications has fallen for four weeks in a row.

#3 We just witnessed the largest crash in luxury home sales in about 9 years.

#4 Existing home sales have now fallen for 13 months in a row.

#5 In March, total residential construction spending was down 8.4 percent from a year ago.

#6 U.S. manufacturing output was down 1.1 percent during the first quarter of this year.

#7 Farm incomes are falling at the fastest pace since 2016.

#8 Wisconsin dairy farmers are going bankrupt “in record numbers”.

#9 Apple iPhone sales are falling at a “record pace”.

#10 Facebook’s profits have declined for the first time since 2015.

#11 We just learned that CVS will be closing 46 stores.

#12 Office Depot has announced that they will be closing 50 locations.

#13 Overall, U.S. retailers have announced more than 6,000 store closings so far in 2019, and that means we have already surpassed the total for all of last year.

#14 A shocking new study has discovered that 137 million Americans have experienced “medical financial hardship in the past year”.

#15 Credit card charge-offs at U.S. banks have risen to the highest level in nearly 7 years.

#16 Credit card delinquencies have risen to the highest level in almost 8 years.

#17 More than half a million Americans are homeless right now.

#18 Homelessness in New York City is the worst that it has ever been.

#19 Nearly 102 million Americans do not have a job right now.  That number is worse than it was at any point during the last recession.

But at least the stock market has been doing well, right?

Actually, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been down for two days in a row, and investors are getting kind of antsy.

Hopes of a trade deal with China had been propping up stocks in recent weeks, but it looks like negotiations may have hit “an impasse”…

The latest round of US-China trade talks may have hit an impasse, raising doubts about the chances of an early trade deal between the world’s two leading economies, Chinese official media reported on Thursday.

Unlike the previous negotiations, the 10th round of high-level economic and trade talks, which concluded here on Wednesday, had fewer details about specific discussions and results, state-run Global Times reported.

I warned my readers repeatedly that this would happen.  The Chinese are going to negotiate, but they are going to drag their feet for as long as possible in hopes that the U.S. will free Meng Wanzhou.

Of course that isn’t going to happen, and so at some point the Chinese will have to decide if they are willing to move forward with a trade deal anyway.

But if the Chinese drag their feet for too long, Trump administration officials may lose patience and take their ball and go home.

In any event, the truth is that the U.S. economy is really slowing down, and no trade deal is going to magically change that.

And a lot of other pundits are also pointing out that a substantial economic slowdown has now begun.  For example, the following comes from Brandon Smith’s latest article…

The bottom line is, the next crash has already begun. It started at the end of 2018, and is only becoming more pervasive with each passing month. This is not “doom and gloom” or “doom porn”, this is simply the facts on the ground. While stock markets are still holding (for now), the rest of the system is breaking down right on schedule. The question now is, when will the mainstream media and the Fed finally acknowledge this is happening? I suspect, as in 2008, they will openly admit to the danger only when it is far too late for people to prepare for it.

Hopefully things will remain relatively stable for as long as possible, because nobody should want to see a repeat of 2008 (or worse).

Unfortunately, we can’t stop the clock.  We are already more than a third of the way through 2019, and we will be into 2020 before we know it.

It has been an unusual year so far, but I have a feeling that it is about to get much, much more interesting.

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Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Featured image is from The Economic Collapse

A junior Canadian gas E&P company has shut down abruptly, leaving as many as 4,700 wells behind, CBC reports, quoting the Alberta Energy Regulator, which said it had sent Trident Exploration Corp. an order to manage its wells, to which the company did not respond.

Trident closed two days ago and announced it would not be returning any money to shareholders or holders of unsecured bonds, adding it had well abandonment and reclamation liabilities of US$244.78 million (C$329 million) to deal with.

According to the Alberta Energy Regulator, these 4,700 wells add to more than 3,000 abandoned wells in Canada’s oil heartland that are currently awaiting remediation. The regulator also said it had been working with the company to smooth its exit from the industry and had ordered it to decommission the wells or transfer them to another company. Trident failed to comply with the order, the AER said.

“Trident does not have the funds to operate its infrastructure or enter into creditor protection. As a result, they have decided to walk away, leaving more than 4,400 licensed sites, many of them active, without an operator,” the watchdog told CBC.

Data from the Alberta Energy Regulator says there are some 170,000 abandoned wells in the province, most of these sealed and taken out of service or reclaimed. The number represents more than a third of the total well count in Alberta, with the watchdog noting in its overview on the topic that even their abandonment, the wells remain the responsibility of the company that owns them.

Two years ago, think tank C. D. Howe warned Alberta was facing a well cleanup and reclamation bill of US$5.95 billion (C$8 billion) and needed to change the way it made companies take financial charge of the abandonment and reclamation of their wells. Since then, this figure has grown.

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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

UPDATED: According to pro-IDF sources,yet to be confirmed, a total of 90 rockets were launched.

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At least 50 rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip at Israeli targets in the morning of May 4, according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). According to pro-IDF sources, “tens” rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

Especially intense explosions were reported in the area of Ashkelon.

.

There are reports that the IDF’s aircraft delivered strikes on at least two supposed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

RAW FOOTAGE: Incoming rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli civilians, as filmed by the Israeli civilians that Hamas is targeting. pic.twitter.com/Kz1d1KwCle

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 4, 2019

The May 4 rocket launchers took place one day after two Israeli troops were shot and injured during patrol along the contact line with the Gaza Strip. In response to the shooting, the Israeli Air Force struck an alleged Hamas target, killing two people.

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Just two weeks after the nine-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster—the largest ocean oil spill in U.S. history—the Trump administration on Thursday moved to dismantle offshore drilling regulations aimed at preventing another catastrophic leak.

The White House’s revised Well Control Rule—which could save the fossil fuel industry close to a billion dollars over the next decade—was unveiled by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who advocacy groups have described as a “walking, talking conflict of interest.”

Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, called the Trump administration’s move “a major step backward in offshore drilling safety.”

“Gutting the few offshore drilling safeguards established in wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is reckless and wrong,” Hoskins said in a statement. “More drilling and less safety is a recipe for disaster. We should be implementing new safety reforms, not rolling back the few safety measures currently in place.”

The Trump administration today weakened crucial offshore drilling safety standards that were put in place after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which killed 11 people and covered the seas with millions of barrels of oil. https://t.co/y9MY87Vuuk

— NRDC 🌎 (@NRDC) May 2, 2019

This administration is constantly trying to literally poison Americans.https://t.co/gTTbVBVkKh

— Thor Benson (@thor_benson) May 2, 2019

The rule will go into effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register, which could happen as early as Friday.

According to the New York Times, one of the major components of the Trump administration’s plan “is a significant reduction in the requirement for oil companies to test fail-safe devices called blowout preventers, which are intended to be a last line of defense against disasters like Deepwater Horizon.”

The White House’s revisions also included slight tweaks to the language of existing regulations that environmentalists warned could have massive effects.

As the Washington Post reported:

“Safety-bureau regulators removed a key word from language describing the level of down-hole pressure the agency requires operators to maintain in a given well to avoid an accident. The word it removed is ‘safe.'”

Chris Eaton, oceans attorney with Earthjustice, said his organization “will use every tool we have to prevent these rollbacks.”

“The Trump administration is rolling back mechanisms and technology designed to protect rig workers and prevent another disaster offshore,” Eaton said in a statement. “These rollbacks are a hand out to oil company CEOs at the cost of endangering the lives of their workers and heightening the risk for another environmental catastrophe off America’s coastlines.”

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Featured image: U.S. Coast Guard crews work to put out a fire during the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. (Photo: U.S. Coast Guard)

Under the guise of protecting human rights, the Trump administration is illegally meddling in three countries it has dubbed the “troika of tyranny” — Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed,

“Miami is home to countless Americans, who fled the prisons and death squads of the Castro regime in Cuba, the murderous dictatorships of Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, and the horrific violence of the 1980s and today under the brutal reign of the Ortegas in Nicaragua.”

But the U.S. government’s human rights record doesn’t compare favorably to Cuba’s. And the Trump administration, which ignores notorious human rights violators like Saudi Arabia, is acting out of more cynical motives in its commission of egregious human rights violations against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

The U.S. government has imposed unlawful, coercive sanctions on these nations, and attempted to mount a coup to illegally change Venezuela’s regime.

Trump and the real troika of tyranny — Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams — have failed in their coup attempt against the democratically elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Trump’s troika, egged on by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), are seeking to substitute U.S. puppet Juan Guaidó for Maduro as president of Venezuela.

On May 1, Pompeo told Fox Business that the U.S. might use military force in Venezuela “if that’s what is required.” Eric Prince, founder of the infamous Blackwater mercenary group, presented a plan to U.S. and European leaders to provide 5,000 mercenaries to Guaidó.

McClatchy reported that covert U.S. weapons shipments arrived in Venezuela from Miami in February.

This is particularly alarming because Russia has a solidarity presence in Venezuela and a U.S.-backed attack could risk a conflagration with Russia.

Furthermore, the United Nations Charter forbids countries from using or threatening to use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another country. The Charter of the Organization of American States prohibits any country from intervening in the internal or external affairs of another nation. And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to self-determination.

Sanctions Constitute Illegal Collective Punishment

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has increased punishing sanctions on Venezuela as a step toward forcible regime change.

“Statements from the [Trump] administration indicated that the purpose of the sanctions was to provoke a military rebellion to topple the government,” according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Those sanctions are exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela. They have led to more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018 and oil production has fallen more than 36 percent since January 2019.

Source: Embassy Protection Collective/Facebook

The report says the economic sanctions Trump imposed in August 2017 “reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation.” In addition, “They exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.”

According to the report,

“Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019, and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government.”

Seeking to pressure Cuba to cease its solidarity with Venezuela, Trump has slammed Cuba with more sanctions, stiffening the economic and travel blockade and activating Title III of the Helms Burton Act to allow thousands of lawsuits that will discourage tourism and investment in Cuba.

Trump has threatened Cuba with “a full and complete” embargo if it does not “immediately” stop supporting the Maduro government. Cuba called Bolton a “pathological liar” for alleging that Cuban troops are stationed in Venezuela. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez stated at a news conference, “This is vulgar calumny. Cuba does not have troops nor military forces nor does it participate in military or security operations of the sister Republic of Venezuela.” Indeed, the CIA has determined that Cuba is much less involved and its solidarity is much less crucial to Venezuela than U.S. officials think, according to a former official.

In December 2018, Trump signed a bill levying sanctions to block Nicaragua from obtaining loans from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The U.S. government is targeting Nicaragua’s Bancorp, which has ties to Venezuela.

All of these sanctions constitute collective punishment of the civilian population, which is prohibited by the Geneva and Hague Conventions. They also violate the Charter of the Organization of American States, which prohibits intervention in the internal or external affairs of another country and the use of economic or political coercive measures “to force the sovereign will of another State.”

This is not the first time the U.S. government has interfered and intervened in these three sovereign socialist countries. In 1960, responding to a secret State Department memo, the Eisenhower administration imposed an economic embargo on Cuba. The memo proposed “a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” The cruel U.S. economic blockade against Cuba, which continues to this day, has never led to the overthrow of the Cuban Revolution.

In the 1980s, the Regan administration illegally assisted the Contras, who sought unsuccessfully to overthrow Daniel Ortega’s socialist government in Nicaragua.

And in 2002, the CIA during the George W. Bush administration mounted a failed coup attempt against socialist president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The United States uses a double standard for its human rights concerns and its attacks on socialist countries.

Embassy Protection Collective Protects Venezuelan Embassy

Meanwhile, the Embassy Protection Collective remains in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C. Members of CODEPINK and Popular Resistance have lived in the embassy for more than two weeks to protect it from a coup attempt and possible invasion by U.S.-backed opposition forces. On May 1, members of the collective fended off an attempted takeover of the embassy by forces loyal to Guaidó.

Starting to gather for the rally in front of the embassy. (Source: Embassy Protection Collective/Facebook)

If the Trump administration were to enter the embassy to expel these people, who are present with consent of the Venezuelan government, it would violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Article 22 of that treaty states, “The premises of the mission shall be inviolable.” U.S. agents are prohibited from entering the embassy without the consent of the Maduro government. The United States 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.” And the premises, furniture and other property “shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.”

Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, members of the Embassy Protective Collective, wrote,

If the Venezuelan embassy in Washington is taken over by the opposition, it will have disastrous results. The Venezuelan government declared that if this happens, they will take the US embassy in Caracas. The US will view this as an act of aggression, and because it is already looking for an excuse to do so, could attack Venezuela. Because Russia and China are close allies of Venezuela, this could spark a global conflict.

Why Is Team Trump Intent on Sanctions and Regime Change?

Why is Trump’s troika so intent on regime change in Venezuela and sanctions in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua?

Last month, Bolton addressed the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association on the 58th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, in which the U.S. aided and abetted a failed attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro. “Together, we can finish what began on those beaches,” Bolton said, adding, “We must reject the forces of communism and socialism in this hemisphere.”

It’s not simply anti-communism that animates the Trump administration’s fixation on sanctions and regime change in these Latin American countries. “With at least a half-million voters who were born in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia or Nicaragua — and more with ancestral roots in those countries — it’s a constituency that could prove pivotal in November 2020 in a state that’s essential to Trump’s reelection fortunes,” Marc Caputo wrote at Politico.

U.S. strategies on Cuba and Venezuela intertwine in an insidious way, and Senator Rubio is pivotal in both. “Venezuela is really an extension of the position on Cuba,” according to Ricardo Herrera, director of the Cuba Study Group. The Wall Street Journal reports that both countries are part of a plan to reassert U.S. dominance in Latin America and finally destroy the Cuban Revolution.

Moreover, corporate America wants to get its hands on Venezuela’s oil. Bolton said in January, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now…. It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Veterans for Peace issued a statement calling on U.S. troops to resist illegal orders to invade Venezuela, noting, “While President Trump speaks of supporting democracy in Venezuela and Latin America, the real purpose of the U.S. assault on the Venezuelan government is to fully open the vast Venezuelan oil reserves to U.S. and other Western oil corporations as well as to destroy progressive governments in Latin America that put their own peoples’ needs above the profits of foreign corporations.”

Although there is opposition to Maduro’s policies in Venezuela, people don’t want the United States to impose its will on them. Eva Golinger, former adviser to Hugo Chavez, told Democracy Now! that “certainly, there are many in Venezuela who would hope for change in their country, but they don’t want a U.S.-backed regime in place. They don’t want a far-right-imposed regime that answers to foreign interests, which is what we’re seeing take place in the country.”

On May 1, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), also appearing on Democracy Now!, said, “A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela,” adding, “this particularly bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

Many in Congress and the corporate media walk in lockstep with the administration on its Venezuela strategy. On April 3, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to recognize Guaidó as the president of Venezuela.

Instead, Congress should pass H.R.1004, the Prohibiting Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela Act, which would forbid the use of U.S. military force in Venezuela without explicit congressional authorization. This bill is now pending in the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. People can contact their representatives and urge them to co-sponsor and support H.R.1004.

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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. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Embassy Protection Collective/Facebook

Relying heavily on confidential industry research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to re-approve glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.

EPA’s conclusion that glyphosate poses no risks to humans contradicts a 2015 World Health Organization analysis of the leading independent research that determined glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

“American consumers have no reason to trust the EPA’s deeply flawed assessment of glyphosate’s safety,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “As with past EPA studies, the agency has relied heavily on confidential industry research that can’t be reviewed by independent scientists. This is an industry-friendly conclusion that’s simply not based on the best available science.”

In addition to the WHO’s conclusion, other U.S. federal agencies have acknowledged evidence of glyphosate’s link to cancer. This includes the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The EPA assessment release today was conducted by the agency’s pesticide regulatory office, which has long had the reputation of reaching industry-friendly decisions.

“The EPA’s biased glyphosate assessment ignores its own guidelines for estimating cancer risks and falls short of the most basic standards of independent research,” said Donley. “Trump’s EPA lost no time in trying to hand Bayer a consolation prize following last week’s shareholder revolt over glyphosate. But it can’t erase glyphosate’s well-documented links to cancer.”

Within the past nine months, two juries have ordered Monsanto/Bayer to pay multimillion-dollar awards to glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which independent research has linked to glyphosate. A third trial is currently underway, and lawsuits involving roughly 13,000 people have been filed against the company for failing to warn consumers of the pesticide’s cancer risks.

Emails obtained in litigation brought against Monsanto by cancer victims and their families uncovered a disturbingly cozy relationship between the EPA and Monsanto on matters involving the glyphosate risk assessment.

In one example, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would be reviewing glyphosate’s safety, an EPA official assured Monsanto he would work to thwart the review, saying, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.”

That Health and Human Services review was delayed for three years and only recently released.

In addition to evaluating the risks of glyphosate to human health, the EPA also analyzed risks to plants and animals and found that serious harms could result from using glyphosate, including exposure to spray drift that could harm the growth and reproduction of birds and mammals. It also found that exposure to small mammals exceeded by 10-fold the agency’s level of concern — the exposure level known to cause harm.

“In addition to the threats glyphosate poses to human health, glyphosate is a leading cause of the decline of the imperiled and iconic monarch butterfly,” said Donley. “The minor, industry-vetted restrictions the EPA has proposed are a far cry from what’s needed to bring these amazing creatures back from the brink.”

The EPA’s assessment found that field buffers up to 600 feet would be needed to prevent harm to milkweed, the sole host plant for monarch caterpillars. Yet the EPA’s interim approval does not contain any field buffers, and the minor spray-drift mitigation measures put in place were preapproved by the pesticide industry.

Migratory monarch populations have declined by 80 percent in the past two decades, and their decline has been driven in large part by the surge in glyphosate use resulting from the widespread planting of corn and soybeans crops genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate.

Glyphosate is a potent killer of milkweed. The dramatic surge in glyphosate use has virtually wiped out milkweed plants in the Midwest’s corn and soybean fields. While monarch populations enjoyed a one-year spike due to ideal weather conditions in the 2018-2019 season, migratory monarchs continue to be gravely imperiled by glyphosate use.

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Featured image: Monarch butterfly photo by Lori Ann Burd, Center for Biological Diversity. (Source: CBD)

No place on Earth is free from human influence—not even the bottom of the deepest trenches in the ocean.

Shrimp-like critters from three West Pacific ocean trenches were found to munch on food that sinks down from the surface, leaving a unique chemical signature from decades-old nuclear bomb tests in the bodies of the deep-sea crustaceans. The findings, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, not only help marine scientists figure out how these bottom dwellers survive, but also underscore the depths to which humanity’s influence can penetrate.

Deep ocean trenches may be among the least explored nooks on Earth. The deepest of these, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, reaches down to about 36,000 feet below sea-level. (Mt. Everest could sit at the bottom, and its summit would still lie beneath more than a mile of water.) At the bottom, temperatures hover just above freezing and the water exerts a pressure more than 1,000 times that felt at the surface.

“Biologically, [ocean] trenches are taken to be the most pristine habitats on Earth,” says Weidong Sun, a geochemist at the Institute of Oceanology in China and coauthor of the new study. “We are interested in how life survives down there, what’s its food source, and whether human activities have any influence.”

In those dark depths, one of the most common critters is the shrimp-like amphipod, a family of crustaceans that scavenge the ocean floor for food. Where that food comes from is a matter of debate. Potential sources include morsels that percolate up from Earth’s interior, nutrient-rich sediment that slides down steep trench walls, or tasty detritus that wafts down from the surface.

A recent haul of deep-sea amphipods offered Sun and colleagues a chance to solve this marine mystery. Using baited traps, two Chinese research vessels in 2017 harvested amphipods from three trenches in the West Pacific, including the famous Mariana Trench. Sun’s team chemically analyzed the amphipods’ muscle tissue and gut contents and found elevated levels of carbon-14, a heavy variant of carbon. The levels closely matched abundances found near the surface of the ocean, where the amount of carbon-14 is higher than usual thanks to nuclear bomb tests conducted more than half a century ago.

Carbon comes in a few different varieties based on how many neutrons are stuffed into its atomic nucleus. About one out of every trillion carbon atoms on Earth has two extra neutrons. This form, known as carbon-14, occurs naturally thanks to high-speed atomic particles from deep space whacking into nitrogen atoms. But in the middle of the 20th century, humans doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, from 1945 to 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union (with a little help from the United Kingdom and France) detonated nearly 500 nuclear bombs, 379 of which exploded in the atmosphere. These tests dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 on our planet. The Test Ban Treaty of 1963 put a stop to most atmospheric and underwater tests, and carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere started a slow return to normal—though they are still higher than pre-nuclear levels—as ocean waters and land-based life absorbed carbon from the air.

This steady decline of carbon-14, which has a half-life of about 5,730 years, has become a useful tool for figuring out the age and source of organic matter. Throughout any organism’s life, it latches on to carbon in the environment. When the organism dies, that exchange stops. By measuring how much carbon is in the form of carbon-14, researchers can determine when an organism died.

Different places on Earth also have highly variable inventories of carbon-14. Organic material from inside the planet is largely free of carbon-14. Sediments from ocean trench walls also have very low levels. But material from the ocean surface mirrors the relatively high amounts in the atmosphere.

In the muscle tissue of the harvested amphipods, carbon-14 levels closely matched surface abundances from 2004 to 2007, which suggests that these creatures live for more than a decade. Their cousins near the surface typically live for just two years. The freshly digested food in the amphipods’ guts, meanwhile, had carbon-14 levels similar to those found in contemporary surface samples, suggesting that surface flotsam quickly plummets to the deepest trenches where the amphipods scarf it down.

A map of the Mariana Trench with Challenger Deep labeled, the deepest known point in the ocean with a depth of about 36,000 feet. (Kmusser via Wikicommons CC BY 2.5)

While the nuclear bomb signature has been recorded a couple miles down in the West Atlantic, no one has seen it as these depths before.

“This is just interesting as all get out,” says Robert Key, a Princeton oceanographer who was not involved with this study. He points out that starting about a mile below the surface of the North Pacific, carbon-14 levels closely match what the atmosphere looked like before the bomb tests. “The high carbon-14 [in the amphipods] could only come from food that’s come down from the top,” he says.

The abundance of material created in nuclear bomb tests high in the sky found in the bodies of deep-dwelling amphipods underscores a very intimate connection between human activity and the most isolated reaches of the sea.

“These are indeed extraordinary results, but I am not surprised,” says Timothy Shank, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “From 25 years of conducting exploration and research on deep-sea ecosystems, I find their connection to us being closer than we ever thought.”

Toilets and showers lurk two miles down, he says, while plastic and metal trash has turned up in more than 30 deep-water canyons off the east coast of the United States.

And this isn’t the first time that researchers have seen trench amphipods dealing with humanity’s refuse. A 2017 paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution reported that amphipods from two West Pacific trenches contained elevated levels of the industrial pollutants PCB, once widely used in electronic devices, and PBDE, a flame retardant. In some Mariana Trench amphipods, PCB levels were as much as 50 times higher than levels found in crabs caught near the Liaohe River, one of the most polluted rivers in China.

Sun and colleagues aren’t done with their amphipods or the rich ecosystem that flourishes in these underwater canyons.

“There are lots of creatures in the very deep, very dark places,” Sun says. “We want to understand how the ecosystem deals with human activity … and how the system reacts to this heavy pollution from the surface.”

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Featured image: The first test of a thermonuclear weapon, or a hydrogen bomb, codenamed Ivy Mike and conducted by the United States in 1952 over the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. (Public Domain)

We bring this article to the attention of our readers for informational purposes only

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After the statement from Chinese geneticist Jiankui He that he and his team had achieved the birth of the first genetically modified babies (that our Observatory covered extensively, see HERE), the Chinese government ordered an official investigation that has now confirmed the veracity of these facts.

Jiankui and his team used the CRISPR gene editing tool to inactivate the CCR5 gene in human embryos, giving them immunity to the AIDS virus. Two of these embryos were transferred to the patient, with the pregnancy progressing and resulting in the birth of the first babies with a modified genome. Another pregnancy is also currently underway.

The investigation has revealed that the Chinese scientist falsified documents to pretend that the experiment had been approved by an Ethics Committee. He also used blood samples from other individuals so that the tests would not detect that the men participating in the experiment were HIV positive, as in China, HIV carriers are banned from participating in vitro fertilization cycles. The university where he worked has announced that he has been formally dismissed.

International scientific community opinion

These experiments have been widely criticized by the international scientific community, because the technique is not safe and the changes will be transmitted from generation to generation. Furthermore, in a recent issue of journal The Lancet, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and a group of HIV researchers have joined the criticisms, classing the facts as contrary to ethics, morality and legality, and proposing the implementation of appropriate regulations and practical guidelines. They also recommend that the privacy of the babies be protected.

Counterproductive effects of the modification

It is also interesting that the HIV researchers stress how inactivation of the CCR5 gene not only does not mean the cure of any disease (it is a preventive modification), but that it may be counterproductive: “The CCR5 gene has a key role in maintaining proper physiological and immunological functions of the cell. Genetically knocking out CCR5 in healthy human embryos has no scientific basis, could have serious adverse effects, and is likely to have unpredictable consequences”. They also highlight that “HIV is highly mutable and CCR5 is only one of the co-receptors for HIV entry. Therefore, disabling the CCR5 gene would not completely prevent HIV infection” and that “proven effective and accessible strategies already exist for the prevention of perinatal transmission of HIV”. They therefore concluded that this genetic modification “provides no benefit but is likely to have uncontrollable risks to the babies and their future health”.

Should only be condemned genetic modifications with reproductive purposes?

Up to this point, the assessments provided appear adequate. Nevertheless, there is another aspect in which the ethical criterion does not seem right to us. Thus, the three publications condemn only those genetic modifications that have a “reproductive purpose”, understood as the implantation of the embryos in a woman and their development. The modification of embryos for investigational ends, in contrast, would not be reproachable. However, this involves the modification of human embryos for their subsequent use and destruction, which is ethically unacceptable. Scientific advances in this area should be based on research on animal embryos.

Spanish Bioethics Committee position

In light of this news, the Spanish Bioethics Committee has issued a document stating their position on these events and on germline genetic modification.

The report highlights the importance not only of the safety problems that gene editing poses, but also the ethical and social conflicts. It also states that

“in no case, the decision to apply gene editing and the corresponding gene therapy in humans can start from private and singular initiatives, but rather should be taken in a general framework of reflection, deliberation and consensus”.

As regards the distinction between genetic modification for curative or enhancement purposes, it states that “although the use of these techniques in the strictly curative field is not exempt from ethical problems, their use for direct or indirect enhancement purposes (mere biology or enhancement genetic engineering), as has happened in the case of the two girls born in China, is absolutely unacceptable and inadmissible, under the requirements of the essential value of the dignity and equality of human beings”.

The US has more or less succeeded in convincing Belarus to “defect” from Russia and pivot to the West, which therefore puts Trump in a prime position to twist Putin’s arm through Lukashenko as he attempts to squeeze seemingly endless strategic concessions out of Moscow, but it remains to be seen whether this geopolitical blackmail will actually work.

The Crisis That’s Being Kept Under Wraps (For Now)

There’s a serious crisis brewing in Europe but barely anyone has noticed because the relevant Great Powers have self-interested reasons in staying silent about it. Unbeknownst to many, Russian-Belarusian relations are rapidly transforming before the world’s eyes and potentially becoming a game-changer in the New Cold War after Minsk shut down Moscow’s oil transit through its territory and just unprecedentedly got Putin to replace his ambassador to the country after less than a year on the job following controversial comments that he recently made about his host country. His remarks weren’t all that inflammatory but they got Lukashenko to issue a thinly veiled demand to Putin that he punish his envoy, which the Russian leader ultimately acquiesced to because he really had no choice if he wanted to de-escalate this worsening crisis and carry out much-needed “damage control” for his country’s image.

Denying Reality Doesn’t Change It

Russia officially denied that these developments indicate a crisis between the two Eurasian Union and CSTO allies, but then again, it’s understandable why it would want to downplay this drama in order to avoid the attendant disaster that it would be for its soft power if the international audience realized that this “fellow Slavic Orthodox country” is following in Ukraine’s footsteps by “defecting” to the West.

The US, which has been successfully courting Lukashenko since 2014, is aware of just how sensitive of an issue this is for Russia in all respects, which is why it’s keeping quiet about it in order to cut a deal with Moscow behind closed doors that would give Putin a “face-saving” defeat and avoid the loud domestic criticism that he’d come under if he was blamed for “losing Belarus”.

Simply put, despite their asymmetries in geographic and demographic sizes, Belarus is much more important to Russia than the reverse because Minsk can always replace the role that Moscow plays in its economy by embracing the West, an “inconvenient fact” that few in the Kremlin cared to recognize due to the hubris that’s pervaded within its walls since Putin restored the country’s Great Power status. Taking its alliance with Belarus for granted, Russia imposed a tax on its oil exports at the beginning of the year that Minsk said would cost it hundreds of millions of dollars a year but which Moscow claimed was necessary to stop the billions of dollars that it’s been bleeding to subsidize its neighbor’s economy.

Everything snowballed from then on out until the geopolitical avalanche finally happened and Belarus cut off Russia’s energy exports to Europe on the pretext that $2.7 billion in tainted oil was recently pumped through the Druzhba (ironically, “Friendship”) Pipeline. Moscow maintains that an act of sabotage might have been responsible for contaminating its oil exports while there are those who suspect that it might have been a “plausibly deniable” way to punish Minsk for its pro-Western pivot even though this speculatively “clever plan” ended up backfiring in the worst way possible. Either way, there’s no avoiding the fact that Russia stands to lose untold billions in current and future revenue from this oil crisis alone, to say nothing of its long-term geostrategic consequences in the economic and military spheres vis-a-vis the Eurasian Union and the CSTO.

Catastrophic Strategic Consequences

This isn’t mere “fearmongering” either since the EU just announced that “there are no market barriers to US LNG coming to Europe” during the 1st EU-US Energy Council Business To Business Energy Forum that took place on Thursday and saw the attendance of US Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Seeing as how energy-hungry Europe can no longer depend on the reliability of Russia’s overland pipelines through Ukraine and now Belarus, it makes sense why it would seek to replace the sudden drop in Russian exports with American resources instead. This will have the inevitable effect of hitting the Russian budget at its most sensitive moment when the country is racing to implement Putin’s landmark “Great Society” socio-economic development strategy and preparing for the impending change of power that will finally happen in 2024 (PP24, “Post-Putin 2024”).

Russia literally can’t afford to lose the revenue that it receives from its energy exports to Europe (especially those through Belarus) given the aforementioned domestic context and the ongoing Arms and Space Races with the US, though Moscow can conceivably take advantage of the US’ anti-Iranian sanctions regime to replace Tehran in the growing Chinese and Indian marketplaces and recoup some of its losses at its “partner’s” expense. Even so, the fact of the matter remains that Belarus is disproportionately more important to Russia than the reverse, and Minsk’s “defection” to the West and its stunning turning of the strategic tables on Moscow carry with it very serious security implications for the larger of the two countries that are also immensely embarrassing for its international image, hence why its media has been conspicuously mum about these developments.

As horrifying of a scenario as many in Alt-Media will undoubtedly consider it to be, objective observers can’t discount the possibility of Washington using Minsk to geopolitically blackmail Moscow,. Instead of publicly humiliating Russia by openly flaunting this and risking the chance that international awareness about it could trigger an  “unpredictable reaction” from Putin in order to “save face”, however, Trump wants to first try reaching a deal behind closed doors and only then would he openly throw this in his counterpart’s face if he fails to reach one on America’s terms. It’s with this in mind that the upcoming Lavrov-Pompeo meeting in Finland next week takes on a completely new significance because it might lead to the US requesting Russia to do something for it in Syria in exchange for not weaponizing Belarus more intensely than it already has.

The Real “Deal Of The Century”

Russia is already doing its utmost to pressure Syria into initiating Iran’s dignified but “phased withdrawal” from the country by refusing to provide it with energy relief during the ongoing fuel crisis, attempting to ensnare it in a strategic trap through the Tartus port deal, and speaking on its behalf by provocatively misrepresenting Damascus’ position towards Idlib and “Israel” until it gets what it wants, but its efforts might take on a renewed urgency if the US demands that this be done by next month to coincide with its expected unveiling of the so-called “Deal of the Century” at the end of Ramadan. It remains to be seen whether Russia can succeed within such a short timeframe considering that it’s been trying to achieve this for roughly a year already, but it might nevertheless still try.

In any case, Moscow would be sorely mistaken if it thinks that Washington would stop geopolitically blackmailing it with Belarus in the event that Russia does the US a favor in Syria because Trump has succeeded in reversing the power dynamics between Lukashenko and Putin and won’t hesitate to repeatedly play this hand as he seeks to advance America’s grand strategic interests. What the US really wants from Russia is for Moscow to slow down the pace of its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) integration with Beijing, but that’s politically impossible for Putin to do after he proudly committed his country to this global series of megaprojects during his keynote speech at last week’s BRI Forum. As such, the US will probably try to transform Belarus from a thorn in Russia’s side to a spear that strategically strikes the Great Power’s Heartland.

What’s meant by this is that the US has the potential to seriously damage Russia’s soft power by propagating global awareness of Belarus’ pro-Western pivot and then instrumentalizing it in such a way that it renders the much-touted Eurasian Union and CSTO post-Soviet integration frameworks useless, especially if Washington is able to convince Minsk to sign an EU Association Agreement and strengthen its ties with NATO through the ongoing “Partnership for Peace” negotiations. Under those very probable scenarios, Russia would have no choice but to either cut a deal with the US and/or Belarus, buy off Lukahsneko (if it’s even still possible), or take him out, the latter choice of which the US has been deviously preconditioning the international community to expect ever since the beginning of the year in order to raise suspicions about Moscow’s geopolitical motives.

Concluding Thoughts

There should be no doubt by now that Trump is getting ready to twist Putin’s arm through Lukahsneko as he attempts to squeeze seemingly endless strategic concessions out of Moscow, but there’s no telling whether or not he’ll succeed in getting what he wants out of Russia since its leadership might have foreseen this dark scenario and has backup plans to implement for when it happens. In the event that Russia refuses to enter into a series of behind-the-scenes deals with the US in exchange for preventing Washington from propagating the embarrassing crisis in Russian-Belarusian relations across the world and irreversibly damaging Moscow’s soft power, it’ll have to accept the consequences to its international image and the post-Soviet integration structures that it leads. Strategically reorientating itself eastward towards China and southward through the “Ummah Pivot” could help lessen the blow, but nothing would ever be the same again if Russia “loses” Belarus for good.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

In the wake of RussiaGate 1.0, will there be a shift in US foreign policy involving a decisive change in US-Russia relations?

Is the Witch-hunt over? 

Or is RussiaGate 2.0 in the making? 

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On March 3, Trump and Putin held a telephone conversation. They spoke for an hour and a half.

The discussions were described by Trump as “positive”.

Trump “unofficially” discussed “The Russian Hoax” with Vladimir Putin. “Very Productive Talk”.

“Getting along with Russia and China, getting along with all of them is a very good thing, not a bad thing, it a good thing, it’s a positive thing,” (to reporters on May 3)

Trump confirmed that he was open to negotiations on reducing the stock of nuclear weapons with both Moscow and Beijing in the context of a trilateral deal (US-Russia-China). Indelibly, such an agreement could potentially destabilize Trump’s 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program. It could also have an impact on the movement of Aerospace and Defense (A & D) stocks, which experienced a market bonanza in 2018.

The lifting of sanctions on North Korea, Ukraine and the crisis in Venezuela were also discussed.

The Trump-Putin telephone initiative was taken without prior consultation with John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who have systematically blocked the restoration of normal dialogue and diplomatic exchange with Moscow.

Is this part of an unfolding internal battle between Trump and his national security advisers, not to mention Vice President Mike Pence? (image right).

President Trump’s overture to the Kremlin visibly contradicts both Bolton and Pompeo who are threatening president Maduro,  pressuring him to leave Venezuela and hand over the presidency to Guaido.  According to Trump:

“He [Putin] is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela,”

It is worth noting that two days prior to the Trump-Putin telephone conversation, Pompeo told Lavrov (also in a telephone conversation) that

“the intervention by Russia and Cuba is destabilizing for Venezuela and for the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship.”

In a bitter irony, this (telephone) statement by Pompeo was made one day after the failed “military coup” in Caracas.

Will Trump’s dialogue with Putin have a bearing on the Bolton-Pompeo threats directed against the Maduro government? Was Trump’s call to Putin (May 3) meant to override Pompeo’s overt threats (May 1st) to intervene militarily in Venezuela?

Lavrov and Pompeo are set to meet early this week in Finland. Will Pompeo, a former army officer, Christian evangelical and for a short while a former-CIA director change his tone and approach following Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin? Unlikely. Mike Pompeo has been the architect of numerous foreign policy blunders since his appointment by Trump first as CIA director in January 2017 and then as Secretary of State.

The presumption of the mainstream media(Time) (which borders on ridicule) is that Donald Trump as president of the United States should have sought the green-light from Bolton-Pompeo. The fact of the matter is that these two individuals are deliberately involved in sabotaging US relations with a large number countries:

The conversation, which Trump went on to describe as “very positive,” appeared to be yet another example of Trump taking Putin’s claims at face value despite contrary evidence from his own government. The White House national security adviser, John Bolton, and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo both said earlier this week that the Kremlin talked Maduro out of leaving Venezuela after U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido attempted to end his regime on Tuesday by calling for a military uprising. (emphasis added)

RussiaGate 2.0

How is this internal confrontation going to evolve? Who is calling the shots at the White House?

Pompeo and Bolton are an obstacle to normalizing diplomatic relations with Russia. They are dangerous individuals, psychopathic in their understanding of global geopolitics, influential with regard to sanctions and  military intervention. They are also misinformed with regard to the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, which they consider as peace-making bombs.

Both Bolton and Pompeo were instrumental in the sabotage of the latest US-North Korea summit in Hanoi.

Impeachment

Despite the release of the Mueller report, the impeachment campaign prevails. Immediately following the Putin-Trump telephone conversation, the campaign to impeach Trump has gone into high gear.

The Atlantic, March 2019

Will The Kremlin Intervene in the 2020 elections? 

Another absurd proposition: The US media is now intimating that Trump’s conversation with Putin is setting the stage for Kremlin intervention in the 2020 elections:

“Mr. President, did you tell him not to meddle in the next election?” a reporter asked.

“Excuse me, I’m talking, I’m answering this question. You are very rude. So we had a good conversation about several different things,” Trump told the reporter.

When asked again about Russian interference in future U.S. elections, Trump said: “We didn’t discuss that.”

According to the Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro

“President Donald Trump wants Russia to interfere on his behalf again in 2020”.

“All of a sudden, he’s willing to take the word of a leader like Vladimir Putin who, time and again, has shown himself to be adversarial to the United States and to be dishonest,” .

In turn, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now candidate for the 2020 presidential elections has stated:

 “that Congress would have “no alternative” but to impeach President Trump if his administration seeks to block its investigations of issues raised in the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference.” (WaPo, April 30, 2019)

See Trump’s press conference 

ANNEX.

The Russian embassy in the US on the Trump-Putin Telephone Exchange

Embassy of Russia in the USA / Посольство России в США

May 3 at 10:25 AM ·

Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the United States of America Donald Trump, at the initiative of the American side.

The current state and prospects of bilateral relations were discussed with a focus on economic cooperation. The two presidents spoke in favour of developing mutually beneficial trade and investment relations. They affirmed their shared commitment to step up dialogue in various areas, including on issues of strategic stability.

Vladimir Putin informed Donald Trump of the key results of his April 25 meeting in Vladivostok with Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK Kim Jong-un, stressing that Pyongyang’s good-faith fulfilment of its commitments should be accompanied by reciprocal steps to ease the sanctions pressure on North Korea. Both parties noted the importance of consistent progress towards denuclearisation and achieving long-term normalisation on the Korean Peninsula.

The situation in Ukraine was touched on in the context of the recent presidential election. Vladimir Putin emphasised that the new leadership in Kiev should take real steps to implement the Minsk Agreements, which are critical to resolving the internal Ukrainian conflict.

While exchanging views on the situation around Venezuela, the President of Russia underscored that only the Venezuelans themselves have the right to determine the future of their country, whereas outside interference in the country’s internal affairs and attempts to change the government in Caracas by force undermine prospects for a political settlement of the crisis.

It was agreed to maintain contacts at various levels.

The two heads of state expressed satisfaction with the business-like and constructive nature of the conversation.
——————

“The conversation between Trump and Putin lasted for almost 1.5 hours,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
More:
http://tass.com/world/1056870

Baby Boomers should remember that innovative Sci Fi television series, The Outer Limits (1963). The opening monologue really was a rare look into the future… OUR future here in Military Industrial Empire’s America. Remember the opening:

Control Voice: [introduction] There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly, and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits!

Well, that was 56 years ago, and look at the boob tube now. They say in all the civics classes that We the People own the airwaves. Yeah right! It is those who run this empire who control our media, and not us. You channel surf through ALL the so called news and news talk shows, and all you get is ****!

The Two Party/One Party food fight centers lately on the ominous Mueller Report , all day and all night!

In between that nonsense the Democratic Party leaning networks focus on how terrible (and he is) Trump is behaving, but not on the real issues that we working stiffs should be concerned about. No, they spend time, after many commercial breaks, on sexual scandals and other low brow things, while this straw man is allowing the Military Industrial Empire to bankrupt us!

On the right wing pro Republican networks they focus on how great our economy is, despite the fact that too many working stiffs need to work second ( even third) jobs to stay afloat. Both sides seem to wish Julian Assange should be jailed for life… if not executed along with Ms. Manning and of course Eric Snowden… who had the foresight to get the hell out of Dodge before they got him. Both sides also want to satisfy the empire’s movers and shakers by seeing regime change in Venezuela, ignoring the fact that Maduro was legally elected and re-elected by his people. And through it all our cherished media servants make sure to genuflect at the altar of this massive beast called the Pentagon.

I used to love watching sports talk shows. No more. On any of the multitude of such shows all you get is hype and spin for either the NBA or the NFL. You have millionaire commentators, many ex jocks, who carry the water for their masters, the uber rich, who own those sports and the networks… and of course the corporations who advertise on them.

Scandal is in and strategy is out! Ever try to watch a live sporting event? In the old days of my baby boomer youth a NFL game was maybe 2.5 to 3 hours long. Now, they are at least close to 4 hours. So, a smart fan tapes the game and watches it on delay to avoid those incessant commercials. Major league baseball games used to also be 2.5 to 3 hours long… now they too are close to or even over 4 hours. 

I won’t even delve too much into the financial aspect of pro sports, with the mega millionaire players who spend too much time being on injured reserve, or the millionaire players who can’t even hit with a .250 average. Well, look at how much their team’s owners are raking in: Billions in some cases! And the media , like the Outer Limits monologue says, controls everything and makes mega billions on these sports. Meanwhile, any working stiff who dares to fork out a couple of hundred bucks to take his kid to a game is a jackass! Bad enough what we have to all pay for cable television when the 1996 Telecommunications (under so called ‘progressive’ President Clinton) opened the door for massive fee increases! The rest of the world may yet be ahead of us as many of their pro soccer leagues have the players wearing sponsor’s ads on their backs.

What I love is the two year cycle of preparation for another presidential election. Yes, it usually begins two years after the last election when the Two Party/One Party con job returns to overwhelm the suckers.

The drama intensifies as to who will be the next water carrier for the uber rich empire. Dumb downed Amerikans get so intense and so angry, each at the other side of this phony spectrum. The candidates are running around to raise money, for without the cash no one can ever have the sufficient commercial time of twenty and thirty second sound bites to win ‘Hearts and minds’. The print and electronic media whores love this all, as it fattens their piggybanks, with all those commercials and mailings.

Meanwhile, our ship is sinking and you better start taking Chinese language lessons!

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Philip A Farruggio is the 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].

Notice to our readers: This week’s interview guest Eva Bartlett will be speaking in Edmonton on Saturday May 4th at 7:30pm at the Ukrainian Centre at 11018 97 Street.

She will also speak in Vancouver on Sunday May 5th at 7pm at Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House at 800 E Broadway.

Both talks will centre around her March-April visit to Venezuela.

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For those participants in the 2014 EuroMaidan protests with hopes of overthrowing a corrupt kleptocratic regime and ushering in a new era of freedom and prosperity for Ukrainians, the past five years would seem to have been a jarring reality check.

Following the February 2014 ouster of sitting President Viktor Yanukovych, the autonomous Republic of Crimea would separate and rejoin the Russian Federation. A separatist movement in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in eastern Ukraine would escalate into a bloody war with thousands of civilian and militant deaths and millions of displaced persons. Neo-Nazi elements would gain a foothold in the Ukrainian parliament and in Ukrainian military units. And notwithstanding the signing of an association agreement with the EU, prosperity still remains as distant a hope as ever for the vast majority of Ukrainians, 60 percent of whom live below the poverty line in what statistics reveal to be Europe’s poorest country.

Disturbingly, as reported on this radio program, journalists in Ukraine face threats of imprisonment or even extra-judicial killing if they dare deviate from government-approved narratives about the Ukrainian revolution and oppressive crimes by the post-revolutionary order.

The story of Kirill Vyshinsky is a case in point. Having published essays from other writers back in 2014 which Ukrainian authorities deemed a “threat to national information security” the Chief Editor of RIA Novosti Ukraine was arrested on May 15th of last year and almost a year later is still sitting in pre-trial detention!

Meanwhile, a supposed ‘outsider’, Volodymyr Zelensky, has emerged victorious over incumbent President Poroshenko. Known for his work as a TV comedian, Zelensky has pledged to bring an end to the conflict in Donbass by continuing the Minsk process and by waging a ‘powerful information war.’

Preliminary sparring between Zelinsky and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the latter’s offer of simplifying the Russian citizenship process for residents in war-torn eastern Ukraine suggests that improved relations between the two countries may not be on the menu.

This week’s Global Research News Hour resumes its coverage of the ongoing Ukraine crisis with two provocative and relevant stories.

In the first half hour, Eva Bartlett returns for the second week in a row, this time to provide more background on Kirill Vyshinsky, and her thoughts about the legal and political rationale for his arrest. In the second half hour, George Eliason presents a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics playing out in Post-Maidan Ukraine, including the roots of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism, the forces influencing President Zelensky, and the prospects for peace in the Donbass.

Find more analysis on Ukraine, check out Global Research’s comprehensive archive.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting. Her articles on Kirill Vyshinsky’s detention can be found here and here.

George Eliason is an American journalist based in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC, and Press-TV. His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT,and Global Research among others. His article: Ukraine’s Voters Didn’t Just Reject Nationalism, They Rejected Maidan, Bandera and the Revolution appears at mintpressnews.com.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 258)

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

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

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By May 3, another attempt of US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido and his supporters to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro had failed.

So-called “Operación Libertad”, which started on April 30 as an attempt to seize power by force with help from some defectors from the Venezuelan military, turned into a tragicomedy. Riots staged by the opposition slowed up while the government successfully mobilized its supporters and held large-scale rallies demonstrating its power.

The fact that mainstream media coverage mostly ignored pro-Maduro rallies did not help Guaido to change the situation on the ground. Guaido’s key ally, Leopoldo Lopez, reportedly hid in a Spanish embassy in Caracas.

Rumors that top Venezuelan defense officials, like Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, National Guard chief Ivan Hernandez Dala and Supreme Tribunal of Justice President Maikel Moreno, were in talks to recognize Guaido as the legitimate president were spread by National Security Adviser John Bolton and others and appeared to be yet another example of fake news.

Nonetheless, the Washington establishment found out who was guilty for this failure.

The media hysteria reached the level when speculations about tens of thousands of Cuban special agents, Russian mercenaries, Hezbollah, Iranian and Chinese agents were the only reason of the Maduro government survival under pressure from the “international community” and the “democratic opposition” were presented as rock-solid facts. Mysterious Russian nuclear missiles in Venezuela are also added to the list.

This hysteria is being used to increase pressure on Venezuela, threaten the country with a military invasion and justify moves to punish Venezuela’s local allies. On May 1, President Donald Trump said that the US would impose an “embargo, together with highest-level sanctions” on Cuba if it did not end its support for Maduro.

State Secretary Mike Pompeo also made a phone call to the Russian Foreign Minister stressing that “the intervention by Russia and Cuba is destabilising for Venezuela”. Pompeo urged Russia to cease support for Nicolas Maduro. In response, Lavrov denounced Washington’s “destructive influence” and revealed that Russia is working to set up a UN group that would oppose a US military intervention in Venezuela.

It appeared that strengthening voices calling for a US military action in the Latin American country has caused a rift within the Trump administration. According to sources contacted by the Washington Post, the Bolton camp was openly pushing for an escalation while President Trump and representatives of the military, including Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul J. Selva, seem to be against conducting a military operation.

This internal conflict will likely deepen further if the Washington establishment finds no real strategy that may allow Guaido to seize power without a direct military invasion by a foreign power. However, this scenario is unrealistic because the US-backed opposition demonstrably has little support from the population and the military that would allow for overthrowing the government.

The regime change in Venezuela and control over its oil reserves are among key current priorities of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Latin America and Trump has shown that he’s ready for a wide range of actions to achieve these goals. However, he appeared to be not ready to jeopardy US soldiers lives and key security issues to conduct a direct military intervention.

At the same time, representatives of the Deep State, including John Bolton, are traditionally ready to do all what is needed to achieve own financial and political interests. These includes the readiness to put not only lives of US personnel, but also civilians and even entire nations on the line.

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Grossly mistreating Assange and Chelsea Manning is all about silencing truth-telling, wanting dirty secrets about imperial high crimes suppressed, what the public has a right to know, what journalism the way it should be is obligated to report and explain — demanding accountability in opinion pieces.

In Manning’s case, it’s about exposing US war crimes and denying her constitutional rights, imprisoning her a second time (in solitary confinement) over her right to remain silent.

For Assange, he was violently arrested extrajudicially, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment for “violating bail terms,” relating to a phony rape and sexual abuse charge later dismissed.

The unacceptable sentence came ahead of handing him over to US authorities for crucifixion — for the “crime” of award-winning truth-telling investigative journalism, reporting what Manning uncovered and a whole lot more about imperial wrongdoing.

WikiLeaks denounced his unjust sentence, calling it “shocking (and) vindictive,” expressing great concern over the unlikelihood that he’ll get a fair extradition hearing.

If handed over to US authorities, besides the phony “conspiracy” accusation, he’s virtually certain to be charged with espionage under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act, a WW I relic, used to persecute imperial state victims for actions above and beyond the call of duty — for exposing dirty imperial secrets.

Assange won numerous awards and honors for his work — including the Sam Adams Award, Sydney Peace Prize, Economist New Media Award, Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, Jose Couso Press Freedom Award, Voltaire Award for Free Speech, Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts, Global Exchange Human Rights Award, and EU GUE/NGL Award for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information, among other honors received.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said “(t)hrough WikiLeaks, Julian Assange’s vision of transparency has revolutionized (investigative) journalism,” adding:

“His imprisonment and threatened extradition to the United States has drawn a sharp line in the sand. You are either encouraging the crackdown on media freedom or you are standing with Julian Assange.”

Separately, he said the

“extradition request that needs to be fought…That is a question of life or death for (Assange), and it’s a question of preserving a major journalistic principle — the right for a publisher to publish truthful information (from reliable sources). That’s what it’s all about.”

“Think of what is happening here. I don’t have any faith in the government or branches of government. It seems to me, that with all of the failures of those branches in the Wikileaks case, that people must rise up and do something.”

“(E)verything (in his defense) has been dismissed. The judge dismissed the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruling and ridiculed it…UK foreign minister (Jeremy Hunt)” did the same thing.

“This is outrageous, and if we don’t start to organize and protest and change things, we’re going to see a breakdown of all norms in our society and the international system. So it’s a very serious thing and a litmus test for everybody.”

Assange’s May 2 extradition hearing will resume on May 30. He wasn’t present in court on what affects his fundamental rights, freedom, and possible death sentence, making a statement via video link from behind bars in London’s Belmarsh prison — where he’s punitively isolated as a political prisoner unjustly.

Asked about Britain’s likely intent to hand him over to US authorities, he said

“I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many many awards and protected many people” — stressing he intends to fight extradition.

He’s being punished and otherwise abused for doing the right thing. Presiding Judge Michael Snow also ruled that an extended hearing on his case will be held on June 12.

His lawyer Jen Robinson said UK police arrested and detained him for “extradition to the United States for (the crime of) publishing” information everyone has the right to know.

His arrest was “not just for breach of bail conditions (related to phony rape and sexual abuse charges) but also in relation to a US extradition request.”

“This sets a dangerous precedent for all journalist and media organizations in Europe and around the world.”

“This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States.”

His legal team will be “contesting and fighting” extradition to the US, Robinson vowed. If unsuccessful in UK courts, his case will likely be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights or European Court of Justice, the highest EU court.

If extradited to the US, he’ll likely face torture and abuse, mistreatment similar to what Chelsea Manning endured for nearly seven years, more of the same ongoing for invoking her constitutional rights to stay silent.

At stake for them both, all journalists, and everyone else are fundamental speech, media and academic rights. If lost, so will all others — what tyranny is all about.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Your Geopolitical Quiz for the Day:

Two countries are embroiled in a ferocious rivalry. One country’s meteoric growth has put it on a path to become the world’s biggest economic superpower while the other country appears to be slipping into irreversible decline. Which country will lead the world into the future?

Country A builds factories and plants, it employees zillions of people who manufacture things, it launches massive infrastructure programs, paves millions of miles of highways and roads, opens new sea lanes, vastly expands its high-speed rail network, and pumps profits back into productive operations that turbo-charge its economy and bolster its stature among the nations of the world.

Country B has the finest military in the world, it has more than 800 bases scattered across the planet, and spends more on weapons systems and war-making than all the other nations combined. Country B has gutted its industrial core, hollowed out its factory base, allowed its vital infrastructure to crumble, outsourced millions of jobs, off-shored thousands of businesses, plunged the center of the country into permanent recession, delivered control of its economy to the Central Bank, and recycled 96 percent of its corporate and financial profits into a stock buyback scam that sucks critical capital out of the economy and into the pockets of corrupt Wall Street plutocrats whose voracious greed is pushing the world towards another catastrophic meltdown.

Which of these two countries is going to lead the world into the future? Which of these two countries offers a path to security and prosperity that doesn’t involve black sites, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial assassinations, color-coded revolutions, waterboarding, strategic disinformation, false-flag provocations, regime change and perennial war?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Tectonic Shift in the Geopolitical Balance of Power

Over the weekend, more than 5,000 delegates from across the world met in Beijing for The Second Belt and Road Forum For International Cooperation. The conference provided an opportunity for public and private investors to learn more about Xi Jinping’s “signature infrastructure project” that is reshaping trade relations across Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

According to journalist Pepe Escobar,   “The BRI is now supported by no less than 126 states and territories, plus a host of international organizations” and will involve “six major connectivity corridors spanning Eurasia.” The massive development project is “one of the largest infrastructure and investment projects in history, ….including 65% of the world’s population and 40% of the global gross domestic product as of 2017.” (Wikipedia) The improvements to road, rail and sea routes will vastly increase connectivity, lower shipping costs, boost productivity, and enhance widespread prosperity. The BRI is China’s attempt to replace the crumbling post-WW2 “liberal” order with a system that respects the rights of sovereign nations, rejects unilateralism, and relies on market-based principles to effect a more equitable distribution of wealth. The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s blueprint for a New World Order. It is the face of 21st century capitalism.

The prestigious event in Beijing was barely covered by the western media which sees the project as a looming threat to US plans to pivot to Asia and become the dominant player in the most prosperous and populous region in the world. Growing international support for the Chinese roadmap suggests that Washington’s hegemonic ambitions are likely to be short-circuited by an aggressive development agenda that eclipses anything the US is currently doing or plans to do in the foreseeable future.

The Chinese plan will funnel trillions of dollars into state of the art transportation projects that draw the continents closer together in a webbing of high-speed rail and energy pipelines (Russia). Far-flung locations in Central Asia will be modernized while standards of living will steadily rise. By creating an integrated economic space, in which low tariffs and the free flow of capital help to promote investment, the BRI initiative will produce the world’s biggest free trade zone, a common market in which business is transacted in Chinese or EU currency. There will be no need to trade in USD’s despite the dollar’s historic role as the world’s reserve currency. The shift in currencies will inevitably increase the flow of dollars back to the United States increasing the already-ginormous $22 trillion dollar National Debt while precipitating an excruciating period of adjustment.

Chinese and Russian leaders are taking steps to “harmonize” their two economic initiatives, the Belt and Road and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This will be a challenging task as the expansion of infrastructure implies compatibility between leaders, mutual security guarantees, new rules and regulations for the common economic space, and supranational political structures to oversee trade, tariffs, foreign investment and immigration. Despite the hurtles, both Putin and Xi appear to be fully committed to their vision of economic integration which they see as based on the “unconditional adherence to the primacy of national sovereignty and the central role of the United Nations.”

It comes at no surprise that US powerbrokers see Putin’s plan as a significant threat to their regional ambitions, in fact, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted as much in 2012 when she said, “It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called the Eurasian Union and all of that, but let’s make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.” Washington opposes any free trade project in which it is excluded or cannot control. Both the EEU and the BRI fall into that category.

The United States continues to demonize countries that simply want to use the market to improve the lives of their people and increase their prospects for prosperity. Washington’s hostile approach is both misguided and counterproductive. Competition should be seen as a way to improve productivity and lower costs, not as a threat to over-bloated, inefficient industries that have outlived their usefulness. Here’s an excerpt from an article that Putin wrote in 2011. It helps to show that Putin is not the scheming tyrant he is made out to be in the western media, but a free market capitalist who enthusiastically supports globalization:

“For the first time in the history of humanity, the world is becoming truly global, in both politics and economics. A central part of this globalization is the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region as compared to the EuroAtlantic world in the global economy. Asia’s rise is lifting with it the economies of countries outside Asia that have managed to latch onto the “Asian economic engine”….The US has also effectively hitched itself to this “engine”, creating an economic and financial network with China and other countries in the region…

The “supercontinent” of Eurasia is home to two-thirds of the world’s population and produces over 60 percent of its economic output. Because of the dramatic opening of China and the former Soviet Union to the world, almost all the countries in Eurasia are becoming more economically, politically, and culturally interdependent. …

There is huge potential for development in infrastructure, in spite of some formidable bottlenecks. …A unified and homogeneous common power market stretching from Lisbon to Hanoi via Vladivostok is not necessary, because electric power markets do not function in that way. But the creation of infrastructure that could support a number of regional and sub-regional common markets would do much for the economic development of Greater Eurasia.” (Russian newspaper, Izvestia, 2011)

Keep in mind, the article was written back in 2011 long before Xi had even conjured up his grand pan-Asia infrastructure scheme. Putin was already a committed capitalist looking for ways to put the Soviet era behind him and skillfully use the markets to build his nation’s power and prosperity. Regrettably, he has been blocked at every turn. Washington does not want others to effectively use the markets. Washington wants to threaten, bully, sanction and harass its competitors so that outcomes can be controlled and more of the world’s wealth can be skimmed off the top by the noncompetitive, monopolistic corporate behemoths that diktat foreign policy to their political underlings (in congress and the White House) and who see rivals as blood enemies that must be ground into dust.

Is it any wonder why Russia and China have emerged as Washington’s biggest enemies? It has nothing to do with the fictitious claims of election meddling or so-called “hostile behavior” in the South China Sea. That’s nonsense. Washington is terrified that the Russo-Chinese economic integration plan will replace the US-dominated “liberal” world order, that cutting edge infrastructure will create an Asia-Europe super-continent that no longer trades in dollars or recirculates profits into US debt instruments. They are afraid that an expansive free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok will inevitably lead to new institutions for lending, oversight and governance. They are afraid that a revamped 21st century capitalism will result in more ferocious competition for their clunker corporations, less opportunity for unilateralism and meddling, and a rules-based system where the playing field is painstakingly kept level. That’s what scares Washington.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union represent the changing of the guard. The US-backed ‘neoliberal’ model of globalisation is being rejected everywhere, from the streets of Paris, to Brexit, to the rise of right wings groups across Europe, to the unexpected election of Donald Trump in 2016. The Russo-Chinese model is built on a more solid, and less extractive, foundation. This new vision anticipates an interconnected multipolar world where the rules governing commerce are decided by the participants, where the rights of every state are respected equally, and where the new guarantors for regional security scrupulously keep the peace. It is this vision of ‘revitalized capitalism’ that Washington sees as its mortal enemy.

This article was first published on the UNZ Review

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

In the aftermath of another tragic shooting at another synagogue, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon has again called for the criminalization of antisemitic speech.

I have previously written about such international efforts to criminalize speech, including a proposal supported by the Obama Administration. The implications of such laws for free speech are easy to dismiss amidst the sorrow of another attack. However, the free speech community must remain firm that free speech is not the cause of hate, it is solution to hate.

Danon declared

“The time for talking and having a conversation is over. What Israel and the Jewish community around the world demand is action – and now.”

Over the course of the last 50 years, the French, English and Germans have waged an open war on free speech by criminalizing speech deemed insulting, harassing or intimidating. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, (here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). There are encroachments appearing in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Notably, the media celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.

Danon argues that “Until it becomes criminal, this bigotry will persist; it will fester. It is only a matter of time until it erupts again in violence and bloodshed.”

The cause-and-effect relationship between speech and violence is increasingly claimed by those who want to criminalize speech. The effort of Muslim countries to create an international blasphemy law is an example of how new calls for censorship and regulation of speech is being repackaged. We have seen how these laws create insatiable appetites for greater and greater speech criminalization. These calls are the strongest after violent attacks when defending free speech can be easily misconstrued as a lack of sympathy or concern for the victims of hate. Politicians often seek responses to tragedies and limiting rights like speech can be remarkably easy. After all, free speech is an abstraction when an attack is a real and traumatic fact.

I readily admit to following the classic liberal view of free speech. The solution to bad speech — even hateful speech — to more speech. It is free speech that allows people of conscience to contest the flawed and hateful ideas of bigots. Germany has proven the fallacy of changing minds through threatened prosecution.  While I am certainly sympathetic to the Germans in seeking to end the scourge of fascism, I have long been a critic of the German laws prohibiting certain symbols and phrases, I view it as not just a violation of free speech but a futile effort to stamp but extremism by barring certain symbols. Instead, extremists have rallied around an underground culture and embraced symbols that closely resemble those banned by the government. I fail to see how arresting a man for a Hitler ringtone is achieving a meaningful level of deterrence, even if you ignore the free speech implications.

Ambassador Danon is right that we must all fight the scourge of antisemitism and recognize its rise around the world. The disagreement is only with the means used to achieve that worthy end. Criminalizing speech has never produced any results other than fostering even greater speech criminalization.

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A friend of ours who works in public relations told us once that the only group he really worries about are the people who shop at Whole Foods. And by this, we imagine he meant people who care about the food they eat and the world around them, who read labels, pay attention to science, and don’t hesitate to do whatever is needed to protect their families from harm.

The instinct to protect is so basic to being a human being that we take it for granted. We grab the hands of small children to cross the street. We dress them in warm clothes to play in the snow. We slather them with sun block or make them wear shirts at the beach. We feed them healthy food.

And while it may be possible to pay a politician enough money to vote a certain way on an issue, you can’t pay a parent enough money to allow you to expose his or her child to something harmful. That’s just human nature.

So why would parents be so complacent about the construction of up to a million new wireless antennas near homes and apartments in residential areas across the country – antennas that emit radio-frequency microwave radiation 24/7, paving the way for the next generation of wireless technology known as “5G”?

It’s not a lack of science. Hundreds, if not thousands, of published, peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated how long-term, low-level exposures to this type of wireless radiation can eventually overwhelm the body’s biological, chemical and electrical systems, creating an opportunity for serious medical issues ranging from neurological problems and cognitive deficits to cancer. Children are more vulnerable to these effects, as their physiology is still developing.

Back in the 1960s, the U.S. and Russia were both conducting extensive experiments on the health impacts of wireless radiation on military personnel, and what they found (and documented) was worrisome. These studies, some classified until just recently, were among the first to show neurological and cognitive harm from microwave exposure levels far below current government standards.

A recent 10-year, $30-million-dollar study by the National Toxicology Program of our National Institutes of Health corroborated what numerous other studies have shown: clear evidence that long-term exposure to wireless radiation increases the risk of several cancers, particularly malignancies of the heart, brain and adrenal gland.

A 2018 study by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy found that lab animals exposed to the radiation emitted by distant cell towers had a greater chance of developing heart tumors than those not exposed. This study, funded in part by the U. S. government, was the first large-scale study to show clear evidence of cancer risk from far-field exposures.

Given the science, you would expect that the sight of wireless companies installing powerful new antennas in close proximity to homes and apartments would elicit cries of protest from parents. But curiously, they have been silent.

Until now.

On May 15th, a national coalition of more than 90 local organizations across the country will participate in simultaneous rallies in front of retail wireless establishments, demanding that wireless companies stop their deployment of so-called “small cell” wireless antennas in residential areas until their technology can be proven safe.

The groups are counting on public opinion to do what the government has so far been unable or unwilling to do. Current government guidelines for exposure to wireless radiation are more than 20 years old, and pertain only to thermal exposures (How close do you need to get to an antenna before it burns your skin?) and nothing at all to do with biological impacts, which have been the subject of hundreds of recent studies showing harm. Despite repeated requests from consumers, the medical research community and the General Accounting Office, the FCC has declined to update its guidelines.

Local officials have been stymied in their efforts to slow the deployment and protect their citizens; recent rulings by the FCC, which have the force of law, essentially prevent any local municipality from stopping the deployment of wireless antennas, even when local communities can prove there is no gap in coverage and no need for them.

Senator Richard Blumenthal has been outspoken in his criticism of wireless companies and the FCC for permitting the deployment of small cells without proof of safety, and several members of the House of Representatives have introduced legislation to un-do the recent rulings of the FCC and restore authority to local officials. But their efforts are not receiving widespread support, and given the speed with which legislation moves in Washington, it is highly unlikely that any action by the Federal government will stop the deployment in time.

Which leaves us with public opinion, and those people who truly care about the world we live in and the world our kids will inherit. Most parents feel a natural instinct to protect their children, and this May 15th, they have a unique opportunity to demonstrate their concern. Please join us.

For more information about the 5G National Day of Action, please visit 5GCrisis.com.

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Who won, who lost, was it Remain, Leave, blah, blah.  Let’s not beat about the bush here and say what this really means and not the garbage that the mainstream media would have you believe.

Change UK changed nothing at all and the electorate ignored them.

The Tories were hammered. Let’s not forget that in the 23 months since the last general election 47 ministers have resigned or been sacked from Theresa May’s government. That’s just about two a month.

Labour, against a backdrop of rising hatred to everything that the Tories stand for – and for not taking the stand of their own party members on Brexit, were embarrassingly given a public beating by their own. Any party looking to gain power would need to make solid gains. The did the opposite.

The Lib Dems and Greens did really well as a protest vote, but don’t have what it takes to gain enough to lead anything.

The Independents that stood were the biggest winners but will translate into nothing at all at a general election.

The Tory state media has attempted to portray the results as a crisis for Labour but haven’t actually worked out why. It is, but nothing compared to the drubbing the Tories themselves got. The last time something like this happened, they were thrown out of power for well over a decade and even then had to form a coalition to get back into No 10. Their performance since has been a national disaster.

As for Labour, the political editor of TalkRadio quite rightly points out that – “Jeremy Corbyn is set to have lost more than 400 Labour councillors in four years. That may make him the worst performing leader of the opposition at local elections for 40 years.” Anyone who thinks Labour didn’t so do bad – wake up.

So what we can surmise from all that if interpreted into a general election?  Not much. If anything, just that voters were once again faced with the least worst of utterly awful. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn do not have what it takes to be future leaders of Britain.

Whilst I have said since well before Theresa May lost her majority in a snap election and shoe-horned herself in by aligning with thugs from Northern Ireland, that she would be a dictator listening to no-one – I have also said that Jeremy Corbyn would do anything to seize power, irrespective of the consequences to the nation and not listen to the party membership. Sadly, I was right on both occasions.

Labour, who stand the best chance of being elected in a future general election, will take these results as some sort of mandate for a Brexit deal – a deal they can’t be seen to be agreeing in negotiations with the Tories and couldn’t solve even if they were in power. They are ignoring loyal Remainers in their party and taking them completely for granted whilst hunting down some disaffected Leave voters from the Tories. That’s it. Bugger the nation. Literally.

Labour should take notice of the fact that their own support in poll after poll does not give them a commanding lead and the local elections do not confirm anything else.

As for Brexit – the local elections mean nothing. Both Tory and Labour have confirmed that their awful results mean only that Brexit must be done – or not. But not something in no-mans-land as it is.

But how about taking another view of all of this political instability.

Brexit – was an unexpected result. Theresa May’s snap election was unexpected. Politicians on both sides of the house agreed to trigger Article 50 without knowing the first thing of its consequences. Strong and stable is dead. Taking back control is dead. All the slogans from the left/right, remain/leave are dead.

Is something else not emerging? That of rising national dissent.

Are the people not looking at the events that have disturbingly ‘taken control’ of their lives, stolen their ‘stability’ in the few short years of this century.

It started with Iraq – an international disaster we have all had to endure. The attack of Libya and Syria then added to the collapse of those nations and caused a mass migration movement that destabilised the European Union that was seized upon by a MSM hellbent on spewing out guttural racist claptrap – also known as propaganda.

Inequality, homelessness, working families and child poverty, the crisis of everything – from the health service to military service – it’s all a shambles. We’ve had to endure cover-ups from paedophiles at the highest in public life to illegal wars and more. The state is spying, hacking and tracking all of us. Bankers bonuses on the one hand and austerity-driven nutritional famine on the other. From bad credit to universal credit.

The social contract between nation and state has been broken. Trust between them has all but vanished as it has with the very institutions originally designed to protect us from this anarchy by the rich and powerful.

Even the political correspondent of Sky News agrees.

“The conduct of the prime minister and her ministers imperil (parliament) its  long-term vitality, undermine its authority and threaten to unstitch the seams between people and parliament.”

Have we not had enough of the political class that has discarded social justice. Human rights – fought for by our predecessors will soon become maybe’s. Looking at the arrest of recent non-violent protestors around the climate crisis, fracking or Assange for instance – clearly demonstrates that our civil liberty is being dismantled right before our eyes. Look at the banker’s non-stop crimes without punishment and then the arrests and imprisonment of starving beggars on high streets and the whole concept of equality before the law becomes nothing more than a political sound-bite to protect those above it.

What does all this mean? It means to everyone else that British politics is not fit for purpose. The state cannot work out what it is or what it stands for. It knows it wants to protect before all things its power, influence and wealth and other than the latter, it can’t even achieve its most self-important goals any more.

This political class have not bothered to attempt to protect this nation from the malicious threats of the 21st century such as unchecked corporate power and its insidious lobbying. They’ve allowed our own surveillance agency to do as they please, allowed foreign threats from unaccountable agencies including America’s NSA, Israel, China, Russia and so on. It has failed to concentrate on hackers, to protect our fundamental right to privacy and doing the opposite by forcing upon us all secret national ID cards via biometrics, illegal facial recognition systems and the like. It has failed to protect us from terrorism and even encouraged it with the rise of the far-right, now a bigger threat than extremists who traditionally will stop at nothing to kill us and our way of life for their own warped ideologies.

Extinction Rebellion has taught us something. Take action before this political class – the establishment, completely destroys what is left of Great Britain.

The rise of the Independents at the local elections – a great result for a bunch of totally unconnected individuals with no party backing or anything like the funding of their competitors says a lot – something the ever-shrinking mainstream media have again rejected as a consideration.

The group now called ‘None-Of-The-Above’ is a clear sign that the political ecosystem that has been utterly abused by all those walking the corridors of power is now at risk of imminent implosion.

What we have left is that neither main party seems able to cobble something remotely like a deal acceptable enough for either them or the electorate when it comes to something like Brexit. You cannot imagine the dire consequences if this lot were facing the challenges of 1939.

The reality is this. Both political parties have been punished by A) those who voted to Remain and blamed them for even offering it in the first place and B) by those who voted to Leave and then not doing so.

About 30 per cent of party loyalty on either side is embedded – and that is not as big as you imagine. They would vote for their tribe irrespective of the consequences – but that leaves a significant force in the middle who have just pushed their heads up above the parapet. Neither Tory nor Labour have listened or taken heed. The EU elections are next (assuming May doesn’t desperately do some sort of deal with Corbyn to avoid them) – and a new message will emerge.

By the time we get to the next general election, the circumstances are there that there will be no viable government as more and more Independent’s stand and the undecided/hacked off/none-of-the-above look for a new political home. By then, Britain will be in a critical state and at that moment the crisis could turn into a catastrophe.

The Tories will disintegrate, Labour could well split. The fuse for a populist leader is set alight. Farage is a good demonstration of that. Worse, from Blair to May – these corrupt administrations gave themselves new unprecedented powers that should never be given to authoritarians.

These local elections tell us that there is no electoral consensus either way. Britain’s leadership has collapsed. The ‘establishment’ is no longer leading, defending or managing in the national interest and the people know it. Our best hope is that an insurgent centre ground political force rises up. It isn’t Chukka & Co that’s for sure. Other than that – Britain is in big, big trouble.

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Tuesday’s abortive coup attempt initiated by the US puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó in Venezuela has served once again to expose the criminal role of the US corporate media.

Guaidó’s video of himself and Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of Guaidó’s extreme right-wing CIA-funded party, Voluntad Popular, appearing with a few dozen armed men in uniform and calling for a military uprising, was greeted with undisguised glee by the major media outlets.

This stunt was staged as the 100-day “reign” of Mr. Guaidó, existing only in the greedy imagination of US imperialism and Big Oil, appeared no closer to establishing control over Venezuela. Even as it became evident that it had turned into an unmitigated fiasco, the media continued to broadcast reports suggesting that the military was divided, and the people were in revolt.

As the failure of the coup attempt became increasingly undeniable, CNN and the major networks all repeated the farfetched claims made by the regime-change operation’s principal protagonists within the Trump administration as if they were incontrovertible fact.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the media that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was set to board a jet waiting on the tarmac in Caracas to whisk him away to Havana but had only been persuaded at the last minute by the “Russians” to stay.

Did any of the talking heads who repeated this claim over and over have any evidence beyond the words of the former CIA director to substantiate its veracity? If so, they didn’t bother to share it with their audience.

John Bolton, Trump’s warmongering national security adviser, issued a statement on the White House lawn in which he asserted that Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, the head of the country’s supreme court and the chief of the palace guard had all “agreed that Maduro had to go” and now had to act on their “commitments” or “go down with the ship.”

This likewise was treated as fact, despite the public denunciations of Guaidó’s actions by both Padrino and the supreme court. Bolton’s peculiar repetition three times of the three men’s names in the course of his remarks was an unmistakable sign that the national security adviser was engaged in a bit of information warfare aimed at disrupting the Venezuelan government.

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, weighed in with an editorial on the very night of the US-backed coup under the headline, “Don’t call it a coup. Venezuelans have a right to replace an oppressive, toxic regime.” It might have benefited from an underline, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

The Post editors declared,

“Venezuelans responded to Mr. Guaidó’s call for street protests and were met by troops loyal to Mr. Maduro. By late afternoon, clashes were taking place, regime officials were promising a decisive ‘counterattack,’ and there was no way to know whether ‘Operation Liberty,’ as Mr. Guaidó dubbed this high-risk move, would succeed or be crushed — or devolve into civil war.

“What is not, or should not be, ambiguous is the political and moral essence of this volatile situation,” the Post declared.

The “moral essence” of the situation, all the invocations of “liberty” notwithstanding, smells decidedly of oil and excrement.

There was no “decisive counterattack” by the government because none was needed. Neither troops nor any sizeable number of civilians rallied to Guaidó’s tweeted video calling for the storming of the La Carlota Air Base and the armed overthrow of the Maduro government. By the end of the day, Lopez, the apparent architect of the coup attempt, had sought refuge in first the Chilean and then the Spanish embassy. The handful of soldiers who stayed with the right-wing US puppets, some 25 in all, asked for protection in the embassy of Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Guaidó’s political party has its roots in Venezuela’s reactionary traditional ruling oligarchy, responsible for the oppression of the working class and poor and for such crimes as the massacre of thousands who rose up against IMF austerity in the caracazo uprising of 1989, which far eclipses any repression carried out under Maduro or his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

There are clearly millions of Venezuelans, who, despite their anger over deteriorating social conditions as well as the Maduro government’s corruption and its defense of a privileged capitalist layer known as the boliburguesía, see in Guaidó and his ilk the traditional enemy of the country’s working people.

The genuine overthrow of a government by its people, which in the present epoch can be successfully prosecuted only by means of the independent political mobilization of the working class against the entire capitalist setup, is defined as a revolution. The attempt to oust a sitting president by mobilizing small groups of armed men to storm a military base with the backing of a foreign power is, whether the Post likes it or not, a coup.

The New York Times, in the wake of the coup fiasco, made its own contribution to Washington’s regime-change operation, publishing an article based upon a supposed “secret dossier” ostensibly provided by a turncoat Venezuelan intelligence officer and confirmed by a cohort claiming that former Venezuelan vice president and current industry minister Tareck El Aissami, the son of Syrian immigrants, had “pushed to bring Hezbollah into Venezuela.”

The “dossier” has all the earmarks of the kind of reporting that the Times did about “weapons of mass destruction” in the advance of the 2003 US war of aggression against Iraq.

The Times’ own readers responded to the story with suspicion and contempt. Among the top-rated readers’ comments was the observation that “the report has all the smell of a conjured-up pretext the same as the basis to race into Iraq and wreak havoc and destabilize the Mideast. In fact, the smell is even more pungent.”

Another reader wrote:

“So why are ‘secret dossiers’ on the Venezuelan government suddenly appearing? Why not secret dossiers on Saudi Arabia? Why not secret dossiers on Egypt? Why not secret dossiers on Israel? Why not secret dossiers on Kazakhstan? Why? Because the US is 100 percent focused on regime change in Venezuela, and already has the regimes it wants in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and other countries.”

There has been not a single critical voice raised within the so-called mainstream media against the US regime-change operation in Venezuela. The newspapers and television news programs are filled with lies and propaganda preparing for the realization of the continuously invoked threat that “all options are on the table.”

The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently published the results of a survey of the main trend-setting media outlets, both print and broadcast, covering the three-month period between January and April of this year. It concluded: “zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti-regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position. Not a single commentator on the big three Sunday morning talk shows or PBS NewsHour came out against President Nicolas Maduro stepping down from the Venezuelan government.”

Underlying the corporate media’s lockstep, shameless and undisguised support for another imperialist regime-change operation and coup in Latin America are the overriding interests of crisis-ridden US capitalism in asserting its unfettered control over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest on the planet, and in rolling back the growing economic and political influence of both China and Russia in a hemisphere that Washington has historically regarded as is own “backyard.”

The US media has undergone a protracted degeneration, corresponding with the abandonment by the US capitalist ruling elite of any semblance of support for democratic rights and processes. While there was never a golden age of the capitalist press in the United States, the days when the New York Timesand the Washington Post could publish the Pentagon Papers, defying the US government to bring the criminal policy of US imperialism in Southeast Asia to the attention of the American public in the midst of a bitter war, are long gone.

Those attempting to carry out a similar function in today’s environment confront the full weight of capitalist repression, with the media talking heads and columnists egging the state on.

That is the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, sentenced on Wednesday to almost a year in prison by a UK judge and facing the threat of rendition to the US and a potential death sentence for the crime of exposing Washington’s war crimes. Like him, Chelsea Manning, the army whistleblower who provided WikiLeaks with files exposing US crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and conspiracies around the world, has been jailed for nearly two months, much of it in solitary confinement and without needed medical care, for refusing to provide state’s evidence against Assange.

The struggle against the threat of war on Venezuela and the defense of Assange and Manning lies with the international working class, whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the warmongers in the American ruling class and their lackeys in the media.

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Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019.

The federal system under which the Canadian state operates, places a great deal of decision making power in the hands of its provinces. While the dubiously progressive Trudeau Liberals run things federally (for the present), the provincial level of government is now dominated by the Conservatives and other hard right political parties. Ontario’s right wing Tory Premier, Doug Ford, recently greeted the electoral victory of his political co-thinkers in Alberta by declaring in the Legislature that, “We see just a blue wave going across this country from west to east.” Through clenched teeth, it is necessary to admit that he is not wrong.  Six of the ten Canadian provinces are now governed by hard right political regimes and the great majority of the country’s population and economic capacity is to be found within that block, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains.

Right wing attack

All of these right wing governments are on the attack, with a combination of social cutbacks and regressive and racist policies. In March, the Conservative government of New Brunswick, on the east coast, tabled a budget based on austerity driven ‘hard decisions.’ Titled ‘Acting with Urgency,’ it imposed cuts on social benefits, child welfare, affordable housing and attacked disabled people in particular. The measures it took and the rhetoric it cloaked itself in will be sadly familiar to those who have experienced cutting edge austerity regimes.

The election last autumn of the xenophobic and populist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), gained attention across North America, largely because of its hard line anti-immigrant positions. They are implementing legislation that would prevent Quebec’s public sector workers from wearing clothing or items associated with their religious beliefs. While the pretence is made that this is about an equally enforced commitment to ‘secularism’, it is quite clear that Muslim women are the real targets. The Quebec National Assembly, where bills are passed into law, prominently displays a large crucifix on the walls of its main chamber.

To the west of Ontario, British Columbia is the only province that is not governed by the conservative right. In Manitoba, the government of Brian Pallister his taken the path of harsh austerity, an attack on public healthcare and an assault on trade unions and workers’ rights. The right wing Saskatchewan Party has proved to be a formidible austerity regime in the Canadian province that was ‘the North American birthplace of social democracy.’ That party has pursued a course of social cutbacks, privatisation and a systematic attack on workers rights. The viciousness of the assault is perhaps most clearly shown in the disastrous elimination of a provincial bus service that was utterly vital to rural and Indigenous communities.

On April 16, the United Conservative Party (UCP) won office in Alberta and pushed out the governing (social democratic) New Democratic Party (NDP). This represents a victory for the right in Canada’s major oil producing province.  UCP leader, Jason Kenny, notorious as a hard line rightist from his days as federal Immigration Minister, led a campaign that leaned heavily on climate denial and racism.  His government will certainly embrace vicious austerity, an assault on workers’ rights and a reckless pandering to the oil industry regardless of environmental cost.

Tory Ontario

As stated at the outset, Ontario’s Tory leader, Doug Ford, greeted the Alberta result with jubilation. Ever the right wing populist, Ford styles his regime as a ‘Government for the People’ that proudly proclaims that ‘Ontario is open for business.’ The Tories began their attack, after being elected last year, by cancelling an increase in the minimum wage and launching an attack on basic workplace rights.  They tabled their first provincial budget on April 11 and it contains some staggeringly harmful cutbacks. Funding for the enforcement of employment standards has been gutted and a website for employers set up so they can ‘educate themselves’ on their legal obligations to workers! Public healthcare and education are attacked. The Ministry of Indigenous Affairs has been massively de-funded. Huge cuts to legal aid have been introduced and funding for legal representation in immigration and refugee cases has been discontinued. Unemployed and disabled people living on wretchedly inadequate social assistance benefits will have their incomes frozen. The Ontario Federation of Labour (the equivalent here of the TUC) has described it as a ‘scorched earth budget.’

The ‘blue wave’ may well extend beyond provincial politics this autumn, when a federal election will take place. Justin Trudeau’s government is beset by scandal and epitomises the inability of regimes of the neoliberal centre to fend off the challenge from the right. If the Conservative Party of Canada forms the government in Ottawa, the right wing tide will surge dramatically.

Worsening threat

The conservative right is as much a work in progress as the agenda of austerity and privatisation it is most qualified to implement. Certainly, the UK experience since 2010 testifies to this. Margaret Thatcher viewed the sell off of the Royal Mail as ‘step too far’ but the far less formidable David Cameron felt able to take it. In much the same way, the conservative right in Canada is ready and able to inflict more damage than in previous decades. This is partly because the accumulating impact of austerity has so weakened the social infrastructure that present day cuts go right into the bone. Here in Ontario, Doug Ford’s brutal measures follow fifteen years of more stealthy but profoundly damaging Liberal austerity. It is also true that present attacks take place in the context of more than a decade of sluggish recovery for the global economy that appears to be going over to conditions of economic downturn. Government cutbacks are far more punishing when the need for a ‘social safety net’ is at its greatest.

The conservatives in Canada, moreover, very much in line with developments internationally, are moving in ever more right wing directions. When he ran for party leader in Ontario, Doug Ford was not the choice of the conservative establishment but a populist maverick, with disturbingly friendly relations with religious bigots and far right racists. The federal party leader, Andrew Scheer, has become notorious for his connection to such people. The far right in Canada has made a point of linking its racism to climate denial and calls for the building of more pipelines. Scheer spoke at one of their rallies in Ottawa, where he shared the stage with the notorious white supremacist, Faith Goldy, who received a disturbing 25,000 votes when she ran in the Toronto mayoral race. The conservative right’s commitment to deepening austerity is matched by a dangerous pushing of the boundaries in terms of overt racism and xenophobia.

Resisting the Right

It is clear that the blue wave can’t be turned back by the neoliberal centre, whether that is represented by liberals or right wing social democrats who refuse to break with the austerity consensus. It is equally clear that mass social action is urgently required to disrupt and seriously challenge the hard right governments installed across Canada. In Ontario, a recent rally of teachers, students and parents against the the attack on public education was far larger than expected and it followed a walkout by over 100,000 school students. The prospects for the building of a working class common front of social resistance are increasing as people shake off initial shock and react with anger to the reality of the destructive agenda of Canada’s blue wave.

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John Clarke became an organiser with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty when it was formed in 1990 and has been involved in mobilising poor communities under attack ever since.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Should journalism ever have a deity worth His, Her or Its salt, looking down upon the recent proceedings against Julian Assange will provide endless choking fits of confusion and dismay.  The prosecution continues in the twisted logic that engaging a source to disclose something secret while also protecting anonymity is somehow unnatural in the world of journalism.  Most prosecutions in this regard tend to be ignorant of history and its various contortions; theirs is to simply fulfil the brief of a vengeful employer, in the now, in the falsely clear present.  If their reasoning could be extended, the likes of those in press land would spend far more time in prisons than out of them.

The savagery being meted out to Assange is evident by receiving the maximum sentence for skipping bail.  Fifty weeks may not seem like much in the scheme of things, but when you consider relative punishments, it smacks of a certain state vindictiveness.  What the decision also ignores is the entire context of Assange’s escape to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012. Since then, Britain has abandoned that beastly instrument known as the European Arrest Warrant, the Swedish allegations against him for sexual assault have been withdrawn and he, importantly, was found to be living in conditions of arbitrary detention by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

The refusal to take the decision of the UN Working Group seriously has been a hallmark of British justice, one skewed in favour of handing out to Assange the worst treatment it can find.  In 2016, the body, chaired by Seong-Phil Hong, found that “various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected to constitute a form of arbitrary detention.”  The Working Group further maintained “that the arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation.”

The UK Government, for its part, decided to rebuff the decision.  “The original conclusions of the UN Working Group are inaccurate,” came a scoffing statement, “and should be reviewed.”  Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire insisted at the time that the working group had erred for not being “in possession of the full facts.”  Assange had remained in the embassy purely on his own volition, a fantastic form of reasoning that denied the broader context of US efforts to seek his scalp, and the prospect of extradition should he have been sent to Sweden.  On this issue, WikiLeaks and Assange have proven to be right, but critics remain deaf and dumb to the record.

The same Working Group also expressed bafflement at the stiff sentence, noting that the Swedish allegations had been withdrawn, meaning that the original bail terms be negated as a result.  The entire treatment “appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged by human rights standards.”  It was also “further concerned that Mr. Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal offence.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, who currently holds the reins as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, told gathered press members that Assange had been confined for periods of 23 hours a day at Belmarsh.  The publisher was, effectively, keeping company with the less savoury while facing the damnable conditions of solitary confinement.

Only a day after the rough determination, Assange faced an extradition hearing in which the UK legal system, pressured by US lawyers and officials, will again have a chance to display its ignominious streak.  The hearing, lasting a few minutes, took place via video link in Westminster Magistrates Court.

“I do not wish,” Assange told the court, “to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people.”  (Perhaps Assange might have eased off on his accolades, but history has its callings.)

Assange’s legal team is clear: focus the issue on publishing, thereby bringing the work of their client within the ambit of free speech and traditional journalism.  As his lawyer Jennifer Robinson has explained, to accept the validity of the US charge would result in a “massive chill on investigative journalism.”  Assange’s involvement with Chelsea Manning was “about a journalist and a publisher who had conversations with a source about accessing material, encouraged that source to provide material and spoke to that source about how to protect their identity.”

The prosecution team, aided in the wings by hundreds of press vultures who seem intentionally malicious or keen to distance Assange from such protections, are obsessed by the hacking argument.  Even left as it is, the effort here seems skimpy at best.

Hrafnsson, on a worried note, does not shy away from the consequences to Assange’s own being.  “What is at stake here could be a question of life or death for Mr. Assange.”  And more than that, it involved “a major journalistic principle.”  The former point is salient: the moment Assange is rendered into the clutches of the United States, the prosecution is bound to bloat with various charges.

With Assange being treated as a felon of grave importance; and Manning’s continued detention for her ongoing refusal to cooperate with the investigative grand jury in the United States, the press corps of the world should be both revolted and alarmed.  What a delightful World Press Freedom Day it turned out to be.

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

«Ciência sem consciência é a ruína da alma» (François Rabelais)

Ultimamente, a revista semanal política e económica de renome mundial The Economist cativou a atenção dos media internacionais. Com razão. 

No fim de cada ano, a revista publica há décadas uma edição especial, ansiosamente aguardada, com o prognóstico das grandes tendências políticas, económicas e sociais do ano vindouro. Contrariamente ao habitual, o número de Dezembro de 2018, intitulado The World in 2019 (O Mundo em 2019), demarcou-se com uma característica única e interessante: a publicação de duas capas sucessivas e enigmáticas. No espaço de alguns dias, a fotografia da capa da 33ª edição da revista – parcialmente detida pela família Rothschild e conhecida porta-voz da elite mundial e da sua agenda (2) -passou do preto integral à quase magia negra! 

E uma vez que a página oficial da revista não permite elucidar o mistério das duas capas – especialmente a da 2ª versão, que apresenta um vasto leque de imagens e de símbolos crípticos –o leitor depara-se com a necessidade desconfortável de recorrer a leituras esotéricas, ocultas e maçónicas. Felizmente, um artigo elucidativo (3) do blog The Vigilant Citizen – cujo lema, “Os sinais e os símbolos governam o mundo, não as palavras nem as leis”, é atribuído a Confúcio -fornece uma descrição esclarecedora daqueles símbolos, maioritariamente apocalípticos e illuminati. 

No centro da página ergue-se o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’, uma das obras de arte mais célebres de Leonardo da Vinci, além da Gioconda. Em 2019, prevê-se, precisamente, comemorar o 500º aniversário da morte deste génio misterioso do Renascimento, com pompa e circunstância, em muitos países ocidentais.

Analisando a característica principal da capa do The Economist, o blog explica que o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ “moderno” tem “óculos de visão nocturna ou até um capacete de realidade virtual […]. Nas suas mãos, segura uma folha de canábis, uma bola de basquetebol e um smartphone. Poderia argumentar-se que empresas farmacêuticas, da big tech e do divertimento utilizam estes objectos para distrair e pacificar o homem moderno. O ‘Homem Vitruviano’ tem também duas tatuagens. No seu antebraço, ostenta uma dupla hélice, símbolo que representa o ADN e constitui uma referência provável à pesquisa intensa desenvolvida pelo sector privado em matéria de modificação do ADN. Terá o ADN do ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ sido alterado?”

O artigo termina com observações chave que levantam duas questões cruciais: “O ‘Homem Vitruviano’ moderno aparece globalmente como um ser cego, fraco, distraído e reprimido. O círculo que o envolve e que outrora simbolizava o mundo espiritual agora representa a Terra.  Terá o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ perdido a sua alma? Será que lhe interessem apenas as realidades profanas e materiais?”

Vale a pena sublinhar que, para o seu desenho (realizado cerca de 1490), Leonardo da Vinci se inspirou profusamente nas obras de Marcus Vitruvius Pollo, célebre arquitecto romano, engenheiro civil e militar e autor. No seu tratado (4), que foi traduzido do latim com o título Os dez Livros sobre a Arquitectura, Vitrúvio demonstrou que o corpo humano “ideal” encaixava perfeitamente num círculo e num quadrado –dois motivos geométricos fundamentais da ordem cósmica– ilustrando deste modo a sua convicção de que existe uma ligação entre as formas geométricas perfeitas e o corpo perfeito. Mais significativamente ainda, Vitrúvio era considerado um dos “Grandes Mestres” e uma figura central –juntamente com o rei Salomão de Israel, o rei Hiram de Tir e Hiram Abif, três figuras bíblicas estreitamente associadas à construção do Templo do rei Salomão– da alegoria ligada à passagem para o Terceiro Grau na Maçonaria (5), cujo emblemático logo associa dois instrumentos utilizados na arquitectura: um esquadro e um compasso reunidos, aos quais é frequentemente associada a letra “G”, no centro.

Na simbologia maçónica (6), o compasso representa a ferramenta que traça um círculo; sem princípio nem fim, o círculo simboliza a alma (o espírito ou a eternidade). O esquadro, por sua vez, permite desenhar um quadrado, símbolo antigo que representa o corpo (físico e temporário) e encarna o mundo material, com os seus 4 pontos cardeais, as 4 estações, os 4 elementos e os 4 estados da matéria. Juntos, representam aquele que é supostamente o objectivo final da maçonaria: criar o “homem perfeito” através da quadratura do círculo –ou, por outras palavras, através da harmonização dos mundos opostos, físico e espiritual– e atingir, assim, o estado divino! Não é, por conseguinte, de estranhar que a maçonaria esteja aberta aos “homens de todas as religiões, mas que a religião não possa ser discutida nas reuniões maçónicas”. (7)

Não será o ‘Homem de Vitrúvio’ moderno do The Economist o mesmo homem imaginário que o ‘Übermensch’ de Friedrich Nietzsche, esse ‘Super-homem’ que nem Zaratustra nem o discípulo do filósofo alemão encontraram e que acabaria por conduzir este último à loucura e à morte? (8) E não estaremos perante a mesma busca louca, senão suicidária, actualmente prosseguida –de maneira mais obstinada e com conhecimentos científicos infinitamente mais vastos e meios tecnológicos cada vez mais poderosos– em muitos laboratórios das várias ‘Silicon Valleys’ do mundo “desenvolvido”? 

No seu livro particularmente assustador –“altamente recomendado” por Bill Gates– o filósofo sueco e director fundador do Future of Humanity Institute da Universidade de Oxford, Nick Bostrum (9), sublinha que se um dia construirmos cérebros de máquinas que ultrapassem o cérebro humano em inteligência geral, esta nova superinteligência poderá tornar-se muito poderosa. E “tal como o destino dos gorilas hoje depende mais de nós, humanos, do que dos próprios gorilas, o destino da nossa espécie passará a depender das acções da superinteligência artificial”. Bostrum e muitos outros transhumanistas encaram o transhumanismo como uma extensão do humanismo -do qual deriva, em parte- e desejam seguir caminhos de vida que, cedo ou tarde, exigirão que nos transformemos em pessoas pós-humanas. Eles aspiram a “atingir picos intelectuais tão altos e distantes do génio humano comum quanto os humanos distam de outros primatas; a ser resistentes às doenças e impermeáveis ao envelhecimento; a ter uma juventude e um vigor ilimitados; a exercer um controlo sobre os seus próprios desejos, humores e estados mentais; a ser capazes de evitar sentirem-se cansados, odiosos e irritados com coisas fúteis; a ter uma capacidade acrescida de prazer, de amor, de apreciação artística e de serenidade; a fazer a experiência de novos estados de consciência aos quais o cérebro humano comum não consegue aceder.” (10)

Neste mundo maravilhoso e tecno-geek, inteira e exclusivamente dedicado ao lazer individual, às pulsões sensuais e à rêverie, os pós-humanos tanto “poderão vir a ser inteligências artificiais completamente sintéticas, como uploads melhorados ou o resultado de numerosos acrescentos mais pequenos, mas cumulativamente mais profundos, introduzidos no homem biológico. Esta última alternativa exigiria provavelmente uma nova concepção do organismo humano baseado na utilização de nanotecnologia avançada ou o seu aperfeiçoamento radical mediante o uso de uma combinação de tecnologias como a engenharia genética, a psicofarmacologia, as terapias contra o envelhecimento, as interfaces neuronais, as ferramentas avançadas de gestão da informação, o desempenho da memória, os medicamentos, os computadores portáteis e as técnicas cognitivas”. (11) Contudo, as mudanças necessárias para nos transformarmos em pós-humanos são consideradas demasiado profundas para poderem ser conseguidas modificando apenas alguns aspectos da teoria psicológica ou do nosso modo de pensar sobre nós próprios. É por isso que são necessárias modificações tecnológicas radicais do nosso cérebro e do nosso corpo. 

Os transhumanistas estão, obviamente, perfeitamente conscientes que as transições tecnológicas vindouras constituem, sem dúvida, o desafio mais importante com que a humanidade se defrontará. Eles até admitem que toda a vida inteligente futura na Terra poderá depender do modo como forem geridas estas transições. Se fizermos as coisas como deve ser, dizem, “poderá abrir-se um futuro pós-humano maravilhoso com possibilidades ilimitadas de crescimento e de florescimento”. Mas previnem que, caso giramos mal estas transições, “a vida inteligente poderá extinguir-se”. Bostrom acredita que poderemos, em princípio, construir uma espécie de superinteligência que proteja os valores humanos. Mas, na prática, acrescenta, o problema do controlo –saber como controlar a superinteligência– parece bem difícil dado termos, aparentemente, uma única oportunidade. Seja como for, Bostrum avisa que caso venha a existir uma superinteligência “hostil”, esta nos impedirá de a substituir ou de modificar as suas preferências. Por conseguinte, “o nosso destino estará, então, selado”! (12) 

A todos aqueles que, à partida, preferem ignorar “uma tomada de controlo artificial” considerando-a pura ficção científica, os transhumanistas respondem ser provável que ela se produza no decurso deste século. Para nos convencer de que o seu ponto de vista e as previsões estão correctas não perdem uma única ocasião para exibir os dados disponibilizados por Derek Price. (13) Segundo estes, os indicadores com que são avaliadas a ciência e a tecnologia apresentam números que, desde o final do século XIX, têm duplicado de quinze em quinze anos. Extrapolando esta taxa de progresso exponencial, e salvo um reverso brutal das tendências actuais ou uma desaceleração inesperada, os transhumanistas prevêem mudanças espectaculares num futuro relativamente próximo e já não hesitam em proclamar Urbi et Orbi o advento tão esperado do Prometeu moderno! 

Na verdade, a contagem decrescente – sinónimo de ponto de não retorno –em direcção ao Frankenstein de Mary Shelley já está em curso. O processo começou na Suécia natal de Bostrum, onde a empresa de tecnologia BioHax International já “microchipou” muitos dos seus empregados. (14) O futuro também já chegou aos empregados da sociedade de tecnologia Three Square Market (32M), sediada no Wisconsin. O pequeno chip do tamanho de um grão de arroz –igual àquele que é utilizado nos cartões de crédito ou no telefone portátil– é inserido entre o polegar e o índex. Utilizando a tecnologia de identificação por frequência radio (RIFD), permite aos empregados fazer funcionar as fotocopiadoras, abrir portas, conectar-se a computadores e mais, mediante um simples gesto da mão e sem que seja necessário utilizar o clássico cartão de acesso. (15)

Mas, como diz o provérbio, o “melhor” ainda está para vir, em duas frentes. 

Primeiro, ao nível das empresas. Existe uma concorrência feroz entre as várias ‘Silicon Valleys’ do mundo que é, essencialmente, alimentada pela imaginação desenfreada, pela avidez material e pela vontade de poder de certos dirigentes como Marc Zuckerberg e Elon Musk. (16) Nos Estados-Unidos, que são considerados o leader mundial nos campos da inteligência artificial (IA) e da aprendizagem automática (Machine Learning), os engenheiros e os neurocientistas trabalham silenciosamente, há mais de duas décadas, na construção de uma tecnologia revolucionária chamada BrainGate que permite conectar, sem fios, a mente humana aos computadores, mediante chips inseridos no cérebro humano. Estes cientistas estão actualmente a desenhar um mapa numérico do cérebro humano. E estão a experimentar e a modificar consideravelmente o comportamento humano e as funções cerebrais. (17)

Segundo, ao nível mundial, estão a ser feitos esforços incessantes e investidos recursos financeiros consideráveis na corrida pelo leadership mundial da IA, com especial enfoque na área militar, nomeadamente através do desenvolvimento de sistemas de armas autónomas letais. Este aspecto é de tal maneira grave e complexo que levou as Nações Unidas a iniciar um debate sobre a eventual elaboração de um tratado que proíba estas armas aterradoras. (18) O Presidente russo Vladimir Putin declarou sem rodeios que “a Inteligência Artificial é o futuro, não só da Rússia, mas da humanidade. Ela representa oportunidades colossais, mas também ameaças difíceis de prever. Quem for leader nesta área, será o dono do mundo.” (19) Reagindo às observações de Putin, Elon Musk declarou que a competição pela supremacia, a nível nacional, pela supremacia em matéria de IA será “a causa mais provável da 3ª guerra mundial”. Esclareceu que, do seu ponto de vista, a guerra não seria desencadeada por um chefe de fila mundial, mas por uma IA, a título de ataque preventivo. (20)

Esta evolução dramática e o seu impacto profundo na perenidade da civilização moderna será o tema principal de uma próxima análise.

Amir Nour*

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Artigo original em francês :

La quête éperdue de l’Übermensch: De l’Humanisme de la Renaissance à la naissance de l’homme robot

Referências

1. *Amir Nour : Investigador argelino, em relações internacionais, autor do livro “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (“The Orient and the Occident in time of a new Sykes-Picot”), Edições Alem El Afkar, Argel, 2014: pode ser descarregado gratuitamente em: http://algerienetwork.com/blog/lorient-et-loccident-a-lheure-dun-nouveau-sykes-picot-par-amir-nour/ (Francês)
2. O antigo director da revista foi John Micklethwait (2006-2015), que participou em várias conferências secretas de Bilderberg e contribuiu para os seus debates e as suas conclusões secretas. Cf. a lista de participantes (http://bilderbergmeetings.org.participants.html) e os principais temas (http://cnbc.com/2018/06/06/bilderbergmeetings-elite-focuses-on-politics.html  da reunião anual de 2018, que decorreu em Turim (Itália) em Junho de 2018.
3. Ler: http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/the-economist-the-world-in-2019-is-  full-of-cryptic-messages/
4. Marcus Vitruvius Pollo, De Architectura Libri Decem, escrito ca. de 20-30 a.C. e “redescoberto” em 1414 pelo “humanista” italiano Poggio Bracciolini, na Abadia de Saint-Gall, na Suíça.
5. Uma loja maçónica denominada Vitruvius Lodge # 145 foi criada em 1860 em Bloomfield, na Califórnia. Continua activa.
6. Ler Richard Cassaro, What Does the Freemason’s ‘Square&Compass’ Symbol Really Stand For?, richardcassaro.com, 28 de Novembro de 2009.
7. Ler Statement of Freemasonry and Religion, Masonic Service Association of North America.
8. Segundo um estudo publicado na Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia, em Dezembro  de 2006, a morte de Nietzsche não terá sido devida a uma paralisia demente (General Paralysis of the Insane – GPI), conforme se pensou durante muito tempo, mas a uma demência frontotemporal (Frontotemporal Dementia – FTD), que é uma demência crónica.
9. Nick Bostrum, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press, 2014.
10. (10) Ler Transhumanist FAQ, version 3.0, em:   http://whatistranshumanism.org
11. (11)Idem, Op. cit.
12. (12) Nick Bostrum, Op. cit.
13. (13) Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Silence, Big Science… and Beyond, Columbia      University Press, 1988.
14. (14) Jonathan Margolis, I am microchipped and have no regrets, The Financial Times,  8 de Maio de 2018.
15. (15) Haley Weiss, Why You’re Probably Getting a Microchip Implant Someday, The Atlantic, 21 Septembre 2018.
16. (16) Cofundador da empresa americana de neurotecnologia Neuralink, conhecida por desenvolver Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) implantáveis.
17. (17) Jeff Stibel, Hacking the Brain: The Future Computer Chips in Your Head,  Forbes.com, 10 de Julho de 2017.
18. (18) Ver 2017 UN report:      http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/6036958.69445801.html
19. (19) RT, Whoever leads in AI will rule the world: Putin to Russian Children on  Knowledge Day, 1 de Setembro de 2017.
20. (20) Karla Lant, Elon Musk: Competition for All Superiority at National Level Will Be The ‘Most Likely Cause of WW3, Futurism, 4 de Setembro de 2017.

The Following text is Section 9 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

*

Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

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Contents 

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO War to Demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11.  Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty
14. The Western American Empire plays the war card
15. The US/NATO planetary war system
16. Exiting the war system of NATO

***

1. The operation conducted by the USA and NATO in Ukraine began in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact, which was a part of the Soviet Union, also disintegrated. The United States and its European allies moved immediately to take full advantage of the new geopolitical situation.

2. Ukraine – whose territory acts as a buffer between NATO and Russia and is crossed by energy corridors between Russia and the EU – did not enter NATO directly. However, within the framework of NATO, it joined the “Partnership for Peace” contributing to “peacekeeping” operations in the Balkans.

3. The “NATO-Ukraine Action Plan” was adopted in 2002, and President Kuchma announced his intention to join NATO. In 2005, in the wake of the “Orange Revolution” (orchestrated and financed by the US and European powers), President Yushchenko was invited to a NATO summit in Brussels. Immediately afterwards, an “intensified dialogue on the aspiration of Ukraine to become a member of NATO” was launched, and in 2008 the Bucharest summit gave a green light to its entry.

4. That same year, the Georgian army, which had been fighting South Ossetia that wanted to become independent from Georgia since 1991 (when the Soviet Union disintegrated), was trained and armed by the United States and at the same time by Israel through “private” military contractors. On the night of 8 August 2008, Georgia, backed by NATO, launched a military offensive to regain control of the disputed region. A few hours later Russia intervened militarily, rejecting the Georgian invasion, and South Ossetia effectively became independent of Georgia. It was the first sign of the offensive that NATO, under US command, was preparing on the eastern front to force Russia to react.

5. In Ukraine, in 2009, Kiev signed an agreement that allowed the transit from its territory of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Membership now seemed certain but, in 2010, the newly elected president Yanukovych announced that, while continuing cooperation, NATO membership was not on his government’s agenda. Meanwhile, however, since 1991, NATO had woven a network of ties within the Ukrainian armed forces. Senior officers had been attending courses at the NATO Defense College in Rome and in Oberammergau (Germany) for years. Also contributing to the network of ties was the establishment, at the Ukrainian Military Academy, of a new “multinational faculty” with NATO professors. The scientific and technical cooperation in the field of armaments had also been greatly developed to facilitate the participation of Ukrainian armed forces in NATO-led “joint peace operations”.

6. Since there were other ties beyond what we could see, it was clear that NATO was building a network of connections in military and civilian environments much larger than it appeared. Through the CIA and other secret services, neo-Nazi militants had been recruited, financed, trained and armed for years. A photographic record showed young Ukrainian UN-UNSO neo-Nazi militants being trained in Estonia in 2006 by NATO instructors, who taught them urban combat techniques and the use of explosives for sabotage and attacks.

7. The same methods were used by NATO during the Cold War to form the secret paramilitary structure “Gladio”. It was also active in Italy where, at Camp Darby and other bases, neo-fascist groups were trained, preparing them for attacks and possible coup d’états.

8. The paramilitary structure of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups came into action in 2014 in Maidan Square in Kiev. An anti-government demonstration, which began with just claims against the rampant corruption and the worsening of living conditions, was rapidly transformed into a real battlefield. While armed groups attacked the government buildings, snipers (purposely brought into Kiev from Georgia) used the same sniper rifles on both demonstrators and policemen.

9. On 20 February 2014, the NATO Secretary General addressed the Ukrainian armed forces with a commanding tone, warning them to “remain neutral” on pain of “serious negative consequences for our relations”. Abandoned by the leaders of the armed forces and much of the government apparatus, President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to flee. Andriy Parubiy – co-founder of the National Social Party, established in 1991 on the model of the National Socialist Party of Adolf Hitler, and head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary groups – was put in charge of the “National Security and Defense Council”.

10. The Maidan Square putsch was accompanied by a persecutory campaign, directed in particular against the Communist Party and the unions, similar to those that marked the advent of fascism in Italy and of Nazism in Germany. Party headquarters were destroyed,  leaders were lynched and tortured, and journalists murdered; activists were burned alive in the Odessa Chamber of Labor; unarmed inhabitants of eastern Ukraine of Russian origin were massacred in Mariupol and bombarded with white phosphorus in Slaviansk, Lugansk, Donetsk.

11. A real coup under US/NATO direction was underway with the strategic aim of provoking a new cold war in Europe to strike and isolate Russia and at the same time strengthen the influence and military presence of the United States in Europe. Faced with the coup d’état and the offensive against the Russians of Ukraine, the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – Russian territory that was given to Ukraine during the Soviet period in 1954 – voted to secede from Kiev and requested to be re-connected to the Russian Federation, a decision that was confirmed with 97% of the votes in favor by a popular referendum. On March 18, 2014, President Putin signed the treaty for the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation with the status of an autonomous republic. At this point Russia was accused by NATO and the EU of illegally annexing Crimea and was subjected to sanctions. Russia responded with counter-sanctions that mainly affected the economies of the EU, including the Italian economy.

12. While in Donbass, the self-proclaimed Popular Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, supported by Russia, resisted the Kiev offensive that caused thousands of civilian deaths. A roadmap for NATO-Ukraine technical-military cooperation was signed in December 2015, which, in fact, integrated the armed forces and the arms industry of Kiev into those of the US-led Alliance.

13. In 2019, Ukraine took an unprecedented step: it included in its constitution the commitment to officially enter NATO and, at the same time, into the European Union. On February 7, at the suggestion of President Petro Poroshenko – the oligarch enriched from the looting of state property and who was returned to the presidency – the Kiev parliament approved (with 334 votes against 35 and 16 absent) the amendments to the Constitution to implement these steps. The Preamble states “the irreversible course of Ukraine towards Euro-Atlantic integration”: Articles 85 and 116 decree that the fundamental task of parliament and the government is “to obtain the full membership of Ukraine into NATO and the EU”; Article 102 states that “the president of Ukraine is the guarantor of the strategic course of the state to obtain full membership in NATO and the EU”.

14. The inclusion in the Constitution of the commitment to officially enter NATO involves very serious consequences. Internally, it binds the future of Ukraine to this choice, excluding any alternative, and effectively makes it illegal for any party or person to oppose the choice. On the international level, it should be kept in mind that Ukraine is already in fact in NATO, of which it is a partner country. For example, the Azov battalion, whose Nazi imprint is represented by the emblem modeled on that of the SS Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped with armored vehicles and trained by US instructors of the 173th Airborne Division, transferred from Vicenza to Ukraine and flanked by others from NATO. Because Russia is accused of illegally annexing Crimea and carrying out military actions against Ukraine, if Ukraine officially joined NATO, the other 30 members of the Alliance, according to Art. 5, should “assist the attacked party by taking action deemed necessary, including the use of armed force”. In other words, they should go to war against Russia. On these dangerous implications of the modification of the Ukrainian Constitution – behind which there are certainly the long hands of US/NATO strategists – political and media silence has fallen over Europe.

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Sections 10-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

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The Chinese and Laotian Presidents signed an action plan to build a community of shared future earlier this week after the latter’s trip to the People’s Republic to attend the recent BRI Forum. These two nations might seem to be an odd pair to the unaware observer who would instantly notice the obvious asymmetries in their geographic and demographic sizes, but these two countries actually share very close and fraternal relations with one another that are destined to strengthen following the completion of the China-Laos railway by the end of this year, therefore making the agreement that their two leaders just signed all the more relevant in the forthcoming strategic context. The aforementioned project isn’t a stand-alone one but is part of the larger Kunming-to-Singapore high-speed railway vision that forms the regional basis of China’s BRI investments in ASEAN, and the key to the success of this “ASEAN Silk Road” is none other than Laos.

Despite being tiny, Laos boasts an outsized geostrategic importance because it’s adjacent to all of the states in the Greater Mekong Subregion (mainland ASEAN), which is why its decision makers consider it to be “land-linked” instead of just landlocked. Furthermore, the country is investing heavily in dams along the Mekong River in order to become the “battery of Southeast Asia” through its planned export of hydroelectricity throughout the energy-hungry region. Both of these interconnected visions perfectly complement China’s integrational ones through the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), therefore making it the perfect partner for the People’s Republic to pair up with. Additionally, Laos is also a communist country just like China, which is yet another convergence of interests that these two neighbors share. In fact, its governing model and small population make it more likely that Laos will be able to fairly disperse the land-linked, hydroelectrical, and Silk Road wealth that it expects to earn in the coming future.

This is a very important point because Laos is still struggling to recover from the devastation of the Vietnam War-era when the US dropped more bombs on it than during the entirety of World War II, an infamous but little-known fact that former President Obama even apologized for during his historic 2016 visit to the country. Without Chinese support, Laos would have difficulty developing and bringing its people into the 21st century. The country’s geography is highly varied and very tough to traverse in some regions, though the ASEAN Silk Road will change all of that because of the many tunnels and bridges that are being built along its route, which are engineering marvels in their own right and will greatly contribute to connecting Laos’ people to the rest of the region and the world at large, especially by means of its Chinese and Thai neighbors.

The example being set by Chinese-Laotian relations is that win-win cooperation can still prevail regardless of the size asymmetries between states. China has an interest in developing Laos’ connectivity potential and helping it achieve its goal of becoming the land-linked core of the Greater Mekong Subregion because this provides the People’s Republic with reliable overland access to Thailand, which has the largest economy in mainland ASEAN. Laos, meanwhile, benefits from the billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure projects that China is funding and can turn the ASEAN Silk Road into the country’s primary developmental corridor by taking advantage of its irreplaceable role facilitating Chinese-Thai trade. As a result, both China and Laos can reap the benefits of their bilateral cooperation in spite of the glaring differences in their geographic and population sizes, proving that BRI is the ultimate equalizer between states and pioneering a new model of International Relations.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit (Source: Oriental Review)

On April 28, a general election, for the National Congress and the Senate, was held in Spain after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called new elections. Sánchez is the leader of the social-liberal, pro-European Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSO), in power since June 2018, when he led a successful motion of confidence against the government of Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right, conservative Partido Popular (PP).

The outcome of the election casts no doubt as to who the winner is: Pedro Sánchez himself. Not only did his party win an election for the first time in 11 years but also doubled the number of deputies attained by the second-in-line, the Partido Popular, which obtained the worst result in its history. The liberal right-wing, Spanish nationalist Ciudadanos consolidated a strong third position and continued an upward progression in all districts. Unidas Podemos, left-wing populists and socialists, lost parliamentary weight and retreated in large areas of the country. Vox a party of the extreme right, Spanish nationalists, and neo-fascists, broke into the Parliament but obtained a somewhat more modest result than expected.

The turnout (75.75%) was very high, matching that of past key electoral processes including the first elections after Franco in 1977, the first victory of PSOE-Felipe González in 1982, and the victory of Zapatero after the protests against the Iraq War and the 11-M attacks in 2004. The unwritten rule in modern Spanish politics is that whenever turnout is high, the left obtains great results and usually wins. This fact alone confirms the essentially progressive character of Spanish society.

The Final Results Leave Some Key Conclusions

The post-Franco bipartisan system, which lasted more than three decades in Spain, is officially dead. The current parliamentary fragmentation culminates a process started in 2015, with the arrival of Podemos and Ciudadanos on the political scene, and requires a culture of pact and compromise to develop. In this scenario, the Spanish left is expected to fare much better than the right.

The outcome of this election will likely give way to a phase of institutional stability, closing the period started during the 2008 financial crisis and leading to the subsequent social, political crisis; the turmoil that stirred a cycle of citizen protests from 2011 to 2014, and the phase of political volatility that ensued from 2015 to 2018. The so-called Regime of 78, based on the new Constitution and formed as a formal parliamentary democracy with the central role of the monarchy as an institutional central arrangement, now appears to be no longer at risk. Even though the PSOE decided to form a minority government, its strong position in relation to other forces will be a gravitational factor of stability.

The PSOE itself has successfully finished a process of renewal, and has reaffirmed itself as the structuring party of the Regime of 78. While the PP’s crisis deepens, Pedro Sánchez has come out victorious within the internal battles (against the barons of the party, like Felipe González, or the Andalusian leader, Susana Díaz), returned to occupy the political centre and recovered the lost credit among the citizenship. Also, the bourgeoisie – financial and economic elites, both national and European – have regained a trustworthy ally to navigate the complicated short-term scenario in Europe, i.e., Brexit, rise of right-wing populism, etc. The Spanish Crown is very satisfied with this result as well.

The Right

The political and social Spanish right lost a golden opportunity to obtain a political majority that would serve to implement a reactionary, hard-line conservative and neoliberal agenda in Spain. The collapse of the Partido Popular, the hegemonic party of the centre-right for more than three decades, has left conservative forces fragmented and competing for a decreasing political space.

The advance of the far-right (Vox) is remarkable – they set the tone and led the electoral campaign, forcing all other right-wing parties to radicalize their narratives, but they failed in reaching the Executive, their main goal – unlike Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Erdogan, Salvini, and Orban. This represents a potentially very important symbolic defeat, especially considering the upcoming European elections next month. In any case, the arrival of Vox to Spanish politics shows that the far-right does not need to be in government to contaminate the agenda and public debate. The Parliament will be a privileged platform which will be used to consolidate its confrontational and hateful discourse, thus increasing its visibility.

The top bureaucrats in Brussels are breathing a sigh of relief. Just one month ago, the victory of the Forum for Democracy in the Dutch election unleashed panic in the European institutions at the possibility that the growth of Vox put Spain in the orbit of far-right populism. With a hard-Brexit scenario more likely than ever, the European establishment in Brussels, as well as France and Germany, is happy to find a stronger ally in Pedro Sánchez.

The Left

The working class and its demands/interests were almost totally absent from the debates during the campaign. The Catalan Procès, and the social and political upheaval it created, was strategically used by the right to build an agenda based on topics like the defence of Spain against separatism, the risk of immigration, insecurity, etc., all played out with a confrontational tone and maximalist identitarian approaches. Only Unidos Podemos made an honest attempt to bring economic inequality, poverty, the eviction crisis, the retreat of the welfare state, etc., as topics for discussion during the campaign.

The far-right chose women and feminists as one of its favourite enemies. Accordingly, the response of the female vote was resounding: women, above all, but also young people and the working class, held back the advance of the right. The feminist wave that has been growing in Spain, as well as other countries in the world, has proven not only its potential for hegemony, but also a strong capacity to tactically resist the advance of fascist forces. In this sense, these elections could have an important ideological projection for the future.

The Basque and Catalan nationalist and independentist parties fared extremely well, and this happened as the three parties of the right massively failed in both territories. In the Basque Country, the three parties of the right didn’t manage to obtain a single deputy, while socialist, independentist EH Bildu reached its historical maximum, and the nationalist, conservative Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) consolidated its first position in the region. In Catalonia, the republican, independentista party Esquerra Republicana won a resounding victory, and together with JxSí, comprising nationalists and neoliberals, consolidated a strong presence of the Procès/independentist parties in Madrid. Ciudadanos maintained an important presence in Catalonia (especially in Barcelona), and the PP collapsed: it obtained a single deputy, whereas Vox gained one. Two ideas arise from these outcomes: first, the right wing does not want to do politics in Catalonia or Euskadi, but they use confrontation to make gains in the rest of Spain, but this strategy has failed; and second, contrary to what the right-wing forces have tried to argue, the Spanish people want dialogue and politics, and reject the agenda of repression and confrontation.

After several years with a reduced representation, or absence from Parliament altogether, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) took five deputies to Congress under the candidacy of Unidas Podemos. The most prominent communist MP is Enrique Santiago, Secretary General of the PCE, an expert in Latin American politics and a lawyer close to human rights organizations and the peace process in Colombia.

The Outcome?

The moderately positive outcome of the election – the far-right was stopped, the government remaining progressive – shouldn’t let us forget the weakness of social and popular organizations in the Spanish State as a whole. Before the crisis, mass organizations and social struggles were undermined whenever the PSOE obtained a strong electoral result. The exceptional circumstances of this election, as well as the successful process of renewal of the PSOE, could further weaken the social and organizational dynamics of militant organizations – how many more times will social democracy manage to deceive the people? However, there exist examples of conscious and active groups: Basque pensioners demonstrated today in Bilbao, demanding an increase in retirement pensions. Furthermore, Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions), the largest union in Spain, warned Pedro Sánchez today that they expect a clearer focus on policies in favour of the working class from now on.

On May 26, municipal elections of town councils, regional elections of regional parliaments, and European elections will be held in Spain. These new elections will define further the tendencies pointed out yesterday, and their projection toward local and European politics. There is still a sense of an emerging moment, and therefore, until after 26 May, it is unlikely that the formation of the new government will be announced.

The PSOE has several options. The first is to form a minority government – common in other countries but foreign to the political culture of Spain. The second is to count on the support of Unidas Podemos and use the support of one or several independentist forces to appoint Pedro Sánchez as president. Finally it could sign a deal with Ciudadanos but this is unlikely, since it would be viewed very unfavourably by the socialist bases and, from the point of view of Ciudadanos, it would compromise its intention to become the new hegemonic party of the Spanish right, a longer-term goal. In any case, the government – led by the PSOE, no matter what – that will come out of these elections will be stable and will have the approval of the European institutions.

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This article is available in Spanish at Elecciones Generales en España 2019 – Análisis del día después.

Sleeping drugs such as Ambien have been making people kill themselves in their sleep, says the Food and Drug Administration.  Drugs that supposedly help people sleep are linked to falls, burns, poisoning, limb loss, drowning, and even suicide.

According to The New York Times, this could all be solved by adding warning labels to the bottles of the pills instead of people trying to get off Big Pharma’s drugs.

Incidents related to sleeping pills have included “accidental overdoses, falls, burns, near drowning, exposure to extreme cold temperatures leading to loss of limb, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, hypothermia, motor vehicle collisions with the patient driving, and self-injuries such as gunshot wounds and apparent suicide attempts,” according to the FDA’s own research. But rather than tell people not to use such drugs, the FDA simply wants people to know they could kill themselves after taking the pills.

The FDA announced Tuesday that a prominent warning would be required on all medication guides for Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and the generic version of Ambien, which is called zolpidem. The FDA also mandates a separate warning against prescribing the drugs to anyone with a history of sleepwalking. –Futurism.

That’s a lovely side effect…

“Patients usually did not remember these events,” the agency wrote, according to Futurism. Bizarre actions have been widely reported after using sleeping pills, and the FDA has warned about this in the past – 12 years ago, in fact. That means this isn’t exactly new information.  Big Pharma’s drugs have been problematic for quite some time now, but it is comforting to see others take note of just how disastrous some of these medications can be to humanity.

Some have expressed their surprise at the FDA’s admission that these pills may not be all that safe for people to use. “I am surprised to see this warning come out now,” University of Pennsylvania physician Ilene Rosen told The NYT. “This is something I’ve been telling my patients for the last 15 years, and in the sleep community, this is well known. And I’d like to think we’ve done a good job putting the news out there, that these drugs have some risks.”

But all drugs have risks and hopefully, people will begin to realize that medications simply treat the symptom not the underlying problem that caused the issue to begin with.  Western medicine is about management, not treatment. And it isn’t just Ambien and sleeping drugs humanity should be worried about; it’s all the drugs pushed on the public every single day.

Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is great at explaining the dilemma we as a society have found ourselves in. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. This book shows the true scale of this murderous disaster. Goldacre believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale.

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Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

Despite the lack of visible preparation for war, the Lebanese authorities consider it important to take all necessary precautions for a possible Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel is not alone; this time its forces enjoy unlimited military support from the US administration through the US forces stationed in Israel and in various bases in the Middle East. Israel also enjoys financial support from Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, in case of a punitive war against non-state allies of Iran. Indeed, Israel sent a sharp message to the Lebanese authorities revealing its intention to bomb selected targets in the country, considered threatening by Israel. Lebanon answered: “a bombing of targets in Lebanon will be met with a similar bombing in Israel and we are ready for a possible escalation if it is imposed on us”.

The US and Israel are working side by side against Iran and its allies/partners in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Lebanese authorities received an official warning, via France, revealing the intention of Israel to bomb specific locations in Lebanon, claimed to host missile factories. The local authorities answered:

“Lebanon shall not initiate a war against Israel. But if any location in Lebanon is bombed, a similar and equivalent and precise location in Israel will be bombed. If Israel bombs several locations, Lebanon will respond by bombing an equivalent number of locations and objectives. If Israel escalates, Lebanon will follow and the response may spill over the borders of Lebanon where its allies may not hesitate to take part in a war against Israel”, said a well-informed source in the country.

“Unlike the US military, Israel has air force superiority in the Middle East. The US forces can only offer military advice, intelligence, interception missiles batteries, supply of weapons and ammunition, exert pressure on Middle Eastern countries (mainly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) to finance a military campaign with the objective to cripple Iran’s allies in the region, and make sure the UN is not taking any resolution against any possible Israeli aggression. But real attacks are normally carried out by the Israel Air Force”, said the source.

Notwithstanding the non-state militant leadership in Lebanon who “personally estimate that the possibility of war is unlikely”, “worst-case scenarios have been laid down by the high military command”, as the leader of Hezbollah said in his last speech, reminding his listeners of “the treacherous capacity of Israel” (to start a sudden war).

Several war scenarios were discussed.

“In a first case scenario, it is unlikely that Israel would start bombing selective targets from its bank of objectives and then decide to stop because Lebanon would react by hitting specific targets drawn from its own bank of objectives and hurt Israel with its precision missiles”, said the source.

The non-state actor in Lebanon has several types of rockets and missiles, estimated by Israel at around 150,000, “capable of creating enough confusing to Israel’s interception missiles to limit their efficacy. It will be enough if 20% to 30% of these highly destructive and precise missiles reach their desired objectives. The question remains: is Netanyahu ready to engage himself in a long and destructive war? Our experience indicates the opposite, and Israel’s recent clash with the Palestinians in Gaza shows that it is hard for Israel to stand for a long and destructive war where missiles can reach the heart of Tel Aviv, its airports and infrastructures”, said the source.

Israel possess “Iron Dome” interception batteries to defend itself against rockets and missiles launched from Gaza or Lebanon. It has the “Arrow 3” and “Arrow 4” to intercept ballistic missiles. It has also the US “THAAD” System, the “Barak 8” and “David’s Sling”.

Nevertheless, the capability of Israel to intercept and destroy cruise missiles launched from different parts of Lebanon is doubtful. Moreover, Israel’s capability to defend its offshore oil and gas rigs as well as its harbour against the advanced anti-ship “Yakhont” missiles is highly doubtful, despite the deployment of Iron Dome on these platforms and protection vessels. Also, in Lebanon, anti-air missiles capable of downing helicopter or jets at low or medium altitude have been delivered by Syria. This means the Israeli Navy will be out of the possible war equation, along with Israeli helicopters. The Israeli Air Force will be in need, in this case, of highly expensive laser guided missiles launched from high altitude.

In past years and wars, Lebanese militants used to fight within the 2000 sq km of South Lebanon as its military operational area, deploying forces and effectives to launch missiles and rockets against Israel. In any possible future war, the area of operation will be enlarged to beyond 6000 sq km, more than half of Lebanon’s 10300 sq km, including the Bekaa valley and the Lebanese-Syrian borders. The capability and the possession of long-range solid fuel missiles with highly destructive warheads will allow a rapid deployment of effectives beyond the south of Lebanon, making it more difficult for the Israeli Air Force to localise, attack and destroy military positions in mountains and valleys spread all over the country.

Ground forces are the only possibility for Israel to make a change on the ground in case of war. One of the worse-case scenarios discussed and microscopically examined is the possibility of Israel pushing forces through the Golan heights, on the Syrian Zabadani axis, to reach the Lebanese-Syrian borders. This scenario was one of the possibilities contemplated during the 2006 war but not implemented. In this case, Israel could reach the Lebanese-Syrian borders and close them, imposing its conditions before leaving control over the borders to a United Nations forces capable of intercepting and blocking any flow of weapons into Lebanon in the future. But again, for Israel to force its way so far and stay until a negotiate political outcome is agreed is not a simple task and is full of risks. Syrian elite forces and their allies have established many traps on the way.

When military scenarios and possible plans are shared, it can be a message for both sides that these possibilities have been explored and taken into account. The aim is to tell belligerents that the element of surprise will no longer be effective, in order to reduce the possibilities of war where the objectives will be hard to achieve.

Are both sides ready to show their strength without using it?

Some in Lebanon believe Israel is not ready. Israeli military officials have indeed complained about the lack of readiness of the “internal front” in case of war. Military experts believe the internal front in any country is never fully ready in case of war, but there is a minimum of precautions to adopt to protect and warn the population in advance. Israel is working on these measures and considering seriously the possibility of dislodging and relocating Israeli settlements and villages to prevent casualties and possible cross-fire situations or kidnapping. All that would come at a high cost. Israel may very well opt for the less costly option: the financial strangulation of Lebanon.

Hezbollah may not be seriously affected by the US “strangulation war”. The US sanctions on Shia donations and wealthy Shia businessmen created peripheral damage to the non-state actor whose militants receive their regular salaries, enjoy free medical support and even receive a gift for the beginning of the month of Ramadan (6 of May) of $200 for each contractor and employee. Donations received from abroad were used to ease the life of militants willing to marry or furbish their homes. That bonus ceased but nothing else.

But the US administration and Israel want the Lebanese to complain about sanctions and blame Hezbollah as the cause of sanctions and the reason for the lack of financial support to the country.

In this context, a military war is unlikely. The US and Israel are better off adjusting to live with the presence of Lebanon defended by a non-state actor that is part of Lebanese society. This will reduce any need for the use of weapons in the long term.

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