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Trump said in Japan that he is not looking for regime change in Iran.

Trump said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister ABE Shinzo,

“We aren’t looking for regime change – I just want to make that clear. We are looking for no nuclear weapons. I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal, and I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership.”

Trump breached the treaty the US and other members of the UN Security Council signed with Iran in 2015, which aimed precisely at forestalling Iran from having nuclear weapons.

Editors and journalists and US politicians seem perpetually confused about the difference between a civilian nuclear enrichment program and a weapons program.

Iran has not had a weapons program since 2002, and that program was rudimentary. The cult-like People’s Jihadis (Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK) outed the program in that year, and the Iranian government mothballed it. The People’s Jihadis are a small fanatical Iranian dissident group once hosted by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, which has carried out large terrorist attacks.

So what Iran does have is a civilian enrichment program for producing fuel for its three nuclear reactors at Bushehr, built by Russia. These are light water reactors.

Uranium in nature comes mixed as U235 and U238. It is U235 that is volatile and useful as a fuel. But to run a reactor, the proportion of U235 in the uranium has be to increased to 3.5 percent. This is accomplished by putting the uranium in a centrifuge, gassifying it, and whirling it around so as to separate out the U235 from the U238.

This civilian nuclear enrichment for fuel is what Iran has been doing for the past 16 years. It is very different from making a bomb, which requires a whole set of other technologies.

Iran did enrich some uranium to 19.5 percent as fuel for a small medical reactor, to produce isotopes for treating cancer. That level is still considered LEU or Low enriched Uranium.

The problem with centrifuges is that they are potentially dual use. If you had enough centrifuges and could secretly keep feeding the ever more enriched uranium through them, you could eventually enrich to 95% to make a bomb.

You could also theoretically make a bomb with a heavy water reactor, and Iran had one planned at Arak.

So the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action closed off Iran’s avenue to a bomb in four ways:

1. It is restricted to 6,000 centrifuges, so few that it would take a very long time to enrich uranium with them to bomb grade.

2. It is subject to regular UN International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. These inspections involve sophisticated technology that can detect the signature of plutonium or HEU (High Enriched Uranium). The equipment cannot be fooled, since the signatures are powerful and stay around.

3. Iran was forced to brick in its planned heavy water reactor at Arak. It isn’t being built, though Iran is threatening to revive the project if it goes on being subjected to severe sanctions.

4. It had to cast its 19.5% enriched uranium stockpiles in a form that makes it impossible to further enrich them.

The CIA has never found any evidence since 2003 of Iran even wanting a nuclear weapons program, much less practically embarking on one. And the four restrictions of the JCPOA make it impossible to establish such a program as long as they are in place.

So if what Trump wanted was “no nukes,” then he already had that in the form of the JCPOA, which he has tried to destroy!

Destroying the JCPOA will simply remove the restrictions on Iran’s enrichment program, the opposite of what you would do if you don’t want them to have weapons.

Iran did not mothball 80% of its enrichment capacity out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because they were promised an end to international sanctions. Instead, Trump has ratcheted up the sanctions far beyond where they were in 2014.

Iran was screwed over by the US– it gave up its only deterrence card to forestall a US invasion and regime change. And then once that was done, the US slapped back on the sanctions at an even more powerful level.

There is almost no incentive for Iran now to remain in the deal. For Trump to go around the world forbidding other countries (including Japan) to buy Iranian oil is, contrary to what he says, an attempt to overthrow the government, which has been heavily dependent for its revenues on oil exports.

I suspect Abe Shinzo [Japanese put their last names first] told Trump all this, and he is probably carrying a message from Trump to Tehran next month. In the meantime, the Iranian economy is deeply hurting and Iran has little reason to make yet another deal with someone who lightly reneged on 3 years of work on the last one.

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Merkel is the most powerful and influential politician not only in Europe but in the world, today.

Yet she, herself, made arguably the greatest political and military error of the past 70 years by unilaterally agreeing to supply Israel’s tiny naval force with a fleet of German Dolphin-Class submarines that are now believed armed with cruise missiles tipped with 200kton nuclear warheads, and a range of 1500kms. They are assumed to be deployed in both the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. This huge arms transaction was subsidised by the German government and has given the Israeli state a ‘2nd strike capability’ which has dramatically altered the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East.

This act of military madness had helped drive the rise of the far Right not only in Germany itself but throughout Europe, the majority of EU states having no nuclear defence of their own and certainly no 2nd strike capability. In the event of a nuclear conflict against Europe, it does not need much imagination to calculate who will be ‘the last man standing’.

The state of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapon entity in the world and is probably the 4th most powerful after the US, Russia and France.  She has an estimated stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads which is greater than that of China, Pakistan or India and, of course, still refuses to be a party to the global nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or any of the international treaties (CWC/ BWC) that outlaw both chemical and biological weapons.

Chancellor Merkel is now nearly halfway through her fourth and final term as Chancellor and her legacy is profound.

Empowering Israel to be one of only four so-called nuclear triad states in the world with a 2nd strike capability i.e. with air, land and undersea nuclear capabilities, was probably the defining act of profound irresponsibility ever delivered by any European leader.

A nuclear triad is a three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.

The ramifications of such a voluntary act of irresponsibility could resonate around the world for more than a hundred years.  The most powerful politician in Europe for over the past decade will leave a continent of a half a billion people at the mercy of a small, troubled, nuclear-weaponised country in the Middle East with a population of less than nine million.

As Merkel prepares to leave office, she might reflect on the dangers that both NATO and the continent she has for so long dominated, now become so vulnerable to attack by foreign forces with both nuclear and chemical WMD.  Tragically, that one deliberate action that made a mockery of the (NPT) nuclear Non Proliferation Act, can never be reversed. That die is now well and truly cast.

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

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

It’s a David vs Goliath story. A former local newspaper reporter, Robert Stuart, is taking on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Stuart believes that a sensational video story about an alleged atrocity in Syria “was largely, if not entirely, staged.”  The BBC would like it all to just go away. But like David, Stuart will not back down or let it go.  It has been proposed that the BBC could settle the issue by releasing the raw footage from the event, but they refuse to do this. Why?

The Controversial Video

The video report in controversy is ‘Saving Syria’s Children‘. Scenes from it were first broadcast as a BBC news report on August 29, 2013 and again as a BBC Panorama special in September. ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ was produced by BBC reporter Ian Pannell with Darren Conway as camera operator and director.

The news report footage was taken in a town north of Aleppo city in a region controlled by the armed opposition. It purports to show the aftermath of a Syrian aerial attack using incendiary weapons, perhaps napalm, killing and burning dozens of youth.  The video shows the youth arriving and being treated at a nearby hospital where the BBC film team was coincidentally filming two British medical volunteers from a British medical relief organization.

The video had a strong impact. The incident was on August 26. The video was shown on the BBC three days later as the British Parliament was debating whether to support military action by the US against Syria. As it turned out, British parliament voted against supporting military action. But the video was effective in demonizing the Syrian government. After all, what kind of government attacks school children with napalm-like bombs?

The Context

‘Saving Syria’s Children’ was produced at a critical moment in the Syrian conflict. Just days before, on August 21,  there had been an alleged sarin gas attack against an opposition held area on the outskirts of Damascus. Western media was inundated with videos showing dead Syrian children amidst accusations the Syrian government had attacked civilians, killing up to 1400.  The Syrian government was assumed to be responsible and the attack said to be a clear violation of President Obama’s “red line” against chemical weapons.

This incident had the effect of increasing pressure for Western states or NATO to attack Syria. It would be for humanitarian reasons, rationalized by the “responsibility to protect”.

The assumption that ‘the regime’ did it has been challenged. Highly regarded American  journalists including the late Robert Parry and Seymour Hersh investigated and contradicted the mainstream media. They pointed to the crimes being committed by the armed opposition for political goals.  A report by two experts including a UN weapons inspector and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity also came to the conclusion that the Syrian government was not responsible and the attack  was actually by an armed opposition group with the goal of forcing NATO intervention.   

Why the Controversial Video is Suspicious

After seeing skeptical comments about ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ on an online discussion board, Robert Stuart looked at the video for himself. Like others, he thought the hospital sequences looked artificial, almost like scenes from a badly acted horror movie.

But unlike others, he decided to find out. Thus began his quest to ascertain the truth. Was the video real or was it staged?  Was it authentic or contrived propaganda?

Over almost six years his research has revealed many curious elements about the video including:

• Youth in the hospital video appear to act on cue.
• There is a six hour discrepancy in reports about when the incident occurred.
• One of the supposed victims, shown writhing in pain on a stretcher, is seen earlier walking unaided into the ambulance.
• The incident happened in an area controlled by a terror group associated with ISIS.
• One of the British medics is a former UK soldier involved in simulated injury training.
• The other British medic is daughter of a prominent figure in the Syrian opposition.
• In 2016 a local rebel commander testified that the alleged attack never happened. 

Support for Robert Stuart

Robert Stuart’s formal complaints to the BBC have been rebuffed. His challenges to those involved in the production have been ignored or stifled. Yet his quest has won support from some major journalistic and political figures.

Former Guardian columnist Jonathan Cook has written several articles on the story. He says,

“Stuart’s sustained research and questioning of the BBC, and the state broadcaster’s increasing evasions, have given rise to ever greater concerns about the footage. It looks suspiciously like one scene in particular, of people with horrific burns, was staged.”

Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray has compared scenes in ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ with his own harrowing experience with burn victims. He says,

“The alleged footage of burn victims in hospital following a napalm attack bears no resemblance whatsoever to how victims, doctors and relatives actually behave in these circumstances.”

Film-maker Victor Lewis-Smith has done numerous projects for the BBC. When learning about Stuart’s research he asked for some explanations and suggested they could resolve the issue by releasing the raw video footage of the events. When they refused to do this, he publicly tore up his BBC contract.

Why it Matters

The BBC has a reputation for objectivity. If BBC management was deceived by the video, along with the public, they should have a strong interest in uncovering and correcting this. If there was an error, they should want to clarify, correct and ensure it is not repeated.

The BBC could go a long way toward resolving this issue by releasing raw footage of the scenes in ‘Saving Syria’s Children’.  Why have they refused to do this? In addition, they have actively removed youtube copies of ‘Saving Syria’s Children’. If they are proud of that production, why are they removing public copies of it?

Has the BBC produced and broadcast contrived or fake video reports in support of British government foreign policy of aggression against Syria? It is important that this question be answered to either restore public trust (if the videos are authentic) or to expose and correct misdeeds (if the videos are largely or entirely staged).

The issue at stake is not only the BBC; it is the manipulation of media to deceive the public into supporting elite-driven foreign policy. ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ is an important case study.

The Future

Robert Stuart is not quitting.  He hopes the next step will be a documentary film dramatically showing what he has discovered and further investigating important yet unexplored angles.

The highly experienced film producer Victor Lewis-Smith, who tore up his BBC contract, has stepped forward to help make this happen.

But to produce a high quality documentary including some travel takes funding. After devoting almost six  years to this effort, Robert Stuart’s resources are exhausted. The project needs support from concerned members of the public.

If you support Robert Stuart’s efforts, go to this crowdfunding website.  There you can learn more and contribute to this important effort to reveal whether the BBC video ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ showed true or staged events. Was the alleged “napalm” attack real or was it staged propaganda?  The project needs a large number of small donors and a few substantial ones to meet the June 7 deadline.

As actor and producer Keith Allen says,

“Please help us to reach the target so that we can discover the facts, examine the evidence, and present the truth about ‘Saving Syria’s Children’. I think it’s really important.”

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Susan Dirgham is editor of “Beloved Syria – Considering Syrian Perspectives”published in Australia.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in northern California.  He can be contacted via [email protected]

Alla presenza del Capo della Stato Sergio Mattarella, del ministro della Difesa Elisabetta Trenta, del ministro dello sviluppo economico Luigi di Maio, e delle massime autorità militari, è stata varata il 25 maggio nei Cantieri di Castellammare di Stabia (Napoli) la nave Trieste, costruita da Fincantieri.

È una unità anfibia multiruolo e multifunzione della Marina militare italiana, definita dalla Trenta «perfetta sintesi della capacità di innovazione tecnologica del Paese». Lunga 214 metri e con una velocità di 25 nodi (46 km/h), ha un ponte di volo lungo 230 metri per il decollo di elicotteri, caccia F-35B a decollo corto e atterraggio verticale e convertiplani V-22 Osprey.

Può trasportare nel suo ponte-garage veicoli blindati per 1200 metri lineari. Ha al suo interno un bacino allagabile, lungo 50 metri e largo 15, che permette alla nave di operare con i più moderni mezzi anfibi della Nato.

In termini tecnici, è una nave destinata a «proiettare e sostenere, in aree di crisi, la forza da sbarco della Marina militare e la capacità nazionale di proiezione dal mare della Difesa».

In termini pratici, è una nave da assalto anfibio che, avvicinandosi alle coste di un paese, lo attacca con caccia ed elicotteri armati di bombe e missili, quindi lo invade con un battaglione di 600 uomini trasportati, con i loro armamenti pesanti, da elicotteri e mezzi di sbarco.

In altre parole, è un sistema d’arma progettato non per la difesa ma per l’attacco in operazioni belliche condotte nel quadro della «proiezione di forze» Usa/Nato a grande distanza.

La decisione di costruire la Trieste fu presa nel 2014 dal governo Renzi, presentandola quale nave militare adibita principalmente ad «attività di soccorso umanitario». Il costo della nave, a carico non del Ministero della difesa ma del Ministero dello sviluppo economico, veniva quantificato in 844 milioni di euro, nel quadro di uno stanziamento di 5.427 milioni per la costruzione, oltre che della Trieste, di altre 9 navi da guerra. Tra queste, due unità navali ad altissima velocità per incursori delle forze speciali in «contesti operativi che richiedano discrezione», ossia in operazioni belliche segrete.

Al momento del varo, il costo della Trieste è stato indicato in 1.100 milioni di euro, oltre 250 in più della spesa preventivata. Il costo finale sarà molto più alto, poiché va aggiunto quello dei caccia F-35B e degli elicotteri imbarcati, più quello di altri armamenti e sistemi elettronici di cui sarà dotata la nave nei prossimi anni. L’innovazione tecnologica in campo militare – ha sottolineato la ministra della Difesa – «deve essere supportata dalla certezza dei finanziamenti».

Ossia da continui, crescenti finanziamenti con denaro pubblico anche da parte del Ministero dello sviluppo economico, ora guidato da Luigi Di Maio.

Alla cerimonia del varo, ha promesso agli operai altri investimenti: ci sono infatti da costruire altre navi da guerra. La cerimonia del varo ha assunto ulteriore significato quando l’ordinario militare, monsignor Santo Marcianò, ha esaltato il fatto che gli operai avevano affisso sulla prua della nave una grande croce, composta da immagini sacre alle quali sono devoti, tra cui quelle di Papa Wojtyła e Padre Pio. Monsignor Marcianò ha elogiato la «forza della fede» espressa dagli operai, che ha benedetto e ringraziato per «questo segno meraviglioso che avete messo sulla nave».

È stata così varata la grande nave da guerra portata a esempio della capacità di innovazione del nostro paese, pagata dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico con i nostri soldi sottratti a investimenti produttivi e spese sociali, benedetta col segno della Croce come all’epoca delle crociate e delle conquiste coloniali.

Manlio Dinucci

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The Rockefeller Way: The Family’s Covert ‘Climate Change’ Plan

By The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, May 28, 2019

The Rockefellers are arguably the wealthiest and most powerful family in the history of the United States. For more than 100 years, they have shaped and directed America’s economic, financial, political, and public policy while simultaneously amassing one of the largest family empires in the modern era.

DHS Is Locking Immigrants in Solitary Confinement

By Naureen Shah, May 28, 2019

The stories become even more harrowing when we learn why ICE allegedly imposed solitary. NBC news reported reasons including: wearing a hand cast, sharing a consensual kiss, or needing a wheelchair. ICE reportedly put LGBTQ individuals and people with mental illness in solitary as “protective custody,” citing their own safety.

Turkish Dreams of a “Radical Islamic Annex” in Northern Syria Fade Away

By Steven Sahiounie, May 28, 2019

From the outset of the Syrian conflict, the men who carried weapons were all fighting to abolish the secular Syrian government, in order to form a new government which would be Radical Islam.

Prior to the Cold War: US Nuclear Plans Entailed Blowing Up Hundreds of Chinese, Soviet and Eastern European Cities

By Shane Quinn, May 28, 2019

On 30 August 1945, Major General Lauris Norstad dispatched a document to his superior, General Leslie Groves, outlining a total of 15 “key Soviet cities” to be struck with US atomic weapons, headed by the capital Moscow.

The Ever Dependable Bully on Embassy Row; Venezuela and Iraq Are No Longer Worlds Apart

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, May 28, 2019

The United States is still punishing Iran for the 1979 takeover of its ‘sacred’ premises, its embassy in Tehran. By contrast, when American authorities occupy another nation’s embassy there’s nothing but approval from the American public and silent acquiescence by others.

War is a Racket. Major General Smedley Butler

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, May 28, 2019

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

Palestinian Economic Development Under Zionist Settler Colonialism

By Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh, May 27, 2019

The following research article deals with the entanglement of some Palestinian capitalist interests and Zionist colonial interests inside the Israeli market and also inside the Zionist colonial settlements. It further explores the economic and political dimensions of the collaboration of a segment of the Palestinian “business elites” with the Zionist colonial project in the Palestinian colonized territories.

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The 2019 edition of the exclusive Bilderberg Meeting will take place at the Hotel Montreux Palace in the Swiss town of Montreux from Thursday to Sunday.

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It will feature Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, the head of Germany’s Christian Democrats, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and Crédit-Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam among others.

According to Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will also be among the attendees, although he is not on the official guest list on the Bildberg website.

The Swiss paper reports that Pompeo is set to sit down with Ueli Maurer. The two are tipped to discuss the situation in Iran where Switzerland represents US interests.

However, the Swiss Finance Ministry told The Local on Tuesday that no meeting was envisaged between Pompeo and Maurer.

The yearly Bilderberg talk-fest, which dates back to 1954, features a guest list of around 130 people from Europe and North America including everyone from royals to business tycoons and academics.

A highly secretive affair without a fixed agenda, the Bilderberg Meeting is regular fodder for conspiracy theorists who believe its participants act as a secret world government.

However, organisers argue the private nature of the event gives attendees the chance to hold informal discussions about major issues.

Topics up for discussion this year include climate change and sustainability, Brexit, China, Russia, the future of capitalism and the weaponization of social media.

According to the official Bilderberg website, discussions are held under the Chatham House Rule, which means participants can use any information they receive during the meeting but cannot reveal its source.

This year will be the second time the Bilderberg meeting has been held in Switzerland. In 2011, it was held in St Moritz in the country’s southeast.

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The European elections were always going to be interesting if nothing else. We’ve put lots of stats together so you can see them in a different way.

One thing is for sure – this particular vote proved only one thing – the nation cannot decide on Brexit – and that, if anything, is the takeaway message. However, everyone has a different view and position, so here are some interesting numbers.

Here are the 2016 EU referendum results in Britain on a simple question of Leave or Remain:

• LEAVE 17,410,742 or 51.89%
• REMAIN 16,141,241 or 48.11%
• Total votes 33,577,342
• Registered voters 46,500,001
• Voter turnout 72,21%

What is surprising in last weeks European elections is that given the raised passions for one side or the other, voter turnout completely collapsed from the 72.2 per cent turnout at the original 2016 UK EU referendum but remained more or less stable for the last 4 EU elections.

The chart below shows the percentage of registered UK voters who actually voted at European Parliament elections from 1979–2019, and the average turnout across the European Union.

Chart by UK Political Info

Although the Brexit party have claimed a decisive victory – and to be fair, for a single party, it was – it depends on what you are looking for in the numbers. Given the political parties position on Brexit – this is how it turned by pro/anti-Brexit votes.

The chart below shows how the Brexit Party topped polls in every country or region apart from London, which was won by the Liberal Democrats; Scotland, which was won by the SNP; and Northern Ireland, where they did not stand.

From a mapping perspective – the result seems overwhelming.

Map – BBC UK Politics

There is another side of the story though

But the maps and numbers don’t tell the whole story. There are a number of ways of looking at this result.

From here, even after looking at the maps and basic numbers – the actual statistics demonstrate only one thing (depending on your view of course) – that there is no unambiguous majority for anything when it comes to Brexit.

It was the Tories worst election result since 1832.

It was Labour’s worse share of the vote in 100 years.

SNP has a 23% increase in the percentage of votes cast over the last EU election. The result is inevitable at some point – Scotland will be leaving the union if England leaves the EU, quite possibly irrespective of what Westminster ends up doing.

6,085,174 people signed the petition to revoke article 50 a few months ago. It took three weeks to reach 6 million. Politically and in the mainstream media, nobody took any notice. Last week, 5,248,533 people voted for the Brexit Party. For the mainstream media, this 6-week old party must be followed unquestioningly on TV screens and front pages.

In 2016 17.4m people voted for Brexit. In 2019 5.2m people voted for the Brexit Party.

In contrast – According to Electoral Calculus, if last week’s vote had been a general election, the result would be:

• Conservative: 0 seats
• Labour: 93 seats
• Lib: 31 seats
• Green: 1 seat
• SNP: 56 seats
• Plaid: 5 seats
• Brexit: 446 seats
• Brexit majority 242!

And finally ….

Whilst we all fixate on Brexit it should be noted that Child homelessness has surged by 80 per cent since the Conservatives came into government in 2010, with a new household now found to be homeless every five minutes, official figures show. It’s a rise of 33 per cent in the last four years. There has been a 267 per cent rise in children living in B&B between 2010 and 2018. The number of young people who have been in B&Bs for more than six weeks is up by 440 per cent in the same period

Unfortunately, whilst Brexit sucks the life out traditional politics, millions are suffering and rapidly rising child poverty is a legacy the entire nation should be ashamed of in modern Britain.

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The Bilderberg Group will be meeting behind closed doors at the Hotel Montreux Palace, Montreux from the 30th of May to the 2nd of June, 2019.

The topics announced by the organizers for the 2019 Bilderberg meeting are:

1. A Stable Strategic Order
2. What Next for Europe?
3. Climate Change and Sustainability
4. China
5. Russia
6. The Future of Capitalism
7. Brexit
8. The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
9. The Weaponisation of Social Media
10. The Importance of Space
11. Cyber Threats

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The following review article by Stephen Lendman was originally published on Global Research in June 2009.

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Daniel Estulin has investigated and researched the Bilderberg Group’s far-reaching influence on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world’s resources and its money.

His book, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,” was published in 2005 and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that in 1954, “the most powerful men in the world met for the first time” in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, “debated the future of the world,” and decided to meet annually in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who’s who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others – some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.

Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet, and Bank of England’s Mervyn King.

For over half a century, no agenda or discussion topics became public nor is any press coverage allowed. The few invited fourth estate attendees and their bosses are sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, Estulin undertook “an investigative journey” that became his life’s work. He states:

“Slowly, one by one, I have penetrated the layers of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this withot help of ‘conscientious objectors’ from inside, as well as outside, the Group’s membership.” As a result, he keeps their names confidential.

Whatever its early mission, the Group is now “a shadow world government….threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality” very much harming the public’s welfare. In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement.

“Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public.”

Early in its history, Bilderbergers decided “to create an ‘Aristocracy of purpose’ between Europe and the United States (to reach consensus to rule the world on matters of) policy, economics, and (overall) strategy.” NATO was essential for their plans – to ensure “perpetual war (and) nuclear blackmail” to be used as necessary. Then proceed to loot the planet, achieve fabulous wealth and power, and crush all challengers to keep it.

Along with military dominance, controlling the world’s money is crucial for with it comes absolute control as the powerful 19th century Rothschild family understood. As the patriarch Amschel Rothschild once said: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.”

Bilderbergers comprise the world’s most exclusive club. No one buys their way in. Only the Group’s Steering Committee decides whom to invite, and in all cases participants are adherents to One World Order governance run by top power elites.

According to Steering Committee rules:

“the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists” or divulge anything that goes on in meetings.

Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor and communications.

Meeting procedure is by Chatham House Rules letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public. Meetings “are always frank, but do not always conclude with consensus.”

Membership consists of annual attendees (around 80 of the world’s most powerful) and others only invited occasionally because of their knowledge or involvement in relevant topics. Those most valued are asked back, and some first-timers are chosen for their possible later usefulness.

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, for example, who attended in 1991. “There, David Rockefeller told (him) why the North American Free Trade Agreement….was a Bilderberg priority and that the group needed him to support it. The next year, Clinton was elected president,” and on January 1, 1994 NAFTA took effect. Numerous other examples are similar, including who gets chosen for powerful government, military and other key positions.

Bilderberg Objectives

The Group’s grand design is for “a One World Government (World Company) with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one ‘World (Central) Bank’ using one global currency.” Their “wish list” includes:

— “one international identify (observing) one set of universal values;”

— centralized control of world populations by “mind control;” in other words, controlling world public opinion;

— a New World Order with no middle class, only “rulers and servants (serfs),” and, of course, no democracy;

— “a zero-growth society” without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;

— manufactured crises and perpetual wars;

— absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles;

— “centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;” one size fits all globally;

— using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on “world citizens;”

— expanding NAFTA and WTO globally;

— making NATO a world military;

— imposing a universal legal system; and

— a global “welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination.”

Secret Bilderberg Partners

In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is dominant. One of its 1921 founders, Edward Mandell House, was Woodrow Wilson’s chief advisor and rumored at the time to be the nation’s real power from 1913 – 1921. On his watch, the Federal Reserve Act passed in December 1913 giving money creation power to bankers, and the 16th Amendment was ratified in February creating the federal income tax to provide a revenue stream to pay for government debt service.

From its beginnings, CFR was committed to “a one-world government based on a centralized global financing system….” Today, CFR has thousands of influential members (including important ones in the corporate media) but keeps a low public profile, especially regarding its real agenda.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called it a “front organization (for) the heart of the American Establishment.” It meets privately and only publishes what it wishes the public to know. Its members are only Americans.

The Trilateral Commission (discussed below) is a similar group that “brings together global power brokers.” Founded by David Rockefeller, he’s also a leading Bilderberger and CFR Chairman Emeritus, organizations he continues to finance and support.

Their past and current members reflect their power:

— nearly all presidential candidates of both parties;

— leading senators and congressmen;

— key members of the fourth estate and their bosses; and

— top officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, defense establishment, and other leading government agencies, including state, commerce, the judiciary and treasury.

For its part, “CFR has served as a virtual employment agency for the federal government under both Democrats and Republicans.” Whoever occupies the White House, “CFR’s power and agenda” have been unchanged since its 1921 founding.

It advocates a global superstate with America and other nations sacrificing their sovereignty to a central power. CFR founder Paul Warburg was a member of Roosevelt’s “brain trust.” In 1950, his son, James, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

Later at the 1992 Bilderberg Group meeting, Henry Kissinger said:

“Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil….individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government.”

CFR planned a New World Order before 1942, and the “UN began with a group of CFR members called the Informal Agenda Group.” They drafted the original UN proposal, presented it to Franklin Roosevelt who announced it publicly the next day. At its 1945 founding, CFR members comprised over 40 of the US delegates.

According to Professor G. William Domhoff, author of Who Rules America, the CFR operates in “small groups of about twenty-five, who bring together leaders from the six conspirator categories (industrialists, financiers, ideologues, military, professional specialists – lawyers, medical doctors, etc. – and organized labor) for detailed discussions of specific topics in the area of foreign affairs.” Domhoff added:

“The Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council action stimulated by government from autonomous actions. (Its) most important sources of income are leading corporations and major foundations.” The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations to name three, and they’re directed by key corporate officials.

Dominant Media Partners

Former CBS News president Richard Salant (1961 – 64 and 1966 – 79) explained the major media’s role: “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”

CBS and other media giants control everything we see, hear and read – through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, films, and large portions of the Internet. Their top officials and some journalists attend Bilderberg meetings – on condition they report nothing.

The Rockefeller family wields enormous power, even though its reigning patriarch, David, will be 94 on June 12 and surely near the end of his dominance. However, for years “the Rockefellers (led by David) gained great influence over the media. (With it) the family gained sway over public opinion. With the pulse of public opinion, they gained deep influence in politics. And with this politics of subtle corruption, they are taking control of the nation” and now aim for total world domination.

The Bilderberger-Rockefeller scheme is to make their views “so appealing (by camouflaging them) that they become public policy (and can) pressure world leaders into submitting to the ‘needs of the Masters of the Universe.’ ” The “free world press” is their instrument to disseminate “agreed-upon propaganda.”

CFR Cabinet Control

“The National Security Act of 1947 established the office of Secretary of Defense.” Since then, 14 DOD secretaries have been CFR members.

Since 1940, every Secretary of State, except James Byrnes, has been a CFR member and/or Trilateral Commission (TC) one.

For the past 80 years, “Virtually every key US National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor has been a CFR member.

Nearly all top generals and admirals have been CFR members.

Many presidential candidates were/are CFR members, including Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter (also a charter TC member), George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and John McCain.

Numerous CIA directors were/are CFR members, including Richard Helmes, James Schlesinger, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta.

Many Treasury Secretaries were/are CFR members, including Douglas Dillon, George Schultz, William Simon, James Baker, Nicholas Brady, Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner.

When presidents nominate Supreme Court candidates, the CFR’s “Special Group, Secret Team” or advisors vet them for acceptability. Presidents, in fact, are told who to appoint, including designees to the High Court and most lower ones.

Programming the Public Mind

According to sociologist Hadley Cantril in his 1967 book, The Human Dimension – Experiences in Policy Research:

Government “Psycho-political operations are propaganda campaigns designed to create perpetual tension and to manipulate different groups of people to accept the particular climate of opinion the CFR seeks to achieve in the world.”

Canadian writer Ken Adachi (1929 – 1989) added:

“What most Americans believe to be ‘Public Opinion’ is in reality carefully crafted and scripted propaganda designed to elicit a desired behavioral response from the public.”

And noted Australian academic and activist Alex Carey (1922 – 1988) explained the three most important 20th century developments – “The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

Web of Control

Numerous think tanks, foundations, the major media, and other key organizations are staffed with CFR members. Most of its life-members also belong to the TC and Bilderberg Group, operate secretly, and wield enormous power over US and world affairs.

The Rockefeller-Founded Trilateral Commission (TC)

On page 405 of his Memoirs, David Rockfeller wrote:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

In alliance with Bilderbergers, the TC also “plays a vital role in the New World Order’s scheme to use wealth, concentrated in the hands of the few, to exert world control.” TC members share common views and all relate to total unchallengeable global dominance.

Founded in 1973 and headquartered in Washington, its powerful US, EU and East Asian members seek its operative founding goal – a “New International Economic Order,” now simply a “New World Order” run by global elites from these three parts of the world with lesser members admitted from other countries.

According to TC’s web site, “each regional group has a chairman and deputy chairman, who all together constitute the leadership of the Committee. The Executive Committee draws together a further 36 individuals from the wider membership,” proportionately representing the US, EU, and East Asia in its early years, now enlarged to be broadly global.

Committee members meet several times annually to discuss and coordinate their work. The Executive Committee chooses members, and at any time around 350 belong for a three-year renewable period. Everyone is a consummate insider with expertise in business, finance, politics, the military, or the media, including past presidents, secretaries of state, international bankers, think tank and foundation executives, university presidents and selected academics, and former senators and congressmen, among others.

Although its annual reports are available for purchase, its inner workings, current goals, and operations are secret – with good reason. Its objectives harm the public so mustn’t be revealed. Trilaterals over Washington author Antony Sutton wrote:

“this group of private citizens is precisely organized in a manner that ensures its collective views have significant impact on public policy.”

In her book, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Holly Sklar wrote:

Powerful figures in America, Europe, and East Asia let “the rich….safeguard the interests of Western capitalism in an explosive world – probably by discouraging protectionism, nationalism, or any response that would pit the elites of one against the elites of another,” in their common quest for global dominance.

Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski (TC’s co-founder) wrote in his Between Two Ages – America’s Role in the Technotronic Era:

“people, governments and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations. (The Constitution is) inadequate….the old framework of international politics, with their sphere of influence….the fiction of sovereignty….is clearly no longer compatible with reality….”

TC today is now global with members from countries as diverse as Argentina, Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Brazil, Turkey, China and Russia. In his Trilaterals Over America, Antony Sutton believes that TC’s aim is to collaborate with Bilderbergers and CFR in “establishing public policy objectives to be implemented by governments worldwide.” He added that “Trilateralists have rejected the US Constitution and the democratic political process.” In fact, TC was established to counter a “crisis in democracy” – too much of it that had to be contained.

An official TC report was fearful about “the increased popular participation in and control over established social, political, and economic institutions and especially a reaction against the concentration of power of Congress and of state and local government.”

To address this, media control was essential to exert “restraint on what newspapers may publish (and TV and radio broadcast).” Then according to Richard Gardner in the July 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs (a CFR publication):

CFR’s leadership must make “an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece,” until the very notion disappears from public discourse.

Bilderberg/CFR/Trilateralist success depends on finding “a way to get us to surrender our liberties in the name of some common threat or crisis. The foundations, educational institutions, and research think tanks supported by (these organizations) oblige by financing so-called ‘studies’ which are then used to justify their every excess. The excuses vary, but the target is always individual liberty. Our liberty” and much more.

Bilderbergers, Trilateralists and CFR members want “an all-encompassing monopoly” – over government, money, industry, and property that’s “self-perpetuating and eternal.” In Confessions of a Monopolist (1906), Frederick C. Howe explained its workings in practice:

“The rules of big business: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you. So long as we see all international revolutionaries and all international capitalists as implacable enemies of one another, then we miss a crucial point….a partnership between international monopoly capitalism and international revolutionary socialism is for their mutual benefit.”

In the Rockefeller File, Gary Allen wrote:

“By the late nineteenth century, the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to gain a monopoly was to say it was for the ‘public good’ and ‘public interest.’ “

David Rockefeller learned the same thing from his father, John D., Jr. who learned it from his father, John D. Sr. They hated competition and relentlessly strove to eliminate it – for David on a global scale through a New World Order.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Trilateralists and CFR members collaborated on the latter’s “1980 Project,” the largest ever CFR initiative to steer world events “toward a particular desirable future outcome (involving) the utter disintegration of the economy.” Why so is the question?

Because by the 1950s and 1960s, worldwide industrial growth meant more competition. It was also a model to be followed, and “had to be strangled in the cradle” or at least greatly contained. In America as well beginning in the 1980s. The result has been a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, shrinkage of the middle class, and plan for its eventual demise.

The North American Union (NAU)

The idea emerged during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. David Rockefeller, George Schultz and Paul Volker told the president that Canada and America could be politically and economically merged over the next 15 years except for one problem – French-speaking Quebec. Their solution – elect a Bilderberg-friendly prime minister, separate Quebec from the other provinces, then make Canada America’s 51st state. It almost worked, but not quite when a 1995 secession referendum was defeated – 50.56% to 49.44%, but not the idea of merger.

At a March 23, 2005 Waco, Texas meeting, attended by George Bush, Mexico’s Vincente Fox, and Canada’s Paul Martin, the Security and and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was launched, also known as the North American Union (NAU). It was a secretive Independent Task Force of North America agreement – a group organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, and CFR with the following aims:

— circumventing the legislatures of three countries and their constitutions;

— suppressing public knowledge or consideration; and

— proposing greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social, and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise non-debatable, not voted on agreements to be binding and unchangeable.

In short – a corporate coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by hard line militarization to suppress opposition.

If enacted, it will create a borderless North America, corporate controlled, without barriers to trade or capital flows for business giants, mainly US ones and much more – America’s access to vital resources, especially oil and Canada’s fresh water.

Secretly, over 300 SPP initiatives were crafted to harmonize the continent’s policies on energy, food, drugs, security, immigration, manufacturing, the environment, and public health along with militarizing three nations for enforcement.

SPP represents another step toward the Bilderberg/Trilateralist/CFR goal for World Government, taking it one step at a time. A “United Europe” was another, the result of various treaties and economic agreements:

— the December 1951 six-nation European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC);

— the March 1957 six-nation Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC);

also the European Atomic Energy Commission (EAEC) by a second Treaty of Rome;

— the October 1957 European Court of Justice to settle regional trade disputes;

— the May 1960 seven-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA);

— the July 1967 European Economic Community (EEC) merging the ECSC, EAEC and EEC together in one organization;

— the 1968 European Customs Union to abolish duties and establish uniform imports taxing among EEC nations;

— the 1978 European Currency Unit (ECU);

— the February 1986 Single European Act revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome; it established the objective of forming a Common Market by December 31, 1992;

— the February 1992 Maastricht Treaty creating the EU on November 1, 1993; and

— the name euro was adopted in December 1995; it was introduced in January 1999 replacing the European Currency Unit (ECU); euros began circulating on January 2002; they’re now the official currency of 16 of the 27 EU states.

Over half a century, the above steps cost EU members their sovereignty “as some 70 to 80 per cent of the laws passed in Europe involve just rubber stamping of regulations already written by nameless bureaucrats in ‘working groups’ in Brussels or Luxembourg.”

The EU and NAU share common features:

— advocacy from a influential spokesperson;

— an economic and later political union;

— hard line security, and for Europe, ending wars on the continent between EU member states;

— establishment of a collective consciousness in place of nationalism;

— the blurring of borders and creation of a “supra-government,” a superstate;

— secretive arrangements to mask real objectives; and

— the creation of a common currency and eventual global one.

Steps Toward a North American Union

— the October 4, 1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Canada, finalized the previous year;

— at the 1991 Bilderberg meeting, David Rockefeller got governor Bill Clinton’s support for NAFTA if he became president;

— on January 1, 1994, with no debate under “fast-track” rules, Congress approved WTO legislation;

— in December 1994 at the first Summit of the Americas, 34 Hemispheric leaders committed their nations to a Free Trade of the Americas agreement (FTAA) by 2005 – so far unachieved;

— on July 4, 2000, Mexican president Vincente Fox called for a North American common market in 20 years;

— on February 2001, the White House published a joint statement from George Bush and Vincente Fox called the “Guanajuato Proposal;” it was for a US-Canada-Mexico prosperity partnership (aka North American Union);

— in September 2001, Bush and Fox agreed to a “Partnership for Prosperity Initiative;”

— the September 11, 2001 attack gave cover to including “security” as part of a future partnership;

— on October 7, 2001, a CFA meeting highlighted “The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks; for the first time, “security” became part of a future “partnership for prosperity;” also, Canada was to be included in a “North American” agreement;

— in 2002, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) was established in Montreal “to address the issues raised by North American integration as well as identify new ideas and strategies to reinforce the North American region;”

— in January 2003, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE – composed of 150 top CEOs) launched the “North American Security and Prosperity Initiative” calling for continental integration;

— in April 2004, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin announced the nation’s first ever national security policy called Securing an Open Society;

— on October 15, 2004, CFR established an Independent Task Force on the Future of North America – for a future continental union;

— in March 2005, a CFR report titled Creating a North American Community called for continental integration by 2010 “to enhance, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans;” and

— on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, America, Canada and Mexico leaders launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) – aka North American Union (NAU).

Secretive negotiations continue. Legislative debate is excluded, and public inclusion and debate are off the table. In May 2005, the CFR Independent Task Force on the Future of North America published a follow-up report titled Building a North American Community – proposing a borderless three-nation union by 2010.

In June and July 2005, the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) passed the Senate and House establishing corporate-approved trade rules to further impoverish the region and move a step closer to continental integration.

In March 2006, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was created at the second SPP summit in Cancun, Mexico. Composed of 30 top North American CEOs, it serves as an official trilateral SPP working group.

Secret business and government meetings continue so there’s no way to confirm SPP’s current status or if Barack Obama is seamlessly continuing George Bush’s agenda. In an earlier article, this writer said:

SPP efforts paused during the Bush to Obama transition, but “deep integration” plans remain. Canada’s Fraser Institute proposed renaming the initiative the North American Standards and Regulatory Area (NASRA) to disguise its real purpose. It said the “SPP brand” is tarnished so re-branding is essential – to fool the public until it’s too late to matter.

Bilderbergers, Trilaterists, and CFR leaders back it as another step toward global integration and won’t “stop until the entire world is unified under the auspices and the political umbrella of a One World Company, a nightmarish borderless world run by the world’s most powerful clique” – comprised of key elitist members of these dominant organizations.

In April 2007, the Transatlantic Economic Council was established between America and the EU to:

— create an “official international governmental body – by executive fiat;

— harmonize economic and regulatory objectives;

— move toward a Transatlantic Common Market; and

— a step closer to One World Government run by the world’s most powerful corporate interests.

Insights into the 2009 Bilderberg Group Meeting

From May 14 – 17, Bilderbergers held their annual meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, and according to Daniel Estulin have dire plans for global economies.

According to his pre-meeting sources, they’re divided on two alternatives:

“Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty (or) an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Other agenda items included:

— “the future of the US dollar and US economy;”

— continued deception about green shoots signaling an end to recession and improving economy later in the year;

— suppressing the fact that bank stress tests were a sham and were designed for deception, not an accurate assessment of major banks’ health;

— projecting headlined US unemployment to hit 14% by year end – way above current forecasts and meaning the true number will be double, at minimum, with all uncounted categories included; and

— a final push to get the Lisbon Treaty passed for pan-European (EU) adoption of neoliberal rules, including greater privatizations, fewer worker rights and social benefits, open border trade favoring developed over emerging states, and greater militarization to suppress civil liberties and human rights.

After the meeting, Estulin got a 73-page report on what was discussed. He noted that “One of Bilderberg’s primary concerns….is the danger that their zeal to reshape the world by engineering chaos (toward) their long term agenda could cause the situation to spiral out of control and eventually lead to a scenario where Bilderberg and the global elite in general are overwhelmed by events and end up losing their control over the planet.”

Estulin also noted some considerable disagreement between “hardliners” wanting a “dramatic decline and a severe, short-term depression (versus others) who think that things have gone too far” so that “the fallout from the global economic cataclysm” can’t be known, may be greater than anticipated, and may harm Bilderberger interests. Also, “some European bankers (expressed great alarm over their own fate and called the current) high wire act ‘unsustainable.’ ”

There was a combination of agreement and fear that the situation remains dire and the worst of the crisis lies ahead, mainly because of America’s extreme debt level that must be resolved to produce a healthy, sustainable recovery.

Topics also included:

— establishing a Global Treasury Department and Global Central Bank, possibly partnered with or as part of the IMF;

— a global currency;

— destruction of the dollar through what longtime market analyst Bob Chapman calls “a stealth default on (US) debt by continuing to issue massive amounts of money and credit and in the process devaluing the dollar,” a process he calls “fraud;”

— a global legal system;

— exploiting the Swine Flu scare to create a WHO global department of health; and

— the overall goal of a global government and the end of national sovereignty.

In the past, Estulin’s sources proved accurate. Earlier, he predicted the housing crash and 2007 – 2008 financial market decline, preceded by the kind of financial crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers collapse. Watch for further updates from him as new information leaks out on what the world’s power elites have planned going forward.

Estulin will be the featured guest on The Global Research News Hour Tuesday, June 2. He can be heard live or afterwards through the program archive.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre of Research for Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

From the beginning of his campaign for president, Donald Trump claimed that he was going to build a wall along the southern border. He said “nobody builds walls better than me.” He said the wall would be “big” and “beautiful.” He said someone else would pay for it. And he said it would be built so fast that “your head would spin.”

Last night, for the first time, a federal judge made clear to President Trump he couldn’t get his wall by illegally diverting taxpayer money.

The judge’s ruling comes in an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC). Together, the Sierra Club and SBCC represent the communities who live in, protect, and treasure the lands and communities along our southern border. For years, these communities have engaged in the democratic process and successfully persuaded their congressional representatives to deny President Trump funding to build his wall.

Our lawsuit centers on the question of whether the president abused his power to divert funds for a border wall Congress denied him. Unfortunately for President Trump, the Constitution is clear on the matter: only Congress has the power to decide how taxpayer funds are spent. And Congress, like border communities, said no to the President’s wall.

Congress didn’t bow to Trump’s pressure even after he caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history over his demands for billions of dollars for his wall. Congress allocated only a fraction of the money that Trump demanded, and imposed restrictions on where and how quickly any border barriers could be built.

In a blatant abuse of power meant to circumvent Congress, President Trump declared a national emergency on February 15, 2019, and announced he would illegally divert $6.7 billion from military construction and other accounts for the border wall project.

From the beginning, the emergency was obviously a sham. Trump said as much himself when he declared the emergency, saying he “didn’t need to do this” but he’d prefer to build the wall “much faster.” He added that he declared a national emergency because he was “not happy” that Congress “skimped” on the wall by denying him the billions he demanded.

Despite this, the Trump administration tried to argue in court last Friday that Congress never actually “denied” President Trump the billions of dollars he is now trying to take from the military. The court rejected the administration’s argument, reminding the administration that “the reality is that Congress was presented with—and declined to grant—a $5.7 billion request for border barrier construction.”

The court’s ruling blocks the sections of wall that the Trump administration announced would be built with military pay and pension funds. It also invites us to ask the court to block additional projects as they are announced in the future. The judge emphasized the government’s commitment to inform the court immediately about future decisions to build.

It may be easy to ridicule President Trump’s desperation for a border wall — an absurd and xenophobic campaign promise for which he has only himself to blame. But as pointless and wasteful as it may be, Trump’s campaign promise now threatens to cause irreparable and real damage to our constitutional checks and balances, the rule of law, border communities, and the environment.

The wall is part of an exclusionary agenda that President Trump has targeted, over and over, at people of color. From his notorious Muslim Ban, to his efforts to eliminate protections for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, courts have found“evidence that President Trump harbors an animus against non-white, non-European” immigrants. Trump has repeatedly justified his wall by lying about border communities, falsely claiming that America needs a wall.

Border communities know firsthand that walls are dangerous and wasteful. They divide neighborhoods, worsen dangerous flooding, destroy lands and wildlife, and waste resources. As our clients explained to the court, “we are a community that is safe, that supports migrants, that works well together and supports one another, that is worthy of existence.”  What border communities truly need is infrastructure and investment, not militarization and isolation.

The court’s order is a vindication of border communities’ advocacy for themselves, and of our Constitution’s separation of powers. As the court wrote, “Congress’s ‘absolute’ control over federal expenditures—even when that control may frustrate the desires of the Executive Branch regarding initiatives it views as important—is not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one.”

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Dror Ladin, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project

Featured image is from ACLU

In 2012, I visited the federal supermax prison ADX Florence in Colorado and spoke with men living in solitary confinement. I listened closely to their stories of anguish, but I could not understand how they survived it. They told me of the horror of being trapped in a small room, without access to fresh air or sunlight, for at least 22 hours a day—alone, afraid, and not knowing when it would end. I learned that people in solitary confinement talk to the walls, to themselves, to no one — sometimes they stop talking altogether.

Those are the types of horrors we now know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is inflicting on immigrants, thanks to the courage of whistleblower Ellen Gallagher. This week, multiple news outlets reported government documents detailing 8,488 cases of solitary confinement. In half the cases, solitary lasted longer than 15 days — the point at which some of its psychological harms may become irreversible and it can amount to torture, as well as a violation of international standards outlined in the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules.

The stories become even more harrowing when we learn why ICE allegedly imposed solitary. NBC news reported reasons including: wearing a hand cast, sharing a consensual kiss, or needing a wheelchair. ICE reportedly put LGBTQ individuals and people with mental illness in solitary as “protective custody,” citing their own safety.

The reports are replete with allegations that, if true, suggest that ICE repeatedly violated its own 2014 directive on solitary confinement.

At the time, the ACLU welcomed that directive as a much-needed step forward, as it required that solitary confinement occur “only when necessary.” Except in disciplinary cases, the directive requires that solitary be imposed “for the briefest term and under the least restrictive conditions practicable.” Individuals may not be placed in solitary based solely on their physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity (among other bases). And solitary can only be imposed as a form of discipline after a panel determines the detainee “committed serious misconduct” and “when alternative dispositions would inadequately regulate detainee behavior.” Instead of following its directive, however, ICE “uses isolation as a go-to tool, rather than a last resort,” The Intercept concluded.

If  ICE has repeatedly flouted its own rules on solitary, it should come as no surprise. ICE and its peer agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), have egregious records of allowing officials to commit abuses and endanger lives, often with impunity.

This week 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vazquez died in CBP custody in Texas one day after being diagnosed with influenza. He reportedly had traveled there to reunite with family and support his siblings, including his brother with special needs. Only three days prior to his death, the ACLU Border Rights Center and ACLU of Texas wrote a complaint to the DHS Inspector General describing shocking conditions in CBP detention: Children and their parents forced to sleep outdoors through extreme heat and rain, in puddles of water, given only paper-thin Mylar sheets to shield them from the elements; Border Patrol agents ignoring or denying requests for medical care, including for infants and kids.

And yet the immigration detention machine churns on. This week ICE detention numbers spiked at 52,398 people—an apparent all-time high, and far above the level of 45,000 that Congress authorized earlier this year.

The Trump administration has asked Congress for billions more in enforcement funds for CBP and ICE. At a hearing this week, Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan warned that without more funds, it would be difficult for DHS to prevent “the children being put at risk.” He also asked for new legal authorities to detain families for longer.

Providing an abusive agency more money and authority so that it will stop committing abuses makes no sense. It’s like donating to a corrupt politician, in the hope that it will stop her from yielding to the temptation to be corrupt.

Immigration detention is expensive, inhumane and unnecessary. Instead of being hostage to the Trump administration’s ever-increasing demands, Congress should press the administration to reduce detention and revive alternatives such as the Family Case Management Program, in partnership with community-based organizations, for individuals who need case management support.

Congress should also pass the Dignity For Detained Immigrants Act, a landmark detention reform bill. One key provision: It requires the DHS Office of Inspector General to carry out unannounced inspections of every DHS detention site, and forces DHS to promptly investigate detainee deaths.

Policymakers should be knocking on the doors of every detention site in the nation. We know horrific things have gone on there. Unless they are exposed, and ICE and its contractors held accountable, it’s all too likely the abuses will continue.

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Naureen Shah, Senior Advocacy and Policy Counsel

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Russia’s dispatch of specialists to the Congo Republic (Congo-Brazzaville) in order to maintain military equipment completes Moscow’s plan of creating a corridor of influence across the continent from the Sudanese Red Sea coast to the Congolese Atlantic one via the Central African Republic, which therefore greatly increases the chances that it’ll ultimately succeed with its 21st-century grand strategy of becoming the supreme Afro-Eurasian “balancing” force in the New Cold War.

The “African Transversal”

Most observers missed it because it wasn’t given much media attention at the time, but Russia and the Congo Republic (Congo-Brazzaville, henceforth referred to simply as the Congo) signed an important deal last week for dispatching specialists to the African country in order to maintain the military equipment that Moscow sold it over the decades. While seemingly nothing more than a technical agreement, it actually completes Moscow’s plan of creating a corridor of influence across the continent (the “African Transversal”) from the Sudanese Red Sea coast to the Congolese Atlantic one via the Central African Republic (CAR) where a small contingent of Russian troops are reportedly working with Wagner’s mercenaries under UNSC approval in order to stabilize the war-torn but resource-rich country. Put another way, Russia is now much more powerfully positioned to succeed with its 21st-century grand strategy of becoming the supreme Afro-Eurasian “balancing” force in the New Cold War if it can successfully export its “Democratic Security” model of countering Hybrid Warfare to the rest of the continent.

Required Reading

The reader is probably unaware of what this all means since most people haven’t been following Russia’s “Pivot to Africa” over the past year and a half, which is why the reader is strongly encouraged to skim through the author’s following pieces in order to obtain a better understanding of the larger dynamics involved or at the very least read the one-sentence summaries below each of the articles:

• 16 January, 2018: “The Changing Foreign Policy Trajectories Of African States”

New Cold War pressure from the US and China is leading to the redivision of Africa into “spheres of influence” between the many competing Great Powers, which nevertheless provides Russia — which has been largely left out of this game until now — with the chance to carve out its own military-strategic niche there in order to complement the activities of its Chinese and Turkish partners and increase its overall value to each of them.

• 18 January, 2018: “Russia Might ‘Pivot To Africa’ With ‘Mercenaries’”

The reported involvement of the Wager private military company in CAR could enable Moscow to cost-effectively stabilize the country in exchange for lucrative extraction contracts, which could lead to the creation of an exportable model for securing China’s Silk Road investments in the continent and therefore increasing Russia’s strategic importance vis-a-vis its main Great Power partner.

• 7 May, 2018: “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”

Russia aspires to become the supreme “balancing” force in 21s-century Afro-Eurasia through a combination of creative diplomatic and military interventions aimed at reversing the chaotic consequences of the US’ Hybrid Wars in the Eastern Hemisphere and facilitating political solutions to regional crises, but its main shortcoming is that it hasn’t properly explained its grand strategy to the international audience.

• 9 June, 2018: “Russia’s Making Some Smart Moves In The Central African Republic”

As Russia began to make progress in successfully stabilizing CAR, many opportunities have emerged for it to replicate some of its experiences from the Syrian intervention in order to sustain its strategic gains in the African state, further allowing it to perfect its new military-diplomatic model and increasing the odds of exporting it elsewhere.

• 2 August, 2018: “UN Update On Russia’s Military Mission In The Central African Republic”

A UN report released last summer provided some valuable authoritative information about the success that Russia’s military mission in CAR had up until that point, which also importantly touched upon some specific details of its deployment and a few of the challenges that still remain for bringing peace to the conflict-beleaguered country.

• 17 October, 2018: “The Chinese-Indian ‘Great Game’ In East Africa’”

China and India are poised to intensify their competition in East Africa through their Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) hemispheric integrational megaprojects, respectively, which while diminishing the prospects for a grand convergence between them that strengthens multipolarity, could nevertheless increase Russia’s irreplaceable “balancing” role between its two main Asian partners.

• 8 February, 2019: “The US Is More Africa Of Losing Africa To Russia Than To China”

US concerns about Russia’s growing influence in Africa are somewhat valid even if Moscow’s military activity there is officially misportrayed by the American authorities since the country’s geopolitical rival has proven itself more than capable of doing the hitherto politically impossible by stabilizing CAR, which makes Washington fear that Moscow will use what it learned to protect China’s African Silk Road investments from Hybrid War too.

• 14 March, 2019: “Has The World Been Ignoring An Almost Decade-Long ‘African Spring’?”

Unbeknownst to all but the closest observers, Africa has been experiencing an almost decade-long spree of non-electoral regime changes all across the continent, which has raised the alarm of “legacy” leaders in places such as the geo-pivotal Congo and therefore increased demand all across Africa for the “Democratic Security” model that Moscow’s perfecting in the CAR.

Taken together, the prevailing trend is that Russia has been so wildly successful in implementing its low-cost and low-commitment “Democratic Security” model in CAR that many other African countries are now more than eager to have Moscow share its priceless state-stabilization experiences with them in exchange for valuable extraction contracts, which could lead to Russia becoming the vanguard defender of their Silk Roads.

The Threat To Françafrique

Being better aware of Russia’s grand strategic aims in Africa, the reader can now appreciate the genius behind  Moscow’s latest military move in the Congo. This geo-pivotal country used to be a close Soviet ally during the Old Cold War years when it was ruled by a Marxist-Leninist government, and nowadays it’s at the center of several regional fault lines, something that its long-serving leader Denis Sassou-Nguesso made sure to remind Putin of during their face-to-face meeting last week. Going clockwise, the Congo abuts CAR, the perennially unstable Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the oil-rich Angolan exclave of Cabinda that’s occasionally hit by separatist violence, coup-threatened Gabon, and doubly Hybrid War-afflictedCameroon that’s currently suffering simultaneous Angolophone separatist and Boko Haram destabilizations. It’s likely with an eye to having Russia help stabilize this strategic space through its “Democratic Security” model that Sassou-Nguesso told Putin that his country can help Africa build a new regional security system.

Russia’s “African Transversal” through Sudan-CAR-Congo significantly cuts the continent into almost two equal halves of influence that roughly correspond to the Western sphere where French and EU interests are predominant and the Eastern one where Chinese and Indian one are poised to compete, therefore positioning Moscow right in the center the new “Scramble for Africa”. Not only that, but it also allows Russia to export its “Democratic Security” model to the states adjacent to its “African Transversal” in the French/EU and Chinese/Indian “spheres of influence” that are at the highest risk of internal conflict (e.g. Cameroon/Chad and the DRC/Ethiopia), further increasing its “balancing” importance for both of them. In addition, the new non-aligned movement (“Neo-NAM”) that Russia might be in the process of assembling to increase the odds of reaching a “New Detente” could very easily incorporate its growing number of African partners who are looking for a “third way” between the West and China in each respective “sphere of influence”.

In the African context, the Russian-led “Neo-NAM” would be more to France’s detriment than China’s because Paris’ neo-colonial policy of Françafrique stands the most to lose from the diversification of its partners’ Great Power patrons. It’s worthwhile keeping in mind that two of the three “African Transversal” countries are part of Françafrique and use the Paris-issued “Central African Franc” as their national currency, which could gradually change if Russia encourages CAR and the Congo to use rubles in bilateral extraction, military, and other contracts instead in order to strengthen its currency and increase the chances that its investments there will be recycled back into its own economy through the creation of a complex system of economic-strategic interdependence with time. That vision is still a far way’s off from hapening, but the fact remains that it’s credible enough of a scenario to make France afraid for the future of Françafrique if Russia’s “Democratic Security” gains in and around the “African Transversal” remain unchecked.

“Red October”

Like any globally assertive Great Power and following in its Soviet superpower’s footsteps, Russia wants to institutionalize its influence abroad and especially in Africa, which is why it’s hosting its first-ever all-inclusive Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi this October in order to solidify its newfound gains and diversify them across the board. Russia’s “Democratic Security” model laid the basis for its “Pivot to Africa” through the newly created “African Transversal” that it carved out through these means in connecting the Red Sea and Atlantic Ocean coasts through Sudan-CAR-Congo, and now it wants to build upon its strategic successes by comprehensively branching out into all other spheres. “Military diplomacy” simply won’t suffice for sustaining its strategic gains after the US announced that it’s considering sanctioning all of Russia’s military partners across the world, so Moscow needs to urgently diversify its partnerships with the continent’s many countries in order to incentivize them into resisting the US’ forthcoming pressure campaign.

It can foreseeably do this by combining its “Democratic Security” model with real-sector economic benefits such as infrastructure (and especially railway) investments, free trade deals, educational support, low-interest loans, and diplomatic support at the UN in order to create an attractive enough package to get them to reconsider going along with the US’ demands. Dealing with African countries on a bilateral basis in this respect is one thing, but entering into continental-wide Russian-African cooperation through the upcoming summit is something altogether qualitatively different, which can help overcome Russia’s soft power shortcomings touched upon in the previously mentioned piece about its grand strategy if it get its many current and prospective partners to better understand the role that it envisions itself playing in stabilizing their affairs throughout the course of the ongoing New Cold War.

The “African Transversal” is the staging point for expanding Russian influence throughout the rest of the continent in its French/EU and Chinese/Indian “spheres of influence”, with CAR’s impressive stabilization held up as the prime example of what a strategic partnership with Russia is capable of achieving. This is extremely attractive for the many countries confronting the threat of the “African Spring” spreading into their borders or uncontrollably continuing after it already succeeded there. The EU (apart from France) might also appreciate the effect that Russia’s “Democratic Security” model could have in preventing a Migrant Crisis 2.0 from exploding in West Africa, just like China might see the need to contract Russia’s services in order to protect its Silk Road and help the People’s Republic avoid what many believe will be its inevitable “mission creep” in this respect. It’s really only the US and France (which are one another’s “special partners“) that fear the spread of Russian influence throughout Africa, and those two could conceivably pose serious challenges to Moscow.

Concluding Thoughts

Russia’s “African Transversal” is complete after the military deal that it just sealed with the Congo, which therefore gives it the entire summer to solidify its strategic gains in the cross-continental tri-state space between that country, CAR, and Sudan prior to this October’s first-ever Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi. Just as importantly, the Congo is the second country that Russia is working very hard to “poach” from France’s  Françafrique neo-colonial “sphere of influence”, which certainly puts it at odds with Paris and its “special partners” in Washington but might enable Moscow to leverage these optics to its soft power advantage if it’s skillful enough to tap into the region’s ever-present decolonization hopes that were never met in practice after independence. Russia would therefore be wise to use the upcoming Sochi Summit to not only unveil a comprehensive continental-wide “balancing” strategy that diversifies away from its erstwhile “Democratic Security” dependence into the real-sector economic sphere, but to also channel its Soviet-era reputation of supporting decolonization and anti-imperialist processes in order to maximize the appeal of the Neo-NAM.

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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.

From the day the war began in March 2011 in Deraa, the political ideology of Radical Islam has been center stage.  From the outset of the Syrian conflict, the men who carried weapons were all fighting to abolish the secular Syrian government, in order to form a new government which would be Radical Islam.  They saw their Christian neighbors as ‘heathens’ that needed to be slaughtered.  They were not interested in freedom or democracy; they were fighting to cleanse Syria of anyone who wasn’t like them. 

Erdogan, the Turkish leader, was tasked by his NATO co-signers with the job of being the transit point of international jihadists pouring in to bolster the failing Free Syrian Army (FSA), and the source of supplies and weapons for the NATO-backed ‘boots on the ground’, who hailed from the 4 corners of the globe.  Turkey benefited immensely from the flow of weapons, cash, chemicals, terrorists, and from the huge amount of humanitarian aid pouring in for Syrian refugees.

Erdogan didn’t have to worry about Turkish citizens complaining about Radical Islam, because his ruling AK Party was based on hard-core Islam and was in the process of turning secular Turkey into a Muslim Brotherhood safe haven, and he had a policy of silencing critics.

Erdogan developed a dream of annexing the Northern strip of Syria. His dream was about to be realized, but the Idliboffensive began recently, and his dream is turning into a nightmare.  He had supported the FSA and all the terrorists, whom he calls ‘rebels’, regardless that they are Al Qaeda affiliates, and many were associates of ISIS. He is now sending re-enforcements to Idlib, supplied with sophisticated weapons. However, the terrorists he commands are not using aircraft, except for drones.

A recently penned article by a pro-Erdogan media, carried a headline wondering if Turkey was going to lose Idlib; which gives an impression that the Turkish government felt they had a right to Idlib, and clearly describes how the Turkish President views the Syrian President.

The civilian population of Idlib is characterized by western media as being in fear of the Syrian and Russian military advancing.  The NATO nations at the UN are always invoking the name of the civilians of Idlib as if they were all of one mind, and all of them wanted to remain in the hands of the terrorists.

Selma (name changed for security concerns) spoke to her sister in Latakia and said “Every time we hear tanks, we are praying it is the Army coming to free us.  My kids and I have our white flags ready.  We might be lucky and get spared, or we might die in the battles, but regardless we will end up free.”  Selma’s sister re-told stories of suffering, deprivation and living under Islamic Law.

Selma recounted how in the past the FSA, supported by America, had been easier to live under, except they extorted money, and made a profit off of their power.  However, as the years wore on, the FSA became extinct and the foreign Jihadists were in control of everything.  They didn’t all speak Arabic and did not practice a recognizable religion, but some new fanatical cult which utilized fear to subjugate the civilians.  Every young girl or woman was a coveted sexual target.  Idlib was not part of Syria: it had become an Islamic State.

The Russian-Turkish agreement signed at Sochi in 2018 meant for Erdogan to physically remove the terrorists away from the civilians.  The agreement was never a ceasefire or a no-conflict zone.  It was a tool in order to ensure the unarmed civilians would not be harmed when the Russian forces and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) fought to eliminate the Al Qaeda linked terrorists.  In the end, it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, as Erdogan never made any attempt to remove terrorists, and instead built numerous out-posts inside Idlib, thus in effect annexing the territory to Turkey, and all with explicit coordination among the Al Qaeda aligned groups.

Presently, the Syrian Arab Army under the command of General Suhel Al-Hassan and his elite “Tiger Forces” are pushing forward in an attempt to regain Idlib, free the civilians, and exterminate the terrorists.  This crescendo was seen previously in Bab Amro, East Aleppo, and East Ghouta.

UN Security Council Resolution 2249 of 2015, “UN member states are called upon to eradicate the safe havens established over Syria/Iraq by ISIL (Islamic State/ISIS), the Al Nusra Front (Syria’s AQ franchise), and ‘all other entities associated with Al Qaeda.’” All eyes are on Idlib as the finale approaches.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

Featured image is from InfoRos

The time was 1917, and for anyone keen to impress us about any liberal feelings on the part of President Woodrow Wilson, the following should be said.  Having deemed the United States too proud to fight, he proceeded to commit the very same to the first global industrial conflict of its kind and overturn every reservation against backing the Franco-German alliance.  Initial constipation and weary restraint gave way to a full-blooded commitment against Kaiserism.

In doing so, the nasty instrument known as the Espionage Act of 1917 came into being, a product of disdain in the face of the First Amendment’s solemn words that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

The Espionage Act, also known as 18 USC 793, has been a bother to a good number in the legal profession. It was, according to Charles P. Pierce, “the immortal gift of that half-nutty professor, Woodrow Wilson, and his truly awful attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer.”  Even then, Wilson was disappointed, given that the final document was somewhat more diluted from its initial concentrate featuring wide-ranging press censorship and the targeting of anarchists.

In the words of law academic Stephen Vladeck, the law “draws no distinction between the leaker, the recipient of the leak, or the 100^th person to redistribute, retransmit, or even retain the national defence information that by that point is already in the public domain.”

The overstretch with prosecuting Julian Assange is comprehensible, in so far as security concerns are a psychosis, a junkie’s fascination with secrecy.  Applied to Chelsea Manning in 2011, it led to the imposition of a 35-year sentence that was subsequently commuted.  The superseding indictment against Assange and WikiLeaks goes even further in in its inventive paranoia, seeking to implicate the publisher as instigator and, effectively, the entire process of distribution.  Seek, receive, and be damned.

While Assange will never fit neatly into any categories of obedience and observance, the crude scope, and motivation behind the use of the Espionage Act, remains.  The descriptions in the immediate aftermath of the law’s passage are worth nothing.  In October 1918, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette rose to proclaim that,

“Today and for weeks past honest and law-abiding citizens of this country are being terrorized and outraged in their rights by those sworn to uphold the laws and protect the rights of the people.”

The senator spoke of a state of unnecessarily wild and zealous policing.  Unlawful arrests had been perpetrated; people thrown into jail had been “held incommunicado for days, only to be eventually discharged without even having been taken to court, because they have committed no crime.”

The Espionage Act was not used sparingly, becoming a weapon of choice to criminalise efforts to obstruct the war effort with mere words.  Elizabeth Baer and Charles Schenck were some of the first notable targets, accused of mailing some 15,000 anti-war flyers to potential conscripted recruits urging peaceful disobedience.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment was shorn in a palpable trimming of civil liberties. In its place was the modifying “clear and present danger” test, showing that the courts were, even more than Congress, keen to impute severe intentions on how broad the Espionage Act was meant to be.  (Indeed, most senators had to admit they had little clue on what the provisions of the Act actually meant.)

In the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Rather grimly, the judicial bench made the all too willing concession to the urges of the warring state.

“When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”

Other socialist activists of the form and determination of Kate Richards O’Hare also fell foul of the law, being sentenced to five years for violating its provisions.  Socialist party members C.E. Ruthenberg, A. Wagenknecht and Charles Baker also faced prison terms for aiding and abetting those failing to register for the draft.

One of the most notorious victims of the Espionage Act was the leading founding member of the Socialist Party of America, Eugene V. Debs.  Debs found himself in prison as a result, having given a public speech inciting his audience to interfere with military recruitment whilst referring to the harsh fate of his fellow socialist activists.  His assessment of the situation was appropriately brave.  “I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.”

On appeal, the US Supreme Court affirmed, in a unanimous opinion delivered by the persistently unsympathetic Justice Holmes, the harsh line it had taken in Schenck.  Debs’s sympathy for individuals opposing the draft and interfering with the recruitment process was punishable and beyond the scope of protection.  The speech, even if did mention socialism interspersed with a range of other observations, was “not protected by reason of its being part of a general program and expressions of a general and conscientious belief.”  Quibbling be thy name.

While the United States is currently not officially at war, it can hardly be said to be at peace.  Engaged in low, slow burning conflicts on several continents, the US imperium continues its warring peace endeavours with a certain insatiability.  The case against Assange is an attempt to internationalise the punishment of those who would dare publish, write or discuss matters at the heart of what Gore Vidal did title, with much sorrow, the National Security State.  But as Senator La Follette observed with steely warning, taking aim at the Espionage Act, “More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of governmental policies shall be open and unclogged.”

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

Featured image is from thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0

It is not difficult to find repeating patterns in United States governance internationally and domestically. Here are just a few:

• Make decisions for other people, despite the lack of knowledge about them, or any lack of responsibility for making such decisions.
• Never try diplomacy, when war will do.
• Assure that all legislation benefits the rich white males.
• Support  pro-US “self-determination” around the world, unless people have the temerity to select a leader or form of government the U.S. views as unacceptable.

We will take a few moments to look at some examples of each. These are only a random sample; it would take volumes of books to adequately cover these topics.

• Making decisions the U.S. government has no business making:

No one should be surprised that groups composed of mainly men are passing abortion restrictions. People have wide and diverse views on abortion, to which they are all entitled. But there does seem to be something a bit odd about men having the final say. Shouldn’t women, the people who actually get pregnant, have a significant voice in abortion legislation?

But no, the paternalistic men who control Congress and most State Houses know best, even though what they say often makes no sense. Consider U.S. president Donald Trump proclaiming at a rally that women give birth, the baby is carefully wrapped in a blanket, while the child’s mother and her doctor determine whether or not to execute the baby. Fodder indeed for his rabid, right-wing, pseudo-Christian base, but without any connection to reality at all.

Let us look at a parallel situation, where decisions are made for people who have no input into them. The U.S. president is now ready, it seems, to reveal his ‘Deal of the Century’, to ‘resolve’ the main problem in the Middle East: Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine. His arrogant and unqualified son-in-law and close advisor, Jared Kushner, has conferred closely with Israel’s leaders in developing the plan, but no one from the U.S. has bothered to solicit input from anyone in Palestine. But no matter: like men regulating women’s bodies, the mighty U.S. knows what’s best for Palestine. No wonder every Middle East expert has already declared the as-yet unannounced ‘Deal’ dead on arrival.

• Never try diplomacy, when war will do.

Trump’s closest advisors are itching to invade Iran, something that even the bellicose president himself does not seem anxious to do. Could not diplomacy perhaps serve a role here? Trump expects his illegal and unjust sanctions to cause the Iranian government to come crawling to him (when pigs fly). Would not, perhaps, some positive gesture by the U.S. help things along? Iran has adhered strictly to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the U.S. violated. Would it not be possible that, should the U.S. decide to honor that agreement, as Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, did, the U.S. could then approach the Iranian government and say that there are, perhaps, one or two additional points it would like to negotiate?

Prior to the start of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), it was said of President James Polk that he “held the niceties of diplomacy in contempt”. Could not the same be said about every U.S. president before and since? The concept of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one), is the U.S. government’s idea of ‘diplomacy’. Putting the words ‘gunboat’ and ‘diplomacy’ together is as ridiculous as linking ‘democracy’ and ‘Israel’. The pairing of those words simply makes no sense.

• Assure that all legislation benefits rich, white males.

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, following the ‘landmark’ overhaul of the U.S. tax code, found himself ridiculed from coast to coast when he remarked that a teacher had told him that, with her new tax rate, she could now afford the $78.00  Costco membership (the teacher saw her take-home pay increase by $1.50 per week; the top 1% of wage earners received about 650 times that amount). That Ryan actually felt that that $1.50 weekly increase was something to crow about only shows how out of touch he was with the average U.S. citizen. And he is certainly not an anomaly. The tax law mainly benefits wealthy U.S. citizens who are overwhelmingly male and white.

• Dubious support for self-determination.

How many nations’ governments has the U.S. decided to overthrow because those countries elected socialist governments, or a form of government that in some way displeased the U.S.? In each of the cases listed below, the people of each of those countries established a government of their own choosing. The U.S., either covertly through supporting terrorists, or overtly by bombing and invading the country, and/or the use of sanctions (or some combination of all of these), destroyed the government, thus thwarting self-determination. We will just look from 1950 to the present:

• Albania
• Palestine
• Laos
• Ghana
• Indonesia
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Brazil
• Chile
• Uruguay
• Cambodia
• Argentina
• El Salvador
• Nicaragua
• Yugoslavia
• Columbia
• Venezuela
• Syria
• Libya
• Yemen
• Iran
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Vietnam
• Lebanon
• Grenada
• Panama

The people of these countries selected governments that were in some way displeasing to the United States, and so, instead of their duly-elected leaders, the U.S. installed brutal dictators. So much for self-determination.

This is a long-established pattern. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress, and said, in part, the following: “The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.”[1] The following year, his legal counselor, David Hunter Miller, advised the president that “the rule of self-determination would prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.”[2] No, self-determination is only for those on whom the U.S. deigns to grant it.

President Donald Trump entered the White House with a promise to ‘Make America Great Again’. Where is this mythical greatness? A nation founded on genocide, built on slavery, and made powerful through brutal colonialism cannot return to a greatness it never had.

At this point, the best that can be hoped for is that, as other nations grow in military and economic power, the power and influence of the United States will decline. That will be advantageous for the entire planet.

 

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Notes

[1] Michael S. Neiberg, The World War I Reader, (New York University Press, 2006),292.

[2] Ibid.

Featured image is from peterpilt.org

The Syrian government’s offensive in northwestern provinces of Hama and Lattakia that began almost a month ago fell short of expectations. Having briefly established control over a number of areas, the Syrian army units were forced to retreat due to fierce counter-attacks by the armed opposition factions. After that the campaign transformed into a prolonged stand-off framed by sporadic clashes and mutual shelling.

The robust defense of the opposition forces is rooted into two key factors. First, the armed factions that previously existed in a state of a permanent internal struggle managed to join their ranks and reinforced the front lines with additional troops. The attacks of the Syrian army are currently being repelled by fighters of the National Liberation Front (NLF) that is considered part of the moderate opposition, members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) and Uighur jihadists from Islamic Turkistan Party.

Second, the militants benefit from the use of advanced weapons, primarily ATGMs, that give them the capability to target armored vehicles from a distance and stall offensive actions of the government forces.

Since the beginning of the escalation the opposition launched dozens of ATGMs against the army units. It would appear that a lack of munitions is not a concern for them as an urgent weapons supply line was opened by Turkey.

Last week, a Turkish convoy carrying a large batch of weapons and munitions arrived at the NLF-held town of Jabal Al Zawieh. In an interview to Reuters the NLF spokesman Naji Mustafa did not deny that the group received Turkish weapons.

Besides ATGMs, the armed opposition factions were also supplied with Turkish-made Panthera F9 armored personnel carriers. Pictures posted on social media demonstrate that at least three vehicles are in possession of the opposition.

In addition to that, members of Turkey-backed factions that are normally based in northern Aleppo were recently redeployed to the front lines in northern Hama.

Despite any short-term gains, by providing the opposition forces with weapons on a large scale Turkey risks to harm its own interests in Syria.

Taking into account that during the last few years the HTS extremists have effectively established dominance over Idlib, it’s not hard to predict that Turkey-supplied weapons will end up in the group’s hands. These developments would not only hinder peaceful settlement of the situation in Idlib that Turkey is a part of, but also threaten Ankara’s ambitions of strengthening it’s influence in northern Syria. Such repercussions must come as another warning to the Turkish authorities who risk to witness internal turmoil due to their ill-advised actions abroad.

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.  

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

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

There’s no ambiguity about longstanding US policy toward the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.

Trump, Pompeo, Bolton, and their subordinates are more hostile toward the country than any of their predecessors. Their actions toward Iran speak for themselves.

They’re going all out to topple its government, so far short of war that’s unlikely in my judgment because of the world community opposition, but very much possible if other tactics fail.

Trump earlier warned Iran’s leadership, tweeting: “TIME FOR CHANGE.” Bolton earlier said “(o)ur goal should be regime change in Iran” — war his favored strategy.

His appointment as national security advisor was and remains a virtual declaration of war on the Islamic Republic. The same goes for Pompeo.

Earlier he said the strongest sanctions in history will stay imposed on the country unless it complies with outrageous US demands no responsible leadership would accept.

The Trump regime’s Iran Action Group (IAG), formed in August last year, is all about toppling its government — headed by State Department policy planning director Brian Hook, serving in the same capacity as Elliott Abrams on Venezuela.

Longstanding plans call for returning both countries to US client state status, along with gaining control over their huge energy reserves.

Something similar to the Iran Action group is in play against Venezuela. Tactics include sanctions aiming to crush their economies, wanting normal economic, financial, trade, and other relations with other countries undermined, along with efforts to destabilize them by orchestrating internal unrest — what color revolutions and old-fashioned coups are all about.

Bolton reportedly asked the Pentagon to prepare plans for war on Iran and Venezuela, his favored strategy against nations on his target list for regime change.

On the anniversary of Trump’s unlawful pullout from the JCPOA nuclear deal, Pompeo turned truth on its head, saying the action aims “to end Iran’s (nonexistent) destabilizing behavior and prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon” — it abhors, doesn’t seek, and wants eliminated everywhere.

On Monday during a visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, Trump turned truth on its head about his aims toward Iran, saying: “We are not looking for regime change. I just wanna make that clear,” adding he thinks “we’ll make a deal” with Tehran.

Islamic Republic ruling authorities rule out talks with Trump, on Sunday Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi, saying the following:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to establish balanced and constructive relations with all countries in the Persian Gulf region based on mutual respect and interests,” adding:

His government rejects direct or indirect talks with Trump regime officials. On the same day, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Moussav rejected “direct or indirect talks between Iran and the US.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called reports about Iran seeking to negotiate with Trump regime officials “mere lies,” adding:

“The actions that it is taking are aimed at defeating the Iranian nation,” wanting it returned to its pre-1979 revolution status.

Last week Rouhani said he “favor(s) negotiation and diplomacy, but do not approve of it under the current circumstances at all.”

On Saturday during a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Mohamed Ali Alhakim in Baghdad, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his government offered to sign nonaggression agreements other Persian Gulf region countries, adding:

The US is unlawfully “bullying other countries into compliance with its unilateral measures” against Iran. After meeting with Iraqi President  Barham Salih on Saturday, he said cooperation between both countries aim to prevent regional war that could jeopardize the region’s security and stability.

Iran seeks peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations, its aims polar opposite how the US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners operate.

As long as Trump regime hardliners continue waging economic, financial, and sanctions war on Iran, along with hostile rhetoric, saber-rattling, and wanting the JCPOA undermined, talks with its officials are futile, able to accomplish nothing.

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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 Raialyoum

Dr Lissa Johnson is a clinical psychologist and columnist for the Australian news website New Matilda, with a background in media studies and sociology, and a PhD in the psychology of manipulating reality-perception. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Dr Johnson talks about a recent investigative series she wrote on the US government’s hunt for Julian Assange, how propaganda works, and the psychology that divides people and allows them to commit atrocities against “outgroup” members.

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Eresh Omar Jamal: You recently wrote a detailed, five-part investigative series titled “the psychology of getting Julian Assange”. What inspired you to write it?

Dr Lissa Johnson: I began thinking about the series after attending a rally in Sydney in June 2018. A few months earlier, Ecuador had cut Assange off from the outside world and silenced him.

I expected to find large crowds at the rally, as Julian was in the news at the time, and a very well-known Australian journalist, John Pilger, was going to be speaking there. What I found when I arrived, however, was just a small gathering.

At the rally, Pilger gave a very powerful speech, in which he criticised the Australian media’s complicity in a long and vicious smear campaign against Assange. Afterwards, I was curious to see how the Australian media would report on Pilger’s speech, so I looked through mainstream publications for coverage of the rally. I expected to find biased and negative coverage, but what I found surprised me even more. I found nothing.

It was little wonder, then, that so few people attended. The Australian public didn’t even know that the rally had taken place.

This near-total media blackout struck me as extraordinarily co-ordinated and comprehensive. While making sense of this, I was also absorbing something that Pilger had said during the rally. He had placed the smear campaign against Assange in the context of a leaked 2008 document from the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments branch of the US Defence Department. The document, Pilger explained, had outlined a plan to destroy the “trust” at WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”, all those years ago.

I came away thinking that a mission to destroy “trust” is a very psychological project for the Defence Department. As a psychologist, I could certainly see evidence of psychological knowledge all over the smear campaign against Assange. In fact, my PhD concerned the psychological processes by which one person influences another’s beliefs about reality, and it seemed to me that every effort had been made over the years to psychologically manipulate public perception, so as to not only destroy trust in WikiLeaks, but to turn reality-perception upside down—such that peace is bad, war is good, truth is dangerous, and censorship will set you free.

EOJ: How has psychology been used by the US and UK to persecute Assange and WikiLeaks?

DLJ: Psychological vulnerabilities in the human reality-processing system have been exploited over the last decade in order to push particular versions of “reality” concerning Assange and WikiLeaks, which depart starkly from the fully-informed, well-researched reality. In short, whereas WikiLeaks is a media organisation and Assange is an award-winning journalist (as confirmed by UK courts and tribunals), he has been cast as a terrorist and WikiLeaks an enemy of the state.

Similarly, whereas WikiLeaks, with its history of 100 percent accuracy, has exposed serious state-corporate crimes in the public interest, including civilian slaughter, it is the perpetrators of those crimes, with their long history of lies—particularly the Western national security state—that have been cast as trustworthy, noble and righteous.

Moreover, although covering up a crime is a crime, the cover-up of these crimes by silencing and imprisoning Assange, in violation of UN rulings and international law, is being cast as the legally upstanding position, with Assange as the criminal—for doing journalism.

In order to turn reality on its head in this way, a key psychological vulnerability exploited in the war on WikiLeaks has been the fact that human information processing is powered largely by emotion.

Even in terms of the neuroscience of cognition, emotion enters the decision stream well before conscious thought, and influences the kinds of reasoning and deliberation that people will entertain. The end result is that unless people are especially motivated to be accurate and factual, we are all susceptible to information and arguments that fit with our emotional states.

If we feel angry or disgusted about something or someone, for example, we are more likely to believe and accept damning rather than positive information about them. This all takes place on an unconscious level, outside our awareness, and plays a very powerful role in shaping our worldviews.

So, for opinion-shapers seeking to influence public perception of Assange, it is essential to manipulate the unconscious, automatic emotional associations with Julian. And one of the best ways to do that is to repeatedly pair a target with desired emotions, wiring an automatic emotional pathway in the brain, like water flowing down a gully on a hill.

In my articles, I wrote that a number of “news” stories about Assange have essentially served as vehicles by which to pair Assange’s name and face with negative emotions, such as anger, revulsion, resentment, suspicion and rage. This is the psychological equivalent of pinning an emotional bullseye to Julian Assange’s head, causing negative information—or misinformation—to stick.

Via the highly politicised Swedish investigation, for instance, Julian Assange has been repeatedly paired with the concept of rape, linking him to very visceral and raw emotions regarding rape and sexual assault, including anger, trauma, hatred and disgust.

This propagandistic function of the Swedish investigation has been facilitated by glaring irregularities in the investigation’s conduct. In fact, so poor has the conduct of the UK and Sweden been in this matter that the head of the Swedish Bar Association has called the handling of the Swedish investigation “deplorable”, adding that she fears that it has “damaged the reputation of the Swedish judicial system.”

Other tactics have been simply to pair Assange’s name with nasty personality traits, bad smells, poor hygiene and other emotive associations. Via Russiagate, spuriously linking him to both Donald Trump and Russia has also exploited the fear, shock and rage felt by many after the 2016 US election, pinning those feelings to Assange, and directing the lust for revenge his way.

All of these emotional tactics lay the psychological groundwork to plant narratives that are hostile to Assange and WikiLeaks, regardless of their factual inaccuracies and glaring omissions—and ultimately serve the same end: to foster a public mood that is supportive of, or at the very least indifferent to, the persecution of Assange.

They thereby facilitate the criminalisation of journalism, and trampling of free speech, via a host of dangerous legal precedents that are being set, as we speak, in Assange’s case.

The endgame of the entire endeavour has been to gain public consent to treat public interest journalism as public enemy number one, spelling death to numerous democratic freedoms, and government accountability.

EOJ: In your series, you mentioned the involvement of psychologists in wars waged by major western powers. Can you summarise that for us?

DLJ: The CIA and military do employ psychologists to undertake work of the highest “sensitivity” according to the US government’s own websites and promotional material, but the exact nature of much of that work is not publicly known.

Thanks partly to WikiLeaks and whistle-blowers, however, we do know that one function that psychologists have done for Western powers has been to design and implement a brutal torture programme. The programme was implemented both at the military prison Guantanamo Bay, and at secret CIA black sites around the world, as part of the “War on Terror”. The victims of this Bush-era torture programme, many of whom were innocent, were subjected to horrifically sadistic depravities under the direction of two licensed psychologists, with the knowledge and complicity of the American Psychological Association.

So heinous was the torture that torture expert and Associate Professor Dr Sandra Crosby reported, after examining one survivor, “In my many years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, [this patient] presents as one of the most severely traumatised individuals I have ever seen.”

Why would psychologists torture suspects in this way? To gather crucial intelligence to keep the world safe? Except that at the time it had been known since the 1980s that torture does not produce accurate intelligence. All that it can be relied on to produce is false confessions.

Which turned out to be useful in waging the Iraq War, as it happens.

According to former senior officials, a tortured false confession lurked behind Colin Powell’s infamous UN speech pressing for the Iraq War. So, directly or indirectly, psychologists played a part in fuelling the lies that manufactured consent for the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Much to our profession’s shame.

Thanks in part to WikiLeaks, however, the American Psychological Association (APA) has since revised its ethical procedures regarding psychologists’ involvement in torture. Not many people know this, but in 2011, when WikiLeaks released the Guantanamo Files, a group of psychologists who had been lobbying for ethical reform at the APS used evidence in the Guantanamo Files to finally hold the APA accountable, and bring about ethical change.

EOJ: You also talked about the use of propaganda and how it’s designed to exploit basic human psychological vulnerabilities. Can you tell us about that and how it ties to wars that have happened since 9/11?

DLJ: Where war is concerned, pro-war propaganda seeks to manipulate reality-perception such that good people will support the killing, maiming and immiseration of other innocent human beings, usually for power and profit. To achieve this, emotions supporting war must be mobilised, typically revolving around fear and hate.

A key psychological vulnerability that is exploited to achieve this is the human tendency towards group-based, us-versus-them psychology. As a social species, human beings are wired to organise themselves and their perception of the world into groups: into their own social and cultural groups, or ingroups (us) and other social and cultural groups, or outgroups (them).

A wealth of research over decades has shown that people are, unfortunately, susceptible to all kinds of destructive motives and attitudes towards outgroup members, particularly under conditions of insecurity and threat.

Whether measured psychologically, physiologically or neurologically, for instance, human empathy is lower towards members of outgroups than ingroups. People are more willing to torture outgroup members, and tend to view outgroups as less human, such that members of other social groups are viewed as less capable of human experiences such as pain, heartbreak and suffering.

Fortunately for war propagandists, callousness towards outgroup members can skyrocket from disdain to murderous rage under conditions of fear and threat.

Since 9/11, under the rubric of “war on terror”, to facilitate war throughout the Middle East, Islam has been falsely and repeatedly paired with the concept of terrorism in Western media and political discourse. Social psychologists Kevin Durrheim and others wrote that “call to arms discourse [such as this]…justifies violence by contrasting a virtuous ‘us’ with a savage ‘other’.” They describe the whole process as mobilising populations for war by mobilising hate.

Another related psychological vulnerability that is exploited in order to mobilise populations for war is the tendency, well-documented in the West, towards system justification. System justification is the drive to view one’s own social, political and economic systems in an unrealistically favourable light, rendering Westerners, on average, susceptible to messages that minimise their society’s flaws and glorify the status quo.

This tendency is exploited in Western wars by depicting “our” violence as virtuous, “our” wars noble and “our” leaders’ motives good, no matter how many millions of innocent people they have slaughtered, nor how many countries they have destroyed.

A large research literature has shown that most people (in the West) will system-justify even when confronted with their society’s flaws, such as corruption, inequality and violence. In fact, most people studied tend to double-down and defend the system even more forcefully in the face of systemic flaws, to maintain their faith in the status quo.

EOJ: Are we all vulnerable to these propaganda techniques?

DLJ: Although we all possess common human vulnerabilities in reality-perception, some of us are more susceptible—or resistant—to propaganda than others. Individual differences on propaganda-susceptibility need to be better studied, but given that official state-corporate propaganda is typically system-justifying, lower levels of system-justification (i.e. being less defensive of the status quo) are likely to foster resistance to official propaganda. Similarly, a less group-based, us-versus-them view of the world is likely to protect against many pro-war propaganda techniques.

More generally, in psychological research, curiosity is a human quality that protects people against misinformation such as propaganda. Individuals who possess what researchers call “science curiosity” are likely to be more motivated to seek out additional information, interrogate claims, and pursue an accurate, fact-based position, whether or not it fits with their initial biases and assumptions.

EOJ: Recently, we saw Christians in Sri Lanka and Muslims in New Zealand being viciously attacked in their places of worship. What can you tell us about the mind-set of those who carry out such attacks and how they view the “other”?

DLJ: In these tragic attacks, the “other” is viewed through the prism of group-based rivalry described above, which can be a very dangerous and deadly psychological state, particularly under conditions of fear and threat. Even when strangers are divided into groups based on nothing other than coin tosses or the colour of their T-shirts, group members tend to view each other with hostility, judgement and dislike.

When such group-based animosity is intensified by fear, then the “other” can come to be viewed not simply as inferior but as sub-human. Many psychological studies show that provoking fear of outgroups causes people to view outgroup members in dehumanised terms, fostering support for, and indifference to, violence of all kinds.

In psychological research with US subjects, for instance, just a single news article mentioning 9/11, or warning of unspecified future Islamic fundamentalist attack, causes sufficient group-based fear to prompt forgiveness of US atrocities in Iraq. In the real world, a constant barrage of such fear-based news articles since 9/11 has dehumanised Muslims sufficiently that Western populations have looked the other way while their leaders have killed somewhere between one and two million innocent people since 2001.

The underlying tactic is to cause nations and religions to fear each other, fuelling dehumanisation and a fight-to-the-death mentality. In this psychological environment, individual perpetrators of group-based violence such as the New Zealand and Sri Lankan massacres have taken the whole ugly process a deadly step further, by perpetrating the violence themselves rather than leaving it to the state.

EOJ: What role has the media played here? And what role should it play—along with academics, politicians and others—so that a “clash of civilisation” type of scenario, which is increasingly arising because of growing tension between different groups, can be avoided?

DLJ: Since 9/11, the emotions aroused by that event have been exploited and channelled into the War on Terror, being used to brand Muslims in general as dangerous and bad. This has been achieved in Western mainstream media and political rhetoric by repeatedly and spuriously pairing Islam with violent extremism, pinning an emotional—and literal—bullseye on the heads of millions of innocent Middle Eastern human beings.

On the other hand, if the media genuinely wished to prevent a clash of civilisations, and promote peace rather than war, it would seek to foster a sense of common humanity across group boundaries—geographic, cultural, social, ethnic and religious.

In psychological research, such a mindset is called identification with all humanity or psychological sense of global community. People who adopt this psychological standpoint value ingroup and outgroup members equally, viewing themselves as part of a larger human group.

Studies have found that identification with all humanity is related to positive support for human rights and human dignity across group boundaries, and to reduced support for war and violence. In one study, for example, simply asking Americans and Palestinian citizens of Israel to think about the shared human consequences of global warming led to reduced support for violence and increased support for peace.

In another study, subtle differences in the wording of a news article influenced whether readers were willing to support the torture of Muslim prisoners using the methods of Abu Ghraib. When Muslims were subtly humanised in news reports, by describing them using human qualities such as “passion” or “ambition”, readers were less supportive of torture.

In short, if they chose, our media and public figures could easily play a powerful role in fostering identification with all humanity, humanising members of other social groups, and reducing racism, intergroup violence and war.

Frankly, however, I don’t see that happening any time soon in the mainstream media in the West. Western media, like Western politicians, are reliant on military dollars, and are very closely entwined with the military-industrial-complex.

The Western independent, alternative, reader-funded media sphere, however, is a different story. There are many independent outlets that do a wonderful job of cutting across war propaganda, promoting a psychological sense of global community, humanising across social groups and promoting peace. It is precisely these media outlets, however, that the US national security state is seeking to shut down, in part by criminalising national security reporting such as that of WikiLeaks.

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This article was originally published on The Daily Star. Eresh Omar is a frequent contributor to Global Research

On Tuesday, the world’s third largest platinimum mining house, Lonmin, will like die, remembered as the exemplar of multinational corporate irresponsibility. As a people’s trial hosted by the Marikana Solidarity Network gets underway outside Carlton House Terrace in London, where Lonmin’s shareholders vote on a friendly takeover deal (albeit with extremely dubious characteristics), many critics are shaking their heads – and fists – at the extraordinary financial and political circumstances.

Starting in 1909, the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company was a backwater mining house until it became one of the world’s most predatory corporations. The critical shift was Lonrho’s growth away from its origins in what is now Harare, during the 1962-93 leadership of Roland Walter Fuhrhop, a German who renamed himself Tiny Rowland and emigrated to England and then Rhodesia.

By the early 1970s, an unprecedented internal rebellion of directors against its flamboyant leader led to court proceedings that revealed much about Lonrho’s modus operandi. As Brian Cloughly explained,

A British prime minister, Edward Heath, observed in 1973 that a businessman, a truly horrible savage called ‘Tiny’ Rowland, represented “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.” The description was fitting because Rowland was a perambulating piece of filth who had indulged in bribery, tax-dodging, and the general range of ingenious whizz-kid schemes designed to make viciously unscrupulous people rich and keep them that way.

The majority of that wealth was stripped from Southern Africa, especially an area two hours drive from Johannesburg, in Rustenburg’s Western Platinum mines. By the early 1970s, they had become the most consistent source of Rowland’s profits, in some years exceeding half the firm’s earnings. But by 2017 it became obvious that Lonmin’s ongoing bribery of political leaders (especially in Africa), and its attacks on labour, community (especially women) and the environment were self-destructive on two grounds:

• a legacy of hatred that spilled over into the political sphere, reaching to the very top of South African politics, and
• an exceptional devaluation of investor worth, for what had become the world’s third largest platinum corporation – after Implats and Anglo American – was suddenly (and to many, mercifully) swallowed by a young (five year old) Johannesburg-based mining house, SibanyeStillwater.

The price for all of Lonmin’s London Stock Exchange shares offered in December 2017 was a measly $383 million, which was at the time just a seventh of Sibanye’s share value at the time, and a tiny fraction (1.4 percent) of Lonmin’s $28.6 billion peak value a decade earlier.

But its owners were glad to accept even these few crumbs, and indeed the final package of Sibanye trade-in shares was increased in April 2019 as platinum prices rose 11 percent in the four prior months, shortly before shareholder approval would finalise the deal.

Yet as journalist Felix Njini pointed out at the time, “While Sibanye has boosted the share ratio it is offering to Lonmin investors, the value of the deal remains lower than when it was announced, after the company’s share price fell and it sold new equity earlier in April.”

During the 2007-17 crash, Lonmin, its management, and especially its main South African investor (and protector) Cyril Ramaphosa, together deserved their neo-Rowlandian reputations. They sought profits at any cost, even the irreparable soiling of their own nests.

To be sure, last Saturday Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s president, after his party won the May 8 election with a much reduced 58 percent of the national vote – gaining a tick from only 30 percent of those who were eligible as apathy and disgust reduced voter participation to an unprecedented level.

That tradition of profits-at-any-cost will continue in coming years under Sibanye’s notorious CEO Neil Froneman. Even in the crucial 2012-19 years when reform should have been possible, there continued to be excruciating attacks on Lonmin’s workers, the Marikana community and the surrounding ecological systems, of which the worst single incident was at the platinum mine two hours’ drive northwest of Johannesburg.

On August 15, 2012 Ramaphosa emailed a request to the police minister regarding a week-long wildcat strike at a Marikana mine of which he owned more than 9 percent: “The terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such … there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.”

Ramaphosa was referring to 4000 desperately underpaid miners, and the violence they had suffered and meted out the prior week, during which six workers, two security guards and two policemen died in skirmishes. Neither Lonmin officials nor its board’s Transformation Committee leader Ramaphosa wanted to negotiate.

The main union then representing the platinum workers, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM, which was courageously led by Ramaphosa during the 1980s), sided with management. The day after his emails, strikers began to peacefully depart the hillside where they gathered for the nearby shantytowns, heading home for the weekend. They were blocked by barbed wire hastily assembled by police, and then 34 of the workers were shot dead, and 78 wounded.

The police acted not dissimilarly to those of the pre-1994 apartheid era, with a visceral hatred of the rebellious workers; class had simply replaced race in the calculus (since the police shooters were largely black, including most of their commanders). Ramaphosa’s role was especially unconscionable given his struggle history.

In the 2014 Emmy Award-winning film Miners Shot Down, director Rehad Desai reveals the class-loyalty U-turn. In 1987 in the midst of a legendary strike, Ramaphosa accused the “liberal bourgeoisie” of using “fascistic” methods. Thirty years later Ramaphosa had become the main local investor in Lonmin, and within five years was a “monster,” according to local activists. He played a familiar role described by the workers’ lawyer, Dali Mpofu:

At the heart of this was the toxic collusion between the SA Police Services and Lonmin at a direct level. At a much broader level it can be called a collusion between the State and capital… in the sordid history of the mining industry in this country.

Part of that history included the collaboration of so-called tribal chiefs who were corrupt and were used by those oppressive governments to turn the self-sufficient black African farmers into slave labour workers. Today we have a situation where those chiefs have been replaced by so-called Black Economic Empowerment partners of these mines and carrying on that torch of collusion.

Collusion resisted but not defeated

The post-massacre period provides many lessons about how Lonmin maintained its predatory approach and also how resistance was stymied, notwithstanding a crescendo of labour unrest culminating in a five-month strike across the platinum belt in 2014. Summing up the overall lack of improvement at Marikana three years after the massacre, photojournalist Greg Marinovich explained,

The miners’ salaries have, over the course of two long and deadly strikes, been substantially increased. And their lives have improved, albeit not to the level that Lonmin promised back in 2007, when Brad Mills told Business Daythe money would create “thriving” and “comfortably middle class” communities around Lonmin’s projects.

Police advance after shooting striking workers with live ammunition on 16 August 2012 (Source: South African History Online)

Given the horror of the massacre at Marikana, it is not surprising that the failure of the state, municipalities and Lonmin to provide dignified and reasonable living conditions has been sidelined. But it is this squalid environment and the cynical disregard by those with the power to change it that provoked the miners to risk death in the first place. And for the women here, who are mostly shut out of formal employment possibilities, life remains an unremitting grind, despite the World Bank’s tagline: “Working for a World Free of Poverty.”

Indeed although the Marikana Massacre’s impact on Ramaphosa, Lonmin and its victims was devastating, that incident alone did not immediately destroy the firm (for example, in the way the London public relations firm Bell Pottinger was quickly dismembered due to its South African mistakes in mid-2017).

Instead, the underlying dilemma that ultimately led to Lonmin’s death was the over-accumulation of minerals capital on the world scale, and the inability of Lonmin to keep its cost structure sufficiently low to avoid a takeover.

Froneman made clear that his main rationale in buying Lonmin was to consolidate the firm’s relatively cheaper smelting capacity at Marikana for use by other firms (although the return of electricity brownouts in 2018 and fast-rising tariffs quickly diluted this benefit). Closure of Lonmin mine shafts will accelerate, and the Social and Labour Plans will continue to be ignored.

Already in 2016, Lonmin’s workforce shrunk dramatically, from 40 000 to 33 000 employees, with another 8000 workers fired in 2018 and 4100 in mid-2019. Sibanye’s takeover plan projected the firing of a further 12 600 Lonmin workers within three years.

A subsequent price recovery of one metal, palladium (closely related to platinum, rising from $826/ounce in September 2018 to a March 2019 high of $1601/ounce), apparently slowed Lonmin’s retrenchment process, but Sibanye remained intent on Lonmin labour rationalisation.

In general, Froneman’s treatment of workers was seen as exceptionally careless even in a South African context, with 24 mining fatalities at Sibanye in 2018 alone. That year Froneman was awarded salary and benefits worth $3.8 million, even though the entire firm’s profits (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) were only $47 million.

But the troubles Froneman brought upon himself at Sibanye were prefigured by the Marikana Massacre. The labour movement witnessed an extraordinary upsurge of shopfloor militancy in the subsequent weeks, and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) emerged so strong from the NUM’s demise at Lonmin, that it waged a five-month strike across the platinum belt in 2014.

In the wake of the massacre, Lonmin was also the site of new frictions with two new advocacy groups from the surrounding community: Bapo Ba Mogale and the Mining Forum of South Africa. The two groups complained,

Lonmin has circumvented compliance willfully and purposefully, a practice they have mastered for years with intent to secure interests of capital at the expense of the disadvantaged and the poor. They have a proven track record of presiding and surviving on hopelessness, volatility, death, instability, poverty and violence.

The Massacre also humiliated a high-profile Lonmin financial supporter, the World Bank. The Bank’s 2007-12 celebration of Lonmin’s so-called “Strategic Community Investment” at Marikana attracted persistent complaints from a women’s community group, Sikhala Sonke (“We cry together”), supported by the Wits University Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS).

Another unnecessary casualty of Marikana was the possibility of an ambitious state-led mining policy, since who could trust a state led first by Jacob Zuma and then Ramaphosa, to safeguard workers, communities, women and environments. The then African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader Julius Malema raised the demand for mining nationalisation at a 2011 conference, and as a result, a party disciplinary committee led by Ramaphosa expelled him and his comrades.

Malema subsequently founded the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and won a growing share of the platinum belt’s support in subsequent elections, rising to a third of the voters residing in Marikana’s shacks and hostels in the 2019 election (one of the EFF members of parliament was a feisty Sikhala Sonke founder, Primrose Sonti). The massacre had shifted South African politics forever.

The state’s response was to distract and defer from the deepest problems unveiled by the massacre. Wrongdoing was investigated by the 2012-15 Farlam Commission set up by Zuma, but the outcome was widely condemned as inadequate. It is tempting to emphasise the negligence or malevolence of personalities:

• Judge Ian Farlam blamed maniacal police leadership.
• Lonmin chief executive Ian Farmer’s salary was 236 times higher than the typical rock drill operator.
• Farmer’s main executive replacement Barnard Mokwena was later unveiled as a State Security Agency operative.

In the structure-agency dialectic, it is these kinds of characters who make it easy to villainise Lonmin and the state. But even when structural forces are at work, central personalities can be targeted for blame.

Thus while Lonmin was intent on Illicit Financial Flows, it was due to Ramaphosa’s strong support as leader of the Incwala black empowerment partner firm. According to Lonmin’s lawyer, “Incwala for very many years refused to agree” to changing what became a $100 million outflow to the Bermuda tax haven justified as marketing expenses, even after Lonmin itself decided to end the tax-dodge.

The state did nothing to punish this; nor did it provide the reparations to massacred and injured mineworkers’ families that even Farlam recommended were due, for many years.

Perhaps the most blatant case of state-corporate collusion appeared in April 2019, when Amcu was threatened with deregistration by the South African Department of Labour, on grounds that it had not properly followed institutional procedures (such as regular conventions) that qualify it to be considered a trade union.

Sibanye’s Froneman had just humbled Amcu leader Joseph Mathunjwa in the gold sector strike, and as platinum negotiations got underway, even worse conflict was expected. Mathunjwa complained,

The registrar is inconsistent and unduly interfering in the affairs of Amcu. The inconsistency of the registrar when it comes to the deregistration of trade unions leaves a lot to be desired. There are numerous examples of trade unions and trade union federations who have contravened many prescriptions including financial submissions they were never deregistered or threatened with cancellation of registration. Instead he chooses to focus on Amcu. This is clearly a political agenda.

Even worse news for Amcu followed two weeks later, when a judge once known for his pro-worker ideological bias, Dennis Davis, ruled against the union’s last-gasp attempt to save jobs by halting Sibanye’s takeover, on grounds of Lonmin’s proximity to bankruptcy:

Notwithstanding transient fluctuations in the price of platinum group metals and currency fluctuations, Lonmin’s continued existence was in jeopardy and the number of job losses that Sibanye and Lonmin projected as a result of the merger was rational. At best, Lonmin would continue to “tread water”, that is, if it was not placed into business rescue, which, if it occurred, would hold significant risk for 32,000 jobs.

Within days, a reality check to Davis’ misplaced pity for Lonmin was offered by Business Day’sAnn Crotty:

In December 2017 Lonmin shareholders, shell-shocked by events dating from even before the Marikana massacre of August 2012, must have been tempted to heave a huge sigh of relief when Sibanye-Stillwater arrived on their doorstep with a share-exchange offer. As could be expected, given that the Sibanye-Stillwater team could smell fear and desperation from the Lonmin camp, the offer was cheeky.

It priced in all of Lonmin’s problems, many of which looked near fatal, but was remarkably snoep when it came to the assets, which include a state-of-the-art smelter and two refineries. Lonmin also has an assessed loss of $1.1bn, extremely valuable for a profit-generating entity. Lonmin has managed to survive through the depths of survived the platinum price weakness and now no longer requires rescuing.

Indeed Crotty quoted a leading mining analyst critical of the deal, concerned about Froneman’s underpayment to Lonmin’s shareholders, given how much the takeover target’s fortunes had improved over the prior eighteen months: “If anything, the all-share acquisition by Sibanye is increasingly looking like a disguised rights issue by Sibanye to shore up its strained balance sheet and covenant ratios.”

Sensing the unease, Froneman quickly authorised a minor increase in the price and Lonmin chief executive Ben Magara – legally bound to favour the Sibanye takeover – downplayed any expectation that the rising profits he had just registered now merited a rethink of the deal:“Our performance has been impacted by low morale and high management turnover, instability and uncertainty, due to the extended timeline to close the Sibanye-Stillwater transaction caused by Amcu.”

On May 24, one of the most important South African financiers, Standard Bank, warned shareholders that they were being sold out by $460 million (instead of $0.81/share, the price should be $2.43), “if assets such as the platinum producer’s suspended K4 project, spare processing capacity and a concentrator are factored in.” If more than 25 percent of the shareholders vote no, the merger will fail.

The South African state’s corruption-riddled Public Investment Commission, with 29 percent ownership and thus power to block the sale, has not stated how it will vote, so a high degree of tension looms in London before Tuesday’s meeting.

Resistance ebbs and flows, from the local to global and back

Against mining capital, the politicians and the state stood a variety of disparate organisations: Amcu, Sikhala Sonke and CALS, the church-based Bench Marks Foundation (which in 2017 had begun campaigning for divestment from Lonmin), a Johannesburg-based network of activists known as the Marikana Support Campaign, the EFF, and solidarity activists in Britain and Germany.

In addition to better wages and more community investment, their main post-massacre demands were that Lonmin and the government publicly apologise, pay survivors and widows reparations (civil suits of more than $70 million have been filed) and declare August 16 a national holiday with a monument at the site of the massacre.

Other concrete grievances were regularly expressed by the Marikana Support Campaign, such as: “No action has been taken against Lonmin directors despite a recommendation for them to be investigated for possible prosecution. President Zuma has sat on the findings of the Claasen Inquiry into Riah Phiyega. In the meantime she has ended her contract and maintained all her benefits.”

Zuma consistently refused to meet these demands, and instead promoted improvement of the living conditions of workers. Government failed to rapidly make mandated compensation payments to the workers and their families – for widows’ and children’s loss of support claims, and for 275 unlawful arrest and detention claims by surviving workers.

In addition, two other international solidarity campaigns continued to put pressure on Lonmin prior to its death. In London, there are regular picketing, film screenings and tours arranged by the Marikana Miners Solidarity Campaign, targeting Lonmin, its institutional owners and its financiers: “London-based asset management funds Investec, Majedie, Schroders, Standard Life and Legal & General who own 44 percent of the corporation. A consortium of banks including Lloyds, HSBC and RBS are Lonmin’s biggest lenders.”

Two important activist groups there are the London Mining Network and the student movement Decolonising Environment. And in Germany, the major platinum purchaser BASF – Lonmin’s largest single customer, dating back three decades – came under pressure from a “Plough Back the Fruits” campaign of solidarity activists demanding that BASF put pressure on Lonmin to improve workplace and community conditions.

The firm resisted this secondary pressure, but BASF was in 2017 finally compelled to admit, “We note that the development of living conditions for Lonmin workers is not progressing as quickly as one would expect or hope. This is due to the fact that the situation in South Africa is extremely multi-faced and cannot be solved in the short term by one institution alone.”In 2018, a book edited by German and Austrian campaigners,Business as Usual after Marikana, deepened the critique of Lonmin.

But so far, notwithstanding the impressive international solidarity, resolutions of the grievances have not been achieved by the disparate civil society strategies that followed Marikana. One was the demand for higher wages, which the workers were gradually winning. However, the R12 500/month initially demanded in mid-2011, when it amounted to $1985/month, had shrunk to just $870/month in mid-2019 due to currency devaluation (from R6.3/$ to R14,4/$ in that period). The R12 500 demand was only achieved in 2019, but inflation had eroded that sum by more than a third.

Another strategy was genuine community development, advocated most strongly by Sikhala Sonke women who, in part, attacked the World Bank for its failures, followed by further Bapo Ba Mogale community grievances. Lonmin management repeatedly claimed to have spent more than $35 million on community housing since 2012, though conceded it had not met the promise of 5500 worker-owned houses because of lack of demand.

Since none of these campaigns for improvements at the point of production (led by Amcu) or labour reproduction (led by Sikhala Sonke) have been satisfactorily achieved, whatcan be learned from these shortcomings?

The 2012-19 era provided dispiriting lessons in power relations thanks to the fragmented, single-issue nature of the attacks on Lonmin, most of which will continue to apply in the Sibanye era, as well as several that require more attention to the 2012 conjuncture for the sake of facilitating the demand for reparations.

To transcend the silo politics, the crucial strategic questions, are what solidarity opportunities for future campaigning might emerge both within the debt-ridden working class as it strives to survive on inadequate wages, and against the rump of Lonmin as captured by Sibanye, its purchasers (BASF and VW) and its bankers (especially the World Bank)?

Indeed, is nationalisation of the platinum reserves as well as the multinational corporate-owned mining infrastructure feasible – and desirable – in a pre-socialist, neoliberal-nationalist era in which the state continues to be run by Cyril Ramaphosa?

Fighting for a nationalised platinum sector 

To prevent the ‘reloading’ of Marikana’s various oppressions, as appears certain today, a much larger accounting of South Africa’s resource-cursed mining sector must be made.To recap, the period since 2012 revealed at least half a dozen underlying curses at Marikana, as well as across what is termed the “Minerals-Energy Complex”:

• political – the obedience of politicians like Ramaphosa and the state security apparatus to the predatory needs of multinational mining capital;
• economic – the tendency to overproduction intrinsic to the capitalist system, especially in times of a commodity super-cycle (2002-11) whose subsequent crash left Lonmin vastly over-exposed;
• financial – usurious microfinance borrowed by mineworkers (leading to extreme borrower desperation by the time of the August 2012 strikes), $150 million in dubious World Bank ‘development finance’ investment, and chaotic corporate investment given Lonmin’s share price debacle;
• gendered – especially the stressed reproduction of labour and community by women in Marikana’s wretched Nkaneng and Wonderkop shack settlements;
• environmental – extreme degradation within fast-growing peri-urban slums, nearby which minerals are dug and smelted using high-carbon processes that also pollute local water, soil and air; and
• labour-related – platinum rock drill operators’ inadequate wages and deplorable working and residential conditions, especially in comparison to mining executives’ ludicrously generous remuneration: the durability of apartheid-era migrancy, itself a condition dividing workers from the area’s traditional residents along familial, ethnic and (property-related) class lines; intra-union battles which split workers and generated some of the initial 2012 violence, followed by further violence in 2017 including within Amcu; and ongoing mass retrenchments due to a (failing) automation strategy.

In future months and years, can these forces find common cause? The underlying principles of Lonmin’s various opponents often seem worlds apart. According to Samantha Hargreaves of the Women in Mining NGO,

Narrow male-dominated trade union and worker interests mean that hope for a radical resolution lies in the struggles of women in places like Wonderkop. The challenge is linking these with (mainly male) worker struggles and environmentalist solidarity to challenge the extractivist model of development, the social, economic and environmental costs of which are principally borne by working-class and peasant women.

It may well be, in this context, that both shopfloor and grassroots forces require assistance from institutions with larger agendas, including political parties and even NGOs challenging the broader economic agenda of transnational corporations.

For example, in mid-2015, Lonmin’s tax avoidance was raised by AIDC director Brian Ashley (a leading Amcu advisor): “As the AIDC, we will pursue a campaign for the company’s licence to be revoked and for the state owned mining company to take over the company… We need to hold these huge corporations to account. You cannot have a company in a country that needs to be rebuilt sucking the resources dry.”

At the same time, the leftist EFF party also demanded mine nationalisation and in the case of the massacre punishment including both jail for Lonmin leaders and compensation: “The EFF will institute a process of reparations against Lonmin to demand reparations and payments of all the families of deceased mineworkers of R10 million (then $1.1 million) per family and R5 million ($0.55 million) per injured worker.”

Even the centre-right Democratic Alliance party announced that it also supported forcing Lonmin to compensate massacre victims’ families.

With Lonmin unable to continue as a going concern, much bigger questions about political strategy can be raised. To think creatively about the options for Lonmin (via Sibanye) not only requires a revived debate about whether or not to take away the firm’s mining license (which, indeed, was threatened by Pretoria in late 2016 due to Lonmin’s default on its Social and Labour Plan) or to nationalise it with – or preferably without (given such immense liabilities) – compensation to traditional overseas owners (as the EFF argue).

But setting aside the particular problems at Marikana, the disastrous recent period of mining capital’s over-accumulation and ruinous competition also compels much wider considerations on the need for new priorities that would radically change the corporate financing parameters now in place. These might include:

• developing a world platinum cartel centred in South Africa;
• establishing a genuinely green economic strategy to move the Minerals Energy Complex away from its traditional roots in coal, iron ore, manganese, gold and diamonds (and not simply to hydrogen fuel cells for individualised electric vehicle production);
• incorporating natural capital accounting into state (and corporate) decision-making so that the true costs and benefits of mining can finally be understood in full cost-accounting terms; and ultimately,
• ensuring a ‘just transition’ to low-carbon, post-extractivist economic activities that are especially friendly to women’s needs – within not just the sphere of production but also the reproduction of society, as the AIDC “Million Climate Jobs” campaign advocates.

These are the kinds of strategic questions that can be raised not only thanks to injustices that continue at Marikana, but also because the specific problems of microfinance, development finance and corporate finance confirm the power but also the overlapping, interlocking vulnerabilities associated with Lonmin’s historic abuse of people and planet (and Sibanye’s likely amplification of these).

However, the vulnerabilities even huge mining corporations face have generated mainly the kinds of fragmented campaigns for reform discussed above. As the limits of reformist strategies are reached in each of these, it is still possible for much greater unity to be established between disparate groups of mining capital’s victims.

Since these victims soon include investors representing South Africa’s large civil service as well as financiers, it will be up to the grassroots, shop-floor and environmental activists to ensure that an even more exploitative regime of extraction in the platinum belt does not emerge in coming years.

Moreover, so as to lessen vulnerability to volatile world capitalist markets, it is long overdue for South Africa (with 88 percent of world reserves) to join Russian and Zimbabwean authorities in a world platinum cartel, about which formal discussions began in 2013 amid the first round of platinum gluts.

In the process, a genuinely green strategy for the region should move the economy away from overdependence upon traditional coal, iron ore, manganese, gold and diamonds exports, and ensure a ‘Just Transition’ to post-‘extractivist’ economic activities in line with South Africa’s growing climate mitigation and adaptation imperatives. As Sikhala Sonke and allies point out, the latter should be especially friendly to women’s needs, within not just the sphere of production but also the reproduction of society.

As for the trade union that is most popular in Marikana, Amcu, Mathunjwa has eloquently explained the workers’ concerns in these terms:

Just surviving each day is a struggle that denies them the choice of engaging in issues of climate change and the ecological crisis caused by mining and the fossil fuel industry… If we leave it to the market, we will not get to the roots of the climate and environmental crisis and workers will be discarded in the existing mining and energy sectors…

We refuse to be made to act like ostriches. There is a climate and ecological crisis. We have a horrific jobs crisis. We need solutions to both. But we need a just transition where no worker loses his or her job without either being skilled and transferred to another industry or is compensated for the rest of their working life. As workers we will not bear the brunt of a crisis we had nothing to do with, except by virtue of the exploitation of our labour.

The consolidation of Ramaphosa’s power in the 2019 election – thanks to a 58 percent vote, four percent higher than his predecessor Zuma had managed in the 2016 election – and his promise that foreign direct investment would reach $100 billion within five years, together confirmed how difficult the terrain would be for subaltern forces in coming years.

In the internal fissures facing the ANC, there was no progressive option for Marikana, given how weak the trade union and Communist Party rump supporters had become, not to mention how ambivalent about the anti-Lonmin struggle they were given NUM’s 2012 defeat there and Amcu’s rise.

Froneman’s anticipated closure of platinum shafts at Lonmin Marikana operations (with the loss of 12 000 mineworker), and the shift of the big smelter there into a site for Sibanye’s cheaper operations to process their ore, will see the fading of any residual hope retained by workers and communities. Internecine violence between Amcu and NUM rose to new heights in early 2019 at Sibanye’s gold mines, but could get worse in the platinum fields, as the latter union seeks to reclaim its old ground, especially if the former is deregistered.

These are very similar tensions compared to the conditions that in mid-2012 confronted Marikana’s activists. They faced the loaded weapons of Lonmin and its police allies – and didn’t flinch. Will they do so again, now that Marikana’s rulers are reloading?

*

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Patrick Bond teaches political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg; for a full account including references, contact [email protected]  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After posting a video of a young recruit talking to the camera about how service allows him to better himself “as a man and a warrior”, the US Army tweeted, “How has serving impacted you?”

As of this writing, the post has over 5,300 responses. Most of them are heartbreaking.

“My daughter was raped while in the army,” said one responder. “They took her to the hospital where an all male staff tried to convince her to give the guy a break because it would ruin his life. She persisted. Wouldn’t back down. Did a tour in Iraq. Now suffers from PTSD.”

“I’ve had the same nightmare almost every night for the past 15 years,” said another.

Tweet after tweet after tweet, people used the opportunity that the Army had inadvertently given them to describe how they or their loved one had been chewed up and spit out by a war machine that never cared about them. This article exists solely to document a few of the things that have been posted in that space, partly to help spread public awareness and partly in case the thread gets deleted in the interests of “national security”. Here’s a sampling in no particular order:

How has serving impacted you?

— U.S. Army (@USArmy) May 23, 2019

“Someone I loved joined right out of high school even though I begged him not to. Few months after his deployment ended, we reconnected. One night, he told me he loved me and then shot himself in the head. If you’re gonna prey on kids for imperialism, at least treat their PTSD.”

~

“After I came back from overseas I couldn’t go into large crowds without a few beers in me. I have nerve damage in my right ear that since I didn’t want to look weak after I came back I lied to the VA rep. My dad was exposed to agent orange which destroyed his lungs, heart, liver and pancreas and eventually killing him five years ago. He was 49, exposed at a post not Vietnam, and will never meet my daughter my nephew. I still drink to much and I crowds are ok most days but I have to grocery shop at night and can’t work days because there is to many ppl.”

~

“The dad of my best friend when I was in high school had served in the army. He struggled with untreated PTSD & severe depression for 30 years, never told his family. Christmas eve of 2010, he went to their shed to grab the presents & shot himself in the head. That was the first funeral I attended where I was actually told the cause of death & the reasons surrounding it. I went home from the service, did some asking around, & found that most of the funerals I’ve attended before have been caused by untreated health issues from serving.”

~

“My dad was drafted into war and was exposed to agent orange. I was born w multiple physical/neurological disabilities that are linked back to that chemical. And my dad became an alcoholic with ptsd and a side of bipolar disorder.”

~

“i met this guy named christian who served in iraq. he was cool, had his own place with a pole in the living room. always had lit parties. my best friend at the time started dating him so we spent a weekend at his crib. after a party, 6am, he took out his laptop. he started showing us some pics of his time in the army. pics with a bunch of dudes. smiling, laughing. it was cool. i was drunk and didn’t care. he started showing us pics of some little kids. after a while, his eyes went completely fucking dark. i was like man, dude’s high af. he very calmly explained to us that all of those kids were dead ‘but that’s what war was. dead kids and nothing to show for it but a military discount’. christian killed himself 2 months later.”

~

“I didn’t serve but my dad did. In Vietnam. It eventually killed him, slowly, over a couple of decades. When the doctors were trying to put in a pacemaker to maybe extend his life a couple of years, his organs were so fucked from the Agent Orange, they disintegrated to the touch. He died when I was ten. He never saw me graduate high school. He never saw me get my first job or buy my first car. He wasn’t there. But hey! Y’all finally paid out 30k after another vet took the VA to the Supreme Court, so. You know. It was cool for him.”

~

“Chronic pain with a 0% disability rating (despite medical discharge) so no benefits, and anger issues that I cope with by picking fistfights with strangers.”

~

“My parents both served in the US Army and what they got was PTSD for both of them along with anxiety issues. Whenever we go out in public and sit down somewhere my dad has to have his back up against the wall just to feel a measure of comfort that no one is going to sneak up on him and kill him and and walking up behind either of them without announcing that you’re there is most likely going to either get you punch in the face or choked out.”

~

“Many of my friends served. All are on heavy antidepressant/anxiety meds, can’t make it through 4th of July or NYE, and have all dealt with heavy substance abuse problems before and after discharge. And that’s on top of one crippled left hand, crushed vertebra, and GSWs.”

~

“Left my talented and young brother a broken and disabled man who barely leaves the house. Left my mother hypervigilant & terrified due to the amount of sexual assault & rape covered up and looked over by COs. Friend joined right out if HS, bullet left him paralyzed neck down.”

~

“My cousin went to war twice and came back with a drug addiction that killed him. My other cousin could never get paid on time and when he left they tried to withhold his pay.”

~

“It’s given me a fractured spine, TBI, combat PTSD, burn pit exposure, and a broken body with no hope of getting better. Not even medically retired for a fractured spine. WTF.”

~

“Y’all killed my father by failing to provide proper treatments after multiple tours.”

~

“Everyone I know got free PTSD and chemical exposure and a long engagement in their efforts to have the US pay up for college tuition. Several lives ruined. No one came out better. Thank god my recruiter got a DUI on his way to get me or I would be dead or worse right now.”

~

“I have ptsd and still wake up crying at night. Also have a messed up leg that I probably will have to deal with the rest of my life. Depression. Anger issues.”

~

“My grandfather came back from Vietnam with severe PTSD, tried to drown it in alcohol, beat my father so badly and so often he still flinches when touched 50 years later. And I grew up with an emotionally scarred father with PTSD issues of his own because of it. Good times.”

~

“Hmmm. Let’s see. I lost friends, have 38 inches of scars, PTSD and a janky arm and hand that don’t work.”

~

“my grandpa served in vietnam from when he was 18–25. he’s 70 now and every night he still has nightmares where he stands up tugging at the curtains or banging on the walls screaming at the top of his lungs for someone to help him. he refuses to talk about his time and when you mention anything about the war to him his face goes white and he has a panic attack. he cries almost every day and night and had to spend 10 years in a psychiatric facility for suicidal ideations from what he saw there.”

~

“My best friend joined the Army straight out of high school because his family was poor & he wanted a college education. He served his time & then some. Just as he was ready to retire he was sent to Iraq. You guys sent him back in a box. It destroyed his children.”

~

“Well, my father got deployed to Iraq and came back a completely different person. Couldn’t even work the same job he had been working 20 years before that because of his anxiety and PTSD. He had nightmares, got easily violent and has terrible depression. But the army just handed him pills, now he is 100% disabled and is on a shit ton of medication. He has nightmares every night, paces the house barely sleeping, checking every room just to make sure everyone’s safe. He’s had multiple friends commit suicide.”

~

“Father’s a disabled Vietnam veteran who came home with severe PTSD and raging alcoholism. VA has continuously ignored him throughout the years and his medical needs and he receives very little compensation for all he’s gone through. Thanks so much!!”

~

“I was #USNavy, my husband was #USArmy, he served in Bosnia and Iraq and that nice, shy, funny guy was gone, replaced with a withdrawn, angry man…he committed suicide a few years later…when I’m thanked for my service, I just nod.”

~

“I’m permanently disabled because I trained through severe pain after being rejected from the clinic for ‘malingering.’ Turns out my pelvis was cracked and I ended up having to have hip surgery when I was 20 years old.”

~

“My brother went into the Army a fairly normal person, became a Ranger (Ft. Ord) & came out a sociopath. He spent the 1st 3 wks home in his room in the dark, only coming out at night when he thought we were asleep. He started doing crazy stuff. Haven’t seen him since 1993.”

~

“Recently attended the funeral for a west point grad with a 4yr old and a 7yr old daughter because he blew his face off to escape his ptsd but thats nothing new.”

~

“I don’t know anyone in my family who doesn’t suffer from ptsd due to serving. One is signed off sick due to it & thinks violence is ok. Another (navy) turned into a psycho & thought domestic violence was the answer to his wife disobeying his orders.”

~

“My dad served during vietnam, but after losing close friends and witnessing the killing of innocents by the U.S., he refused to redeploy. He has suffered from PTSD ever since. The bravest thing he did in the army was refuse to fight any longer, and I’m so proud of him for that.”

~

“My best friend from high school was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function. He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”

~

“Bad back, hips, and knees. Lack of trust, especially when coming forward about sexual harassment. Detachment, out of fear of losing friends. Missed birthdays, weddings, graduations, and funerals. I get a special license plate tho.”

~

“My son died 10 months ago. He did 3 overseas tours. He came back with severe mental illness.”

~

“I’m still in and I’m in constant pain and they recommended a spinal fusion when I was 19. Y’all also won’t update my ERB so I can’t use the education benefits I messed myself up for.”

~

“My dad served two tours in middle east and his personality changes have affected my family forever. VA ‘counseling’ has a session limit and doesn’t send you to actual psychologists. Military service creates a mental health epidemic it is then woefully unequipped to deal with.”

~

“My best childhood friend lost his mind after his time in the marines and now he lives in a closet in his mons house and can barely hold a conversation with anyone. He only smokes weed and drinks cough syrup that he steals since he can’t hold a job.”

~

“After coming back from Afghanistan…..Matter fact I don’t even want to talk about it. Just knw that my PTSD, bad back, headaches, chronic pain, knee pain, and other things wishes I would have NEVER signed that contract. It was NOT worth the pain I’ll endure for the rest of life.”

~

“My cousin served and came back only to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and ptsd. There were nights that he would lock himself in the bathroom and stay in the corner because he saw bodies in the bathtub. While driving down the highway, he had another episode and drove himself into a cement barrier, engulfing his Jeep in flames and burning alive. My father served as well and would never once speak of what he witnessed and had to do. He said it’s not something that any one person should ever be proud of.”

~

“I was sexually assaulted by a service member at 17 when I visited my sister on her base, then again at 18. My friend got hooked on k2 and died after the va turned him away for mental health help. Another friend serving was exploited sexually by her co and she was blamed for it.”

~

“I spent ten years in the military. I worked 15 hour days to make sure my troops were taken care of. In return for my hard work I was rewarded with three military members raping me. I was never promoted to a rank that made a difference. And I have an attempt at suicide. Fuck you!”

~

“I actually didn’t get around to serving because I was sexually assaulted by three of my classmates during a military academy prep program. They went to the academies and are still active duty officers. I flamed out of the program and have PTSD.”

~

“My father’s successful military career taught him that he’s allowed to use violence to make people do what he wants because America gave him that power.”

~

“While I was busy framing ‘soliders and families first’ (lol) propaganda posters, my best friend went to ‘Iraqistan’ but he didn’t come back. He returned alive, to be sure, but he was no longer the fun, carefree, upbeat person he’d previously been.”

~

“My husband is a paraplegic and can’t control 3/4 of his body now. Me, I’ve got PTSD, an anxiety disorder, two messed up knees, depression, a bad back, tinnitus, and chronic insomnia. I wish both had never served.”

~

“This is one of the most heartbreaking threads I’ve ever read.”

~

“I am so sorry. The way we fail our service members hurts my heart. My grandfather served in the Korean War and had nightmares until his death at 91 years old. We must do better.”

~

“My Army story is that when I was in high school, recruiters were there ALL the time- at lunch, clubs, etc.- targeting the poor kids at school. I didn’t understand it until now. You chew people who have nothing at home up and spit them out.”

~

“I was thinking about enlisting until I saw this thread. Hard pass.”

~

“I hope to god that the Army has enough guts to read these and realize how badly our servicepeople are being treated. Thank you and god bless you to all of you in this thread, and your loved ones who are suffering too.”

~

There are many, many more.

This is a poem I wrote a while back called “Naughty Little Boys”:

That little boy’s mum is going to be so upset.
He hasn’t combed his hair,
and his clothes are filthy.
And what’s he gone and done with his legs?
Where are your legs, little boy?
Better go and find them before your mum sees you.
Those legs are very important to her.

They sent the little boys up into the sky
and over the ocean to go play soldiers.
They gave them toy guns
full of toy bullets,
and they screamed toy screams,
and bled toy blood,
and cried toy tears,
and had toy nightmares,
and called out for their mums
in the desert.

The man on the TV keeps calling them heroes.
Don’t call them that, TV man,
you’ll only encourage them.
These are little boys,
and they’re being very naughty.
They are worrying their mums sick
and it’s time for them to go home.

Find your legs, little boy,
and go be with your mum.
Find your hands and your face too;
she’ll miss those as well.
Find your mind and bring it back
from that dark, scary place.
You’re not there anymore.
You are home.
Stop screaming toy screams
and crying toy tears
and go tell your mum that you’ve had
a bad dream.

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Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.

All images in this article are from Medium

On May 26, units of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and the National Defense Forces launched a surprise attack on the town of Kafr Nabudah in northwestern Hama, which had been recently captured by Hayat Tahir al-Sham (the former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria) and its Turkish-backed allies.

The attack began in the morning after a series of airstrikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes. By the evening, government troops had established full control of the town killing at least 5 militants.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led forces seized Kafr Nabudah on May 22. Then, militants claimed that they had killed at least 50 pro-government fighters and captured several pieces of military equipment. Kafr Nabudah is the key strong point of militants in this area. The inability of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to keep it under its control create a threat to the western flank of militants deployed in Khan Shaykhun, Kafr Zita and nearby settlements.

SAA units seized seizing several weapons caches, including Grad rockets, tank rounds, artillery shells, mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and loads of ammunition of different calibers, in Kirkat. The SAA also discovered a underground tunnel leading to a fortified operations room in the town of Qalaat al-Madiq.

The SAA captured Kirkat and Qalaat al-Madiq earlier in May in the framework of its ongoing military operation in northern Hama.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, militant groups lost 350 fighters, five battle tanks, one infantry fighting vehicle, 27 pickup trucks, two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) and three rocket launches since the start of the ongoing round of hostilities in northwestern Hama.

Clashes in the area are expected to continue. The SAA’s 7^th Division has recently sent reinforcements, including T-55 battle tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, Shilka anti-aircraft vehicles and 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers, to the frontline. A source in the 7th Division told SouthFront that these reinforcements could participate in future military operations against Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the region. However, he declined to provide additional information.

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham repelled another SAA attack on their positions south of Kbani in northern Lattakia. Media close to the TIP claimed that several soldiers were killed. According to sources in the 4^th Division, the SAA is seeing Kbani as a high priority target for offensive operations.

Turkey has resumed its weapon supplies to “mainstream Syrian rebels” to help them fend off the SAA advance in northern Hama, Reuters reported on May 25. According to the news agency, Turkey is supplied the militants with dozens of armored vehicles, Grad rocket launchers and anti-tank guided missiles, including US-made TOWs. Multiple Turkish-supplied armoured vehicles were also spotted on the frontline in northwestern Hama.

The de-escalation efforts in the so-called Idlib zone seem to be on the vicinity of full collapse.

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The BBC recently aired a documentary titled One Day in Gaza, which concentrated on the terrible events of 14 May 2018, during the Great March of Return. 

Although more than 60 unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli army snipers that day and more than 2,000 injured, the documentary clearly and demonstrably leans towards the Israeli version of events, showing blatant disregard for the experiences and testimonies of the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who participated that day.

To my undying regret, I took part in this programme – and for this reason, I feel I have a right to make clear exactly how and where the narrative of that day was twisted in the hands of those very skilful at rewriting Palestinian history.

An act of incitement

I do not write this lightly. To justify – even in a nuanced way that appears to give voice to both sides of events – the aggressor’s version of the story is an act of incitement. This is not about whether the film reflects voices and stories on both sides. It’s about how those stories are being told. In other words, it is the framing and the angle selected to tell that story.

The last 70 years of this conflict have shown the world very clearly that if Israel feels it can get away with one massacre, it will do it again. This is how the culture of impunity has been created. It is done with words and images. In this case, the BBC has been the loudspeaker, whether consciously or not.

The narrative of that terrible day, as portrayed in this documentary, is very clear, and largely uncontested by witnesses on both sides: A non-violent, civilian protest march was hijacked by Hamas and other groups that drove people to the fence – in some cases against their will – to be used as cannon fodder against a phalanx of Israeli snipers whose mission was to protect villagers, some living just a few hundred metres away.

Israeli commanders were portrayed as thoughtful and reluctant, torn between the duty to limit civilian casualties but to hold this thin wire fence, which we were told was only one centimetre thick.

This is a cynical travesty of the truth, as every Palestinian in Gaza knows. Instead of dwelling on the fact that these were non-violent protesters aiming to restore Palestinian dignity and end Israel’s suffocating siege, the film portrays a twisted reality, in which demonstrations were led by an ideological organisation that denies the existence of Israel.

The role of civil society activists

Even though the Great March of Return was the product of an agreement among all Palestinian national forces, the documentary highlights the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and some other Islamist figures, while neglecting the primary role played by civil society activists in Gaza.

One of the most damning scenes in the film comes when a Palestinian teenager declares his desire to chop off the head of an Israeli soldier. He describes other protesters, including one holding a rifle in an attempt to intimidate Israeli soldiers.

Another Palestinian youth claims that the protests were no longer non-violent, and that he wished to kill the soldiers and tear them apart.

Even when no biographical link to an armed group is found in the history of a shooting victim, the documentary damns him by association; one of his siblings, killed 16 years ago, was a member of the military wing of Hamas. How is that relevant to a victim shot in 2018?

The documentary does take the Israeli army to task on the case of Wassal al-Sheikh Khalil, the teenage girl whose death was recorded on camera. But even she is robbed of her innocence, called by Palestinian witnesses the “bank of stones” for her efforts to provide stones for the boys.

Kobi Heller, the commander of the Israeli army’s Southern Gaza Brigade, was given free rein to say that as the Great March of Return had been deemed a military operation, military means were justified in stopping it.

Human shields

The documentary alights on the testimony of a Palestinian woman who says women were human shields for the protesters, just as the Israeli army claimed. In normal parlance, human shields are unwilling hostages, used by ruthless gunmen who hide behind them, but these were willing ones.

This woman was acknowledging what neither the Israelis nor the BBC producers wanted to hear: that this uprising was popular. Despite the cost in lives, the marchers did not want it to end. That is why the march has continued for more than a year now.

The marchers, from all parts of society in Gaza, were defending their right to return home to the villages from which their fathers and grandfathers were expelled. This is a legitimate right, recognised by the international community. It’s not history. It is reality.

The mother of Mousa Abu Hassanein, the paramedic who was shot dead by snipers, declares that she was taken to a faraway place which lacked any kind of medical services. Being enraged by this terrible situation, she was informed that these are orders of the organisers of the marches.

The documentary juxtaposes brutish images of rage and aggression in Gaza with an interview with a peaceful, elderly Israeli woman. Living just a few hundred metres from the fence, relaxing with a glass of water in her kitchen, she expresses her fear of what could have happened if the protesters had broken through.

Is this the BBC’s idea of editorial balance? Where was the elderly Palestinian woman, wandering through the rubble of her house, still not repaired since the last Israeli assault on Gaza five years ago? Where were the pictures of all the fallen homes across Gaza that have never been rebuilt?

Instead, the people who did this to Gaza were portrayed as thoughtful, even concerned, about the lives of the people whom they have so comprehensively destroyed since 2007. A female intelligence officer, with her back to the camera, expressed the complexity of reconciling her concern for the citizens of Gaza with her aspiration to protect Israeli villages.

Sins of commission and omission

The documentary creates inevitable feelings of compassion for the “predicament” faced by every Israeli soldier who tried hard to avoid civilian casualties, but was tragically compelled to protect little-old-lady villagers from the brutish, barbaric, easily manipulated protesters who aimed to wipe Israel off the map.

These are the sins of commission. But what of the sins of omission? The documentary did not address the fact that for the vast majority of the day, Israeli soldiers were not exposed to danger and were not opening fire in self-defence.

One soldier was slightly injured and another was killed but outside protest sites, and shots were fired by an individual standing apart from one protest. No soldier or independent military analyst was brought to bear on this point.

I am not whitewashing these events, nor  do I attempt to justify everything that took place that day at the fence. But the film did not pay anything more than lip service to the essence of the Palestinian conflict – the struggle of a whole nation against displacement, massacres and occupation for 70 years. It did not recognise that the Great March of Return was yet another stage in the ongoing fight for Palestinian freedom.

The documentary did not show the reality of the prison that Gaza has become. One shot of the cattle market that exists at the Erez crossing would have been enough to convey the reality of this cage, where there is no freedom of movement, no economic growth, no future prospects – no hope.

Future crimes

Palestinians in Gaza are not robots, being moved around on a chessboard by the dark, unaccountable men from different Palestinian factions declared by the rest of the world as “terrorists”. The masses of Palestinians participating in the Great March of Return were screaming their hearts out, demanding to be heard.

I am not denying that some violations were committed in the course of that terrible day. Knowing Gaza, I would have been surprised if they had not been. But once again, Israel and the BBC have succeeded in fashioning a narrative that turns the aggressor into the victim.

The true victims of that shocking day were the ones trying to break their chains, calling out for their lives, and knocking on the doors of their prison.

During a visit to Chicago, I was interviewed by the BBC for more than two hours for this documentary. They asked for my permission to air the interview, and I approved, under one condition: that they not twist my words or take them out of context. The documentary proved these concerns were well-founded.

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Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian journalist and peace activist. Born in Rafah, in 1984, Abu Artema is a refugee from Al Ramla village. He authored the book “Organized Chaos”.

Upon reading the Financial Times article, “Isis fighters struggle on return to Balkan states,” you might almost forget the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was and still is a hardcore terrorist organization guilty of some of the most heinous terrorism carried out in the 21st century.

The article begins, claiming:

In a village in the Kosovar countryside, Edona Berisha Demolli’s family have gathered to celebrate her return from Syria where she and her husband fled to six years ago to fight for Islamic militants Isis. 

“I am exhausted,” said Ms Demolli, as her relatives served guests slices of celebratory chocolate and vanilla cake and children played in the yard. “I thank God, the Kosovo state, and the US for bringing me home,” she said, referring to the pressure Washington put on countries to take their fighters back from camps across the Middle East and the logistical assistance they provided to that end.

The Financial Times would note that some 300 Bosnians joined ISIS and that Kosovo has set up barracks to accommodate returning fighters.

The article would end by quoting Besa Ismaili, a lecturer at Kosovo’s Faculty of Islamic Studies:

“You don’t have to approve of what they did, but you have to reach out to them to prevent further radicalisation, and their children need to develop a bond to the country.”

It is difficult to imagine how extremists who left their home country to fight alongside ISIS could be yet “further radicalized.”

We can suppose “further radicalization” might mean a second deployment in yet another of Washington’s proxy wars around the globe. It could be argued that returning fighters who receive assistance in reintegrating into society and escaping any real consequences for their actions will do very little to dissuade them or others in their community from doing it again.

Escaping Justice 

The Financial Times in its sympathetic narrative begets questions surrounding an inescapable truth regarding the central role the United States and its allies played in facilitating the transfer of foreign extremists to and from the battlefield in war-torn Syria.

The article specifically mentions (and through the words of a former extremist, thanks) the US for its logistical assistance in returning ISIS militants to their respective countries.

We can only imagine if terrorists invaded the United States, killed Americans, destroyed American infrastructure and fought against US troops, just how slighted Washington would feel if a foreign nation intervened and spirited these terrorists away, especially back to their countries of origin and beyond Washington’s ability to exact justice.

But that is precisely what the US has denied Damascus.

America’s Terrorist Foreign Legions 

The US aiding terrorists in their return to the Balkans will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the real rather than feigned relationship between Washington and Al Qaeda whom ISIS is merely a rebranded offshoot of.

In the 1990s as the US meddled in the Balkans, it provided weapons and aid to the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA), an analogue to the so-called “Free Syrian Army” in Syria today. Both were nothing more than public relations fronts. Behind it were regional Al Qaeda affiliates.

The Wall Street Journal in a forgotten 2001 article titled, “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” would lay out the truth behind KLA:

By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province.

While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department’s terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo. 

Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a “jihad” in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. 

Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with “freedom fighter” Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America’s special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.

The US arming extremists through dubious “liberation fronts?” US diplomats’ lives being in danger from the very extremists their government is sponsoring? America’s own envoys describing the very people Washington is backing as “terrorists?” These are all now well-established, familiar themes seen repeating themselves again and again from Libya where a US consulate was in fact attacked and a US ambassador killed, to Syria where the “Free Syrian Army” turned out to be little more than window dressing for Al Qaeda and ISIS and now back to the Balkans where the US is already seeding the ground for future proxy wars.

Articles like those appearing in the Financial Times today or the Wall Street Journal years ago all but lay out the truth before the American public, but apparently more compelling is contemporary political rhetoric of “fighting terrorism” or backing “liberation fronts” on humanitarian grounds.

Behind the rhetoric, the US has recruited and armed terrorists to fight its wars everywhere from Afghanistan in the 1980s, to the Balkans in the 1990s, to southern Russia in the early 2000s, to Libya and Syria from 2011 onward. Even as the US poses as “victor” over ISIS in Iraq and Syria, it has spent its time ferrying fighters back to Europe where they can escape Iraqi and Syrian justice, recuperate, radicalize others in their community and be fully prepared for the next time Washington’s needs call upon them.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. Gunnar Ulson is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from NEO

If you want to understand what is really happening in the world today, a mid-ranking official named Ian Henderson is vastly more important to you than Theresa May. You will not, however, find anything about Henderson in the vast majority of corporate and state media outlets.

You may recall that, one month after the Skripal incident, there was allegedly a “chemical weapons attack” in the jihadist enclave of Douma, which led to air strikes against the Syrian government in support of the jihadist forces by US, British and French bombers and missiles. At the time, I argued that the Douma jihadist enclave was on the brink of falling (as indeed it proved) and there was no military advantage – and a massive international downside – for the Syrian Army in using chemical weapons. Such evidence for the attack that existed came from the jihadist allied and NATO funded White Helmets and related sources; and the veteran and extremely respected journalist Robert Fisk, first westerner to arrive on the scene, reported that no chemical attack had taken place.

The “Douma chemical weapon attack” was linked to the “Skripal chemical weapon attack” by the western media as evidence of Russian evil. Robert Fisk was subjected to massive media abuse and I was demonised by countless mainstream media journalists on social media, of which this is just one example of a great many.

In both the Skripal and the Douma case, it fell to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to provide the technical analysis. The OPCW is a multilateral body established by treaty, and has 193 member states. The only major chemical weapons owning powers which are not members and refuse the inspections regime are the pariah rogue states Israel and North Korea.

An OPCW fact finding mission visited Douma on April 21 and 25 2018 and was able to visit the sites, collect samples and interview witnesses. No weaponised chemicals were detected but traces of chlorine were found. Chlorine is not an uncommon chemical, so molecular traces of chlorine at a bombing site are not improbable. The interim report of the OPCW following the Fact Finding Mission was markedly sober and non-committal:

The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody.

The fact finding mission then returned to OPCW HQ, at which time the heavily politicised process took over within the secretariat and influenced by national delegations. 9 months later the final report was expressed in language of greater certainty, yet backed by no better objective evidence:

Regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon on 7 April 2018 in Douma, the Syrian Arab Republic, the evaluation and analysis of all the information gathered by the FFM—witnesses’ testimonies, environmental and biomedical samples analysis results, toxicological and ballistic analyses from experts, additional digital information from witnesses—provide reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.

However the report noted it was unable to determine who had used the chlorine as a weapon. Attempts to spin this as a consequence of OPCW’s remit are nonsense – the OPCW exists precisely to police chemical weapons violations, and has never operated on the basis of violator anonymity.

Needless to say, NATO funded propaganda site Bellingcat had been from the start in the lead in proclaiming to the world the “evidence” that this was a chemical weapons attack by the Assad government, dropping simple chlorine cylinders as bombs. The original longer video footage of one of the videos on the Bellingcat site gives a fuller idea of the remarkable lack of damage to one gas cylinder which had smashed through the reinforced concrete roof and landed gently on the bed.

[I am sorry that I do not know how to extract that longer video from its tweet. You need to click on the above link then click on the link in the first tweet that warns you it is sensitive material – in fact there is nothing sensitive there, so don’t worry.]

Now we come to the essential Mr Ian Henderson. Mr Henderson was in charge of the engineering sub-group of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission. The engineers assessed that the story of the cylinders being dropped from the sky was improbable, and it was much more probable that they had simply been placed there manually. There are two major reasons they came to this conclusion.

At least one of the crater holes showed damage that indicated it had been caused by an explosive, not by the alleged blunt impact. The cylinders simply did not show enough damage to have come through the reinforced concrete slabs and particularly the damage which would have been caused by the rebar. Rebar is actually thicker steel than a gas cylinder and would have caused major deformation.

Yet – and this is why Ian Henderson is more important to your understanding of the world than Theresa May – the OPCW Fact Finding Mission reflected in their final report none of the findings of their own sub-group of university based engineers from two European universities, but instead produced something that is very close to the amateur propaganda “analysis” put out by Bellingcat. The implications of this fraud are mind-blowing.

The genuine experts’ findings were completely suppressed until they were leaked last week. And still then, this leak – which has the most profound ramifications – has in itself been almost completely suppressed by the mainstream media, except for those marginalised outliers who still manage to get a platform, Robert Fisk and Peter Hitchens (a tiny platform in the case of Fisk).

Consider what this tells us. A fake chemical attack incident was used to justify military aggression against Syria by the USA, UK and France. The entire western mainstream media promoted the anti-Syrian and anti-Russian narrative to justify that attack. The supposedly neutral international watchdog, the OPCW, was manipulated by the NATO powers to produce a highly biased report that omits the findings of its own engineers. Which can only call into doubt the neutrality and reliability of the OPCW in its findings on the Skripals too.

There has been virtually no media reporting of the scandalous cover-up. This really does tell you a very great deal more about how the Western world works than the vicissitudes of the ludicrously over-promoted Theresa May and her tears of self pity.

Still more revealing is the reaction from the OPCW – which rather than acknowledge there is a major problem with the conclusions of its Douma report, has started a witch hunt for the whistleblower who leaked the Henderson report.

The Russian government claimed to have intelligence that indicated it was MI6 behind the faking of the Douma chemical attack. I have no means of knowing the truth of that, and am always sceptical of claims by all governments on intelligence matters, after a career observing government disinformation techniques from the inside. But the MI6 claim is consistent with the involvement of the MI6 originated White Helmets in this scam. and MI6 can always depend on their house journal The Guardian to push their narrative, as Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker does here in an article “justifying” the omission of the Henderson report by the OPCW. Whitaker argues that Henderson’s engineers had a minority view. Interestingly Whitaker’s article is not from the Guardian itself, which prefers to keep all news of the Henderson report from the public.

But Whitaker’s thesis cannot stand. On one level, of course we know that Henderson’s expert opinion did not prevail at the OPCW. Henderson and the truth lost out in the politicking. But at the very least, it would be essential for the OPCW report to reflect and note the strong contrary view among its experts, and the suppression of this essential information cannot possibly be justified. Whitaker’s attempt to do so is a disgrace.

Which leads me on to the Skripals.

I have noted before the news management technique of the security services, leaking out key facts in a managed way over long periods so as not to shock what public belief there is in the official Skripal story. Thus nine months passed before it was admitted that the first person who “coincidentally” came across the ill Skripals on the park bench, just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army.

The inquest into the unfortunate Dawn Sturgess has now been postponed four times. The security services have now admitted – once again through the Guardian – that even if “Boshirov and Petrov” poisoned the Skripals, they cannot have been also responsible for the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess. This because the charity bin in which the perfume bottle was allegedly found is emptied regularly so the bottle could not have lain there for 16 weeks undiscovered, and because the package was sealed so could not have been used on the Skripals’ doorknob.

This Guardian article is bylined by the security services’ pet outlet, Luke Harding, and one other. The admissions are packaged in a bombastic sandwich about Russian GRU agents.

Every single one of these points – that “Boshirov and Petrov” have never been charged with the manslaughter of Sturgess, that the bottle was sealed so could not have been used at the Skripals’ house, and that it cannot have been in the charity bin that long – are points that I have repeatedly made, and for which I have suffered massive abuse, including – indeed primarily – from dozens of mainstream media journalists. Making precisely these points has seen me labelled as a mentally ill conspiracy theorist or paid Russian agent. Just like the Douma fabrication, it turns out there was indeed every reason to doubt, and now, beneath a veneer of anti-Russian nonsense, these facts are quietly admitted by anonymous “sources” to Harding. No wonder poor Dawn Sturgess keeps not getting an inquest.

Which brings us back full circle to the OPCW. In neither its report on the Salisbury poisoning nor its report on the Amesbury poisoning did the OPCW ever use the word Novichok. As an FCO source explained to me, the expert scientists in OPCW were desperate to signal that the Salisbury sample had not been for days on a doorknob collecting atmospheric dust, rain and material from hands and gloves, but all the politics of the OPCW leadership would allow them to slip in was the phrase “almost complete absence of impurities” as a clue – which the British government then spun as meaning “military grade” when it actually meant “not from a doorknob”.

Now we have seen irrefutable evidence of poor Ian Henderson in exactly the same position with the OPCW of having the actual scientific analysis blocked out of the official findings. That is extremely strong added evidence that my source was indeed telling the truth about the earlier suppression of the scientific evidence in the Skripal case.

Even the biased OPCW could not give any evidence of the Amesbury and Salisbury poisons being linked, concluding:

“Due to the unknown storage conditions of the small bottle found in the house of Mr Rowley and the fact that the environmental samples analysed in relation to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Mr Nicholas Bailey were exposed to the environment and moisture, the impurity profiles of the samples available to the OPCW do not make it possible to draw conclusions as to whether the samples are from the same synthesis batch”

Which is strange, as the first sample had an “almost complete absence of impurities” and the second was straight out of the bottle. In fact beneath the doublespeak the OPCW are saying there is no evidence the two attacks were from the same source. Full stop.

I suppose I should now have reached the stage where nothing will shock me, but as a textbook example of the big lie technique, this BBC article is the BBC’s take on the report I just quoted – which remember does not even use the word Novichok.

When it comes to government narrative and the mainstream media, mass purveyor of fake news, scepticism is your friend. Remembering that is much more important to your life than the question of which Tory frontman is in No. 10.

For an analysis of the Henderson Report fiasco written to the highest academic standards, where you can find all the important links to original source material, read this superb work by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media.

 

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UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty argues that UK Government policy has led to “systemic immiseration” of a significant part of the population – CommonSpace looks at the report’s 10 most important findings

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1. Dickensian Britain

“It might seem to some observers that the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitised version of the nineteenth century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens, rather than seeking to respond creatively and compassionately to the real needs of those facing widespread economic insecurity in an age of deep and rapid transformation brought about by automation, zero-hour contracts and rapidly growing inequality.”

2. Employment is no escape from poverty

“Almost 60 per cent of those in poverty in the United Kingdom are in families where someone works, and a shocking 2.9 million people are in poverty in families where all adults work full-time. According to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, 10 per cent of workers over 16 are in insecure employment. And 10 years after the 2008 financial crisis, employees’ median real earnings are, remarkably, still below pre-crisis levels.”

3.  Eat or heat

“People said they had to choose either to eat or heat their homes. Children are showing up at school with empty stomachs, and schools are collecting food and sending it home because teachers know their students will otherwise go hungry. And 2.5 million people in the United Kingdom survive with incomes no more than 10 per cent above the poverty line –just one crisis away from falling into poverty.”

4. Homeless Britain

“In England, homelessness rose 60 per cent between 2011 and 2017 and rough sleeping rose 165 per cent from 2010 to 2018. The charity Shelter estimates that 320,000 people in Britain are now homeless, and recent research by Crisis suggests that 24,000 people are sleeping rough or on public transportation –more than twice government estimates. Almost 600 people died homeless in England and Wales in 2017 alone, a 24 per cent increase in the past five years.26There were 1.2 million people on the social housing waiting list in 2017, but less than 6,000 homes were built that year.”

5. The disappearing safety net

“The Special Rapporteur heard time and again about important public programmes being pared down, the loss of institutions that previously protected vulnerable people, social care services at a breaking point, and local government and devolved administrations stretched far too thin. Considering the significant resources available in the country and the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have resulted in significantly worse outcomes, the policies pursued since 2010 amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the country’s human rights obligations.”

6. Ideological, not economic

“The ideological rather than economic motivation for the cutbacks is demonstrated by the fact that the United Kingdom spends £78 billion per year to reduce or alleviate poverty, quite apart from the cost of benefits; £1 in every £5 spent on public services goes to repair what poverty has done to people’s lives.40Cuts to preventive services mean that needs go unmet and people in crisis are pushed toward services that cannot turn them away but cost far more, like emergency rooms and expensive temporary housing.”

7. Harm done by Universal Credit

“The Special Rapporteur heard countless stories of severe hardships suffered under UC. These reports are corroborated by an increasing body of research that suggests UC is being implemented in ways that negatively impact claimants’ mental health, finances and work prospects. Where UC has fully rolled out, food bank demand has increased, a link belatedly acknowledged by the Work and Pensions Secretary in February 2019.”

8. Sanctions regime

“One of the key features of UC involves the imposition of strict conditions enforced by draconian sanctions for even minor infringements. As the system grows older, some penalties will last years. The Special Rapporteur reviewed seemingly endless evidence illustrating the harsh and arbitrary nature of some sanctions, as well as the devastating effects of losing access to benefits for weeks or months at a time.”

9. Women and poverty

“Given the structural disadvantages faced by women, it is particularly disturbing that so many policy changes since 2010 have taken a greater toll on them. Changes to tax and benefit policies made since May 2010 will by 2021–2022 have reduced support for women far more than for men. Reductions in social care services translate to an increased burden on primary caregivers, who are disproportionately women. Under UC, single payments to an entire household, which are the default arrangement, can entrench problematic and often gendered interpersonal dynamics, including by giving control of payments to a financially or physically abusive partner.”

10. Scotland

“It is too soon to say whether these steps – and Scotland’s new powers of taxation – will make a difference for people in poverty. However, it is clear that there is still a real accountability gap which can and should be addressed. The Social Security (Scotland) Act of 2018 provides no redress for violations of the right to social security. But if the compelling recommendations made by the First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership are adopted, and if the Scottish Government acts swiftly on its commitment to incorporate the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scottish law, these steps will make a huge difference.”

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“See no Evil. Hear no Evil. Speak no Evil.” This maxim largely sums up Western media foreign policy reporting which diametrically opposes the truth, and serves as war propaganda to advance the interests of al Qaeda and the CIA Caliphate Project[1].

North Americans are not getting the truth, presumably because if they did, the oligarch class dictating its will on the masses through lies and deceptions, would be exposed.

Freedom of the Press in North America is largely dead. Foreign policy “reporters” who rise to the top serve Empire and its war lies.  Democracy is a Western illusion.

Janice Kortkamp and her husband Sid explore these themes in Syria Face To Face Episode 15. They expose the al Qaeda-supporting sources for Western media. They expose the truth about the war on Syria.

Bana Alabed[2], a terrorist-embedded 8 year old who calls for airstrikes and World War Three is exposed.  Bilal Abdul Kareem[3], a terrorist propaganda asset is exposed. The reality of Western disinformation sources is revealed and ridiculed, as it should be.

Bread and circuses, clowns and imposters, are keeping the masses distracted, as the Western-perpetrated holocaust festers and grows beneath the radar of fabricated public ignorance.

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

Notes

[1] Mark Taliano, “NATO Is Endangering Us All.” Global Research, 8 May, 2019. (https://www.marktaliano.net/nato-is-endangering-us-all/) Accessed 27 May, 2019.

[2] Mark Taliano, “War Crimes and the Rights of Children in Syria and Iraq: On the Importance of Media Literacy in Times of Universal Deceit.” Global Research, 14 October, 2017. (https://www.marktaliano.net/war-crimes-and-the-rights-of-children-in-syria-and-iraq-on-the-importance-of-media-literacy-in-times-of-universal-deceit/?fbclid=IwAR33h5QKo9i7yZZVvUI_CEdcTIAI4G-C-UCftDZ3Au1UN_cluJx9ODKO2L8) Accessed 27 May, 2019.

[3] Robert Inlakesh,“Sky News Collaborates with Idlib Terrorists to Create Syria War Propaganda.” 21^stCentury Wire, 24 May, 2019. (https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/05/24/sky-news-collaborates-with-idlib-terrorists-to-create-syria-war-propaganda/?fbclid=IwAR127xCi-FbZ4eKxKlrML88mgMa17E3rAJu17Y_e93BFFLZbwz2FN2S7aLs) Accessed, 27 May, 2019.

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

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Concentrations of antibiotics found in some of the world’s rivers exceed ‘safe’ levels by up to 300 times, the first ever global study has discovered.

Researchers looked for 14 commonly used antibiotics in rivers in 72 countries across six continents and found antibiotics at 65% of the sites monitored.

Metronidazole, which is used to treat bacterial infections including skin and mouth infections, exceeded safe levels by the biggest margin, with concentrations at one site in Bangladesh 300 times greater than the ‘safe’ level.

In the River Thames and one of its tributaries in London, the researchers detected a maximum total antibiotic concentration of 233 nanograms per litre (ng/l), whereas in Bangladesh the concentration was 170 times higher.

The most prevalent antibiotic was trimethoprim, which was detected at 307 of the 711 sites tested and is primarily used to treat urinary tract infections.

The research team compared the monitoring data with ‘safe’ levels recently established by the AMR Industry Alliance which, depending on the antibiotic, range from 20-32,000 ng/l.

Ciproflaxacin, which is used to treat a number of bacterial infections, was the compound that most frequently exceeded safe levels, surpassing the safety threshold in 51 places.

The team said that the ‘safe’ limits were most frequently exceeded in Asia and Africa, but sites in Europe, North America and South America also had levels of concern showing that antibiotic contamination was a “global problem.”

Sites where antibiotics exceeded ‘safe’ levels by the greatest degree were in Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan and Nigeria, while a site in Austria was ranked the highest of the European sites monitored.

The study revealed that high-risk sites were typically adjacent to wastewater treatment systems, waste or sewage dumps and in some areas of political turmoil, including the Israeli and Palestinian border.

The project, which was led by the University of York, was a huge logistical challenge—with 92 sampling kits flown out to partners across the world who were asked to take samples from locations along their local river system.

Samples were then frozen and couriered back to the University of York for testing. Some of the world’s most iconic rivers were sampled, including the Chao Phraya, Danube, Mekong, Seine, Thames, Tiber and Tigris.

Dr. John Wilkinson, from the Department of Environment and Geography, who co-ordinated the monitoring work said no other study had been done on this scale.

He said:

“Until now, the majority of environmental monitoring work for antibiotics has been done in Europe, N. America and China. Often on only a handful of antibiotics. We know very little about the scale of problem globally.

“Our study helps fill this key knowledge gap with data being generated for countries that had never been monitored before.”

Professor Alistair Boxall, Theme Leader of the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, said:

“The results are quite eye opening and worrying, demonstrating the widespread contamination of river systems around the world with antibiotic compounds.

“Many scientists and policy makers now recognise the role of the natural environment in the antimicrobial resistance problem. Our data show that antibiotic contamination of rivers could be an important contributor.”

“Solving the problem is going to be a mammoth challenge and will need investment in infrastructure for waste and wastewater treatment, tighter regulation and the cleaning up of already contaminated sites.”

The finds are due to be unveiled during two presentations at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) in Helsinki on 27 and 28 May.

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So Trump has declared an “emergency” to circumvent Congressional oversight of arms shipments to other countries. By law Congress by law is given 30 days advance before before such sales are completed, and it can obstruct them. But a loophole in the Arms Control Act allows the president to authorize sales in an emergency.

One must ask what emergency causes the president to allow sale of $ 8 billion in arms manufactured by Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, and GE to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. (Britain’s BAE and Europe’s Airbus will also profit handsomely from this decision.)

What emergency confronts any of these recipient countries? The murderous regime of Jared Kushner pal Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, savagely murders journalists who criticize it, crushes dissent in neighboring Bahrain, kidnaps the Lebanese prime minister, applies the strictest interpretations of Sharia law within the kingdom and wages war on Yemen, killing tens of thousands of civilians with U.S. support. Where’s the problem? Is the criminal Saudi effort in Yemen failing so badly the Saudis need more arms to kill more Yemenis to stave off defeat?

What is the emergency in the UAE? They are allied with the Saudis in the effort to crush the Houthis of Yemen, who because of their Shiite Islam in a generally Sunni region are both despised for religious reasons by Gulf monarchs, and consequently smeared with Iranian associations, not because substantial political and military ties exist between Iran and the Houthis (as they do between Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Iran) but because they hate Shiites in general. Perhaps in this emergency situation they need more U.S. bombs to drop the Arab world’s poorest, most miserable country?

What emergency does the Kingdom of Jordan face?

Presumably the State Department and Pentagon will suggest that “recent Iranian threats” to U.S. forces in the Middle East–which were justified as the Pentagon indicated that 120,000 troops would be sent, adjusted down to 10,000, then 1,200-1,500 for some reason (I suspect because the Pentagon balked at the larger figures, noting that there was in fact no new real Iranian threat to U.S. forces in the region)–constitute an “emergency” justifying the sales. (The British and Germans perceive no elevated threat from Iran and have pooh-poohed U.S. saber-rattling.) Fake news is being deployed to rationalize sending more forces to the region, thus ratcheting up tensions with an Iran that has in fact been cautiously defensive.

Trump himself may rationalize it as he always has: arms sales to Saudi Arabia create jobs! (Trump has repeatedly said that the $ 110 billion in arms deals he’s signed with Saudi Arabia means “500,000 jobs.” This is more Fake News; the number is a tiny fraction of that. But clearly Trump is a prime example of Marx’s dictum that “The soul of the capitalist is capital.” It’s not so much about creating jobs anyway but creating obscene profits from arms sales for the captains of the military-industrial complex.)

We can’t allow the hack-saw murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Istanbul consulate to affect our strong ties to the Saudi arms market! U.S. national security is at stake!

Kushner reportedly told MbS that this crisis about the Khashoggi murder in Oct. 2018 would “blow over.” (The prince has told intimates that he has Jared “in my pocket.” It appears that Jared supplied him with the names of Saudi dissidents, subsequently detained, in return for something.) Indeed, the cordial U.S.-Saudi relationship seems unaffected by the murder.

Meanwhile UNCHR, the UN Refugee Agency, has proclaimed a “Yemen Emergency”—which is to say, a real emergency in the real world. This is due principally to the U.S./U.K.-backed Saudi-led campaign to subdue Yemen and turn it into a Saudi satrapy. The civilian casualties, the refugee figures, the deaths from war-related famine alone are horrific. And the Saudis block aid.

We have an emergency in this country, this imperialist country–an urgent need to stop Trump, Pompeo and Bolton from starting another war-based-on-lies egged on by the beastly SbM and the murderous Binyamin Netanyahu, family friend of the Kushners. (Surely you know he once borrowed Jared’s bed in a sleepover at the Kusher home? They’re that close. Google search it. And then realize that the 38-year-old Kushner is Trump’s “senior advisor” on the Israel-Palestinian problem, facilitator of the corrupt Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian alignment.)

Final thought: One real offense that should be truly impeachable is authorizing the sale of fighter jets and bombs used to kill children to a regime led by a prince U.S. intelligence services hold responsible for a journalist’s murder, sidelining Congress in doing so.

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Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: [email protected]. 

On this Memorial Day weekend all Americans should look back to the great essay written in 1935 by Marine General Smedley Butler. He named it ‘War is a Racket’ and it still resonates nowadays perhaps even more powerfully. His essay should be required reading for all high school American History students. General Butler acknowledged that he became a ‘Gangster’ for the US corporate interests internationally.

Realizing that what we call ‘War’ is many times just an excuse for private business interests to A) make mega bucks from our tax dollars and B) to control the resources and markets of overseas nations, all under the protection of our flag. Has anything changed?

Don’t you who ‘know better’, as to this empire, just love it when you turn on the boob tube lately and see those Army, Marines and Navy commercials?

How about the one that shows soldiers in combat, aiming their weapons and wearing similar gear to what Art Carney wore as a sewer ‘denizen’ on The Honeymooners?

The narrator of the commercial says something to the effect of ‘Warriors wanted’.

The Navy has one that says: Around the world, around the clock, in defense of all we hold dear back home. America’s Navy’.

You drive in your car and see the license tags advertising one of the military branches. How about those bumper stickers saying “Proud Mom of a Marine” or “Proud Grandparent of a Marine” …

Usually right near a ‘Trump 2020’ sticker (Some of the car owners still have their ‘Bush/Cheney’ ones)?

You are watching a major league baseball game on the boob tube and all the players and coaches are wearing camouflage caps and uniforms. Didn’t you know that each Monday is ‘Military Monday’? The worst case scenario is when you tune in to watch any major sporting event. Way before the action begins they will have a giant flag draped across the field of play. Then as the national anthem is sung a color guard appears, dressed to the tees in full uniforms and carrying another flag. Well why not? We’re at War!

In this upcoming 2020 election cycle the overwhelming number of potential candidates, and of course the hypocrite Trump, stand in line to keep this obscene military spending alive and well… for whom? Not of course for the 300 million of us who cannot get the public services we need to live comfortably.

How can we, when over half of our federal taxes goes to some segment of what they label Defense Spending. Oh, they con us by calling most of it Discretionary Spending. It sure as hell does NOT go to the young men and women who serve in those overseas places that we had NO business ever being in! Yet, the phonies and hypocrites, and of course the fools who buy into this lie, lower their heads and give reverence to the ‘fallen heroes’. They were not heroes, in places like Vietnam all the way to the present day concerning our illegal and immoral actions in the Middle East.

Rather, they are Pawns in this empire’s geopolitical War Games!

Yes, many of our military personnel were and are brave and stalwart… but NOT those who sent them!

All those generals with the tons of fruit salad on their chests were not then (in Vietnam) or now considered heroes to this writer. If they had any real conscience they would have said NO to follow the pied pipers over the cliffs of reason!

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

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As President Donald Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rattle their sabers, there is no evidence that Iran poses a threat to the United States. It was Trump who threatened genocide, tweeting, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” The Pentagon is now considering sending 10,000 additional troops to the Gulf region for “defensive” purposes and not in response to a new threat by Iran. Threats to use military force — like the use of force itself — violate U.S. and international law.

Last week, Pompeo said U.S. intelligence had determined that Iranian-sponsored attacks on U.S. forces “were imminent.” The Trump administration asserted, “without evidence,” according to The New York Times, that new intelligence revealed Iran was sponsoring proxy groups to attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

The Pentagon announced its intention to deploy a Patriot antimissile battery to the Middle East. Three days later, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the United States would send up to 120,000 troops to the region if Iran attacks U.S. forces or speeds up work on nuclear weapons.

But on May 14, Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, a senior British military official and deputy commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, told reporters at the Pentagon that “there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria.”

The U.S. and Israel Plan Regime Change in Iran

The Trump administration and its close ally Israel have long had their sights on regime change in Iran.

One year ago, Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program. In return, Iran received billions of dollars of relief from punishing sanctions.

Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly confirmed that Iran was complying with its obligations under the agreement, Trump capitulated to pressure from Israel. The United States pulled out of the historic deal and re-imposed the harsh sanctions against Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for convincing Trump to withdraw from the deal.

“I asked him to leave the JCPOA,” Netanyahu claimed. “It was me who made him to depart from the deal.”

Now Israel is fanning the flames of war. Prominent Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, national security reporter for Channel 13 in Israel, wrote at Axios that senior Israeli officials met with Bolton and his team in late April and gave them “information about possible Iranian plots against the U.S. or its allies in the Gulf.”

U.S. regime change in Iran would reprise the covert 1953 CIA coup that overthrew the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalized British oil interests. The United States replaced Mosaddegh with the vicious Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled Iran with an iron fist until he was overthrown in the 1979 Revolution and replaced with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocracy. But U.S. regime change in Iran would be overt this time.

The U.S., Not Iran, Is Acting Aggressively

The New York Times cites military and intelligence officials in the U.S. and Europe who maintain that during the past year, “most aggressive moves have originated not in Tehran, but in Washington” where Bolton “has prodded President Trump into backing Iran into a corner.” Bolton “has repeatedly called for American military strikes against Tehran,” The New York Times reported.

Pompeo listed 12 demands Iran must meet to secure a new nuclear agreement. “Taken together, the demands would require a complete transformation by Iran’s government, and they hardened the perception that the administration is really seeking regime change,” according to The Associated Press.

The Pentagon has prepared plans for an air attack on Iran, veteran Middle East war correspondent Eric Margolis reported in July 2018. He wrote:

The Pentagon has planned a high-intensity air war against Iran that Israel and the Saudis might very well join. The plan calls for over 2,300 air strikes against Iranian strategic targets: airfields and naval bases, arms and petroleum, oil and lubricant depots, telecommunication nodes, radar, factories, military headquarters, ports, water works, airports, missile bases and units of the Revolutionary Guards.

Trump’s reckless withdrawal from the nuclear deal actually increases the chances Iran will develop a nuclear program. After complying with the JCPOA for a year after Trump pulled out of it, Iran is now threatening to resume high enrichment of uranium, which it had agreed to halt under the deal.

Trump’s threats to use military force in Iran and the use of force itself are illegal under the United Nations Charter and the War Powers Resolution.

The U.S. Violates the United Nations Charter

Ratified treaties are “the supreme law of the land” under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. That means their provisions constitute U.S. law. The United Nations Charter, which the U.S. ratified in 1945, is therefore binding domestic law.

In Article 2, the Charter provides,

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The only exception to the Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force is when a country acts in self-defense or with the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack, under Article 51 of the Charter. Iran has not mounted an armed attack against the United States. Under the well-established Caroline case, there must exist “a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”

Pompeo’s claim that Iranian-sponsored attacks will “imminently” occur against U.S. forces remains unsubstantiated. Nothing in the Charter allows a U.N. member country to unilaterally decide to use military force unless it does so in self-defense. If the United States were to attack and/or invade Iran, it would be acting unlawfully and not in self-defense.

Violation of the War Powers Resolution

A U.S. attack on Iran would also violate the War Powers Resolution. Congress enacted that law to reclaim its constitutional authority to send U.S. troops into combat after the disastrous Vietnam War. The resolution allows the president to introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities in only three situations:

First, when Congress has declared war, which it has not done since World War II. Second, in the event of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” which has not occurred. Third, when Congress has enacted “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). There is no AUMF or other congressional statute authorizing the use of military force in Iran.

After the September 11 attacks, Congress passed an AUMF, authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Although the 2001 AUMF was tied to the 9/11 attacks, it has been misused to justify multiple military operations in several countries, many of them unrelated to 9/11.

The government of Iran has no ties to al-Qaeda, which engineered the 9/11 attacks. On May 21, a senior U.S. government official told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community has no evidence that al-Qaeda is allied with Iran in the Persian Gulf area. Thus, the 2001 AUMF cannot be used to legitimize a U.S. attack on Iran.

In 2002, Congress passed another AUMF, which authorized the president “to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to — (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

Once the U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq and eliminated the government of President Saddam Hussein, the 2002 AUMF license ended.

Moreover, Congress specifically provided in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, “Nothing in this Act may be construed to authorize the use of force against Iran or North Korea.”

There are several bills pending in Congress that would require the president to comply with the War Powers Resolution, including a repeal of the 2001 AUMF. Measures such as these could enable Congress to clarify that the president cannot use military force except with congressional approval and only in legitimate self-defense. But on May 22, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted down a Democratic proposal that would require congressional approval for U.S. military force against Iran.

“A war with Iran would be an absolute disaster,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an online speech. “The United States Congress must do everything it can to prevent the Trump administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran that could lead to even more deaths than the Iraq War.”

There is no evidence that Iran poses a threat to the United States, yet the usual suspects in the Trump administration are trying to advance illegal military action. Indeed, it is Trump’s actions thus far that have posed the real threat to U.S. security. Iran is calling his bluff by considering whether to restart high enrichment of uranium.

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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 Jared Rodriguez/Truthout

When it comes down to it, the question is what do we want for our schools?

The government of Doug Ford is actually quite clear about this. It wants to cut money from schools as well as their neighbourhoods, setting them back on their heels and making them more malleable for a government set on hollowing them out. It would like to force schools to privatize, charge more fees, perhaps even offer themselves up for businesses to sponsor them, much in the way that charter schools operate in the U.S. The Ford government has brought in so many changes, so quickly that parents, students and educators have had no time to react to them all.

History

There is nothing new about this. In 1997 the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris took over funding from all the school boards across the province and squeezed it hard with a funding formula that never worked. It would never take into account the varied needs of different schools in different areas with different populations and stresses upon them. According to a 2015 article Harris-era Hangovers  by Hugh Mackenzie, the TDSB has, in most years, faced yawning gaps between what it needs to run schools and programs and what it receives from the government. In 2012, he says that gap was $109 million; the next year there was a further $50 million and in 2014, another $30 million. Whether Liberal or Tory, the gap between what this board needs and what it gets has been pretty much constant.

The gap was so bad in 2002, that the TDSB trustees refused to cut $90 million from the budget that year. As a result, the province took over the board and appointed supervisor Paul Christie, who came in and made the cuts he was told to: millions of dollars from caretaking, staff development, vice-principals, supervisors, assistants, secretaries and many others. Yet, in the end, he couldn’t balance the TDSB’s budget for the Tories.

Now

The gap this year is $67.8 million.

What do we want for our schools?  Schools must have a meaningful curriculum with courses that reflect the widely varied interests of students and enable them to explore and ask questions, without the distractions of standardized tests like EQAO or learning outcomes. Students  need to be engaged, active learners and citizens no matter where they come from in the city or their background. Those who are having trouble coping in school must have the support of well-trained individuals like social workers, psychologists, speech and language pathologists and others who can develop sensible strategies to help. Their teachers require the support and advice of other educators who can help them develop their skills and understanding.

Schools must be democratic places with School and Community Councils gaining decision-making power along with the parents, educators and students who rely on them as the centre of their community. They must be free of racism and prejudice. The activities that go on in them need to reflect the backgrounds of the many people who attend them. The educators in them must further their children’s knowledge of the history and culture of Indigenous peoples so they can truly reconcile with them rather than paying lip service in the form of land dedications. To be truly democratic, all activities must be open to all children regardless of their ability to pay.

Schools have to be well-maintained and safe, providing roles for the many adults who tend to the buildings and the children in them. We need to recognize that the different adults who work or volunteer in their schools are as important as teachers in keeping students safe and in giving them a sense of community.

There is nothing radical about any of these ideas. They are reflected throughout the TDSB “budget drivers,” the guides for Board decisions that Director John Malloy referred to frequently last week as he proposed cut after cut to the budgets of 2019 through to 2021. It must have been a heart-wrenching task to dig the grave for public education deeper than ever.

This is a terrible budget and that is not denigrate the efforts of TDSB staff, but to recognize the strictures under which they worked. It comes at a time when there have already been deep cuts to schools. CUPE Local 4400  President John Weatherup fears for the safety of his members employed in helping needy kids who have already seen their support dwindle over the years. Outdoor education for urban children is placed further from their reach. Many staff who support educators will be gone. The efforts the Board has made to hire people who reflect the backgrounds of the kids they teach will be compromised.

I truly sympathize with trustees as they ponder the decisions they have to make about the coming budgets. They worry about explaining to constituents why their schools, already under stress will have less to work with in the coming years. They worry about losses to their local school budgets. They also wonder what to do about it. Do they say “No” to this budget – turn it down and face the inevitable? That could mean once again, a supervisor being appointed to take over their jobs and make the cuts Doug Ford wants. They fear a supervisor would make far worse cuts than the TDSB management has proposed.

Local OSSTF President Leslie Wolfe told School Magazine: “The worst of the damage of the cuts by the Progressive Conservative government is yet to come. At some point trustees may have to say ‘we can no longer do this.’ But I can understand why they wouldn’t want to risk the imposition of a supervisor this early in the term.”

As difficult as it is, I think trustees do need to say “No” to this budget. They were elected to support public education in Toronto – not stand by helplessly and watch as basic principles like equity, safety and quality teaching are sacrificed to the whims of a provincial government that won 40 percent of the vote in the last election, but acts like a dictatorship. They will lose their credibility as trustees if they go along with this budget. Their opposition to future  government budgets won’t be taken seriously.

Rejecting it could mean a TDSB under supervision and worse cuts. Those might come in future budgets anyway. But, those cuts would be Doug Ford’s alone – the man who says the province is broke, but turns down revenue. Doug Ford should be the person Ontarians turn to when they get sick because public health has been undermined, when their family members die from drug overdoses because he’s cut prevention centres, when they can’t find housing because he’s exempted new rental units from rent control, when their children can’t graduate from their high school because it can’t offer the courses they require, when they no longer get the help they need because the people who could give it to them have been let go, when the ceiling of their children’s school collapses – when schools become warehouses for those who can’t afford a private “choice” – a word of which this government is especially fond.

Doug Ford and his band of cheerleaders must bear the burden of what they have done in the short time they have occupied Queen’s Park. They can’t, as John Weatherup said, go “whistling by the graveyard” as others do their dirty work for them. As cities, boards of health, social advocates, unions and so many more people organize to oppose this government, so too must the trustees of the TDSB and say “No” to this budget.

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Ignacio Ramonet, French author and journalist, former editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, sat recently with Nicolas Maduro.[i] Ramonet has known four Venezuelan presidents. In Miraflores, Caracus, seat of government, people converse, debate, talk on the phone and wait. All is normal.

Visitors, business folk, journalists, civil servants, ministers and their aides pass through the corridors.  Ramonet has not met Maduro since December. Since then, the US has attacked Venezuela more aggressively than in the country’s history.

Maduro is calm. He has shown himself to be a tranquil leader. No minister has left his government. No commanding general has deserted. No rupture has occurred in the civic-military alliance. Ramonet and Maduro discuss all this. Maduro says:

“Only dialogue can resolve the crisis. … Between Venezuelans of good will, we can find solutions without violence”.

Occasionally, precisely the unexpected creates imagination.  It happened to Leroy Jones in 1960. He went to Cuba and returned politicized. In his widely reprinted “Cuba Libre”, he credits a “thin crust of lie we cannot even detect in our thinking”.

He noticed it because of surprise. People were normal, tranquil, interesting, like Maduro.  Jones looked for explanations, not just for why Cubans were as they were, but why he’d expected otherwise. He discovered the “thin crust of lie”.

It’s not so thin.

It is who we are. Ionesco made this point in “Rhinoceros” (1959). When members of a French town become rhinoceroses, others are horrified. But as more become rhinos, villagers are seduced. Even the town’s philosopher wants to “move with the times”. Eventually, only one man, Berenger, remains human.  Berenger is now the monster.

He reassures himself: A “man’s not ugly to look at, not ugly at all!”’. But a few sentences later, he says, “I should have gone with them while there was still time”.

Berenger thinks rhinoceritis is “disgusting” but he might go with the rhinos because, after all, rhinoceritis is not as big a problem as identifying it as a problem, once everyone is a monster.

I was reminded of this listening to a debate on CBC radio about free speech in Canadian universities. One speaker defended hate speech, saying freedom shouldn’t be limited. A second said freedom should be restricted because hate speech is damaging. A third argued for proper scholarship: Say what you want but back it up.

They agreed on freedom. Different politics, different scholarly backgrounds, but the same view. It’s a false view, easily discredited if the question is raised. But it is not raised.

We’re supposed to believe freedom is living “from within” by which is meant from the conscious mind: the conglomeration of desires, values and life plans we associate with the self, or the sense of self.  Meanings come from “within”: the “inner voice”. Except it’s not “inner”. It is caused: by the outside.

We live in a dialectical, causal relationship with the world and that’s how we know it. It acts upon us. This was Marx’s view, roughly, and Lenin and Gramsci developed it further. And it happens to be the view defended by some philosophers of science in North America in the 21st century.

They study knowledge and rationality. They defend realism, the view that we can know the world beyond our beliefs, not absolutely, of course.

Victor Hugo was a realist. Jean Valjean would have liked not to see the truth, but he knew it was ““better to suffer, to bleed, to tear your skin off with your nails … [than to] never look openly, to squint”. He wrestled with an “implacable light [that] … dazzled him by force when all he wanted was to be blind”.

The meaning-from-within view doesn’t recognize that light.  The “inner voice” – being my self – is not something I can be “appalled and dazzled” by.  I create it. No “implacable light” is an “an immense difficulty in being”, as it was for Valjean, if ‘being” is meaningful only from “within”.

It is a comfortable view of how to know right from wrong.  We don’t.  Valjean wrestled with truth that tore him apart, tortured him and broke him: “his conscience, standing over him, fearsome, luminous, tranquil”. “Standing over him” is what we call tyranny, despotism: something other than freedom.

It’s convenient. We live in a world in which 40% of the world’s population uses 80% of the resources, and in which the 40% — for the most part – accept the situation.  We consider ourselves “lucky” or “privileged”.  But when resources are stolen, the owners are not “lucky” or “privileged”. They are bad.

That is, morally bad. It is lucky we don’t believe in the category.

Some do.  When I started reading philosophers from the South – those resisting imperialism and colonialism – I discovered they never asked whether there is truth about value, about humanness. They never doubted that we can know rhinoceritis for what it is because they did know it.

A PhD program at the University Havana, directed by the remarkable philosopher, Thalía Fung Riverón, studies ‘Political Science from the South’. It asks such questions: how to access the moral imagination that allows dehumanizing lies to be known and resisted.

Lenin said it must be “from below”, through those who’ve been colonized, imperialized, discarded.[ii]

A point is missed by some trying to understand Venezuela. It was made by Fidel Castro in 2005 at a conference entitled “Latin America in the 21st century: Universality and Originality”. Revolutionary ideas, to be revolutionary, need not be accepted by all, or even most. But they must be lived by some.

Their examples generate questions that make moral imagination possible. It’s why Maduro matters. His tranquil resistance, if explained, makes imaginable what was not previously imaginable: other ways to think about freedom and how to be human.

Ionesco said his play was about tyranny: of convention. A certain view of freedom is precisely that.

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Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014). She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Cubadebate, 15 May 2019

[ii] E.g. Ciencia Política Enfoque Sur: Intromission en la participación política (Editorial Félix Varela, 2015)

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Assange’s predicament and its broad implications for journalism and speech are evidently of little concern to Amnesty International, which wrote a letter to the Julian Assange Defence Committee (JADC) telling them that Amnesty is not actively working towards Assange’s defense.

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Journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been hit with 17 Espionage Act charges by the United States. If convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 170 years in prison or even face the death penalty.

A conviction would also set a dangerous precedent for journalists in the U.S. who publish classified material. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wrote that “This case will decide the future of media.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.” Nonetheless, the prosecution of Assange continues undeterred.

Say what you want about Julian Assange but remember this: Wikileaks is about 10 years old. In that time, they have doled out more damage to empire through their publishing than possibly any newspaper in its entire history. That's why the US wants him in its prisons.

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) April 11, 2019

With so much at stake for reporters and with Assange’s life on the line, one would expect leading human-rights NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to be going to bat for Assange. Yet his predicament and its broad implications are evidently of little concern to Amnesty International, which wrote a letter to the Julian Assange Defence Committee (JADC) telling them that Amnesty is not actively working towards Assange’s defense.

Assange, Manning just plain old prisoners?

“According to Amnesty International, neither Assange nor [Chelsea] Manning are ‘prisoners of conscience,’” Laura Tiernan reports.

According to Wikipedia:

Prisoner of conscience is a term coined by Peter Benenson in a 28 May 1961 article for the London Observer newspaper. Most often associated with the human rights organisation Amnesty International, the term can refer to anyone imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion, or political views.”

Peter Benenson was the founder and leader of Amnesty International until a scandal regarding Amnesty’s direct cooperation with the U.K. Foreign Office and Colonial Office forced him to step down. MintPress News has covered the early days at Amnesty, when the NGO would receive “discreet support” from the U.K. government.

Another co-founder, Luis Kutner, informed for the FBI on Black Panther Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton — a move that got the young leader killed by the Bureau shortly afterwards.

Amnesty even called on the UN Security Council to send Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court as the push for regime change was heating up, and the same month NATO ultimately invaded the country. And now Amnesty has also toed the U.S. imperial line on Venezuela.

Major human rights organizations @hrw and @amnesty helped build political support for war on Libya and Syria. Now they’re declining to oppose the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen. https://t.co/zK1ro4D6lW Excellent reporting by @sarahlazare

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) March 13, 2018

Maxine Walker of the JADC wrote to Amnesty:

[Assange’s] name appears not to have been mentioned in your material for World Press Freedom Day, an extraordinary omission given his current situation and that Julian Assange was awarded the 2009 Amnesty International U.K. Media Award for New Media.”

The U.K. government has ignored, indeed poured scorn, on the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention 2015 ruling that ‘the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange is arbitrary and in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’”

When Tiernan inquired of Amnesty why they do not consider not just Assange, but also Manning, a ‘Prisoner of Conscience,’ she writes:

[Amnesty’s] U.K. press officer contacted their U.S. office before explaining via email that ‘detention for not testifying before a grand jury is not itself illegal.’ And neither is chopping off heads in Saudi Arabia, which has not prevented AI from actively campaigning on that issue.”

Manning perfectly fits the definition of a political prisoner. She is currently jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury in its investigation of Assange. Even prior to receiving a subpoena in the case, Manning opposed grand jury processes on political grounds. “I can either go to jail or betray my principles,” Manning told reporters. “I would rather starve to death than change my opinion.”

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

Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” has nothing to do with peace, nothing to do with resolving irreconcilable Israeli/Palestinian differences — everything to do with serving Israeli interests at their expense.

Throughout his tenure, Trump waged war on Palestinian rights, one-sidedly benefitting Israel at their expense.

During a Wednesday Security Council session on the Middle East, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia addressed the issue of Palestinian rights.

He called for the “terminat(ion) (of) Israel’s occupation of Arab territories that began in 1967 and establish(ment) of an independent, viable and integral Palestinian State that would peacefully exist side-by-side with Israel, have safe and acknowledged borders, and have a capital in Eastern Jerusalem. At the same time, Western Jerusalem would be the capital of the State of Israel,” adding:

“We see no alternative to the two-state solution. We believe it is the only realistic prospect to put an end to the confrontation and reciprocal claims of Palestine and Israel.”

“Other concepts only mislead and obscure prospects to resume political process. We do not think that Palestinians will abandon their legitimate claims to obtain statehood, no matter what they might be promised in return. Attempts to impose a ready-made solution on the sides will fail.”

Trump regime hardliners have other ideas, polar opposite of  majority of world community nations.

The unacceptability of its no-peace/peace plan delayed its release. Its latest wrinkle is releasing it in stages, beginning with a so-called Peace to Prosperity conference in Manama, Bahrain on June 25 and 26.

The Saudis, UAE, and likely other officials from regional despotic regimes will attend the so-called “economic workshop” — a PR stunt to sell an unacceptable deal to Arab states and the world community.

It’s unclear if representatives from Western nations are coming. Participation will show complicity with the US/Israeli plot against fundamental Palestinian rights.

The two-day session is by invitation only, Palestinian officials not invited. According to an Orwellian White House statement:

“‘Peace to Prosperity (sic)’ will facilitate discussions on an ambitious, achievable vision and framework for a prosperous future for the Palestinian people and the region.”

The planned event is unrelated to the above statement. It’s all about unveiling part of the Trump regime’s sham proposal in segments, declared dead-before-arrival by Palestinian officials.

Its UN Riyad Mansour envoy called the plan a land grab scheme for Israel to steal all parts of Judea and Samaria not under its control, prelude to annexing its settlements and other Palestinian land it covets.

Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki categorically rejected what he called “not a peace plan, but rather conditions for surrender.”

PLO official Saeb Erekat said the Trump regime plan leaves core issues unaddressed, notably Palestinian statehood within pre-June 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as their exclusive capital, control over its borders, air, water and resources, the right of return for its diaspora population, and end of illegal Israeli occupation harshness.

Oslo left these and other major issues unresolved, delayed for later final status talks. Over a generation later, Palestinians are still waiting, betrayed time and again by US/Israeli complicity against them, the Trump regime taking Washington’s bad faith to an unprecedented level.

From inception decades earlier, the so-called peace process has been and remains a colossal hoax. Along with the US global war OF terror, not on it, it’s the greatest scam in modern times.

The Trump regime is perpetuating the deception, its scheme amounting to old wine in new bottles, pretending to offer Palestinians economic incentives, a neoliberal hoax similar to John Kerry’s no-peace/peace plan.

He proposed $4 billion in fantasy economic incentives. It was all about attracting exploitive private investments, benefitting Israeli and Western business interests exclusively, imposing greater neoliberal harshness on the Territories than already.

Reportedly, that’s a core element of Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century, its exploitive economic portion to be presented next month in Bahrain, a deceptive scheme no responsible leadership would accept.

According to Erekat, the Trump regime’s plan “is a non-starter for the Palestinians,” adding: “It should be for the rest of the world, as well.”

It’s all about demanding a Palestinian Versailles 2.0, a repeat of the Oslo sellout in Trump regime wrapping.

“There will be no economic prosperity in Palestine without the end of the occupation,” said Erekat, adding: “Notably, the Palestinian leadership was not consulted by any party on this meeting.”

Trump regime hardliners aren’t “seeking…peace. (They want) a Palestinian declaration of surrender,” Zionist ideologues Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt co-maestros of the grand deception.

They don’t give a hoot about Palestinian prosperity and other rights, notably its millions of refugees by cutting off UNRWA funding and slashing it to the PLO.

They support repressive Israeli apartheid, its illegal occupation and state terror, its militarized control over Palestinian lives and welfare, its slow-motion genocide against suffocating Gazans, its targeted assassinations and belligerence against Palestinians.

Trump’s self-styled “deal of the century” is a scheme only despotic regimes could love — one-sidedly serving Israeli interests, denying Palestinians their fundamental rights.

It bears repeating what I’ve stressed time and again. The US doesn’t negotiate. It demands other nations and people bend to its will — or face the force of its wrath.

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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 PressTV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New York Times also said that

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

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

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

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

Trump and the CIA

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Mueller is a Conspiracy Theorist

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

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

The report also said that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The CIA and the Persecution of Julian Assange 

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from SCN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future of the planet might depend on it.

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

All images in this article are from Mongabay

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

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

But this time I decided to do exactly the opposite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mindset of Israelis is very similar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The question is again – for whom?

Israeli tank being moved towards Golan Heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intifada

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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

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

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

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

Addicted to incompetence

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

Image on the right: Hürriyet Daily News

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

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

Unprovoked attack

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaked document

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

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

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

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

Erased from the record

The leaked document is deeply troubling for two reasons.

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

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

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

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

Experts ignored

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

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

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

Active combatants

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

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

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

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

Systematic failure

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

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

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

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

But it gets worse, far worse.

Al-Qaeda propaganda

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

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

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

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

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

Media worthy of Stalin

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

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

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

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

Doubts about OPCW

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colluding in deception

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

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

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

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

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

Iran the real target

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like a death cult

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mahamat noted in the AU release that:

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

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

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

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

The Current Political Situation in Africa Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All images in this article are from the author

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

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

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

1. What is Neo-liberalism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. What is wrong with neo-liberalism?

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

2.1 Deregulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.2 Privatization of Government-Owned Enterprises (GOE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.3 Free Trade

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

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

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

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

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

2.3.1 Benefits of Tariff Removal 

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

2.3.2 Absence of Trickle-Down Effects 

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

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

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

2.3.3 Negative Effect on SMEs 

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

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

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

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

2.3.4 Unfair Income Distribution

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

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

 

2.3.5 The Industry State Dispute Settlement System (ISDS)

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

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

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

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

2.4 The Structural Adjustment

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

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

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

2.5 Global Production Chain (GPC) 

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

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

3. What Next? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Import dependency

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

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

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

The Death of US Rare Earths

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

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

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

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

GAO Warning

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Firas Samuri, May 26, 2019

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

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

By Ahmad Al Khaled, May 26, 2019

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

Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age

By Ellen Brown, May 26, 2019

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

The Bolivarian Revolution and the Warmongering “Pacifists”

By Arnold August, May 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

Saudi Ship of Death Halted in Europe

By Steven Sahiounie, May 25, 2019

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

Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia

By Manlio Dinucci, May 25, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trump White House’s growing threats against Iran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) May 20, 2019

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

I was right about Vietnam.

I was right about Iraq.

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

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

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 24, 2019

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

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Happened?

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

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

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

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

Act of Sabotage?

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

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

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

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

Advocates or Journalists? 

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

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

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

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

Playing Favorites

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

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

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

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

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

Oil Factor at Play?

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

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

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

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

Iran Taking Blame

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

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

False Flag Operation?

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on Tehran Times.

All images in this article are from Tehran Times

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

“Laughter lingered in the cold night air,

Like snowflakes caught in crystal glass,

Hurrahs rang out as tears were wept,

For the lost, returned, for memories kept,

Of the days we feared would never pass,

Unless we burned the monster’s lair.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from NEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age

Author: Ellen Brown

Publisher: Democracy Collaborative (June 1, 2019)

ISBN-10: 0998471917

ISBN-13: 978-0998471914

Click here to pre-order.

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

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

— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) May 23, 2019

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

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

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) May 21, 2019

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

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

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

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

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) May 22, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) May 22, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

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

A Threat To The Free Press

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Threat to Free Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. He collaborates with many web sites, television and radio broadcasts based in Latin America, Cuba, Europe, North America and the Middle East including Global Research. Twitter  Facebook, His trilingual website:  www.arnoldaugust.com.

Source

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

Notes

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

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

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

Featured image is from Venezuelanalysis.com

“You Can’t Have Capitalism Without Racism.”

– Malcolm X (1964) [1]

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

-George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Global Research News Hour Episode 261)

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 Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manlio Dinucci

Il manifesto, 21 de Maio de 2019

Artigo em italiano :

Rand Corp: come abbattere la Russia

Tradutora; Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from BAR

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

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

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

Undermining Fiscal Capacities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slash and Burn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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