Global Research

Julian Assange is a hero. He defied the globalizing apparatus of fascist repression to expose the war criminals in our midst. Now, the same war criminals and their agencies who commit supreme international war crimes as policy have apprehended him.

Ecuador has shamed itself and proven itself to be a servile vassal of Empire through its actions and inactions, specifically by violating opinion 54/2015 of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations, and by violating Opinion OC-25/2019 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Resolution MC-54-19 of the IACHR of March 2019 which obliges Ecuador not to “deport, return, expel, extradite or otherwise remove Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy,”[1] where Assange was sheltered.

The public has a right to know that Empire is waging war against us all, and that Empire is perpetrating wars of aggression that impose the death sentence on millions.  Empire and its NATO appendage are forces for globalized mass murder, and the globalized displacement of peoples.  It is not a force for good. It creates wars, it does not prevent them. It is the embodiment of evil wrapped in shrouds of propaganda.

When governing agencies bury the truth with impunity, they are also burying millions of corpses.    Assange helped to expose Empire for the Life-destroying, Democracy-destroying, Freedom-destroying cancer that it is. He should be lauded and protected, not persecuted and destroyed.

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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.

Note

[1] teleSUR, “Assange Arrest ‘National Shame’ and ‘Historic Error,’ Ecuador’s Ex-Foreign Minister Says.” 11 April, 2019. (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Assange-Arrest-National-Shame-and-Historical-Error-Ecuadors-Ex-Foreign-Minister-Says-20190411-0013.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork&fbclid=IwAR0QowYIu0GAsHEnYLqQ8TV4WwzZEpEDO3GktqzUsB0A7JkBwvTHe6HTfwU) Accessed 12 April, 2019.

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

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The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.

That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.

But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice. 

Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth. 

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation”. The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast.

Assange’s principal media tormentor, the Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest scoop of the last 30 years”. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.

With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.

With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding joined the police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”. The Guardian has since published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.

But the tone has now changed. “The Assange case is a morally tangled web,” the paper opined. “He (Assange) believes in publishing things that should not be published …. But he has always shone a light on things that should never have been hidden.”

These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the expose of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It all available on the WikiLeaks site.

The Guardian is understandably nervous. Secret policemen have already visited the newspaper and demanded and got the ritual destruction of a hard drive.  On this, the paper has form. In 1983, a Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. The Guardian was showered with praise.

When a court order demanded to know the source, instead of the editor going to prison on a fundamental principle of protecting a source, Tisdall was betrayed, prosecuted and served six months.

If Assange is extradited to America for publishing what the Guardian calls truthful “things”, what is to stop the current editor, Katherine Viner, following him, or the previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, or the prolific propagandist Luke Harding?

What is to stop the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, who also published morsels of the truth that originated with WikiLeaks, and the editor of El Pais in Spain, and Der Spiegel in Germany and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. The list is long.

David McCraw, lead lawyer of the New York Times, wrote:

“I think the prosecution [of Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and the law would have a very hard time distinguishing between the New York Times and WilLeaks.”

Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks’ leaks are not summoned by an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalised by thugs in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence.

In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra’s spooks bugged the cabinet meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In 2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people.

Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.

The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it.

“We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”

What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge” is taken away? 

In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.

She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.

“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her. 

“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”

And did. 

The rest, she might have added, is history.

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“EXIT NATO!”  – was the glaring title on a huge screen greeting the several hundred participants of the Anti-NATO Conference in Florence, Italy, on 7 April 2019. Officially it was called The International Conference on the 70^th Anniversary of NATO, sponsored by the Italian No War No NATO Committee, Global Research of Canada and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). I had the privilege to attend this important forum.

Following the EXIT NATO poster, was another huge slide decorating the conference wall – proclaiming that NATO, as a reward for all their work for Peace, should be rewarded with the Peace Nobel Prize. No doubt, nuclear armament and eventually nuclear wars – to be fought by NATO – by whom else – will make the world a safer place. Wars are actually good for Peace. They are also good for economics, but they are particularly good for Peace.

I’m not kidding you – these are declarations one can read – and has been able to read since practically 9/11, in such prominent “Truth News” papers like the Washington Post and the NYT.  – So, why not the Peace Prize to NATO? – It wouldn’t make much difference, considering the track record of the Nobel Prize Committee – it would fall right into place.

Other than that, the conference basically outlined the atrocities committed by NATO, its associate and crony terrorist armies, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – and so on, changing names for revolving terrorists, recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and of course the US directly or through her many State Department funded and subsidiary NGOs, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and many others. And of course, not to forget a prominent funder of terrorism, Turkey – who is now trying to make a smiling face to Russia and the east, even flirting with the idea of entering the club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); on the one hand purchasing Russian military defense systems – the S-400 – and at the same time US fighter planes F35, dancing on as many weddings simultaneously as they can. – Who would trust Turkey under Erdogan? – Turkey also still hosts one of the most strategic and most dangerous nuclear-equipped NATO bases – literally between east and west.

The Conference recalled the Cold War. By now everybody knows – really? – well, for those who don’t – that the so-called Cold War was one of the best propagated and fakest news of the 20^th Century. It’s a brilliant idea that sprung out of the McCarthy Nazi-era – like NATO itself – to arm the US to the teeth – maximizing profits of the military industrial complex, under the pretext of halting the advancement of the Soviet Union into just liberated western Europe, just liberated from Hitler’s Nazi-Germany. Never mind that western Europe has been saved by the Soviet Union who lost 25-30 million people and basically their transport and production infrastructure.

Yes, it was not the so-called allies – US, UK and France – they came in last, when the bulk of the job was already done by what is today Russia. But of course, no western history book would tell you the truth. In fact, it must be said here too – the US funded Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union with money channeled from the FED, through Wall Street banks, and eventually through the Rothschild dominated Bank for International Settlement (BIS), located in Basel, Switzerland, right at the border to Germany, from where it was easy to pass the money on to the Reichsbank – Hitler’s Central Bank. Yes- that’s how the US was already then dancing on various fiestas at the same time; on the one hand bombing Germany and, on the other, financing Germany’s war against what the US already then perceived as an archenemy – The Red Scare – the Soviet Union. Well, these acts of treason then were the precursors of NATO today.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization) at the conference in Italy

Anything socialist is evil for the US, still today. Trump himself and his minion clowns, Pompeo, Bolton and Pence – are lambasting Venezuela and Cuba for being evil and destructive socialist countries – and that socialism will not be tolerated nowhere by the falling empire – sorry, falling it is – of the United States of America.

The other purpose of the Cold War farce, was to make the Europeans believe that they were under a constant threat of a Soviet invasion, that they had to arm themselves also to the teeth – imagine war-recovering Europe having to spend their money on arms for no use! – and of course most of these weapons had to be bought – yes, you guessed it – from the US military industrial complex – more profit for the war oligarchs. The Anglo-media even created a virtual barrier between western “free” Europe and the bad-bad Red Scare, the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain. Yes, the Iron Curtain; children in school were indoctrinated to be aware that the enemy is luring behind the Iron Curtain, and that the enemy always comes from the East. Hilarious, when you think back. At that time (almost) everybody believed it.

And the third, or perhaps first objective of the Cold War, was to block the Soviet Union from developing a viable and autonomous economy with which they could thrive, as most socialist countries do, until they are boycotted, punished and financially “sanctioned” into suffocation – by the west. These illegal financial manipulations with and within sovereign countries’ economies, are, of course, illegal by any standards of international laws – laws that have become meaningless in the light of US / NATO power, scary nuclear power. These acts of financial and human rights high crimes are only possible, because of the all dominating, fraudulent US-imposed – and NATO-protected – western monetary system.

The NATO-driven Cold War, a constant nuclear threat towards the Soviet Union, was intended to force Russia also to arm for their defense, instead of being able to use their economy’s added value to rebuild their devastated country. The USSR was never a threat to Europe. There was never an intention of the Soviet Union to invade western Europe. The same today, we are being made believe that Russia wants to invade Europe – that’s why NATO needs to build all these military bases, at the door step to Russia. Russia is by far the largest country, territory-wise, in the world, they don’t need to add more land. Historically, neither Russia or China have a record of expansionism.

In the end, the NATO-led Cold War managed to dismantle the Soviet Union by ‘buying’ some corrupt Soviet leaders, so that the new Russia, whose socialist system just was made to collapse, unprepared with legislation for what was to come – privatization by fire-sale of their entire economy. Like vultures, the financial institutions, IMF, World Bank, agents of the FED, descended on Moscow to literally steel by indebting whatever had any value. This misery still has not entirely abetted, as the Russian Central Bank was restructured, following the image of the FED – today, under President Putin, much has changed and was reformed, however, the financial sector is still heavily invaded by the Atlantists – or what you may also call the Fifth Columnists. And of course, even those are protected by NATO – as NATO issues threats, nobody knows from where they come – but you know who executes them, in case of…

The Florence Anti-NATO Conference also recalled some of the most abject killing sprees of NATO in its 70 years of existence, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine – the Maidan massacre followed by the so-called Ukrainian civil war – and the crowning of sorts, the ten-year war on Yugoslavia – the total destruction of Yugoslavia, with the final blow 1999, the merciless bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. – Why Yugoslavia? – Let’s dwell just a moment on this war of cruel destruction and killing – because it is so typical for Pentagon-driven wars of annihilation. Yugoslavia, a socialist country, in the 1970s and 80s under Maoist President Tito, had a prosperous economy, much more so than the rest of Europe. The US-dominated west cannot let a socialist economy flourish. Other countries, especially stagnating western Europe, could get ideas.

Remember, socialism is evil. So, with what is today called the “Balkanization” – cut into pieces – of Yugoslavia was the old-old tactic of divide to conquer, as well as by creating internal chaos, the western powers kept control of the people, and eventually NATO was able to advance closer and ever closer to the Russian border, by occupying former Yugoslav republics with NATO bases (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Kosovo is waiting in the wings), in addition to the further expansion east to Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, not to mention the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

This expansion east – ever closer to Moscow, is a flagrant breach of a promise made by the allied forces. In 1991, then German Foreign Minister Genscher promised Russian President Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch further east than Germany. In fact, he assured Gorbachev that NATO would not move into what before the German unification was Eastern Germany. This promise was unfortunately never recorded in writing, and Gorbachev was miserably betrayed. As we know by now, a betrayal by the west is very normal. In the meantime,12 more NATO bases east of Germany, including in former East-Germany, were built.

In their 70 years of existence, US-NATO, allied and proxy forces, as well as mercenaries, have killed between 20 and 25 million people around the globe, in wars and conflicts – in the eternal war against “terror” – that was “justified” by self-inflicted 9/11, the start to the final phase of the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century – to reach Full Spectrum Dominance.

Wars have a cost – a financial, economic and a social cost. The US official military budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 is US$ 700 billion; for FY 2019 Trump proposes US$ 750. If approved it would be a 40% increase in the last 9 years. But that’s not all. This is just the officially published figure. The real cost for the war, defense and security apparatus to which also the opaque CIA and associated secret services count – is well over a trillion dollars, perhaps as much as US$1.5 trillion – per year.

Conference delegates

The US has currently about one million military personnel stationed in 175 countries around the globe. The Pentagon maintains about a thousand military bases in more than 100 countries. The war cost, in currently seven war theatres is prohibitive – medical costs for veterans, for social services to returning veterans – and we are not talking the cost of off-battle ground lives, i.e. by ever-mounting suicide rates. The Veteran Administration released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, showing that roughly 22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.

The reality is most likely a much higher figure – and the despair and human depression from anxieties related to the never-ending wars has increased exponentially in the last 9 years – more suicides, more desperation, more broken families – – entire generations of kids with fathers at war. This cost cannot be put in figures of dollars and cents – it’s a social cost that bears its toll in years, perhaps generations from now.

The US spends per capita ten times more than the rest of the world together on military / war expenses. President Trump requests European NATO countries to increase their military budget by contributing more to NATO, first up to 2% of GDP – threatening he may decide to withdraw NATO from Europe, if Europe does not comply with his request, still making believe that NATO is a defensive force – protecting Europe- from what, and from whom? – Good-bye NATO. This is the moment to call Trump’s bluff.

But NATO – the Trans-Atlantic Treaty Organization – has also gone overseas to Latin America. NATO has a Cooperation Agreement with Colombia, where the US has 5 military bases – which will automatically convert into NATO bases. NATO is also negotiating with Brazil’s new Nazi-leader, Bolsonaro, to enter Brazil, and, as such being a threat and a potential attack force to topple the Venezuelan democratically elected socialist government. Washington makes no secret – they want Venezuela’s hydrocarbon resources, the world’s largest reserves, gold and other minerals of which Venezuela is rich. NATO is perfect to do the dirty job.

But it gets worse, this Trump clown or the masters behind him had recently the audacity to ask for a European military budget increase to 4% of GDP – or else…. Yes. Let’s decide for else. Good riddance, NATO.

The overall NATO budget is well over a trillion dollars per year – yes, per year. And that is – people of Europe, people of the world! – that is to finance a killing machine that bulldozes countries into the ground with bombs and tanks, that kill indiscriminately civilians and other countries’ defensive military, countries that have never  done any harm to the United States, nor to Europe which follows the Washington mandate like a bunch of vassals, what Europe has become.

Imagine, what could be done, with more than a trillion dollars or euros per year – in terms of building up education, health services, public infrastructure, and other social services – and expand these services to developing countries, to those very countries that are now bombarded mercilessly by NATO! – This, dear People of Europe, is your tax money. Do you want it to be spent killing people around the world for Washington’s world hegemony? – NATO does not protect you. NATO has been designed as an aggressive force – you were just never told. But look out of the window, the window of your ‘safe space’, and you will see the squandering of your tax money.

NATO is invading the space of Russia and China, countries that are seeking friendly relations with the rest of the world, they are seeking a multi-polar world, but encounter instead a response of aggression. NATO is preventing the natural, namely friendly relation and trading as equals within the huge Continent Eurasia, of which Europe has been artificially separated as a continent. This tremendous landmass Eurasia, includes also the entire Middle East and connects to Africa. This enormous mass of land and people and resources – does not need the west, the west, called America.

Wouldn’t it be wise for countries and people of Eurasia, to just live sovereign lives, with friendly interactions, trading as equals not with a one-upmanship as is currently the norm for trading between the rich OECD nations dominating the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the rest of the world- which depends on trade but is always on the losing end?

One more point – that needs to be understood. Europe, the European Union as it was conceived and is limping along today – has never been the idea of Europeans, but was born during WWII in the heads of the CIA, then transplanted into some “willing” European heads and then ‘defended’ by NATO – the “unifying force”. Europe has no Constitution, only a number of non-binding accords, like Maastricht and Lisbon – but no Constitution that holds it together, that outlines a common vision in defense, in economic development, in monetary policy. The European Union results in a bunch of country, some even hostile to each other. They have a common currency, the Euro, without even having a common economic development objective. This currency, forged as the little brother of the US-dollar, equally nothing but fiat money, no backing whatsoever; this currency is not sustainable. So, the currency barely 20 years old, will eventually collapse or fade, and so will the European Union. It hasn’t happened yet, because NATO is holding it together, because Brussels is nothing but a puppet of the Pentagon. It is Washington through the Pentagon, and through NATO that is running Europe.

People of Europe – is it that what you want? Your tax money spent killing people and destroying countries around the globe, and having lost all independence, autonomy as a country, as well as monetary sovereignty – by being run by a military killing machine, called NATO?

It’s time to kill NATO, rather than being killed by NATO. Exit NATO now. It’s time for NEXIT.

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

“You have converted the OAS into an empty shell that has violated its own principles and you’re now proving that our decision to resign was the correct one. We are leaving the OAS and we will never come back. — Venezuela representative Asbina Marin

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In a bid to legitimize Washington’s flailing coup attempt in Venezuela, the Organization of American States (OAS) has recognized faux-President Juan Guaido’s lackey Gustave Tarre as the new representative from Venezuela.

Reporter Anya Parampil, who was at the meeting in Washington on Tuesday, noted that “Five of the 18 countries that voted for the U.S. measure were recently taken over by pro-IMF governments.” Meanwhile, the Haitian government — currently embroiled in a popular uprising over its mismanagement and embezzlement of funds from a generous deal with Venezuela on petroleum products, known as the PetroCaribe alliance — voted for the measure in order to appease the United States and secure Washington’s support in quashing the uprising.

Parampil notes that the Guaido representative, Gustave Tarre, is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), an ultra-hawkish D.C.-based think tank funded by defense contractors and the oil industry.

MintPress News has previously reported that Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, Nathaniel Gleicher, is a senior associate at the very same think tank. As the coup attempt was unfolding, Gleicher leveraged his power at Facebook to censor pro-government accounts. MintPress reported at the time:

764 accounts located in Venezuela, a country in which the United States has been backing a coup attempt in since last week, were banned; and another 1,196 accounts ‘which appear to be engaged in a state-backed influence campaign’ in Venezuela were also shuttered.”

Moreover, Tarre was accused by the Venezuelan government in 2014 of being a conspirator in a plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.

Finding loopholes, breaking rules

The OAS Charter affirms the organization’s function, which is, ostensibly, “to promote [members’] solidarity, to strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their independence.” The OAS branch that voted to admit Tarre, known as the Permanent Council, is charged with “keep[ing] vigilance over the maintenance of friendly relations among the Member States.” Surely, its decision on Tuesday runs counter to its mission statement.

So too does its history: Bolivian President Evo Morales has repeatedly referred to the OAS as the “Ministry of Colonies.”

Parampil grilled U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Carlos Trujillo following the vote, pressing him to provide a legal justification for it. He was unable to do so, and the closest he came was saying that the decision would be revisited by the OAS General Assembly.

On Tuesday I observed the OAS brazenly violate its own rules in order to recognize Guaidó’s ambassador & appease the Trump admin.

I asked US Ambassador Trujillo to explain the vote’s legal basis.

He was unable to cite a single article in the OAS charter. pic.twitter.com/UWUQg99E67

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) April 10, 2019

In exclusive comments to MintPress News, Parampil elaborated on what happened:

Diplomats are typically well versed in international law, or at the very least able to legally defend their own actions and initiatives, so it was strange to me that Ambassador Trujillo could not explain himself with the OAS charter. Does he believe in the integrity of the organization or merely see it as a vessel through which to achieve Trump administration foreign policy goals?

The meeting started an hour late, apparently because Trujillo was still whipping up votes down to the last minute just to secure the 18 needed to pass with a simple majority. Considering most OAS states still recognize the Maduro government, it is no wonder the U.S. opted to rush a hollow vote through the permanent council. It could never convince two-thirds of OAS foreign ministers to accept Guaido’s powerless representatives, which is what would be required in order to affirm this decision with the General Assembly.”

With the Permanent Council, a mere simple majority of 18 was required to pass the vote.

Setting a lawless precedent

Venezuela’s elected government representative Asbina Marin denounced the decision:

You have converted the OAS into an empty shell that has violated its own principles and you’re now proving that our decision to resign was the correct one. We are leaving the OAS and we will never come back.

This day means the end of a chain of violations and traps that, in order to turn the OAS into a weapon against Venezuela, has ended up destroying the entire structure of international law that sustains it. This house, the OAS, has become uninhabitable.”

Venezuela made the decision to leave the OAS in 2017, a process that was, even then, expected to culminate on April 27, 2019. It will be the only nation in the Western Hemisphere absent from the bloc. In Parampil’s estimation, the vote was a “last minute attempt to kick Venezuela’s elected government one last time before it heads out the door.”

Venezuela’s decision to leave OAS came hours after the bloc decided to convene in order to discuss the political situation in Caracas. President Nicolas Maduro had previously warned that he would leave should the meeting take place. Then-Foreign Minister and current Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said at the time:

In the future, Venezuela will not participate in any activity, any event, that promotes interventionism and interference … that only seeks to disrupt the stability and peace of our country … because now we know that this coalition of governments from the region has its sights on the sovereignty of our country.”

Venezuela’s representative was not the only one to protest the decision. Mexican Ambassador to the OAS Jorge Lomonaco warned of it setting a dangerous precedent wherein “a subsidiary body can question, with only 18 votes, sovereign decisions.”

Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador, gave a similar warning, adding that “it ignores the rules of the Permanent Council” and also the OAS charter.

Correction: A previous version of this article said that U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Carlos Trujillo would revisit the legal justification for the referenced OAS decision at the UN General Assembly, Trujillo was actually referencing the OAS General Assembly.  We regret this error.

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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.

Featured image is from Flickr

On Monday, 8 April 2019, the UK’s Home Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, jointly released a white paper on what they describe as ‘online harms’.

The white paper will lead, they say, to the “first online safety laws of their kind”, legally requiring social media companies and “tech firms” to “protect their users and face tough penalties if they do not comply.”

A twelve week consultation period began in parallel with the launch of the white paper. We would encourage everyone to submit your views.

The release of the white paper was covered by Mike Robinson and Patrick Henningsen on UK Column News:

2014

24 September: David Cameron calls for regulation of the Internet at the UN General Assembly

David Cameron tells the United Nations General Assembly that something must be done to prevent extremism – not just violent extremism – from appearing online.

He makes it clear that he considers ‘extremism’ to include narratives on global events which are counter to his own.

2017 

31 March: Home Secretary Amber Rudd meets with Tech companies

Amber Rudd meets with representatives of Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook. Following the meeting she says:

My starting point is pretty straightforward. I don’t think that people who want to do us harm should be able to use the internet or social media to do so. I want to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this.

It was a useful discussion and I’m glad to see that progress has been made.

We focused on the issue of access to terrorist propaganda online and the very real and evolving threat it poses.

I said I wanted to see this tackled head-on and I welcome the commitment from the key players to set up a cross-industry forum that will help to do this.

In taking forward this work I’d like to see the industry to go further and faster in not only removing online terrorist content but stopping it going up in the first place. I’d also like to see more support for smaller and emerging platforms to do this as well, so they can no longer be seen as an alternative shop floor by those who want to do us harm.

31 March: Tech companies publish an open letter to Amber Rudd following their meeting with her

The letter is signed by Hugh Milward, senior director, corporate, external and legal affairs, Microsoft UK; Nick Pickles, UK head of public policy and government, Twitter; Richard Allan, VP public policy EMEA, Facebook; and Nicklas Lundblad, VP public policy Europe, Middle East, Russia and Africa, Google.

It says:

Thank you for the constructive discussion today on the challenges that terrorism poses to us all.

We welcome the opportunity to share with you details of the progress already made in this area and to hear how the UK government is developing its approach in both the online and offline space. Our companies are committed to making our platforms a hostile space for those who seek to do harm and we have been working on this issue for several years. We share the government’s commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online.

We believe that companies, academics, civil society, and government all have an interest and responsibility to respond to the danger of terrorist propaganda online—and as an industry we are committed to doing more.

5 April: Germany approves bill curbing online ‘hate crime’, ‘fake news’

The German government approves a bill that punishes social networking sites if they fail to swiftly remove ‘illegal’ content such as ‘hate speech’ or defamatory ‘fake news’.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas says that companies providing online platforms are responsible for removing hateful content. He said the new bill will not restrict freedom of speech. He says:

Just like on the streets, there is also no room for criminal incitement on social networks … The internet affects the culture of debate and the atmosphere in our society. Verbal radicalization is often a preliminary stage to physical violence.

10-11 April: Europol hosts conference on online terrorist propaganda

Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) hosts its first high-level Conference on Online Terrorist Propaganda. Over 150 participants gather at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague to discuss a wide variety of related topics.

Participants include members of the ECTC Advisory Group on Terrorist Propaganda, representatives of the EU Commission and EU Council, academia and law enforcement practitioners from Europe and the US.

19 December: Home Affairs Select Committee hears evidence on Online Hate from tech companies

‘Experts’ from Google, Facebook and Twitter appear before Yvette Cooper’s Home Affairs Select Committee. The main concern of the inquiry seems to be online abuse of Members of Parliament.

In the course of giving evidence, all three platforms admit to having added staff to their censorship teams. Facebook, for example, admits to having added 3000 staff to its ‘community operations’ team in the previous six months, plus 20,000 staff to their ‘safety and security’ team. Twitter and Google have recruited similar numbers into their equivilent teams.

26 April: MP asks Facebook to tackle ‘fake news’ as election approaches

Damian Collins MP, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, asks Facebook to tackle fake news in the run up to the UK general election on 8 June.

8 May: Facebook broadens its campaign to raise awareness of ‘fake news’ by publishing adverts in the UK press

The ads are published in The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph amongst others and list ten “things to look out for” when deciding if a story is genuine, including checking the article date and website address, as well as making sure it isn’t intended to be satire.

Facebook says it has already removed “tens of thousands” of fake accounts and that it has set up systems to monitor the repeated posting of the same content.

26 May: G7 demands internet giants crack down on extremist content

Theresa May leads calls at the G7 meeting in Sicily to set up an industry-led forum to deal with ‘extremist’ content online. The official statement following the meeting says:

The G7 calls for Communication Service Providers and social media companies to substantially increase their efforts to address terrorist content … We encourage industry to act urgently in developing and sharing new technology and tools to improve the automatic detection of content promoting incitement to violence, and we commit to supporting industry efforts in this vein including the proposed industry-led forum for combating online extremism.

14 June: UK and France announce joint campaign to tackle unacceptable online content

Theresa May travels to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron. There she continues to press for an industry-led ‘forum’ to deal with ‘unacceptable’ content online. She says:

The counter-terrorism cooperation between British and French intelligence agencies is already strong, but President Macron and I agree that more should be done to tackle the terrorist threat online.

In the UK we are already working with social media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds.

And today I can announce that the UK and France will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content.

We are united in our total condemnation of terrorism and our commitment to stamp out this evil.

26 June: Tech giants announce formation of the ‘Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft release a joint statement which says:

Today, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are announcing the formation of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which will help us continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists.

… The new forum builds on initiatives including the EU Internet Forum and the Shared Industry Hash Database; discussions with the U.K. and other governments; and the conclusions of the recent G7 and European Council meetings.  It will formalize and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the U.N.

The statement highlights cooperation with ‘partners’ such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anti-Defamation League and Global Network Initiative “to identify how best to counter extremism and online hate, while respecting freedom of expression and privacy.”

31 July: ‘Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’ holds its first meeting

The Global Internet Forum holds its first meeting in San Francisco, where “representatives from the tech industry, government and non-governmental organisations are coming together to share information and best practices about how to counter the threat of terrorism online.”

In her comments about the meeting, British Home Secretary once again reminds us that ‘terrorism’ includes ‘extremism’, echoing David Cameron’s words of three years previously:

2 August: Word Socialist Web Site publishes stats on the effect of Google algorithm change on organic search

The World Socialist Web Site reports that:

New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches.

The World Socialist Web Site has obtained statistical data from SEMrush estimating the decline of traffic generated by Google searches for 13 sites with substantial readerships. The results are as follows:

* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent

25 September: Reports increase of social media censorship

Reports of censorship by social media companies become a regular occurrence:

27 October: Google & George Soros-backed ‘fact-checkers’ join forces

Erica Anderson, Partnerships Manager at Google News Lab, announces that Google will partner with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute to “fact-check” news stories that appear in search results.

Anderson says:

With so much information available around the clock and across devices, being able to understand at a glance what’s true and what’s false online is increasingly important.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

27 October: Twitter bans advertising from RT and Sputnik

In a statement, Twitter says:

This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.

18 November: Eric Schmidt announces that Google will de-rank RT and Sputnik

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says during a Q&A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, that the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent in search results.

He says:

We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik … We are well of aware of it [Russian ‘propaganda’], and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [their content appearing high up in search results]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.

Schmidt claims that he is “very strongly not in favour of censorship,” but says that he has faith in “ranking”.

30 November: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics establishes ‘The Trust Project’

The Trust Project describes itself as “a consortium of top news companies” including the dpa news agency, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, Hearst Television, the Independent Journal Review, Haymarket Media, Institute for Nonprofit News, Italy’s La Repubblica and La Stampa, Mic, Reach Plc and The Washington Post.

Search engines and social media companies are described as “external partners”.

They say they aim to produce “trust indicators”: standardised disclosures “that provide clarity on a news organization’s ethics and other standards for fairness and accuracy, a journalist’s background, and the work behind a news story”, and which can be fed into search engines so that “quality news” can be brought to the top of search results.

2018

25 January: Theresa May announces internet regulation in major speech at Davos

“Technologies like the internet were developed with a philosophy that connecting us together would improve people’s lives,” she says, “And in many ways they have. But so far, that hasn’t been completely true for everyone.”

She continues:

Just this week, a survey in the UK has found that 7 in 10 people believe social media companies do not do enough to stop illegal or unethical behaviour on their platforms, prevent the sharing of extremist content or do enough to prevent bullying.

The loss of trust is hugely damaging. And it is in all our interests to address it.

… And underpinning all of this is our determination to make the UK a world leader in innovation-friendly regulation.

Regulation that will make the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business – but also the safest place to be online.

1 March: Matt Hancock announces government intervention to support mainstream media

In a speech to the House of Commons, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announces government support for mainstream media. He says:

Today in a world of the Internet and clickbait, our press face critical challenges that threaten their livelihood and sustainability – with declining circulations and a changing media landscape.

… In 2015, for every 100 pounds newspapers lost in print revenue they gained only 3 pounds in digital revenue.

… Action is needed. Not based on what might have been needed years ago – but action now to address today’s problems.

… Our new Digital Charter sets out the overarching programme of work to agree norms and rules for the online world and put them into practice.

… And our review into the sustainability of high quality journalism will address concerns about the impact of the Internet on our news and media.

12 March: Matt Hancock launches government review into the maintream media at the Oxford Media Convention

Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, announces that Dame Francis Cairncross will lead the government review into the sustainability of the mainstream media.

Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention, Matt Hancock says:

There are a multitude of challenges facing our media today. Falling newspaper circulations, declining advertising revenues, changing consumption and wholesale disinformation.

Trusted, sustainable, high quality media is needed now more than ever.

Dame Frances Cairncross will bring her experience in journalism and academia to tackle these issues with a view to examine the press and protect the future of high quality journalism.

10 April: Theresa May establishes the ‘Rapid Response Unit’ inside the Cabinet Office

Also known as the ‘fake news unit’, the Rapid Response Unit is given an initial six months funding. It brings together a “team of analysts, data scientists and media and digital experts,” armed with cutting edge software to “work round the clock to monitor online breaking news stories and social media discussion.”

According to the RRU’s head, Alex Aiken:

The unit’s round the clock monitoring service has identified several stories of concern during the pilot, ranging from the chemical weapons attack in Syria to domestic stories relating to the NHS and crime.

For example, following the Syria airstrikes, the unit identified that a number of false narratives from alternative news sources were gaining traction online. These “alt-news” sources are biased and rely on sensationalism rather than facts to pique readers’ interest.

Due to the way that search engine algorithms work, when people searched for information on the strikes, these unreliable sources were appearing above official UK government information. In fact, no government information was appearing on the first 15 pages of Google results. We know that search is an excellent indicator of intention. It can reflect bias in information received from elsewhere.

The unit therefore ensured those using search terms that indicated bias – such as ‘false flag’ – were presented with factual information on the UK’s response. The RRU improved the ranking from below 200 to number 1 within a matter of hours.

9 May: Facebook deletes 32 accounts run by ‘leftists’

Facebook reports that it has taken down 32 ‘suspicious’ pages and accounts that appear to have been run by ‘leftists’ and ‘minority activists’.

Some within the US Administration claim the pages were probably run by ‘Russian agents’. Facebook says is does not know for sure.

14 May: Director General MI5 tells EU security conference ‘a great deal more’ needs to be done’

Andrew Parker says in his speech:

Age-old attempts at covert influence and propaganda have been supercharged in online disinformation, which can be churned out at massive scale and little cost. The aim is to sow doubt by flat denials of the truth, to dilute truth with falsehood, divert attention to fake stories, and do all they can to divide alliances.

Bare-faced lying seems to be the default mode, coupled with ridicule of critics.

The Russian state’s now well-practised doctrine of blending media manipulation, social media disinformation and distortion with new and old forms of espionage, high levels of cyber attacks, military force and criminal thuggery is what is meant these days by the label ‘‘hybrid threats’’.

… We are committed to working with them [social media companies] as they look to fulfil their ethical responsibility to prevent terrorist, hostile state and criminal exploitation of internet carried services: shining a light on terrorists and paedophiles; taking down bomb making instructions; warning the authorities about attempts to acquire explosives precursors.

This matters and there is much more to do.

17 May: Facebook announces partnership with Atlantic Council

Facebook announces that it was “partnering” with the Atlantic Council, “to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service.”

Facebook becomes a top donor to the Atlantic Council, alongside Western governments, NATO, various branches of the US military, and a number of major defense contractors and corporations.

9 June: Theresa May announces the ‘Rapid Response Mechanism’ at the G7 Summit in Quebec

Theresa May announces the establishment of “a new Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM)”, following Britain’s proposal for “a new, more formalised approach to tackling foreign interference across the G7” at the G7 Foreign Minister’s meeting the previous month.

This agreement sends “a strong message that interference by Russia and other foreign states would not be tolerated,” she says.

The Rapid Response Mechanism “will support preventative and protective cooperation between G7 countries, as well as post-incident responses”, including:

• co-ordinated attribution of hostile activity
• joint work to assert a common narrative and response

31 July: Facebook deletes 32 accounts ‘involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior’

In a press release, Facebook says:

Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing.

We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this.

14 August: Facebook removes Venezuela’s TeleSur page for a second time

Telesur English, a multi-state-funded Latin American news network, says that Facebook has removed its page for the second time this year “without any specific reason being provided.”

“This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don’t fit a mainstream narrative,” they say.

31 October: UK Government announces Executive Board for the new UK Council for Internet Safety

The UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) is the successor to the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). It has an ‘expanded scope’ to improve online safety for everyone in the UK.

The Executive Board brings together expertise from a range of organisations in the tech industry, civil society and public sector, including:

• Apple
• BBC
• Childnet
• Children’s Commissioner
• Commission for Countering Extremism
• End Violence Against Women Coalition
• Facebook
• GCHQ
• Google
• ICO
• Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime
• Internet Matters
• Internet Watch Foundation
• Internet Service Providers and Mobile Operators (rotating between BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Three, Virgin Media, Vodafone)
• Microsoft
• National Police Chiefs’ Council
• National Crime Agency – CEOP Command
• Northern Ireland Executive
• NSPCC
• Ofcom
• Parentzone
• Scottish Government
• TechUK
• Twitter
• UKCIS Evidence Group Chair
• UKIE
• Welsh Assembly

Government says UKCIS will contribute to the Government’s commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online, and will help to inform the development of the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper.

UK Column News asks, Is this the embryonic regulator of the internet?

8 August: Alex Jones / Infowars Deplatformed

Facebook, Apple, Spotify, Youtube and Pinterest remove Alex Jones and Inforwars from their platforms. Twitter initially refuses to do so, but follows suits shortly afterwards, following campaigns by mainstream media.

 2019

11 January: Facebook hires Fullfact to provide fact checking in UK

“From January 2019,” they say, “Full Fact will begin reviewing images, videos and articles on Facebook, as the third-party factchecking initiative comes to the UK for the first time.”

Fullfact says it wants to tackle disinformation at its source and give people the tools to spot it for themselves.

They say they will being checking photos, video and give them a rating. Content with a lower rating will appeak lower in Facebook news feeds, thereby reaching fewer people.

21 January: WhatsApp announces global limit on sharing

WhatsApp announces it will limit all its members to forwarding any single message up to five times in an effort to tackle the spread of false information. The previous limits was twenty times.

They say they made their decision having “carefully” evaluated the results of a half-year-long pilot.

“The forward limit significantly reduced forwarded messages around the world.”

12 February: Dame France Cairncross publishes her review into the sustainability of the Mainstream Media

She proposes:

• New codes of conduct to rebalance the relationship between publishers and online platforms
• The Competition & Markets Authority to investigate the online advertising market to ensure fair competition
• Online platforms’ efforts to improve their users’ news experience should be placed under regulatory supervision
• Ofcom should explore the market impact of BBC News, and whether it inappropriately steps into areas better served by commercial news providers
• The BBC should do more to help local publishers and think further about how its news provision can act as a complement to commercial news
• A new independent Institute should be created to ensure the future provision of public interest news
• A new Innovation Fund should be launched, aiming to improve the supply of public interest news
• New forms of tax reliefs to encourage payments for online news content and support local and investigative journalism

22 February: UKGov confirms Theresa May’s ‘Rapid Response Unit’ has received permanent funding

The Rapid Response Unit, the Cabinet Office ‘fake news unit’ established in April 2018, is given permanent funding to continue its work monitoring social media and making sure the government narrative appears at the top of search rankings.

3 April: Zuckerberg: More government involvement does not remove our responsibility

On a visit to Dublin, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits that there is a lot more the social network can do to regulate social media content.

He told RTE News:

I think these days a lot of people don’t want tech companies or any private companies to be making so many decisions about what speech is acceptable and what this harmful content that needs to be gets taken down.

So I think there is a role for a broader public debate here and I think some of these things would benefit from a more democratic process and a more active government role.

8 April: UK government publishes their ‘Online Harms White Paper’

A joint Home Office / DCMS initiative, the white paper proposals include:

• A new statutory ‘duty of care’ to make companies take “more responsibility” for the content or activity on their services. This will apply to all platforms of whatever size which permit user interaction such as forums or comments, and carries the potential for massive fines and imprisonment.
• Giving a regulator the power to force social media platforms and others to publish annual transparency reports on the amount of harmful content on their platforms and what they are doing to address this.
• Codes of practice, issued by the regulator, which could include measures such as requirements to minimise the spread of misleading and harmful disinformation with dedicated fact checkers, particularly during election periods.
• A media literacy strategy to equip people with the knowledge to recognise and deal with a range of deceptive and malicious behaviours online, including catfishing, grooming and extremism.

A twelve week consultation period begins from the date of publication.

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April 11, 2019, brought us a new word for Judas: Moreno—the puppet president of Ecuador who sold Julian Assange to Washington for his 30 pieces of silver.

This morning’s arrest of Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London is the first stage in Washington’s attempt to criminalize the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Washington’s man in Quito said he revoked Assange’s political asylum and Ecuadoran citizenship because Assange engaged in free speech.

As race and gender diverse police dragged Assange out of the embassy this morning, I reflected on the utter corruption of three governments—the U.S., the U.K., and Ecuador—and their institutions.

The British police showed no shame as they carted Assange from his embassy prison of the last seven years to a British jail as a way station on the way to an American one. If the British police had any integrity, the entire force would have called in sick.

If the British parliament had any integrity, they would have blocked London’s contribution to Washington’s upcoming show trial.

If the British had a prime minister instead of a Washington agent, Assange would have been released a long time ago, not held in de facto imprisonment until Washington found Moreno’s price.

If the Ecuadoran ambassador in London had any integrity, he would have publicly resigned rather than call in the police to take Assange. Is the ambassador so soulless that he can live with himself as the man who helped Moreno dishonor the reputation of Ecuador?

If the Anglo-American journalists had any integrity, they would be up in arms over the criminalization of their profession.

President Trump has survived a three-year ordeal similar to Assange’s seven-year ordeal. Trump knows how corrupt US intelligence agencies and the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) are. If Trump had any integrity, he would bring the shameful and embarrassing persecution of Assange to an immediate end by issuing a pre-trial pardon. This would also end the illegal re-imprisonment of Manning.

But integrity is not something that thrives in Washington, or in London, or in Quito.

When the Justice (sic) Department does not have a crime with which to charge its intended victim, the department trots out “conspiracy.” Assange is accused of being in a conspiracy with Manning to obtain and publicize secret government data, such as the film, which was already known to a Washington Post reporter who failed his newspaper and his profession by remaining silent, of U.S. soldiers committing extraordinary war crimes without remorse. As a U.S. soldier, it was actually Manning’s duty to report the crimes and the failure of U.S. troops to disobey unlawful orders. Manning was supposed to report the crimes to his superiors, not to the public, but he knew the military had already covered up the massacre of journalists and civilians and did not want another My Lai-type event on its hands.

I don’t believe the charge against Assange. If Wikileaks cracked the code for Manning, Wikileaks did not need Manning.

The alleged Grand Jury that allegedly produced the indictment was conducted in secret over many years as Washington searched for something that might be pinned on Assange. If there actually was a grand jury, the jurors were devoid of integrity, but how do we know there was a grand jury? Why should we believe anything Washington says after “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,” and on and on ad infinitum. Why believe Washington is telling the truth this time?

As the grand jury was secret because of “national security,” will the trial also be secret and the evidence secret? Is what we have here a Star Chamber proceeding in which a person is indicted in secret and convicted in secret on secret evidence? This is the procedure used by tyrannical governments who have no case against the person they intend to destroy.

The governments in Washington, London, and Quito are so shameless that they do not mind demonstrating to the entire world their lawlessness and lack of integrity.

Perhaps the rest of the world is itself so shameless that there will be no adverse consequences for Washington, London, and Quito. On the other hand, perhaps the frameup of Assange, following the Russiagate hoax and the shameless attempt to overthrow democracy in Venezuela and install Washington’s agent as president of that country, will make it clear to all that “the free world” is led by a rogue and lawless government. Washington is speeding up the decline of its empire as Washington makes it clear that Washington is worthy of no respect.

No confidence that justice will be served can be placed in any American trial. In Assange’s trial justice is not possible. With Assange convicted by the media, even a jury convinced of his innocence will convict him rather than face denunciation for freeing a “Russian spy.”

Assange’s conviction will make it impossible for media to report leaked information that is unfavorable to the government. As the precedent expands, future prosecutors will claim the Assange case as a precedent for prosecuting critics of the government who will be charged with intended harm to the government. The age of justice and accountable government is being brought to an end.

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

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

The man seemed like a bearded emissary, a holy figure nabbed in his sleep. He looked similarly pale as to how he did in 2013, but he cut a more shocking figure.  Most prisoners would have had room to move in a compound.  The Ecuadorean embassy in London only offered modest space and access to sun light.  Hospitality of late was in short supply. 

Julian Assange had been ill.  His advocates had bravely insisted that he needed treatment. 

“As a journalist who has worked as media partner of @Wikileaks since 2009,” reflected a near grieving Stefania Maurizi, “it has been so painful to watch Julian Assange’s health completely declining in the last 9 years as a result of confinement with no end in sight, tremendous stress, threats.” 

Sir Alan Duncan of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was happy to offer it, provided Assange step out of the embassy.

But Assange’s time had finally come.  The embroiling of the Moreno administration in the INA Papers affair suggested that the president needed an out.  Images of Moreno’s family skirting around the internet in various fora during days of plenty, and the suggestion that he had been profiting from a Panama offshore account, put Assange back in the picture. Who better to blame than a man in confinement, whose communications had been restricted, whose health was failing?  WikiLeaks duly received a tipoff from a “high level source within the Ecuadorean state” that the offshore scandal would be used “as a pretext” to remove difficult tenant.   

The writ and run of asylum has been shredded, and the conduct of Ecuador’s president Lenín Moreno is worth noting. In his address explaining the abrupt termination of Assange’s stay, Moreno was a dissembling picture.  Assange, he had been assured by UK authorities, would come to no harm.  He would not be facing torture or the death penalty (a reassuring red herring, given that the death penalty is off the table in extradition matters dealing with the UK in any case).    

He had been “discourteous” and “aggressive”, WikiLeaks “hostile and threatening” to Ecuador.  Ecuador had been “generous” and “respectful of the principles of international law, and of the institutions of the right of asylum.”  Self-praise tends to increase in volume the more guilt is assumed, and Moreno made it clear that the law of asylum was a “sovereign right of the Ecuadorean state”.  It was Assange who was the violator of diplomatic protocols, refusing to abide by “the norm of not intervening in the internal affairs of other states.” 

Specific reference was made to the leaking of Vatican documents in January 2019; Assange was still “linked” to WikiLeaks. He blocked security cameras; he used “distorting” equipment. He even “confronted and mistreated guards”.  He communicated via a mobile phone “with the outside world.” And he dared taking his case through Ecuadorean legal channels. 

Moreno’s justification received much steam from UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who claimed that Assange was “no hero and no one is above the law.  He has hidden from the truth for years.”  (Psychological slip, perhaps?  Is it Assange allergic to the truth, or the security establishments he wishes to prize open?). Both Moreno and Ecuador were to be thanked for their cooperation with the Foreign Office “to ensure Assange faces justice.”

President Donald Trump has been even more brazen on the subject of Assange’s arrest, feigning an attack of amnesia.  “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing.”  During the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks had been very much Trump’s “thing”, praised some 140 times for revealing email correspondence from the Democratic National Committee.  “Oh, we love WikiLeaks,” he cheered at a North Carolina rally.  No longer. 

Critics of WikiLeaks and Assange have always presumed exaggeration.  The narcissist had nothing to fear accept model British justice, the same justice that has gone to extraordinary lengths over the years to affect various, high profile miscarriages.  Skipping bail was tantamount to a parking offence; face the music.  Instead, WikiLeaks was shown to be correct: Assange is facing the full force of an extensive investigation against a publisher by the self-touted leader of the free world. 

Ever since the publication of Cablegate, WikiLeaks has been the subject of a multi-organisational investigation by US prosecutors and defence personnel keen to sketch a legal basis for targeting the organisation.  Assange has figured prominently.  Despite the niggling problems associated with the Free speech amendment, legal personnel have been stretching the grounds on how to circumvent it. 

Some few hours after Assange was bundled out of the embassy and into a van by the London Metropolitan Police, a US extradition request was revealed.  He would not be prosecuted as a journalist, which would bring up press freedom issues, but as a hacker under the single charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.  “Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorized to receive classified material from the United States.”

The golden thread in the argument is Chelsea Manning, and four databases “from departments and agencies of the United States.” Both Manning and Assange had entered into an agreement to crack “a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network”.  The alleged conspiracy “was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defense of the United States so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate the information on its website.”

Stripped bare, the issue for Assange is this.  Dislike him, loathe him, and feel your skin crawl before him.  Fantasise about what he might or might not have done in Sweden.  Sanctify and scribble hagiography about him.  Speculate about how he might have been as a tenant of asylum.  He remains a publisher and a journalist, unconventional, daring, a vigilante of sorts who sought to etch himself into history while giving the world a very cogent, thrilling idea: opening the darkened corridors of corrupting power and holding them accountable. 

As the Centre for Investigate Journalism states,

“Whatever your view of its philosophy of radical transparency, WikiLeaks is a publisher.  Any charges now brought in connection with that material, or any attempt to extradite Mr Assange to the United States for prosecution under the deeply flawed cudgel of the Espionage Act 1917 is an attack on all of us.” 

Edward Snowden added a concurring voice: Ecuador’s invitation for the UK secret police “to drag a publisher of – like it or not – award winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books.  Assange’s critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom.”

Even if he has never been fully accepted within the fraternity of the press, he has, in many ways, led its change. His forensic style of journalism, with its techniques of placing original documentation upon sites for readers to consult, has brought greater scrutiny of sources.  His embrace of secure systems for sending classified material, and his pioneering of international cross-border collaborative reporting, transformed the nature of modern journalism. But pioneers tend to find themselves in the colosseum facing the hungry lions of state. 

The pursuit of Assange, as British Labour’s Diane Abbott quite accurately assessed, was not done “to protect US national security” but “because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.”  Former Greek finance minister and rabble rousing economist Yanis Varoufakis saw the clouds lift on the sham.  “The game is up.  Years of lies exposed. It was never about Sweden, Putin, Trump or Hillary.  Assange was persecuted for exposing war crimes.”  Punish Assange, punish the press.  Punish Assange and condemn the Fourth Estate. 

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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]

In a shameful public lynching of Julian Assange after his arrest, ladies and gentlemen of the media in “civilized” America are carrying their torches high and calling him the “America’s number one enemy”.

The fact is that these media mercenaries like a mindless firing squad who have a wrong target and are shooting each other! Those “journalists” who fabricate Julian Assange story and his contributions; sooner or later will find themselves victims of the same repressive policies that they are cheering today. The wealthy elite hate to be exposed by independent journalists. They cannot tolerate those who speak up against them and expose their secretive and undemocratic policies and deeds. They have created different institutions such as the CIA, FBI, NSA and DHS so they can spy on all Americans – citizen or not — and punish those who dare to shed light on their criminal and unconstitutional killing, torturing, unlawful arrests and secret detention centers both here in the U.S. and abroad. That is the gist of their revenge against Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

The New York Times, Washington Post newspapers or NPR, CNN, FOX News and MSNBC radio and TV channels already found Julian Assange guilty for “jumping bail!” These critics are the same people who actually are considering the story of cutting the body of a dissent journalist inside the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Ankara as old news. Now the same people are looking for revenge against Julian Assange who only did what an honorable independent journalist should have done, that is telling the truth. Julian Assange didn’t create or fabricate any story; he just simply published the unvarnished truth.

Source: author

So, what is next? Is this the “darkest” time in the U.S. history that puts end to independent journalism? Of course not! We should listen to the man himself while he was dragging out of one prison to another. Julian Assange’s message was simple and clear: “Resist!” American people remember the Sacco-Vanzetti case as two innocent men who had unfair trial. That is true with the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. So this is not the first time. However, times have changed; today the debacle Democrats and Fascistic minded Republicans are accusing each other of treason! True peace activists and democratic minded people will see the arrest of Julian Assange as a new stage in struggle for peace and justice. The Democrats who are professional activists or just act like functionaries are unable to join the struggle for freedom of speech. Their hatred of Trump has blinded them for life.

The message of “Resist!” means that all independent journalists should unite and challenge the fake media personalities for debate! The message of “Resist!” means that activists in the U.K., U.S. and around the world should organize daily demonstrations in front of the British and American embassies and their media buildings. The message of “Resist!” means that progressive students should call for a day of strike for freedom of speech. The message of “Resist!” means that working people from Baghdad to Boston should stand up for transparency and fairness.

“No one is above the law” claimed the worn-out British Prime Minister Theresa May; our task is to prove exactly that.

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

Yesterday (April 10, 2019) a reader alerted me to the fact that I am being smeared on Wikipedia as a “vocal supporter of the current Russian government and its policies.” The reader also reports that an article in the Daily Beast calls me a “Putin worshiper.” The reader says that he tried to edit the Wikipedia entry without success, and he urged me to give it my attention.

I do not know whether the person who wrote my Wikipedia entry intended to smear me or is merely uninformed. However, dissenting voices do get smeared on Wikipedia. It is an ongoing problem for many of us. For years readers and people who know me would make corrections to my Wikipedia biography, but as soon as the corrections were made, they would be erased and the smears reinstalled.

The problem with Wikipedia is that it is an idealistic approach based on the belief that truth is more likely to emerge when everyone has a voice than when explanations are provided by a select group of experts or peers. This idealistic approach is not without merit. Moreover, it might work very well with subjects and people who do not have ideological opponents or are of no threat to those intent on controlling explanations.

The problem arises when a subject or a person is controversial and is especially the case if the person’s arguments disprove or dissent from official explanations. In The Matrix in which we live, truth-tellers are unwelcome to those who control the explanations in order to advance their agendas. Until truth-tellers can be silenced or completely censured, the practice is to discredit them with smears. Thus, I and many others have been described as “conspiracy theorists” for reporting factual information that contradicts the official and unproven explanation of 9/11, anti-semites for criticizing Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians and influence over U.S. foreign policy, and as “Russian agents” or “Putin stooges” for keeping the record straight about Ukraine, Syria, and Putin’s effort to avoid military conflict with the West.

In the pre-Internet age it was difficult to smear people. Newspaper editors would allow letters to the editor to correct factual mistakes or to provide a different interpretation of a collection of facts, but shied away from smears. This doesn’t mean that smears never happened, but not with the abandon of the Internet era.

Open works in process like Wikipedia, Internet comment sections and social media are ideally suited for smearing people and broadcasting the smears worldwide prior to any correction of them. Thus, the digital revolution has been a godsend to government agencies such as the CIA, State Department, Mossad, the Israel Lobby, corporations and other private interest groups, ideological movements such as neoconservatism and Identity Politics, and politicians, all of whom have agendas that are furthered by controlling the explanations.

As money is the highest value for many people, there is an unlimited supply of people who can be hired to smear those who challenge official explanations. A smear can start in a comment section, move to social media, and from there to a website and on to Wikipedia.

It is truth tellers who are smeared, people such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Manning, and whistleblowers whose messages are inconvenient for powerful private and government interests.

Smears are effective. There is no shortage of gullible and uninformed or misinformed people. They take a smear at face value and avoid the person or idea smeared. Despite the extreme clarity of Julian Assange’s orchestrated persecution, many see him as a “rapist escaping justice,” “Russian spy,” and “a blackmailer of governments and people.”

In short mud sticks better than facts. That is why I am not optimistic about the future of truth in the digital age. Many see the digital age as the era when truth will flourish. I understand their case. Their belief is not without merit. But the digital age is also an age in which lies can flourish because, unlike the print age, they can be so easily spread.

Consider, for example, the description of me as a “vocal supporter of the current Russian government and its policies” and a “Putin worshiper.” I am a well known critic of the Russian government’s neoliberal economic policies. Michael Hudson and I have jointly criticized the Russian government’s neoliberal economic policies and demonstrated that they are harmful to Russia’s economy. I am known also as a skeptic of Putin’s policy of turning the other check to Washington’s and Israel’s aggressions. I appreciate and admire Putin’s enormous self-control, but I have expressed concern that Putin’s unwillingness to put down a hard foot fails to turn away wrath and instead encourages more aggression that sooner or later will result in thermonuclear war.

The Russian government is aware of my position, as is the Russian media where I am often interviewed. My position is also clearly expressed on my website, which is read internationally. So why does the Daily Beast and Wikipedia misrepresent my position?

Wikipedia and comment sections can work only if commentators are responsible people who are carefully monitored by knowledgable and responsible monitors. But this takes us back to peer-reviewed explanations that Wikipedia was created to avoid.

Historically, messengers are killed, so truth tellers have to expect smears or worse–Julian Assange was arrested this morning inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London. Mankind is fallen. Governments do evil. The most evil is done to those who oppose evil. Truth cannot be told without cost to he who tells the truth.

When I speak of truth-tellers, I am speaking of people whose motive is to tell the truth. Truth is their agenda. I am not saying that truth tellers are infallible and always right. I am saying that they strive to be. They do not intentionally write falsehoods and mislead.

Truth is not opinion. It is pointless to tell a truth teller that you disagree with him. You can present a case that his facts are wrong. You can present a case that there is a better explanation of the facts.

In my experience when most people say they disagree, they mean that they prefer another explanation that is more congenial to their feelings and emotions. For example, many Americans believed the preposterous Russiagate fib because they dislike Trump, just as today conservative talk radio has adopted the official explanation of 9/11 because it can be used against the outspoken female Muslim member of Congress. The facts have nothing to do with either belief. In both cases, the facts are resisted because the truth is not as emotionally comforting or as useful for the agenda at hand as the lie.

I have no objection if readers undertake to monitor and correct the account presented of me in Wikipedia. It will be an ongoing process, and will require the commitment of many of you. Those behind the attacks on me have a lot of money and a lot of hirelings, and they can erase your work as soon as you finish.

The digital revolution and the control mechanisms it provides makes it far more likely that we will end up in a locked down dystopia than would ever have been possible in the print age. But the digital revolution represents perhaps an even greater threat to humanity. It is making humans redundant.

What are humans to do when everything is automated? If the tech nerds have their way, we soon won’t be allowed to drive cars.

What will humans do when there is no need for their labor? Boston Dynamics, a Waltham Massachusettes company, has come up with a robot that replaces warehouse workers. The prediction is that 40 million more Americans will be shoved out of the workforce by robots over the next ten years.

Has anyone thought about who is going to be employed and have the money to purchase the products of robots? No doubt we will be promised all kinds of new and better jobs like we were promised to take the place of the offshored manufacturing and professional service jobs. The promised jobs never showed up. And no, this is not a luddite argument. Everyone can’t be employed designing robots to replace humans.

Each warehouse will rush to increase its profits by laying off employees, and none will consider the aggregate effect on consumer demand for the products in the warehouses. Will the warehouses have to give back their gained profits in taxes to support the unemployed? Will the warehouses have any profits if people haven’t income from jobs with which to buy the products in the warehouses? Does the robot age mean profits have to be socialized in order to sustain human life?

An intelligent approach to technology would be to focus on technology that enhances human performance, not on technology that eliminates the need for humans.

At Stanford University technology has emerged, or is emerging, that permits real time changes in the movements of a person’s mouth as he speaks in order to broadcast a message different than the one the speaker is speaking. The mischief possible with this technology is unacceptable. Television could destroy any unwelcome politician or leader by showing him delivering a message designed to destroy him. If people catch on, it would mean the end of televised speeches as no one would believe any speech unless they were present in person.

People already find it challenging to comprehand reality. The emergence of technology capable of falsifying reality in real time presages a future in which fact and fiction become indistinguishable. The unintended consequence of this technology may well be the death of truth.

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

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

The Indo-American Strategic Partnership has rapidly progressed to such a point that the South Asian state is now copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, though instead of India being obsessed with suspected Russian interference in its elections like America was, its people can’t stop talking about its imaginary Pakistani variant.

Pakistangate

Pakistani Prime Minister Khan made global headlines earlier this week when he said that it might be easier for his country to clinch peace talks with India and resolve the Kashmir Conflict if Modi wins re-election after his country’s month-long electoral process concludes at the end of May. This took many Indians completely off guard who had hitherto been preconditioned by none other than the ruling BJP itself to think that Pakistan was “meddling” in their elections in order to support the opposition Congress party and their coalition allies. The Pakistani leader explained his initially surprising position by rationally noting how it would be less likely that right-wing forces would oppose any BJP-led peace talks unlike the spoiling effect they could have if left-leaning Congress attempted to initiate the same, which makes sense upon further contemplation and is actually a very wise observation.

From -Gate To -Gate

Instead of being interpreted as such, however, India’s “confirmation bias” on all sides caused it to continue cannibalizing itself over the entirely speculative issue of “who Pakistan really supports”, with practically all parties refusing to believe that their neighbor is just sitting on the sidelines watching in awe as the Indian political class tears itself apart over this issue and discredits their claim to being the self-professed “world’s largest democracy”. Interestingly, what’s unfolding in India at the moment with Pakistangate is very similar to what has been taking place in its military-strategic partner over the past couple of years with Russiagate. This suggests that the vassal state is copying some of the same conspiracy theories as its new patron, including the role that elements of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are playing in this process.

“Deep State” Meddling

Democratic-friendly elements of the American “deep state” essentially entrapped Carter Page, after which they consequently used this false flag as the pretext for “justifying” a far-reaching FISA surveillance operation against the entire Trump campaign which then sought to exploit its “six degrees of separation” from Russia to concoct a weaponized narrative that ultimately failed to prevent him from winning the election and then later getting him overthrown through a de-facto coup. Something along the same lines happened with the BJP-friendly elements of the Indian “deep state” that “passively facilitated” the Pulwama incident which was later blamed on Pakistan and used as the pretext for “justifying” a so-called “surgical strike” against it that also miserably failed in what it sought out to do, though it nevertheless succeeded in making Indians hysterical about anything to do with Pakistan.

Witch Hunts

The BJP has even gone as far as to imply that all dissidents who disagree with its official version of events are treasonous, which is reminiscent of how the then-ruling Democrats suggested that anyone supporting Trump was either under the influence of “Russian propaganda” or a “Russian bot” if they were expressing their views in cyberspace. Just as Russia became a convenient scapegoat for the pro-incumbent elements of the American “deep state” to centralize their power behind the scenes and meddle in their own country’s elections, so too has Pakistan been abused to serve the same purpose vis-a-vis the pro-incumbent elements of the Indian “deep state”, with both of their permanent bureaucracies presently in the process of merging their narratives into a geopolitically weaponized one ridiculously alleging that Russia and Pakistan are jointly waging “hybrid wars” across the world.

Concluding Thoughts

It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that India’s “deep state” is copying its American counterpart’s Russiagate conspiracy theory and remixing it with a national touch to produce Pakistangate in pursuit of the exact same purpose of remaining in power, though just like with its inspiration, this might ultimately end up backfiring against its practitioners since it’s impossible to control chaotic processes once Pandora’s Box has been opened. In any case and regardless of the eventual electoral outcome, the Indian and American “deep states” will continue to converge into a single unipolar shadow entity dedicated to the shared objective of stopping multipolarity, using the “bonding experience” of their respective manufactured -gate conspiracies to accelerate this ongoing process and ensure that the Indo-American Strategic Partnership is one of the Eastern Hemisphere’s most geopolitically disruptive developments this century.

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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.

Il rischio di una grande guerra che, con l’uso delle armi nucleari potrebbe segnare la fine dell’Umanità, è reale e sta aumentando, anche se non è percepito dall’opinione pubblica tenuta all’oscuro dell’incombente pericolo.

È di vitale importanza il massimo impegno per uscire dal sistema di guerra. Ciò pone la questione dell’appartenenza dell’Italia e di altri paesi europei alla NATO.

La NATO non è una Alleanza. È una organizzazione sotto comando del Pentagono, il cui scopo è il controllo militare dell’Europa Occidentale e Orientale.

Le basi USA nei paesi membri della NATO servono a occupare tali paesi, mantenendovi una presenza militare permanente che permette a Washington di influenzare e controllare la loro politica e impedire reali scelte democratiche.

Source: PandoraTV

La NATO è una macchina da guerra che opera per gli interessi degli Stati Uniti, con la complicità dei maggiori gruppi europei di potere, macchiandosi di crimini contro l’umanità.

La guerra di aggressione condotta dalla NATO nel 1999 contro la Jugoslavia ha aperto la via alla globalizzazione degli interventi militari, con le guerra contro l’Afghanistan, la Libia, la Siria e altri paesi, in completa violazione del diritto internazionale.

Tali guerre vengono finanziate dai paesi membri, i cui bilanci militari sono in continua crescita a scapito delle spese sociali, per sostenere colossali programmi miiitari come quello nucleare statunitense da 1.200 miliardi di dollari.

Gli USA, violando il Trattato di non-proliferazione, schierano armi nucleari in 5 Stati non-nucleari della NATO, con la falsa motivazione della «minaccia russa». Mettono in tal modo in gioco la sicurezza dell’Europa.

Per uscire dal sistema di guerra che ci danneggia sempre più e ci espone al pericolo imminente di una grande guerra, si deve uscire dalla NATO, affermando il diritto di essere Stati sovrani e neutrali.

È possibile in tal modo contribuire allo smantellamento della NATO e di ogni altra alleanza militare, alla riconfigurazione degii assetti dell’intera regione europea, alla formazione di un mondo multipolare in cui si realizzino le aspirazioni dei popoli alla libertà e alla giustizia sociale.

Proponiamo la creazione di un fronte internazionale NATO EXIT in tutti i paesi europei della NATO, costruendo una rete organizzativa a livello di base capace di sostenere la durissima lotta per conseguire tale obiettivo vitale per il nostro futuro.

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Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

All images are from the author

What’s going on is a developing story. Events are fast moving. Here’s what’s known so far.

Days earlier, WikiLeaks accused Ecuadorian embassy personnel in London of “extensive spying” on Assange, according to its editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, saying:

It’s been going on as part of Ecuador’s complicity with the US and UK to arrest, detain, and extradite him to US authorities – for the crime of truth telling, journalism the way it’s supposed to be.

“We know that there was a request to hand over visitor’s logs from the embassy and video recordings from within the security cameras in the embassy,” Hrafnsson explained, information to be handed over to Trump regime officials to be used against Assange, she believes.

At a Thursday news conference, former Ecuadorian consul to London Fidel Narvaez said his country “is not protecting Julian anymore,” his asylum status illegally rescinded.

Hours earlier, UK metropolitan police entered Ecuador’s London embassy, forcibly arresting Assange, a statement saying:

“He has been taken into custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as is possible,” adding:

It “had a duty (sic) to execute (an outstanding warrant against him, pertaining to fabricated rape and sexual abuse charges in Sweden later rescinded) on behalf of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and was invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government’s withdrawal of asylum.”

UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted the following:

“(N)early seven years after entering the Ecuadorean Embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK (sic).”

“I would like to thank Ecuador for its cooperation (sic) and the metropolitan police for its professionalism (sic). No one is above the law (sic).”

Last Friday, Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry denied what it called “rumors” about its government’s intention to rescind Assange’s asylum, expelling him from its London embassy, permitting his arrest by UK authorities ahead of extraditing him to the US.

Days earlier, WikiLeaks said Quito and London agreed on expelling Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy in “hours to days.”

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno falsely accused him of “repeatedly violat(ing) the conditions of his asylum,” unjustifiably claiming he “hack(ed) private accounts (and) phones,” adding:

“In WikiLeaks we have seen evidence of spying, intervention in private conversations on phones, including photos of my bedroom, of what I eat, of how my wife and daughters and friends dance.”

The above accusations are groundless. Not a shred of evidence supports them. Assange is a political refugee – granted Ecuadorian citizenship and asylum in the country’s London embassy by former President Correa.

Under international law, refugees and asylum seekers are protected. In cahoots with the US and Britain, Moreno ordered Assange expelled in return for whatever favors he was promised.

Via Twitter, Moreno repeated false accusations against Assange as a phony pretext for rescinding his asylum protection – claiming UK authorities said extradition won’t be ordered to a country practicing capital punishment, a willful deception.

On Thursday, attorney representing Assange Jen Robinson said UK police arrested Assange for “extradition to the United States for (the crime of) publishing” information everyone has the right to know.

His arrest was “not just for breach of bail conditions (related to phony rape and sexual abuse charges) but also in relation to a US extradition request.”

US show trial prosecution on phony charges, along with gulag prison hell awaits him, likely including longterm isolation in solitary confinement, amounting to torture – a flagrant Eighth Amendment violation, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishments.

Under international law, torture and similar abuse are forbidden at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.

US viciousness ongoing again against Chelsea Manning and other heroic whistleblowers, for revealing government criminality and other wrongdoing, now awaits Assange once handed over to US authorities – the fate awaiting him.

It’s up to ordinary people everywhere valuing peace, equity and justice, wanting to live free from Washington’s repressive boot, to resist what’s going on against Assange along with other imperial high crimes.

The choice between freedom or fascism is simple – living free or under the yoke of tyrannical rule.

Assange’s unlawful arrest is one of many reasons for me to be ashamed to be an American – never beautiful, world’s apart from the country I grew up in long ago.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The next Elections for the European Parliament scheduled on 23-26 May 2019 have already started with fervor! A total of 751 seats (MEPs) are currently up for grabs by those fortunate enough to secure a seat in one of the most lucrative and privileged positions on offer.

EU salaries and the perks of MEPs are nothing to sneeze at either: €7957 monthly gross salary; €4342 per month office costs; all domestic and international travel expenses paid plus €306 per day travel allowance including other privileges.  With such incentives on the table, it makes the job of an MEP seem like manna from heaven and nobody wants to miss out on such an opportunity! The only qualification necessary is the “gift of the gab” or to be a member of a political party.

It is no wonder aspiring politicians and party faithful including journalists, media personalities and TV presenters add their names to the list of hopeful candidates in the hope they secure such a prestigious political career.

In the meantime, a fierce battle is in progress between all the political parties offering promises to lure the loyalty of voters but also appeal to prospective candidates that offer a lesser risk of winning a seat at the next European Parliament; a parliament that in fact has no legitimacy!

In smaller states these overrated parliamentary elections become the main topic of affairs and all the local political parties attempt to make deals and counter deals on selecting a mutually agreed candidate in the chance that they can win a seat for the party. Meanwhile, the mass media and the government add to the frenzy as if EU elections are god-sent and so important to people’s lives that they cannot be ignored.

This year however all the political parties share an underlying problem; they fear the rise of nationalist movements! Those sweeping candidates opposed to EU policies show strong signs of gaining critical votes right across Europe. Consequently, they pose a serious challenge and can tip the balance of power inside the chamber of the European Parliament and in so doing, change the entire EU parliamentary spectrum forever.

Swarmed by hundreds of politicians the “Parliament” was originally created with one specific purpose in mind; to use its democratic voting status as a means to rubberstamp the Council’s rulings and in so doing legitimize the EU institution as a democratic entity!

It is also a known fact that MEPs have no role to play in the EU decision-making process or actions agreed behind closed doors between the unelected Commission and Council. As the main body authorized to amend and adopt laws and coordinate policies for the entire European Union, only the “Mighty Commission” can make those decisions. Yet, elected parliamentarians are obliged to stamp their approval on policies presented to them by unelected bureaucrats!

It has come to pass that when an elected parliament has no legitimacy or the power to make decisions, adopt laws or introduce policies in the interest of the people, cannot be called a parliament but a lame institution and that’s where parliamentary democracy ends! The rest is a shambolic act based on misconception by a non-elected and undemocratic EU supranational organization in pursuit of supremacy.

There is a public illusion that MEPs are elected to represent the interests of the voters in their own country but that’s far, far from the truth! In fact it’s a total fallacy and a lie! Once elected, MEPs change hats and they are committed to make decisions in the interest of the entire European Union and not of their own country that has been reduced to a “province” of the EU.

BREXIT this year will certainly shake up the EU and probably become the catalyst to trigger a domino effect for other states to exit the European Union. It promises to be the most significant revolution ever and this nightmarish scenario sends shivers down the spine of the EU and Europhiles. Meanwhile, member-states are anxiously waiting to see the final outcome of this political nightmare, which has come to upset the cozy EU relationship amongst governments and banking institutions.

Without a doubt, there are clear signs of irreconcilable differences between the Commission and some member states are resisting the unsavory metamorphosis the EU is going through – from its original concept of a Common Market to a political European Union in pursuit of its own army and control over the lives of 512.6 million citizens!

Under the current political rift it is reasonable to assume that Article 50 for EU Exit would be repeated again some day soon! The obvious rancor between Emmanuel Macron and Matteo Salvini offers a clear picture of policy discord among EU leaders attempting to protect their own national interests; breakups seem inevitable!

The most serious problem facing member-states today has been the ever-increasing flow of thousands of illegal migrants and “asylum” seekers the Commission refuses to deal with. It has chosen to “wash its hands” by paying billions of compensation to others and deal with the problem. Obsessed by its “Open Borders” flagship, the EU refuses to accept responsibility for actually encouraging the torrent of human flow that now threatens social stability and also the demographic character of Europe!

Without question a new generation of citizens has discovered they have a voice and can no longer remain silent to injustices. They feel deceived by governments and they openly speak out by turning their back on the established order and political parties that have betrayed their aspirations. The Yellow Jackets uprising in France against a failed system it’s a fine example of peoples’ resistance to unfair treatment in a wealthy country.

The ugly scenes of angry mass demonstrations in the streets of France, Greece and other European countries speak a thousand words; they speak of a letdown by governments and EU policymakers that failed them miserably and take to the streets in demand of radical changes and no more shallow promises! Only the people of EU-Cyprus seem reluctant to protest for changes to the status quo and yet the island absorbs the highest ratio of refugees in comparison to its small population.

Citizens have come to recognize that national governments and the EU institution have both reneged on their promise to provide security and social stability in a land of plenty, democracy and equality! In contrast, they have managed to rekindle people’s reawakening of nationalism­­­­­­­–the stuff that revolutions are made of!

If at the upcoming elections, nationalist parties accumulate enough decisive votes in Parliament, things will never be the same again for the European Union. For better or worse, the EU would be forced to recognize its own failures and accept the truth that the “One Happy EU Family” does not exist – it never did!

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Andreas C Chrysafis is a UK published author of six books in circulation worldwide including over 400 press articles. He is an advocate of democracy, Transparency, Equality and Human Rights.

While the campaign for the European elections on 26 May 2019 draws very little interest, the initiative launched by ReCommonsEurope with its ‘Manifesto for a new popular internationalism in Europe’ is on to a promising start. The text was drafted over some twelve months by sixteen people from six different countries (Belgium, Bosnia, France, Greece, Spain and the UK), all active in different organizations and movements (trade unions, political parties, activist movements) and relying on various and complementary fields of expertise (economics, political sciences, philosophy, anthropology, law, ecology, trade unionism, feminism, North/South solidarity, etc.). They represent three generations. The Manifesto is supported by over 160 signatories from 21 different European countries, among whom a majority of women. Signatures are still being collected.

Highlights of the ReCommonsEurope initiative

ReCommonsEurope resulted from the wish to collaborate between two European networks, namely the CADTM and EReNSEP, and the main trade union in the Basque country, ELA (see this). The two European networks had been directly involved in the Greek experiment in 2015 and had drawn converging lessons from it. For over fifteen years ELA and the CADTM have been recurrently involved in various internationalist initiatives, from the World Social Forum launched in 2001 to the Altersummit, including the European Social Forum. ELA, CADTM and EReNSEP activists have also been directly involved in the struggles that are fought in their respective countries. Since 2015 they have taken an active part in meetings and debates about Plan B.

The text of the Manifesto was drafted over the three meetings held in 2018, and collectively finalized in 2019. It is a continuation of the call entitled Ten Proposals to Beat the European Union, a collective text introduced by over 70 signatories in February 2017.

The objective aimed at by ReCommonsEurope is both limited and ambitious: we want to prove that it is both possible and necessary for radical measures to be implemented in Europe.

The Manifesto results from this observation: a large majority of left-wing political organizations and social movements are afraid of coming forward with truly anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and eco-socialist measures. Some are even openly, not to say cynically, social-liberal, which excludes them from any claim to being on the left.

Unlike left-wing parties that compromise themselves with the established order, ReCommonsEurope puts forward radical eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist measures, i.e. measures clearly in favour of popular internationalism, and aimed at promoting social and political revolution.

The 2015 Greek experiment has often been used as a scarecrow. It is supposed to provide evidence that a radical programme cannot be implemented. Yet members of ReCommonsEurope read a different message in the Greek experiment – and fortunately they are not alone. For them the Tsipras government had given up from the start on achieving the radical commitments they had pledged to the Greek people, and this resulted in the disaster of the third Memorandum of Understanding.

ReCommonsEurope asserts the need to implement a radical programme and to rely on a strategy that consists of mobilization, civic disobedience and popular self-organization.

The people who wrote the Manifesto have diverging views on some issues: should we leave the Eurozone or not? Is it possible and useful to create a complementary currency? Should all the banking and insurance sector be expropriated to be turned into a public service or should we create a public pool in competition with capitalist private banks? ReCommonsEurope invites the confrontation of diverging view and debates on what measures ought to be taken. This Manifesto is not some absolute declaration of faith; rather it is an invitation to more debate.

Activists that contribute to ReCommonsEurope are well aware that putting a programme forward, however good it might be, is not enough. Clearly the decisive element will be the struggles to thoroughly change power relationships and make the implementation of a coherent set of economic, political, social and cultural measures possible. But those who meet in the context of ReCommonsEurope are convinced that for the struggles to result in major changes, it is essential to have a clear view of a set of measures to be taken by a popular government.

The climate crisis, violent austerity policies and the danger represented by a racist and xenophobic far right, only make it more urgent to define a strategy associating popular self-organization with social movements and political organizations, in order to make politics serve the interests of the majority.

For the last ten years many popular mobilizations have questioned the establishment. The Manifesto is part of those movements and highlights the struggle against exploitation and all forms of oppression.

As noted in the introduction to the Manifesto, struggles over the past ten years cannot be dissociated from social, environmental, democratic, feminist and solidarity emergencies. A social emergency because the living and working conditions of the popular classes have continuously deteriorated in the last thirty years, most notably since the crisis which affected the continent in 2008-2009. An ecological emergency because the exponential consumption of fossil fuels, and more generally the destruction of ecosystems, which are part and parcel of the capitalist system, have resulted in a global climate change that is ever closer to the point of no return and threatens the very existence of humanity. A democratic emergency because, faced with the challenges to the dominant classes over the last thirty years, the latter have not hesitated to adopt methods of domination which ignore democratic appearances to an ever greater degree, and are increasingly repressive. A feminist emergency because patriarchal oppression in all its forms is increasingly being massively and loudly rejected by millions of women and men. A solidarity emergency because the closing of borders and the building of walls as a response to the millions of migrants fleeing war, poverty, environmental disasters and authoritarian regimes world-wide constitute nothing less than a denial of humanity. Each of these emergencies leads, in turn, to mass civil disobedience, self-organization and the building of alternatives, which represent possible sources of democratic alternatives in Europe.

Not only is the European Union one of the world’s vanguards of neo-liberalism and imperialism, it is also a set of institutions serving big capital. Therefore a left committed to social transformation can no longer be credible and realistic without placing a complete break with the treaties and institutions of the European Union at the heart of its strategy.

By making these proposals for disobeying and breaking with the European institutions, there can be no question of looking towards a nationalist solution to the crisis and social revolt. Just as much as in the past, we need to adopt an internationalist strategy and advocate a European federation of peoples as opposed to pursuing the present course of integration which is completely dominated by the interests of big capital. It is also a question of constantly seeking to develop coordinated campaigns and actions at the continental level and beyond, in the fields of debt, ecology, the right to housing, treatment of migrants and refugees, health, education and other public services, the right to work, the fight to close nuclear power plants, the drastic reduction of the use of fossil fuels, the fight against tax dumping and tax havens, the fight to socialize the banks, insurance companies and the energy sector, the re-appropriation of the commons, action against the ever-increasing authoritarianism of governments and for democracy in every area of social life, the struggle to defend and extend the rights of women and LGBTI people, the promotion of public goods and services, the creation of constituent processes.

A collective work to be carried on

Members of ReCommonsEurope met in Brussels on 21 and 22 March 2019. Participants came from Belgium, Bosnia, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Spain and the UK. They discussed the current final version of the Manifesto and the initiatives to be taken to make it known throughout Europe. It is currently available in French, English, Spanish and Catalan. It is still open to signatures.

This latest meeting on 21 and 22 March 2019 was the fourth meeting of ReCommonsEurope members. The first two took place in Brussels, in February and June 2018 respectively. The third was held in London in September 2018. During these meetings, drafting groups were set up by theme and produced the Manifesto for a New Popular Internationalism in Europe between the end of 2018 and March 2019; the Manifesto was made public in three languages on 21 March 2019.

During the meeting on 21 and 22 March, ReCommonsEurope members agreed that the document could be improved upon, that the work had to be continued. We also noted the need for a shorter more accessible version. Two processes are thus currently taking place: work to improve the Manifesto, which is about 100 pages long, and the drafting of a condensed version that should not be more than 20 pages long.

It is crucial to notice that debates on a programme of measures to be taken have not yet been through enough. Several issues deserve more accurate definition: the possibility and the role of a complementary currency, how a number of countries could leave the euro, practical measures to be taken regarding banks, immediate measures required to contribute to fighting the environmental crisis, etc.

Why the work carried out by ReCommonsEurope is significant and useful

Events that followed the 2015 Greek disaster have shown that the popular Left must urgently discuss and carry out coherent proposals to provide a left-wing exit to the current crises. Brexit has been largely dominated by fighting between various factions of big capital in the UK, the popular classes have not been able to define their objectives and their own answer to the question about leaving the European Union. In the case of the Catalan people’s struggle for independence, the Catalan ‘independentist’ right largely ran the process. The Catalan internationalist and independentist left did not manage to step in with sufficient autonomy. As a consequence the fight for social rights and the contradiction between Capital and Labour were marginalized. In Italy too, the tune is called by the right-wing reactionary forces that are dominant in the current government. More generally, as the crisis within the EU deepens, it is essential that people on the popular side should be in a position to make themselves heard.

ReCommonsEurope has tried, however limited our forces, to convincingly show that we have to step out of the national context in which a large part of the popular side have remained confined. Obviously, stepping out of the national context does not mean that we should not be involved in local social and political struggles but that we should relate them to an international dimension, both in word and deed. We must also shake the large trade unions out of their passivity. The European Trade Union Confederation, which has tens of millions of members, has proved itself unable to stand up for social conquest against the attacks of big capital supported by EU institutions.

The current struggles waged by women (notably on 8 March) and by young people (with their various mobilizations for the climate) show us which way to go. In several European countries, those mobilizations manage to articulate forms of self-organization, self-coaching, public initiatives and a quest for concrete solutions on a global scale. While the present appeal is functionally directed at militants and activists of the European left, its spirit is undoubtedly universal. It is urgent that all anti-capitalist, eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist activists should discuss these solutions and call upon social and political organizations saying: let’s meet current challenges together and develop a new popular internationalism in Europe and beyond.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Christine Pagnoulle and Vicki Briault

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man(2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

All images in this article are from CADTM

A Yemeni city the size of Cambridge had just hours to evacuate before it was pummelled by Saudi war planes, the Court of Appeal in London heard today.

A panel of judges is reviewing a decision made by Sajid Javid not to suspend British bomb sales for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

The Tory high-flier was business secretary when he allowed the arms exports to keep flowing, despite his head of export control warning that “my gut tells me we should suspend.”

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) challenged Mr Javid’s decision unsuccessfully at the High Court in 2017 but later lodged an appeal.

The group said an “enormous” quantity of British bombs is being dropped from Saudi jets onto Yemeni schools, mosques and hospitals as a result of Mr Javid giving a green light to the arms industry.

CAAT’s lawyer Martin Chamberlain QC said entire cities have been targeted by indiscriminate Saudi-led air strikes.

In the case of Sa’ada, a city with around 100,000 residents, Mr Chamberlain said:

“Leaflets were dropped one or two hours before the bombardment started, but a large proportion of that town were illiterate — they couldn’t read the leaflets.

“There was an announcement on radio some four or five hours before — but what were they to do?

“Many had no petrol — and they were being told the whole city was a target.”

More than 200 strikes on the city swiftly followed.

“To declare an entire city the size of Cambridge to be a military target is the most flagrant breach of international humanitarian law one can imagine,” he said.

“It’s like saying Cambridge is a military target — the whole of it.

“What are civilians to do?”

He also highlighted a missile strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Yemen, which killed an aid worker, and the Great Hall incident in capital Sana’a which was a “double tap attack” with missiles “fired at first responders who went to the aid of those injured in the first attack.”

He then lambasted the government, asking:

“What did the Secretary of State think about that? We have no idea.”

The appellant claims that government ministers have not “bothered” to rationally assess the impact of Saudi air strikes on Yemen when considering whether there was a “clear risk” that British bombs could be used to commit war crimes — the threshold required to halt arms deals.

CAAT is bringing the challenge against the Department for International Trade, which now oversees arms export licences.

Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among other parties intervening in the case, which is scheduled to run for three days.

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Featured image: Campaigners outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London ahead of a three-day legal challenge over the British government’s exports of arms to Saudi Arabia, today (April 9)

There are three main anthropogenic factors that pose a serious threat to European wildlife. These are causing the death of individuals by illegal poisoning, poaching, trapping or trading, reduced reproductive success due to habitat disturbance and habitat loss due to e.g. deforestation or wetland filling. Deliberate poisoning has been documented as one of the most severe factors threathening wildlife and biodiversity conservation in Europe. In Austria poisoning currently plays a major role in the loss of dozens of bird species and is the main cause of death for the White-tailed eagle.

The power of poison

The most common methods of poisoning wildlife can be grouped into two main categories: poisoning with chemicals and lead poisoning. Chemicals can be permitted, but pesticides such as non-selective insecticides and rodenticides are often misused. In this case poisoning aims to target e.g. rodents, however, after consuming poisoned prey it weakens the predator or may have lethal effects due to the accumulation of the poisoning agent.

The other group consists of the use of non-permitted, banned poisons, such as the EU-wide banned pesticide Carbofuran. This is one of the most toxic pesticides on the market. It has a high number of leaching into groundwater, a high mammalian and avian toxicity and a low potential for bioaccumulation. No wonder it is not approved for use in the EU. On the other hand, to this day it is a commonly used poison against wildlife and together with other toxic chemicals, their consequences on the environment and wildlife are severe.

Lead poisoning is another possible threathening factor mainly on birds of prey, which are scavenging the carcasses left in the field by hunters. Consumed lead accumulates in the bones and weakens the individual. Unfortunately this is not a one of a kind case.

Alarming cases of raptor poisoning in Austria

Apart from this species, in the last years many Red kites, Buzzards, ravens, as well as foxes and martens have become victims of the growing amount of poisoned baits layed out against predators in the country. Moreover, calculated with the individuals not found due to various reasons, any number published is just the tip of the iceberg, representing a small percentage of the total number of all illegal activities.

White-tailed eagle in Europe’s largest eagle. It was extinct in Austria with only a few wintering individuals in the 1970s. Starting with the first proven breeding documented in 2001, it had a triumphant return. During the last counting 35 breeding pairs were found in total, however, counting with only 70 individuals, losing each bird is a great loss, not to mention losing 8 in a matter of few months.

Bearded Vulture also threatened

Bearded Vulture eats only carcass, which is often poisoned with lead.

One of the most successful reintroduction programmes of the bearded vulture supported with significant funding in the National Park Hohe Tauern has also been paused after 32 years. Many vultures suffered from lead poisoning causing a significant drop in the reproduction rate threading the long term success of their long-term survival in the Alps. Amazing fact here also is, that the reintroduction is more successful in every other location than in Austria, where more vultures die of human influence than anywhere else. The authorities lost Vultures due to lead poisoning already back in 2012.

The need for action

Poisoned baits are, despite being banned by the Birds and Habitats Directive and the Bern Convention of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, actively used across Europe to kill predators. This pattern exists since years, and delays in addressing these cases is a serious concern.

White-tailed eagles poisoned in Serbia

In the last years, many national and cross-border initiatives emerged to bring together responsible sectors in tackling this issue. Some examples include the Balkan Anti-poisoning project and the LIFE project LIFE Against bird crimes.

Raising awareness and public involvement is a key element to tackle this threath. That’s why WWF Austria had set up the “Vorsicht – Gift” (Beware, poison) hotline in 2003. This is maintained in cooperation with the Lower Austrian Hunting Association. National initiatives like Spain’s Veneno project, running from 2010 to 2014 have built up a Network of Volunteers against Poisoning.

There is still much to learn about the sheer extent of these poisoning practices. However, the increasing frequency and widespread distribution of illegal poisoning must draw immediate attention among decision makers. Wilderness requires zero-tolerance towards illegal killing. Adopting this will need coordinated and integrated efforts. This means the engagement of stakeholders as well as relevant governmental authorities and enforcement agencies to improve law enforcement at EU as well as national level.

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All images in this article are from EWS

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ response to the horrific attack on two mosques in New Zealand highlights tensions between promoting the most aggressive ongoing European settler colonialism and Jewish Canadian concern over hate crimes.

Forty-eight hours after the killings in Christchurch the Toronto Star published letters by the heads of CIJA and Toronto’s Jewish Federation under the headline “Jewish Canadians stand with Muslims.” CIJA’s quick response to the mosque attack no doubt reflected genuine horror as well as an understanding that as a minority religious group disproportionately victimized by hate crimes Jews have an interest in building solidarity against such violence. But, it also represents a cynical ‘get out ahead of the story’ type of public relations from a group that regularly demonizes Muslims in defence of Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians. CIJA, which is the lobbying arm of Canada’s Jewish Federations, claims Israel is “fighting  against the Palestinian shackles of international Islamism that has been wreaking absolute havoc all over the world.”

CIJA regularly hypes “Islamic terror”. In response to a 2017 truck attack in Nice, France, CIJA declared “Canada is not immune to… Islamist terror” and in 2018 they highlighted  “those strains of Islam that pose a real and imminent threat to Jews around the world.” At the time CIJA also aligned with the xenophobic backlash  against the term “Islamophobia in bill M-103, which called for collecting data on hate crimes and studying the issue of “eliminating systemic  racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.” In a BuzzFeed article titled “Zionist Groups  in Canada Are Jumping On The ‘Creeping Sharia’ Bandwagon” Steven Zhou detailed CIJA, B’nai Brith and other pro-Israel groups backlash to M-103 and “how Muslim Canadians define Islamophobia.”

In a bid to deter organizations from associating with the Palestinian cause or opposing Israeli belligerence in the Middle East, CIJA constantly targets Arab and Muslim community representatives, papers, organizations, etc. To prove that Muslim Canadians financed “Hamas terror”, CIJA pushed to proscribe Muslim charity IRFAN (International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy) as a terrorist entity because it supported orphans and a hospital in the Gaza Strip through official (Hamas controlled) channels. (The federal government considers Hamas a terrorist organization but Palestinians and most  of the world consider it a political/resistance organization.) The Jewish group’s press release about the first Canadian-based group ever designated a terrorist organization alludes to ‘foreign Muslims taking advantage of Canadians’. It noted, “Canadians will not tolerate the abuse of their generosity by those who seek to bankroll terrorists.” In 2017 CIJA demanded  Ottawa rescind the charitable status of the Islamic Society of British Columbia because the Vancouver-area mosque allegedly offered support for Hamas.

While quick to attack Arabs and Muslims’ support for “terror” or “anti-Semitism,” CIJA clams up when explicit Jewish Islamophobia is brought to their attention. In 2012, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) asked for CIJA’s help with an aggressively anti-Muslim textbook used at Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School in Toronto. It described Muslims as “rabid fanatics” with “savage beginnings,” but CIJA refused to respond.

Last summer lawyer Dimitri Lascaris repeatedly called on CIJA to disassociate from a number of individuals it aligned with at a protest who made anti-Muslim remarks and death threats against mostly Muslim and brown politicians in a video about the rally. CIJA responded by orchestrating an unprecedented  smear campaign against the prominent pro-Palestinian activist.

CIJA Québec failed to respond to my request for comment about the Jewish Public Library in Montréal, a constituent agency of the city’s Jewish Federation it officially represents, hosting  anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali next month. Among a slew of extremist statements, Ali said “violence is inherent in Islam—it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.”

CIJA has stayed mum about the recent scandal over the head of the Toronto Hebrew School Teachers Federation, Aviva Polonsky, escorting a class from the Community Hebrew Academy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington. Polonsky posted photographs of her and students meeting with noted Islamophobe Sebastian Gorka and wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.

CIJA ignores Islamophobia by groups it defends or represents. It also stokes anti-Muslim sentiment as part of its bid to defend Israeli colonialism and violence. On the other hand, Canadian Jewry, which CIJA claims to represent, has a strong self-interest in building broad opposition to hate crimes.

Which side is this organization on? Is it always against perpetrators of hate-crimes, so-called “White nationalists” and governments that favour one religion or ethnicity over others? Or does it make exceptions for its supporters and Israel?

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Egypt has reportedly withdrawn from U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Arab NATO” initiative following President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi’s visit to Washington.

According to the Reuters News Agency, Egypt has made the decision to withdraw fro the U.S.-led “Middle East Security Alliance”, which has been dubbed “Arab NATO”.

This NATO-like group that has been formed by the U.S. administration is composed of a number of Arab states, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirtes, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Furthermore, sources from Reuters said the Egyptian authorities were partially motivated by uncertainty over President Trump’s re-election and whether his successor would scrap the entire initiative — just like Trump himself scrapped the Iranian Nuclear Deal.

Cairo’s decision is believed to have inflicted a blow on Trump’s strategy of curbing Iranian influence in the region, Reuters report says.

It is worth noting that Egypt has been flirting with the idea of purchasing the Russian-made Su-35 stealth jets; this has prompted outrage from the Trump administration.

According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,

“We have made clear that systems were to be purchased that… would require sanctions on the regime,” Pompeo told the Senate Committee on Appropriations. “We have received assurances from them, they understand that, and I am very hopeful they will decide not to move forward with that acquisition.”

Egypt is the most densely populated country in North Africa; it also possesses one of the strongest militaries in the Arab world.

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What just happened in Sudan was likely a military coup despite the “official” explanation being that President Bashir simply stepped down, and while this might appear on the surface to be a huge development, its immediate consequences will probably be quite limited even though certain “dark scenarios” still can’t be ruled out.

The news just broke that Sudanese President Bashir was deposed of in a military coup, though the “official” explanation is that he simply stepped down in response to increasingly violent protests against his thirty-year-long rule. This is an important distinction to make since the African Union and the US would be compelled to condemn the latest developments and possibly suspend their cooperation with the country if the armed forces admitted that they seized power, though it’s “conventional knowledge” that the long-serving leader probably didn’t resign out of his own free will. In any case, this latest non-electoral regime change proves that the decade-long “African Spring” is alive and well, having now succeeded in Sudan immediately after Algeria despite an earlier attempt having failed in Gabon, with three cases therefore being seen since the beginning of 2019 alone. This latest event will certainly have geopolitical consequences that deserve to be discussed, though before doing so, the reader should familiarize themselves with the author’s previous pieces on this issue for context’s sake:

• “Sudan Might Be The Next Geopolitical Victim Of The New Cold War”
• “Sudan’s State Of Emergency Might Herald A ‘Phased Leadership Transition’”
• “Sudan’s ‘Deep State’ Divisions Could Spell The End Of President Bashir’s Rule”

As a brief review, while it’s indeed possible that the incipient Color Revolution that broke out in the country in late-2018 could be exploited by outside forces for geopolitical ends such as catalyzing the diverse state’s further “Balkanization”, the unrest itself appeared to be a mostly spontaneous reaction by a desperate population already fed up with their deteriorating socio-economic conditions following a surprise increase in the price of bread and fuel, albeit one that domestic political activists probably prepared in advance to organize in response to a “trigger” event such as that one. This ended up putting enormous pressure on the government and led to President Bashir implementing a state of emergency that portended the beginning of a “phased leadership transition” by his permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”). That plan recently went awry, however, when divisions began to emerge in his “deep state” following the military’s active intervention earlier this week to prevent riot police from clearing out a camp of protesters outside the Ministry of Defense.

Looking forward, here are the most important takeaways from the coup and the most likely path that Sudan is headed in its aftermath:

• The “African Spring” of non-electoral regime changes might suddenly spread to other countries on the continent such as Cameroon and Uganda after surprisingly succeeding in two of its most security-prone and rigid states that many observers had previously thought would never respond to “grassroots”-initiated pressure.
• The “phased leadership transition” evidently failed in Sudan for reasons that can only be speculated upon at this time but probably has to do with behind-the-scenes politicking that ultimately divided its “deep state” and reached a climax when the military intervened to prevent the riot police from breaking up the protesters’ camp.
• Unlike in Algeria, the odds of a “second round” of protester-driven unrest agitating for the dismantlement of the entire “deep state” are low in Sudan for reasons pertaining to this Northeast African country’s specific domestic political and military situations.
• The military will steer the country towards forthcoming elections in which it will probably field its preferred candidate or attempt to co-opt one of the opposition‘s like Kabila recently did in the Congo with Tshisekedi, doing whatever is needed to keep its “deep state” in power with only minimal but necessary reforms.
• It’s unclear at this moment whether the military will politicize the issue of Russian private military companies (PMCs) in the country, which pro-Western factions could seek to do in order to curry favor with the West, while patriotic ones would probably prefer to keep quiet about this issue in order to retain Moscow’s support.
• Another Russia-related issue is whether Sudan will continue to closely cooperate with Moscow in stabilizing the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) and facilitating Russia’s access to this land-locked war-torn state, though it should be assumed that there won’t be any changes in this respect for now.
• On the topic of continuity, Sudan will continue to occupy an ultra-strategic position in China’s Africa policy by acting as one of its Silk Road gateways to the continent, though this could change in the unlikely event that a pro-American military faction ascends to power behind the scenes.
• If anything, however, Sudan is more inclined to fall further under Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s influence, and even though these two essentially function as the US’ “Lead From Behind” partners, Khartoum will likely continue its “balancing” act between them, Turkey & Qatar, Russia & China, and the US.

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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.

Newsweek is reporting a story regarding how Iran “was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.” The account is sourced to a newly revised estimate prepared by analysts at the Pentagon that was discussed by Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook at a State Department press briefing on April 2nd. According to Hook, Tehran is now being blamed for 17 per cent of all US military deaths because it supplied weapons to the several Shiite militias that were opposing the US invasion, occupation and subsequent presence in the country.

Hook also stated that the American casualties are in addition to the “thousands” of Iraqi troops and civilians that were killed in attacks initiated by what he referred to as the Iranian proxy forces. Hook noted that the new number is higher than the 2015 confirmed death total of 500 that was reported by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, who qualified his estimate by saying

“We were not always able to attribute the casualties that we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity, even though we did not necessarily have the forensics to support that.”

There is little doubt that Tehran provided weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq after the invasion of the country by American forces in April 2003 and the defeat and replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime. The US was occupying the country at the time and Shiites were a repressed majority of the population given the fact that Saddam ruled through his Sunni minority.

The most controversial and lethal weapons used by the Shiite and Sunni resistance to the United States were the Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs, subsequently also referred to as Explosively Formed Penetrators or EFPs which were capable of penetrating the armor on US military vehicles. They first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004, but they were initially mostly used by Sunni insurgents, not by the Shiites.

Now that the US occupation has ended, Iran and Iraq enjoy a close relationship that is based on their common Shiite religion. The former militiamen are now referred to as Popular Mobilization Forces, which were key to the eventual defeat of ISIS. The United States, which retains a major military base inside Iraq, continues to rail against Iran. During the briefing, Hook said

“We are imposing costs on the [Iranian] regime for behaving as an outlaw expansionist regime. The regime is weaker today than when we took office two years ago. Its proxies are also weaker. Unless the regime demonstrates a change in policy and behavior, the financial challenges facing Tehran will mount.”

There are several problems with the Hook analysis, if that is actually what it was. The United States government has been arguing since 2005 that Iran is “interfering” in neighboring Iraq, combined with allegations about “they are killing our soldiers” to make sure that Tehran continues to be everyone recognizable regional enemy. Specific claims by generals and US politicians were made between 2005 and 2007 regarding Iranian involvement in the production of the shaped charges, which were increasingly exacting a bloody toll of US and allied military personnel.

But the claims being made by the Bush Administration, by Congress, and by the media regarding Iranian support of militants in Iraq had a number of things in common: they were generic and lacking in specificity, they were based on possibly unwarranted assumptions about Iranian interactions with other players in the region, they played fast and loose with statistics, and they seldom provided actual verifiable evidence to back up the assertions being made. One might also point out that nearly all the reports were derivative in that they build on each other to develop credibility, much like the reports about Iraq in 2002.

It has also been noted that the arguments about Iranian involvement are logically inconsistent. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would even seek such assistance does not appear probable. In an April 2007 briefing Major General William Caldwell explained,

“We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support.”

Three uses of “some” in one sentence suggest a degree of uncertainty. Even the relatively tame media at the briefing were skeptical, asking “Do the Iranians support all the militias in Iraq?”

The fact that the EFP is very simple to make also argues against a largely Iranian provenance. The EFP or variations thereof has been around for a long time. It was reportedly used under its old name “shaped charge” by the French resistance against the Germans and by the Irish Republican Army against British armored vehicles and it has been used extensively by both Hezbollah and Hamas against the Israelis.

The case against Iran basically relies on a basic argument that the EFP is actually a sophisticated weapon that has to have its copper disk machined in a weapons shop that is accustomed to milling metal to the finest tolerances. According to those who believe in an Iranian hand in EFP attacks, it is not possible that the weapons are being produced by Iraqis without Iranian assistance but the fact is that the Iraqis are more than capable of making the weapon. Iraq had a large and relatively sophisticated military prior to 2003. It had its own weapons shops and ordnance experts, many of whom were Sunnis and many of whom became unemployed in the spring of 2003 when the army was disbanded.

So Iran’s EFP weapon of choice that, according to the Pentagon, has killed 608 Americans turns out to be not that hard to make and not uniquely Iranian. But the real argument against Brian Hook’s numbers is the assumption made by the government analysts that supplying weapons, even if and when the end user can be demonstrated, makes one responsible for who gets killed as a result. Since the US is the world’s leading arms manufacturer, that argument leads down a slippery slope as “Made in USA.” weapons are likely featured in every conflict.

Also bear in mind that the United States in Iraq was an invading army in what became a guerrilla war in which that country’s civilians ultimately constituted most of the victims. By one estimate, 460,000 Iraqis died, many by US-made ordnance. To cite one other more recent example of what that measure of accountability might mean, the United States could be considered responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands civilians in Yemen, 5,000 in 2018 alone, as the Saudis are using US supplied weapons. And there are a lot of other instances of American made weapons winding up in all kinds of places, including the arsenals of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in its war against the Russians in Afghanistan relied largely on American weaponry. Some of those weapons are still being used to kill American rather than Russian soldiers.

Since the United States government is selectively charging Iran with offenses that might well be exploited by neoconservatives named Bolton and Pompeo to initiate a war it should be more careful in how it attempts to frame its arguments. Iran did not kill those 4,424 American soldiers who died in Iraq. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the band of psychopaths at the Pentagon and National Security Council did that when they initiated a chain of events that began with attacking a country that they knew posed no threat against the United States. The bloody consequences of that action continue to this day.

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

Featured image is from SCF

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

This article which is of particular relevance to the arrest of Julian Assange was originally written in June 2018.

This week marks six years since Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorean embassy in London and nearly three years since the UN declared that his situation amounts to an “arbitrary deprivation of liberty.”[1] Over this time, Assange’s health has deteriorated markedly, as colleagues and I reported last January after examining him.[2]

In March, the terms of his confinement became more severe, increasing the risks of what was already a dangerous health situation. Ecuador, which in 2012 granted political asylum to Assange, restricted his visitation and communications and announced an indefinite policy to prevent him from “speaking about politics.”[3] In response, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch, Dinah PoKempner, stated, “his refuge in the embassy looks more and more like solitary confinement.”[4]

Under these circumstances, it would appear that efforts at international diplomacy to preserve his health and protect his human rights have failed. Yet earlier this month, two senior officials of the Australian High Commission visited Assange at the embassy for the first time, representing a turning point that may lead to greater efforts to relieve or at least ameliorate the negative effects that his stay within the embassy has had on his health.

Over this past year, I’ve met with Assange several times at the embassy in London, and have been privy to his conditions and medical record. Assange suffers both physically and psychologically from his prolonged detention—as was found in another evaluation performed in 2015, the results of which were made available to the public.[5] Assange’s detention continues to cause a precipitous deterioration in his overall condition and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Within the embassy, Assange is confined mostly to a single room and has had no meaningful access to the outdoors or to natural light in six years. As a result, he has developed myriad health sequelae and endured exacerbations of preexisting conditions. Because of his health issues, in 2015, Ecuadorean authorities requested that he be permitted humanitarian safe passage to a hospital in London; however, this was denied by the UK.[6]

Although physicians are able to visit Assange for evaluations, many are reluctant to do so given their concerns about appearing to associate with Assange by caring for him as a patient. To this day, Assange remains unable to access hospital based diagnostic testing and treatment—even for a medical emergency. In effect, he has gone without proper access to care for the duration of his six years in confinement. Meanwhile, data on the health effects of solitary confinement suggest that the restrictions on Assange since March increase his risks of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide.[7]

In May, Ecuador denied Human Rights Watch permission to visit Assange, and human rights experts reported that “concern is growing over his access to medical care.”[8] On Monday 18 June, international legal experts presenting to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland testified,

“the UK shows a deliberate disregard for his medical needs by forcing [Assange] to choose between his human right to asylum and his human right to medical treatment.”[9]

As physicians, we have a collective responsibility to advocate for the basic human rights of all people, including that of the right to access care, even when we or society in general may disagree with an individual or group politically. In the case of Assange, at a minimum, Ecuador should respect his rights to visitation, unencumbered communication, and free speech. In addition, the UK must uphold its commitment to the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.[10] This includes permitting his safe passage to a hospital, unimpeded access to care, and at least one hour outdoors in the open air per day.

If Ecuador and the UK cannot guarantee these rights, then the Australian High Commission should seek Assange’s immediate repatriation to Australia. As the US withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council,[11] Australia has the opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership at a time when our global community needs it.

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Sean Love is a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a clinical fellow in surgery at Harvard Medical School, and the co-founder of a pro-bono clinic at Brown University that provides forensic medical and psychological evaluations for asylum seekers. He can be followed on Twitter @SeanLoveMD

Notes

[1] The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Deems the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Julian Assange as arbitrary. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 5 February 2016. Available online: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012

[2] Crosby SS, Chisholm B, Love S. We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care – but he can’t get it. The Guardian, 24 January 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/julian-assange-care-wikileaks-ecuadorian-embassy

[3] Collyns D. Ecuador’s president says Julian Assange can stay in embassy ‘with conditions.’ The Guardian, 31 May 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/may/31/julian-assange-ecuador-president-lenin-moreno

[4] PoKempner D. 2 April 2018. Available online: https://twitter.com/dinahpokempner/status/980623189263966209

[5] Assange Medical and Psychological Records. 14 September 2016. Available online: https://wikileaks.org/Medical-Reports.html

[6] Quinn B. Britain unmoved by Ecuadorian request to give Julian Assange ‘safe passage’ for MRI scan. The Guardian, 12 October 2015. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/15/ecuador-asks-britain-to-allow-julian-assange-safe-passage-for-mri-scan

[7] Grassian S. Psychiatric effects of solitary confinement. Washington University Journal of Law and Policy. Vol 22. January 2006. Available online: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=law_journal_law_policy

[8] PoKempner D. UK should reject extraditing Julian Assange to US. Human Rights Watch, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/19/uk-should-reject-extraditing-julian-assange-us

[9] Collins K. Vigil for the health of Julian Assange to take place in London. CNET, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.cnet.com/news/vigil-for-the-health-of-julian-assange-to-take-place-in-london/

[10] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Accessed 20 June 2018. Available online: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/GA-RESOLUTION/E_ebook.pdf

[11] Borger. US quits UN human rights council – ‘a cesspool of political bias’. The Guardian, 19 June 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/19/us-quits-un-human-rights-council-cesspool-political-bias

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

Julian Assange faces extradition to the US after he was arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London almost seven years after he sought refuge there.

Mr Assange was brought before Westminster Magistrates’ Court this afternoon.

He made a thumbs up gesture to the press gallery as he entered the court and could be seen carrying a book.

Police detained the WikiLeaks founder after the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum, blaming his “repeated violations” of “international conventions and daily-life protocols”.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that Assange was held for failing to appear in court in June 2012 and “further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10.53am after his arrival at a central London police station”.

In a statement, the British Home Office said:

“We can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America.

“He is accused in the United States of America computer related offences.”

In a tweet, Mr Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson also said he had been “arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request”.

BREAKING: #Assange removed from embassy – video pic.twitter.com/qsHy7ZVPg5

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) April 11, 2019

To read the complete RTE article click here

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Much hot air is coming out from the public relations unit of Adani, and the language used is that of a hostage taker seeking to earn a rich and ill-deserved ransom.  With the date for the Australian federal election looming, the Indian mining giant received a boost in its flagging fortunes.  And flagging they had been: banks reluctant to supply credit; scientists concerned about environment credentials; activists worried that Australia was inviting the creation of a dinosaur.  But the Morrison government needed some distracting good news and announced with speedy excitement that the company had met various scientific requirements on the protection of local waterways.  There are seats to be retained in Queensland, and timing is everything. 

The speed of it has all the markings of electoral expediency. The environment minister, Melissa Price, continues to remain an invisible member of the Morrison government, but she briefly manifested in making the announcement.  Bullying and hectoring have also been part of the process, and Senator James McGrath was growling for her resignation if the seal of approval was refused.  Other members of the coalition, including National MPs Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, have been breathing heavily down the minister’s neck favouring Adani’s cause.

The effect of such pressure does much to take away the appearance of volition on Price’s part.  Jo-Anne Bragg, CEO of the Environmental Defenders Office in Queensland, smells a legal case testing the nature of minister’s discretion.  “Such a political threat puts a cloud over Minister Price’s possible decisions on Adani.”

Scientists have different opinions and these have, in turn, been given an unduly rosy twist.   CSIRO and Geoscience Australia have been painted as satisfied assessors of Adani’s project, but they remain sceptical of Adani’s water management plant.  The media release from CSIRO notes that

“Adani’s responses should satisfy the recommendations to update the groundwater models, and to address the modelling-related issues and concerns raised in the CSIRO-GA advice.” 

But it also “noted that there are still components of the advice provided to the department that will need to be addressed through the approval of the research plan, which includes confirming the source aquifer of the Doongmabulla Springs.”

Ample doubt can be found in the scientific community towards Adani’s water plans.  For one thing, there is confusion over which of the two underground aquifers feeds into the ecosystem.  The Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management does little to address the source of the springs.  The risk of getting this wrong would result in draining the aquifer feeding the Doongmabulla Springs itself, thereby resulting in its complete loss.

Queensland Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch was alert enough to be concerned by the qualifications inherent in the CSIRO-GA assessment, which she received a mere 30 minutes before the announcement by the federal government.  Lingering “uncertainties” included “source aquifers of the Doongmabulla Springs Complex, which has always been a requirement for state approval.”  Further “stringent conditions of approval from the Commonwealth” as outlined by Price herself, needed to be met before coal production could commence.

The Morrison government’s encouragement of Adani has also submerged other environmental snags the company has faced.  The fate of the Black-Throated Finch, a critical feature of the approvals process, has somehow disappeared in the enthused announcements.  Adani claims to have a management plan for the finch stretching over two decades, one that will include a conservation area at Moray Downs West as part of the pastoral lease it owns.  The company boasts that, at more than 33,000 hectares in size, “the conservation area will be bigger than Moreton Island and one of the largest privately managed conservation areas in Queensland.”

Adani is also attempting to exert some pull over the Queensland government, which it only supplied with its latest version of the Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management Plan the same day Canberra had given its sketchy approval. 

“Queensland decisions,” Enoch assured, “will be made by the environmental regulator, free from political interference.” 

Adani can at least rest assured that it has a special water license from the Queensland government valid till 2077, giving the company unlimited access to the Great Artesian Basin, should the management plans be approved.

Despite all of this, Lucas Dow, Adani Mining Australia chief executive, proved impatient. 

“The Queensland government has continued to shift the goal posts when it comes to finalising the outstanding environmental management plans for the mine and is standing in the way of thousands of jobs for Queenslanders.” 

When faced with regulatory barriers, Dow’s formula is simple: conjure up rich fictions – that old imaginary notion of thousands of jobs – and threaten elected officials with old fashioned corporate thuggery for not giving in to a mining giant used to greasing palms, despoiling environments and corrupting officials. “It’s time the Queensland government gave us a fair go and stopped shifting the goal posts so we can get on with delivering these jobs.”  Spoken like a true stalwart of plunder.

The Adani chapter in Australian environmental and political history will prove to be one of the darkest, even if the approval process is not finalised in the company’s favour.  This sordid episode has revealed the country’s political classes to be divided, cowardly and impressionable.  They have become de facto hirelings of a foreign, often brutal foreign corporation indifferent to disclosure requirements in foreign jurisdictions, labour conditions and local ecology.  The affair has revealed a hostility to Australia’s environment, and sympathy for a short term, myopic vision that promises to conclude prematurely, given the move away from coal in the near future.  Far from being a beacon of environmental preservation and renewable energy, Australia promises to be the earth’s barren tip. 

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

The Islamic Republic of Iran is looking for new ways to link their capital, Tehran, with Syria´s Damascus and Iraq´s Baghdad.

One of the proposed actions they are taking to make this a reality is the construction of new highways and rail systems that would link Syria with Iran via Iraq.

Iran´s Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri underlined his country’s determination to build new roads and railways in order to link the Persian Gulf states to Syria and the Mediterranean region.

“Iran which understands the political and economic conditions and developments believes that the necessary capacities for cooperation in transferring power and electricity, building roads and etc. will be provided and we hope that obstacles will be removed through the presence of the private sector,” Jahangiri said, addressing the joint Iran-Iraq economic-trade forum in Tehran on Sunday.

He noted that building the Shalamcheh-Basra railway was one of the agreements made during the recent visit by the Iraqi delegation to Iran.

Jahangiri stressed the importance of developing a cross border highway between the two countries in order to boost trade and commerce, while also protecting their interests in the region.

“We will connect the Persian Gulf from Iraq to Syria and Mediterranean via railway and road,” Jahangiri said.

The Shalamcheh-Basra railway project is said to cost around 2.22 billion rials and once implemented, it will link the Iranian railway to Syria through Iraq.

Director General of the Railway and Technical Structures Department at the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (RAI) Mohammad Moussavi said in December that Iran was to build a movable railway bridge over the Arvand River as part of the 35-kilometer Shalamcheh-Basra railway project for linking Iran-Iraq railway network.

In addition to their railway and highway projects, Iran is also rumored to be planning to build a naval base in Syria´s western coast.

While this is still rumored, the idea that Iran could have access to the Mediterranean could trigger more airstrikes from Israel.

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NATO is preparing a package of measures to counter Russia in the Black Sea region. This package includes the deployment of NATO warships to the Black Sea to guarantee ‘passage’ of Ukrainian ships via the Kerch Strait, U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison stressed during a press briefing on April 2.

Hutchison said that the prepared package “beefs up the surveillance, both air surveillance as well as more of the NATO country ships going into the Black Sea to assure that there is safe passage from Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Straits, the Sea of Azov”.

Earlier the US State Department announced that the Black Sea package is a response to the challenges the US and NATO face in the region, “not merely because of the Kerch Strait incident,” but because “Russia is threatening the alliance all along the eastern flank, not just in the north.

The public announcement of a possible NATO operation in the Kerch Strait is itself a move undermining the shaky stability created after the incident of November 25, 2018, when Russian coastal guards detained 3 ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which were attempting to enter the Kerch Strait in a way which violated the established norms and rules. Then, Moscow’s actions gave rise to large-scale hysteria in mainstream and Ukrainian media outlets. However, the situation developed no further. Ukraine’s “partners” limited their response to formal declarations. It was clear that the Kiev government was the side that had provoked the conflict. Before and after the Kerch Strait incident Ukrainian ships were passing the strait after going through the formal procedures established in this area.

If NATO naval forces together with or in some form assisting Ukrainian forces were to make an attempt to break through the Kerch Strait by force violating the established rules of passage, this would be seen by Moscow as an aggressive military action, which would provoke an equivalent response. In other words, a military clash could be expected. In such an event, the situation might escalate further. The media and political importance of such developments could be compared with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which became the formal pretext for the start of the First World War or the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany before the start of the Second World War.

At the beginning of 2019, it seemed that despite the unfriendly rhetoric between the United States and Russia, there were actually no valid reasons for organizing the next armed incident, at a minimum, or in the worst case, for starting a war. However, there are a number of factors which may nudge Washington towards pushing for an escalation in the Black Sea region.

1. On March 25, President Donald Trump officially signed a declaration recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel. This step met with a negative reaction from almost all important regional and international players. The Trump administration has now destroyed one of the last fragments of the post-World War 2 international security system. This action as well as previous blatant violations of international law will have negative consequences for the entire system of international security and international law. Following this, global players can be less and less concerned about even the formal justification of their actions from the point of view of international law and can increasingly rely on military power, sanctions and informational pressure, coups and other “hybrid” methods to achieve their goals. As we see, Washington is the forerunner in the employment of such approaches. Now, the White House is interested in diverting international attention from the current situation and from the expected consequences of Golan-style decisions.

2. The failure of the Venezuelan blitzkrieg forced Washington to reconsider the approaches employed to force regime change. The inability of the US to fully delegitimize and overthrow the Maduro government is based on several factors:

• the insufficient support from the local population for the US puppet;
• the decision of the military to support the legitimate government;
• the resolution of Maduro himself and his inner circle, who unlike the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, were not prepared to sit by indifferently while power was seized by the henchmen of external forces.
• The strong stand of China and Russia in support of Venezuela and the surprising inability of the Trump administration to set up a strong anti-Venezuelan coalition even at the regional level. So far, most of the US regime change partners have limited their participation to formal declarations or, like Columbia, to a lack of opposition to the actions of US agents.

So, the US operation has entered a new phase. The economic and diplomatic pressure on the Maduro government has increased, and the country has experienced a series of large-scale “accidents” targeting critical objects of the energy infrastructure. The Maduro government openly blamed hostile actions by the US for the recent series of blackouts. There are signals that the US is preparing for a military operation in the region, on its own or within the framework of a formally created coalition to put an end to the resistance of Caracas. To ensure the success of this operation, Washington has to carry out actions on the periphery to distract attention from the Venezuelan issue.

3. The situation in Ukraine ahead of the second round of the presidential election is not stable. Experts and analysts have serious doubts that Poroshenko actually gained fairly the 16%, which allowed him to proceed to the second round. It is suggested that from 3 to 8% may have been obtained fraudulently. Even if the incumbent president really did get 16% of the vote, the entire structure of voting demonstrated that the Ukrainians are frustrated by the destructive policy of the ruling regime and the status as a Western colony obtained by Ukraine in 2014. The arbitrary development of this situation could create conditions in which the US and the associated European bureaucracy would lose their influence in Ukraine, and as a result, the money spent on bringing Kiev to vassalage. In the event of the escalation of the political struggle, a possible outcoume could even be that Ukraine would split further into two political antagonists along the west-east line. If the Washington establishment wants to keep the situation under control, it must create the conditions in which Poroshenko could achieve victory. Or should Vladimir Zelensky win, he must be limited in his ability to maneuver and de-escalate relations and even start a dialogue with Russia. He must also be prevented from starting a more or less independent dialogue, ie not that of a vassal, with the European Union.

A military provocation in the Kerch Strait with the support of NATO warships would be suitable for achieving all the goals just described. Moreover, the logic of NATO’s actions includes damage to the infrastructure of the Crimean Bridge or at least its significant damage during the incident. This would have a resounding informational effect and would create significant problems for the economy of Crimea.

Another interesting point is the declaration that Russia “is threatening the alliance all along the eastern flank, not just in the north”. The entire format of such rhetoric raises eyebrows. If, in the case of the northern front, such statements can be justified with the complex configuration around Kaliningrad and the specific historical experience of the Baltic countries and Poland with Russia, the statement about the Russian threat in the south is a rude propaganda cliché.

Hutchison stressed that Russia is threatening “Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, as well as Georgia”. But there are some issues. Georgia is separated from Russia by mountains, is not a NATO country and does not experience territorial claims from Russia. Moreover, Russia still categorically refuses to consider the inclusion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into its own territory. Almost 30 years have passed since the actual independence of these republics, and almost 11 years since the last aggressive war unleashed by Georgia with the support of NATO. Ukraine is also not a NATO country, and recent years have shown that Moscow has no desire to conduct full-scale military operations on its territory. Bulgaria and Romania do not have a land border with Russia and both states have working bilateral relations with Moscow. Even more strikingly, US statements do not even mention the second most significant military state of NATO, the country whose military potential exceeds the combined military potential of Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Greece – Turkey, which by the way, is located on the southern flank of the military bloc. This statement by a representative of the Washington establishment is another vulgar example of Psaki-style rhetoric that has little to do with democratic values, freedom, or a desire for justice. They themselves do not believe in it. They know only that a few others do believe in it. Thus they simply mock the masses, who they consider to be sheep.  Such statements demonstrate that Washington is seriously considering conducting aggressive actions in the near future in several directions at once.

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While the national debt of the United States was recorded at 22.03 trillion as of April 2019, Washington’s going ahead with its hawkish policies worldwide with recent NATO summit pushing for further unity against China, Russia and Iran. NATO’s annual overall military budget was US$ 957 billion in 2017 where the US’s share was US$ 686 billion, accounting for 72 percent of the total. This number is pressed by the US to rise in the years to come.

According to The Guardian, Trump takes more than $1tn in taxpayer money and allocates $750bn to the military. In other words, out of every taxpayer dollar, 62 cents go to the military and Department of Homeland Security and seven cents to Veterans affairs. It leaves just 31 cents for all the rest: education, job training, community economic development, housing, safe drinking water and clear air, health and science research and the prevention of war through diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

The Trump budget finds vast billions for militarization, while it cuts “smaller” poverty alleviation projects and other programs, claiming the goal is to save money.

Rutherford Institute’s founder and director John W. WhiteHead writes in his institute’s website that the American nation is being preyed upon by a military industrial complex that is propped up by war profiteers, corrupt politicians and foreign governments. He remarks:

“Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs”.

He writes “you know what happens to tax dollars that are left over at the end of the government’s fiscal year? Government agencies – including the Department of Defense – go on a ‘use it or lose it’ spending spree so they can justify asking for money in the next fiscal year”.

“We are talking about $97 billion worth of wasteful spending”

He maintains that the nation’s educational system is pathetic, the infrastructure is antiquated and growing more outdated by the day and the health system is overpriced and inaccessible to those who need it most.

The tax cuts on super-rich, outflow of huge sums in interest payment for debt and more spending are plunging the US economy into a new crisis, according to many authors. The US economy faces a deficit which means the spending especially on military and defence is far exceeding the tax revenues.

In 2017, US spent US$ 685,957 billion with 3.6 of its GDP on military spending while the UK stood second at US$ 55,237 billion with 2.1 per cent of GDP.  France and Germany allocated US$ 45,927 billion and 45,472 billion respectively with 1.8 and 1.2 percent of their GDPs. The NATO member states are pressured for raising their defense spending to 2 percent and gradually up to 4 percent in five years.

According to a study regarding world powers’ overseas military bases

• China retains twelve military bases;
• France runs nine military bases including in Germany, Lebanon and UAE;
• Germany has two military bases in France and United States;
• India has seven bases including in Tajikistan and Maldives;
• Israel possesses one military base in Syria’s Golan Heights;
• Pakistan has a military center with 1,180 personnel in Saudi Arabia;
• Russia runs eight military facilities including in Armenia, Georgia, Syria and some Central Asian countries;
• UK controls ten military bases including in Bahrain, Canada, Germany, Singapore and Qatar;
• the US is leading nearly 800 military bases across the world that run in full swing with the highest budget.

In other words, the US possesses up to 95 per cent of the world’s military bases. The Department of Defense says that its locations include 164 countries. Put another way, it has a military presence of some sort in approximately 84 percent of the nations on this planet.

The annual cost of deploying US military personnel overseas, as well as maintaining and running those foreign bases, tops out at an estimated US$ 150 billion annually. The US bases abroad cost upwards of US$ 50 billion only for building and maintenance, which is enough to address pressing needs at home in education, health care, housing and infrastructure.

In 2017 and 2018, the world’s largest military spenders were the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India. The UK took over France as sixth largest spender in 2018 while Japan and Germany stood at eighth and ninth positions.

In early 2018, Pentagon released a report saying that Afghan war costs US$ 45 billion to taxpayers in the preceding year. Of this amount, US$ 5 billion has been spent on Afghan forces, US$ 13 billion towards US forces in Afghanistan and the rest on economic aid.

But these costs are far lower than the time when the US military was highly engaged in Afghanistan. With nearly 100,000 soldiers in the country from 2010 to 2012, the price for American taxpayers surpassed US$ 100 billion each year. For now, there are around 16,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into Afghanistan, the US admits it failed in war against militants in Afghanistan.

In November 2018, another study published by CNBC reported that America has spent US$ 5.9 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001 including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The study also reveals that more than 500,000 people have been killed in the wars and nearly 10 million people have been displaced due to violence.

The US has reportedly spent US$ 1.07 trillion in Afghanistan since 2001 which include Overseas Contingency Operations funds dedicated to Afghanistan, costs on the base budget of the Department of Defense and increase to the budget of the Department of Veteran Affairs.

In Afghanistan, the US costs of war in 2001 commenced with US$ 37.3 billion that soared to US$ 57.3 billion in 2007 and US$ 100 billion in 2009. The year with record spending was 2010 with US$ 112.7 billion that slightly plummeted to US$ 110.4 billion in 2011 but took downwards trend in the later years.

Due to skyrocketing military costs on the US government, Trump Administration recently decided to pack up some of its military bases in Afghanistan and Middle East to diminish expenditures, though it doesn’t mean the wars would end at all.

According to Afghanistan Analysts Network, the US Congress has appropriated more than US$ 126 billion in aid for Afghanistan since financial year 2002, with almost 63 percent for security and 28 percent for development and the remainder for civilian operations, mostly budgetary assistance and humanitarian aid. Alongside the US aid, many world countries have pumped millions of dollars in development aids, but what is evident for insiders and outsiders is that a trickle of those funds has actually gone into Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

With eighteen years into Afghan war, the security is deteriorating; Afghan air force is ill-equipped; poppy cultivation is on the rise; roads and highways are dilapidated or unconstructed; no mediocre hospital and health care has been established; weekly conflict causalities hit 150-250; electricity is still imported from Central Asian countries; economy remains dependent upon imports; unemployment rate is at its peak; more than three quarters of population live under poverty line and many, many more miseries persist or aggravate.

The US boasts of being the largest multi-billion dollar donor for Afghanistan, but if one takes a deeper look at the living standards of majority and the overall conditions, it can be immediately grasped that less than half of that exaggerated fund has been consumed. The US-made government of Afghanistan has deliberately been left behind to rank as the first corrupt country in the world. Thanks to the same unaddressed pervasive corruption, a hefty amount of that fund has been either directed back to the US hands or embezzled by senior Afghan officials.

Afghanistan’s new Living Conditions Survey shows that poverty is more widespread today than it was immediately after the fall of Taliban regime, or in other words, in the early days of US invasion.

Next month, Kabul will host a Consultative Loya Jirga attended by around 2,000 representatives from Afghanistan which will cost the Afghan Ministry of Finance AF 369 million (equivalent to five million US$). Even as the past has proved that these events are only symbolic and further complicating the achievement of peace, a country with great majority under poverty line doesn’t deserve to organize such costly gatherings.

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Featured image is from Salon.com

The US’ strengthening of its energy and security partnerships with the emerging strategic axis of Greece, “Israel”, and Cyprus (GRISCY) through the proposed “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” will contribute to containing multipolarity in the region by working against the interests of Turkey, Russia, and even China.

The GRISCY Game-Changer

Adam Garrie’s observation last year about the emerging Greek-“Israeli“-Cypriot (GRISCY) axis has been validated after two Senators just proposed the “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” that will see the US strengthen its energy and strategic partnerships with this alliance. The popular Greek outlet Ekathimerini summarized the bill’s most important provisions as follows:

                “- Lift the prohibition on arms sales to the Republic of Cyprus;

• Authorize the establishment of a United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center to facilitate energy cooperation between the US, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus;
• Authorize $3,000,000 in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) assistance for Greece;
• Authorize $2,000,000 for International Military Education and Training (IMET) assistance for Greece and $2,000,000 for Cyprus.
• Impede the transfer of F-35 aircraft to Turkey, as long as Turkey continues with plans to purchase the S-400 air defense system from the Russian Federation, a purchase that would be sanctionable under US law.
• Require the Administration to submit to Congress a strategy on enhanced security and energy cooperation with countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as reports on malign activities by Russia and other countries in the region.”

From the above, it’s clear to see that this is a blatantly anti-Turkish piece of legislation, albeit one that’s also equally contrary to Russian and Chinese interests as well. This means that the Act is actually intended to contain multipolarity in the region and is therefore poised to be a game-changing geopolitical development if it enters into law.

Greece & Cyprus

GRISCY brings together three anti-Turkish states along Ankara’s Western and Southern peripheries and gives them a sense of integrational purpose through the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline that they’re all involved in, which in turn serves as the physical basis for expanding their energy relations to the political, military, and ultimately strategic levels.

Greece fulfills an especially important role in this alliance because of Turkey’s transit dependence on it for connecting the Azerbaijani-originating TANAP gas pipeline to Southern Europe, which interestingly puts Ankara in the position of possibly being blackmailed by Athens (either on Greece’s own initiative of at the urging of one of its partners) just like Moscow was by Kiev in the early 2000s.

Another point of pertinence in relation to Greece is that it aspires to become a regional leader in the interconnected Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean space not only through its energy connectivity potential but also because of the role that it’s played in the Republic of Macedonia (now “recognized” as the so-called “Republic of North Macedonia”) and Cyprus.

While Macedonia isn’t of strategic relevance for Turkey, Cyprus certainly is due to the unresolved issue over the northern part of the island, which is why the resumption of American arms shipments to Nicosia could be very troubling for Ankara and must therefore be seen as “punishment” for its purchase of the S-400s and failure to cooperate with Washington in Syria to the extent that the Pentagon wants.

The “Clash Of Civilizations”

It goes without saying that Greece and Cyprus are also very economically destitute countries whose governments can easily be bought by the US and “Israel”, and with both of their populations being anti-Turkish to the bone, these countries’ alliances with those two aforementioned powers will probably be overlooked by many or even praised because of Washington and Tel Aviv’s antipathy to Ankara nowadays.

There’s even a credible chance that its many supporters at home and abroad will present GRISCY’s role as the US’ “Lead From Behind” proxy for managing Eastern Mediterranean affairs through the prism of the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” by portraying it as the West’s “frontline defense” for “protecting Judeo-Christian civilization” from Islam, which could wildly increase its appeal among many right-wing individuals.

Russia & China

Not only would GRISCY contain Turkey, however, but Ekathimerini’s last-mentioned detail about the proposed Act specifically indicates that it has an anti-Russian purpose as well, one that could very easily be expanded throughout the entire Eastern Mediterranean region as recently proven by Pompeo’s threat to sanction Egypt if it proceeds with its planned large-scale purchase of Russian warplanes.

More specifically to the alliance’s three members, the US could try to thwart TurkStream’s possible expansion to Greece en route to Italy, continue cracking down on oligarchic holdings in Cyprus, and try to weaken the Russian-“Israeli” Strategic Partnership, as well as potentially cut off Moscow’s “Levantine Line” trade route between Crimea, Syria, the Sinai, and Eritrea in the event of a crisis.

Concerning China, Beijing’s control over the Greek port of Piraeus provides the People’s Republic with a reliable entry point to the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative”and is the basis for its Balkan Silk Road, so it’s in the US’ interests to monitor all activity related to this important node in the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and to also keep tabs on Chinese activity in the strategic “Israeli” port of Haifa, too.

Concluding Thoughts

As argued in this analysis, all of the above-mentioned points clearly prove that the US’ “Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act” is intended to contain multipolarity in the Eastern Mediterranean by strengthening America’s strategic ties with its “Lead From Behind” proxy of GRISCY in order to thwart Turkish, Russian, and even Chinese designs in the region.

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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.

During the last 3 days, intense clashes were ongoing between militias loyal to the  Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Libyan National Army  (LNA) south of the capital of Tripoli and in several  coastal areas. Pro-GNA factions concentrated most of their best forces and efforts in  the area of Tripoli International Airport. By April 10, they had recaptured  most of the airport and the town of Swani from the LNA and advanced  further to the south entering Al-Aziiziyah. This counter-attack was led  by the Tripoli Protection Forces and Misrata militias. According to pro-GNA sources, they have captured 34 LNA service members  with their vehicles and destroyed at least one LNA battle tank.

Some experts also expected the GNA forces to exploit  the overextended LNA supply lines from the area of Benghazi in  order to carry out raids in the rear of the advancing LNA force.  Al-Qaryat and al-Shwayrif were noted as obvious targets. However, no  military activity of this kind has taken place. Most likely, the reason is  a lack of coordination among the pro-GNA forces, which are more like independent  factions fighting for influence than a monolithic armed force.

In their own turn, the LNA exploited the GNA focus on the airport area by  advancing on other fronts. In particular, LNA units entered Ayn Zara  capturing several military facilities belonging to pro-GNA forces.  Controlling Qasir Ibn Gsher and advancing along the road towards  Tripoli, the LNA is in fact threatening to cut off the GNA force  deployed near al-Aziziyah. Another direction of the LNA advance is the  coastal area to the east of Tajura. The goal is to isolate Tripoli from  its allies in Misrata. However, no significant progress has been  achieved in this field.

At the same time, LNA units advanced near the  GNA-held town of Sirte attempting to cut off communications between it  and Misrata. The situation in the area remains unclear.

Both sides continue to use their existing air forces to deliver strikes on each other. The LNA Air Force recently bombed Tripoli’s Mitiga  airport while GNA warplanes attacked LNA forces near Sirte.

The recent developments show that the LNA has an advantage over its  pro-GNA rivals in terms of maneuverability and coordination, which it  successfully exploits. Despite this, pro-GNA militias are a  well-equipped force that has no shortage of supplies and even has  an advantage in manpower at some parts of the frontline. In some  scenarios, the LNA advance on Tripoli, which started like a kind of  blitzkrieg, may turn into a prolonged siege with shaky chances of taking control of Tripoli anytime soon.

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On Jair Bolsonaro’s 100^th day in office, an international coalition of NGOs – including a group representing more than 300 Brazilian indigenous groups – have called for the European Union (EU) to end its complicity in the assault on indigenous rights and the destruction of the Amazon.

Since President Bolsonaro became leader of the world’s “fourth largest democracy” on January 1, his government has dismantled environmental protections, incursions by armed invaders on Indigenous Peoples’ lands have surged, and deforestation rates in the Amazon have risen.

The EU provides a huge market for Brazilian soy and beef, which drive deforestation and human rights abuses in Brazil on a vast scale. The EU is also Brazil’s second largest trading partner, and together its Member States are Brazil’s largest source of foreign direct investment.

The coalition is calling for tough new EU laws guaranteeing that products sold in the EU do not cause deforestation and human rights abuses in Brazil.

“The EU already has laws to stop illegally logged wood, illegally sourced fish and conflict minerals entering its markets. The unfolding destruction in Brazil shows the glaring need for similar laws for agricultural goods,” said Nicole Polsterer, Forests and Consumption campaigner at Fern, the forests and rights NGO.

“The EU must clean up its [agricultural] supply chains, make them transparent, and use its enormous economic leverage to reduce the threat Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples face,” she added.

Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB ) which represents more than 300 Brazilian indigenous groups, reinforced this call for EU action.

“The first 100 days of Bolsonaro’s presidency are the latest chapter in a long war of attrition against Brazil’s Indigenous People. The crimes that are being committed today are happening in the name of agricultural production. The EU must not evade its responsibility for this,” Guajajara said.

“The EU must use its consumer power to ensure our rights are protected and our forests are preserved,” she added.

The international call for EU action coincides with the release of a new Fern briefing, 100 Days of Bolsonaro, Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon, which details the dizzying speed at which environmental laws have been eroded, and land grabs and attacks on indigenous communities have accelerated in the first three months of Bolsonaro’s presidency. In January 2019, deforestation in the Amazon reportedly rose by 54 per cent compared to  the same month in 2018.

As well as a new EU law preventing commodities being sold on the EU market which have caused deforestation or the violation of human rights, the briefing also calls the EU to use its economic leverage to protect Brazil’s forests and Indigenous Peoples, by:

• Suspending its talks for a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the Mercosur trading bloc – of which Brazil is the largest and most powerful member – until Brazil renews its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, and the deal’s Sustainability Impact Assessment is released publicly and its findings taken into account. The Mercosur deal should also include binding, enforceable provisions to end deforestation and respect customary tenure rights.
• The European External Action Service (EEAS) should strengthen the implementation of the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy and include more proactive consultation with Brazilian civil society organisations. The EU should also monitor and respond to human rights violations and strengthen human rights defenders’ protection mechanisms. For those most at risk, including Indigenous Peoples and environmental defenders, the EU should provide direct, urgent support where required, including through political representations.

Perrine Fournier, Fern’s Trade and Forests campaigner, said that signing the Mercosur trade deal as it stands, would exacerbate an already dangerous situation.

“The EU says it supports values based trade. Bolsonaro is the litmus test for this. Signing the Mercosur deal as it stands would mean renouncing the EU’s commitment to end deforestation by 2020, sacrificing indigenous rights and forests on the altar of trade,” she said.

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With over 97% of votes counted, Netanyahu and leading challenger Benny Gantz each won 35 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, according to the unofficial tally.

Apartheid right wing parties won a super-majority on Tuesday, results similar to recent past elections.

Israelis have themselves to blame, keeping Netanyahu in power as prime minister for the past decade, another four-year term likely as analysts believe a majority of Knesset members support him.

Likud under him represents extremist fascist rule – neoliberal harshness for most Jews, apartheid for Israeli Arabs and Occupied Palestinians.

Institutionalized racism is official Israeli policy under all its ruling coalitions. So is state terrorism, as well as undeclared war on Palestinians and Syria, slow-motion genocide against two million Gazans, suffocating under politicized blockade, attacked repeated by the IDF, the world community doing nothing to stop their suffering.

Israel is a fantasy democracy, not the real thing. Millions of Palestinians are disenfranchised. Their entire population in Israel and the Territories has no say over how they’re governed.

Nearly five million Palestinians in the Territories and Israel are victimized by occupation, colonization, and apartheid state terror, high crimes under international law by any standard.

No matter how Israeli elections turn out, their persecution continues, self-determination denied them by all Israeli regimes.

No-peace/peace talks when held represent the greatest hoax in modern times – along with the US war OF terror, not on it.

Unofficial results have Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White party tied with 35 seats (each with 26% of the vote), around 14,000 votes separating them with about 100,000 remaining to be counted as of 9AM local time.

Ultra-orthodox/religious fundamentalist Shas and United Torah Judaism parties each got eight seats, Union of Right-Wing Parties and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu both with five, and Kulanu four.

Labor and Arab party Hadash-Ta’al each got six seats, Meretz five, and United Arab List-Balad four.

Naftali Bennett, Ayelet (“little snakes”) Shaked, along with other hard-right figures failed to gain enough votes for Knesset seats. Turnout was 68%, down from 72% in 2015, largely because most Israeli Arabs opted out of the process, knowing no matter who wins, they lose.

The above results may change slightly once final results are official. Exit polls varied, at least one showing Gantz’s Blue and White part ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud by four seats, another showing the prime minister slightly ahead.

According to the left of center Meretz party, ballots were missing at one or more polling stations, adding their voters complained of “vandali(zed) Meretz ballots.”

Ones damaged or written on may be invalidated – reminiscent of “hanging chads” in the US 2000 presidential election – won by Al Gore, handed to Bush/Cheney by majority Supreme Court justices.

Benefitting from low Arab turnout, Netanyahu and coalition partners appear to have won 65 – 67 seats for majority control, the prime minister to retain power if official final results turn out this way.

Left-of-center Israelis, Palestinians, the Arab street, and supporters of peace, equity and justice everywhere are losers with the Netanyahu regime retaining power – even though his looming indictment for fraud, bribery and breach of trust may undo him.

For the moment, he appears triumphant, winning another four years in office. Indicting, prosecuting, convicting, sentencing, and imprisoning him will rain on his parade if things go this way.

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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.

Refusing to acknowledge Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia is a disservice to the Palestinian and Yemeni causes because it ignores the important role that Moscow plays in propping up Tel Aviv and Riyadh, resulting in the artificial creation of the overly simplistic and inaccurate narrative that it’s only the West that supports both of those aforementioned powers and that Russia is supposedly on the same side as the “Resistance” vis-a-vis all of this.

America “Bad”, Russia “Good”?

One of the defining characteristics of the Alt-Media Community is that many of its members are activists who strongly support the Palestinian and Yemeni causes, which regularly sees them condemning the West and especially the US for propping up “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. Those aforementioned powers are responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian and Yemeni people, and the overly simplistic narrative that’s artificially created by most of these activists solely attacking the West for its support of “Israel” and Saudi Arabia is that the problem could be easily resolved if only the US changed its foreign policy. This interpretation overlooks the important role that Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia also play in propping up each of them, leading to the inaccurate conclusion that Russia is supposedly on the same side as the “Resistance” vis-a-vis all of this.

“Balancing”

While there are indeed some overlapping interests between Russia, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, especially when it comes to fighting terrorists in the Arab Republic, President Putin is first and foremost dedicated to advancing and protecting his own nation’s interests even if this comes at the (perceived) expense of its anti-terrorist partners’ elsewhere, ergo Russia’s strategic partnerships with both “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. Whether one agrees with the overall strategic wisdom behind them in advancing multipolarity or thinks that this is a naive strategy that’s doomed to fail, it’s an objective fact that Russia is pursuing these two partnerships out of its desire to “balance” Eurasian affairs and potentially replace the US’ influence over both of those powers. Recognizing this reality isn’t endorsing it or expressing a moral opinion about it, but is simply an apolitical and amoral statement of the obvious.

Alt-Media Censorship

Nevertheless, many Alt-Media activists defensively behave as gatekeepers by feverishly suppressing any talk about how President Putin recently ordered the Russian special forces to dig up the remains of 20 “Israeli” “soldiers” in Syria or that the state nuclear energy company Rosatom is bidding to build 16 nuclear power plantsin Saudi Arabia, let alone how the much-celebrated shipment of S-300s was nothing more than a pro-“Israeli” infowar stunt and that Moscow also just confirmed that it’s shipping state-of-the-art rocket launchers to Saudi Arabia. The US is regularly attacked by these very same activists for supposedly “pandering” to “Israel” and contributing to the War on Yemen through its arms exports to Saudi Arabia, yet Russia apparently gets a pass for both for reasons that will now be speculated upon.

Disclaimer

Before proceeding any further, it’s not being argued that anyone should condemn Russia, but just that those who feel strongly enough to condemn the US and others for the same should either explain why they choose to apply different standards towards Russia (possibly by elaborating upon the bigger picture involved with its “balancing” acts) or criticize it with the same intensity out of “ideological consistency”. Ignoring what Russia’s doing, however, is an extreme disservice to the Palestinian and Yemeni causes because it unnaturally omits one of the most important actors from the strategic equation and also contributes (whether deliberately or inadvertently) to the creation of an Alt-Reality where Russia is wrongly implied to be on the same side as the “Resistance”, which it certainly isn’t in these cases.

Ignorance vs. Self-Interest

While only the pro-Palestinian and/or -Yemeni activists who don’t publicly comment on Russia’s “balancing” acts with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia can account for their own actions (or rather, lack thereof), it’s very possible that they’re either ignorant of these facts or are pursuing an agenda. Per the first-mentioned, while Russian international media occasionally reports on the various facets pertaining to these “balancing” acts, they aren’t “promoted” as much as other topics, leave alone the criticisms that they regularly publish about the US and other Western countries’ ties with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia. As for the second-mentioned possibility, some self-interested activists might not want to risk being overlooked for interviews on Russian international media if they criticize Moscow, “rationalizing” their approach as a “necessary sacrifice” for raising awareness about their cause.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever the real reason may be, it’s actually counterproductive to these two causes to ignore Russia’s strategic relations with “Israel” and Saudi Arabia because it creates creates the false impression that Moscow is on the same side as the “Resistance”. It also overly simplifies the plight of the Palestinians and Yemenis by making it seem like their woes would be resolved if only the US changed its foreign policy, forgetting that Russia is also sustaining “Israel” & Saudi Arabia and ensuring their security through multiple means. At this point, no activist can continue to plead ignorance of the facts when Russia has made them as obvious as it did, meaning that many who continue to ignore this reality are likely doing so in order to promote an agenda.

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

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Battlefield Libya: Fruits of US-NATO Regime Change

By Tony Cartalucci, April 10, 2019

The confusing chaos that has continually engulfed Libya since 2011 should come as no surprise. It is the predictable outcome that follows any US-led political or military intervention. Other examples showcasing US-led regime change “success” include Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.

The Nation’s Food: Hazardous US Chemical and Biological Products

By Stephen Lendman, April 10, 2019

Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former drug industry lobbyist and executive. He was president of Lilly USA LLC, Eli Lilly’s largest affiliate company, earlier serving as Bush/Cheney’s deputy HHS secretary.

Western Spies Among the Jihadis in Idlib: Planning A New Drama? A Chemical Attack?

By Steven Sahiounie, April 10, 2019

Recently, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that European intelligence agents were inside Idlib, and planning a chemical attack, which would be blamed on the Syrian and/or Russian military.

Terrorist Designations: Trump and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 10, 2019

The designation by the Trump administration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation was meant to expand options for the US while shutting others out.  While Trump attempts to defrost matters with North Korea, Iran has played the convenient bug bear.  

The Fall of Baghdad 16 Years Ago

By Eresh Omar Jamal, April 10, 2019

Three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, coalition forces led by the US army entered Baghdad and formally occupied it on April 9, 2003. The city’s infrastructure was seriously damaged.

Elite and Media Support for NATO, Increasing Threat of War with Russia

By Shane Quinn, April 10, 2019

Following extensive skirmishes in summer 2008 along Russia’s southern frontier, on 7 August of that year Moscow-led forces launched an intervention into Georgian territory – a military incursion that experienced Russian expert Richard Sakwa, of the University of Kent, described as “a response to the threat of NATO enlargement” and also “in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement’”.

The Boston Trial: Another African Convicted in Another Racist, Chauvinist Western Court

By Ann Garrison, April 10, 2019

In other words, yet another racist, chauvinist, Western court convicted yet another African of participating in mass violence that the US and its Western allies engineered in order to expand their imperial influence in East and Central Africa at the expense of France.

Greens Say ‘No to NATO’ While War Parties Give Standing Ovations to NATO

By Kevin Zeese, April 10, 2019

Last week was one of contrast over the issue of war and militarism as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came to Washington, DC. “No to NATO” protests began on March 30 and continued until the meeting of NATO foreign ministers on April 4.

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The list of House members supporting the Save the Internet Act (H.R. 1644) has surged past 200 with the legislation moving to a floor vote as early as Tuesday evening.

The bill, which would restore the strong Net Neutrality rules and Title II legal framework for broadband of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order, has already drawn the support of 214 members.

The official list of co-sponsors closed at 197 last Thursday since House rules don’t allow additional lawmakers to sign on as sponsors after a bill starts moving to the floor. According to the bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Mike Doyle, the number of representatives signaling their intent to sponsor the bill including Doyle himself had grown to 210 by the weekend. Four additional members, who did not sponsor the bill, voted for it during subcommittee and committee markups.

A companion bill introduced in the Senate in early March is also gathering support in response to widespread public advocacy, including phone calls to Congress and visits to in-district offices from thousands of Net Neutrality advocates.

A University of Maryland poll found that 86 percent of voters opposed the Trump FCC’s 2017 repeal of the Title II Net Neutrality rules, including 82 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats.

Free Press Action Government Relations Director Sandra Fulton made the following statement:

“The momentum of the Save the Internet Act is a stunning reflection of the public support for real Net Neutrality protections. People across party lines understand that without Net Neutrality rules grounded on the strong legal foundation of Title II, our ability to create, seek and share information is in jeopardy.

“Efforts by some in Washington to paint this as a left-right issue ignore numerous public polls which show that overwhelming majorities of Democratic and Republican voters oppose the Trump FCC’s repeal of Title II Net Neutrality safeguards, and support passing the Save the Internet Act to restore those good rules.

“Any holdouts in Congress need to stop neglecting bipartisan public demand for Net Neutrality safeguards and support of this bill and its companion in the Senate. Lawmakers who oppose the Save the Internet Act should listen to their constituents. You can’t ignore more than four out of every five people in the United States and just carry water for Comcast and AT&T. That’s a bad choice.

“Phone and cable companies, of course, don’t want lawmakers to know that Net Neutrality is so popular. They’re resorting to their usual tricks to sink this bill, hiring an army of lobbyists, lawyers and PR flacks to spread lies about Title II. The wave of support behind the Save the Internet Act demonstrates that people in and out of Congress aren’t buying it.”

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Featured image is from Free Press

During a visit to Calexico, California last Friday, President Donald Trump reportedly told Border Patrol agents to defy U.S. law and refuse to allow migrants into the country.

“Behind the scenes,” CNN reported Monday, citing two anonymous sources, “the president told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, ‘Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.'”

“After the president left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the president said they would take on personal liability,” according to CNN. “You have to follow the law, they were told.”

Critics were quick to argue that the president’s reported remarks amount to a blatant violation of his constitutional duty:

This is extraordinarily dangerous and a clear breach of his oath of office. https://t.co/0SngKUsVR1

— Kenneth Zinn (@kennethzinn) April 9, 2019

The president also aggressively pushed to reinstate his family separation policy, CNN reported, confirming earlier reporting from NBC.

“He just wants to separate families,” an anonymous senior administration official told CNN.

CNN‘s report came just as a federal judge in California blocked Trump’s policy of forcing some asylum-seekers to return to Mexico as they await a court appearance.

Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, welcomed the judge’s ruling in a statement, calling the president’s policy “cruel and irresponsible.”

“Asylum-seekers passing through Mexico have already endured dangerous journeys to flee desperate situations,” Krishnaswami said. “Returning them to Mexico and forcing them to wait there would put them at real risk of serious human rights violations. As it currently stands, the policy gravely violates both domestic and international law.”

BREAKING: A federal court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s new policy forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico to wait while their cases are considered.

The president can’t ignore our laws to accomplish his goal of preventing people from seeking asylum here.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 8, 2019

Trump in recent days has openly threatened to “close” the U.S.-Mexico border and—as Common Dreams reported—called on Congress to “get rid of the whole asylum system.”

“And frankly,” Trump told reporters outside the White House last week, “we should get rid of judges.”

The president’s increasingly erratic immigration rhetoric comes as he is carrying out staff changes that critics warn could make his policies toward migrants even more brutal.

On Sunday, Trump forced out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen—a move that is reportedly part of a broader Homeland Security “purge” that will place more power in the hands of the president’s xenophobic adviser Stephen Miller.

As CBS reported,

“U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph ‘Tex’ Alles was fired Monday, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Cissna, DHS undersecretary for management Claire Grady and DHS general counsel John Mitnick are also leaving the administration.”

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The US Treasury Department imposed a new round of sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil industry on Friday.

The measures identified 34 vessels owned by Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA as “blocked property” in a bid to further tighten the screws on Venezuela’s oil sector.

“Treasury is taking action against vessels and entities transporting oil, providing a lifeline to keep the illegitimate Maduro regime afloat,” said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in a statement.

In addition, two companies and a vessel responsible for delivering Venezuelan crude to Cuba were sanctioned. Havana receives around 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Venezuelan oil as part of wide ranging bilateral treaties which include the presence of over 20,000 healthcare workers in Venezuela.

Washington has imposed several rounds of sanctions since the self-proclamation of Juan Guaido as “interim president” on January 23. Some measures have targeted governors and high-ranking military officials, while others have hit Venezuela’s banking, mining and oil sectors.

The sanctions against the oil sector include a de facto embargo on January 28, blocking all US companies from dealing with PDVSA while also freezing the assets of PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo. The embargo effectively brought shipments of Venezuelan crude to the US from around 500,000 bpd to zero following a winding down period, and resulted in a further decline of Venezuela’s oil output as Caracas scrambles to find new buyers.

The latest sanctions came on the eve of rival demonstrations held in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities. Chavismo took to the streets of Caracas for the fifth straight Saturday, with an anti-imperialist march that had three starting points before converging on Miraflores Presidential Palace.

President Nicolas Maduro addressed supporters, stressing that the government is working to restore the electric grid, shielding the computerized system from viruses and attacks, protecting transmission lines and restoring equipment that was damaged by the outages.

“To every new sanction we shall respond with more revolution,” Maduro told the crowd in reference to the latest US sanctions.

Chavismo held a rally on April 6 which ended in Miraflores Palace. (@PartidoPSUV)

For its part, the Venezuelan opposition mobilized in Caracas in its traditional middle and upper class strongholds on the eastern side of town. Guaido had called Saturday’s mobilizations a “dry run” of “Operation Freedom,” touted by the opposition as the final step in ousting the Maduro government. While further details of “Operation Freedom” have yet to be disclosed, Saturday’s demonstrations focused on recent water and electricity issues.

Guaido told the crowd that the country is “ever closer” to putting an end to Maduro’s “usurpation,” while also announcing a meeting of world leaders in Venezuela to address what he called a “humanitarian emergency.” The opposition leader previously saw his parliamentary immunity revoked last week in what could pave the way for criminal charges to be brought against him.

There were reports of clashes during Saturday’s opposition protests in Venezuela’s second largest city of Maracaibo, in Zulia State, with the National Guard using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse opposition marchers. There are unconfirmed reports of 18 wounded and dozens arrested. Opposition lawmakers Nora Bracho and Renzo Prieto were among those temporarily detained.

Western states such as Zulia have been the hardest hit by the ongoing electricity crisis, with the recent outages compounding what was already intermittent service. The Venezuelan government recently announced an electricity rationing plan for the month of April, with locations in 20 out of 23 states having scheduled 3-hour outages 5 to 6 days a week.

While electricity and other services have been gradually stabilized, especially in Caracas and nearby areas, the electrical supply is still far from being fully restored countrywide, with reports that locations in the west or in the Venezuelan llanos are only getting a few hours of electricity at a time.

Venezuela has suffered from a number of major power outages in March, following what authorities have denounced as repeated cyber, physical and electromagnetic attacks against the electric grid and the country’s main electricity generator, the Guri Dam in Bolivar State.

Venezuela’s electric grid has been plagued by under-investment, lack of maintenance and emigration of qualified personnel, as well as the compounding effects of previous and recent US sanctions. Sanctions have stopped Caracas from servicing equipment, shut down access to credit lines, and caused shortages of fuel needed to activate backup thermoelectric plants.

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Libya is back in the news, as fighting escalates around the capital, Tripoli.

Forces under the control of Khalifa Haftar – a former Libyan general under the government of Muammar Gaddafi – turned opposition during the 2011 US-led NATO intervention – turned “opposition” again against the UN-backed “Government of National Accord” (GNA) seated in Tripoli – have most recently reached Tripoli’s airport.

The confusing chaos that has continually engulfed Libya since 2011 should come as no surprise. It is the predictable outcome that follows any US-led political or military intervention. Other examples showcasing US-led regime change “success” include Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.

And just like in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine – the Western corporate media has regularly omitted mention of Libya from headlines specifically to mask the very predictable consequences of US-led regime change as additional interventions against nations like Venezuela, Syria, and Iran are engineered and pursued.

Battlefield Libya 

In 2011, the North African nation of Libya was transformed from a prosperous, developing nation, into a divided, perpetual battlefield where local warlords backed by a milieu of opposing foreign sponsors and interests have vied for power since.

Libya’s current status as a failed, warring state is owed entirely to the US-led NATO intervention in 2011.

Predicated on lies promoted by Western-funded “human rights” organizations and fought under the pretext of R2P (responsibility to protect) – the US and its NATO allies dismembered Libya leading to predictable and perpetual chaos that has affected not only Libya itself, but North Africa, Southern Europe, and even the Middle East.

The war immediately triggered not only a wave of refugees fleeing the war itself, but the redirection of refugees from across Africa seeking shelter and work in Libya, across the Mediterranean and into Europe instead.

Militants fighting as proxies for the US-led war in 2011 would be armed and redeployed to Turkey where they entered Syria and played a key role in taking the cities of Idlib and Aleppo during the early stages of that US-led proxy war.

Currently, Libya is divided between the UN-backed government based in Tripoli, eastern-based forces loyal to Haftar, and a mix of other forces operating across the country, holding various degrees of control over Libya’s other major cities, and equally varying degrees of loyalty to the UN-backed government, Haftar’s forces, or other factions.

Fighting around Tripoli has even allegedly prompted US military forces stationed in Libya to temporarily evacuate. CNBC in its article, “US pulls forces from Libya as fighting approaches capital,” would report:

The United States has temporarily withdrawn some of its forces from Libya due to “security conditions on the ground,” a top military official said Sunday as a Libyan commander’s forces advanced toward the capital of Tripoli and clashed with rival militias. 

A small contingent of American troops has been in Libya in recent years, helping local forces combat Islamic State and al-Qaida militants, as well as protecting diplomatic facilities.

The presence of US forces in Libya might be news to some – and was certainly only a dream within the Pentagon until after the 2011 US-led NATO intervention finally toppled the Libyan government.

America’s foreign policy of arsonist-fireman has endowed it with a large and still growing military footprint in Africa – one it uses to project power and affect geopolitics well beyond the continent.

America’s Growing Footprint in Africa 

The ongoing Libyan conflict – flush with weapons pouring in from foreign sponsors – has also fuelled regional terrorism impacting neighboring Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, and Chad, as far west as Mali and Nigeria, and southeast as far as Kenya. The war has been a boon for US Africa Command (AFRICOM) which has used the resulting chaos as a pretext to expand Washington’s military footprint on the continent.

In a 2018 Intercept article titled, “U.S. Military Says it has a “Light Footprint” in Africa. These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases,” it was reported that:

According to a 2018 briefing by AFRICOM science adviser Peter E. Teil, the military’s constellation of bases includes 34 sites scattered across the continent, with high concentrations in the north and west as well as the Horn of Africa. These regions, not surprisingly, have also seen numerous U.S. drone attacks and low-profile commando raids in recent years.

The article notes that much of AFRICOM’s expansion in Africa has occurred over the past decade.

While the pretext for US military expansion in Africa has been “counter-terrorism,” it is clear US military forces are there to protect US interests and project US power with “terrorism” a manufactured pretext to justify Washington’s militarization of the continent.

Much of the terrorism the US claims it is fighting was only possible in the first place through the flood of weapons, equipment, and support provided to militants by the US and its partners amid regime change operations targeting nations like Libya.

The US-led NATO war in Libya is a perfect example of the US deliberately arming terrorist organizations – including those listed as foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department itself – overthrowing a nation, predictably destabilizing the entire region, and using the resulting instability as a pretext to massively expand America’s military footprint there.

The wider agenda at play is Washington’s desire to displace current Russian and Chinese interests on the continent, granting the US free reign.

Fruits of US-NATO Regime Change 

As NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would claim:

Over seven decades, NATO has stepped up time and again to keep our people safe, and we will continue to stand together to prevent conflict and preserve peace.

This “peace” includes 8 years of heavy fighting in Libya following NATO’s intervention there.

NATO’s Secretary General proclaims NATO’s mission as one to “prevent conflict and preserve peace,” yet it paradoxically and very intentionally engineered the war in Libya, overthrew the government in Tripoli, and triggered regional chaos that not only plagues North Africa to this day – but also inundated Europe with refugees fleeing the conflict.

Europe is one of the few places NATO could conceivably claim any mandate to protect or operate in – yet its own wars of aggression abroad directly compromised European safety and security.

The media blackout that has shrouded the true impact of NATO’s intervention in Libya for the past 8 years helps enable the US and its NATO partners to perpetrate additional proxy wars and political interventions elsewhere.

As the US openly pursues aggressive regime change in Venezuela and meddles in the internal politics of nations across Southeast Asia, the “fruits” of US intervention in places like Libya should always be kept in mind.

What is most alarming of all is considering that the US-led intervention in Libya may not necessarily be a failure. It is only a failure if one believed the US truly sought a better future for the nation. However, if the fruits of perpetual chaos and an equally perpetual pretext for the US militarization of Africa were intentionally set out for from the beginning – then in many ways – Libya was a resounding success.

Depending on how the current fighting around Tripoli unfolds, whether or not a unified Libya emerges, and whose foreign military presence and economic interests are allowed to persist on Libyan soil thereafter – will help determine just how successful Washington’s true agenda in Libya – and in Africa – has been.

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

Featured image is from NEO

Government officials serve their interests. In the US, it includes appointing corporate executives to run federal agencies.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with departments of agriculture, commerce, energy, health and human services, environmental protection, housing and urban development, interior, labor, and other federal agencies are run by corporate officials or others beholden to industry interests.

The FDA “is (supposed to be) responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.”

The agency is run by food and drug corporate executives, industry lawyers and lobbyists, or others connected to them, serving business, not public health, safety and welfare.

Last May, Trump appointed physician, vulture capital investor, resident neocon American Enterprise Institute fellow Scott Gottlieb as FDA commissioner.

Earlier he was involved in agency decisions affecting about 20 healthcare companies. His allegiance is to them, not public health and welfare.

Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former drug industry lobbyist and executive. He was president of Lilly USA LLC, Eli Lilly’s largest affiliate company, earlier serving as Bush/Cheney’s deputy HHS secretary.

The FDA is an HHS agency. They’re both responsible for permitting hundreds of hazardous to health food additives to be sold to the public – instead of banning them.

They include aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, trans fats, blue, red and yellow food dyes, sodium sulfite, sodium nitrate/sodium nitrite, BHA, BHT, sulfur dioxide, and potassium bromate.

Other permitted hazardous substances include high-potency industrial chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, growth hormones, antibiotics in foods, irradiated foods, glyphosate, and other known carcinogens.

Internationally recognized cancer expert, University of Illinois Chicago Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health, the late Samuel Epstein documented occupational, environmental, prescription drug, and consumer product carcinogens. Examples include:

• diethanolamine (DEA) absorbed in the skin, used in cosmetics, soaps and toiletries;

• permanent and semi-permanent dark hair dye, producing 20% of female non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in America;

• food colorings, pesticides, fungicides, nitrites, and hormones in foods.

Most US cattle and sheep receive carcinogenic growth-promoting hormone implants (usually testosterone or estrogens).

Packaging is harmful, containing dangerous chemicals able to migrate into food and other edibles.

Epstein said hazardous prescription drugs “may pose the single most important class of unrecognized and avoidable cancer risks for the US population.”

Most people in the West and other countries are aware of the hazards to human health of GMO foods and ingredients. Yet they’re allowed in America and elsewhere, along with the above substances in the US, showing the power of monied interests over the general welfare.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “The Jungle” exposed corporate excesses, worker exploitation, and unsanitary practices in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants.

Foods hazardous to human health were produced. Nothing was done to stop it. Unsuspecting consumers ate them. Over a century later, things are worse, not improved because of the power of big money and the influence it buys – politicians bought like toothpaste.

Jack London said Sinclair’s book “depict(ed) what our country really is, the home of oppression and injustice, a nightmare of misery, an inferno of suffering, a human hell, a jungle of wild beasts.”

Corporate lawyers and lobbyists write the nation’s laws, assuring the interests of their clients are served. It’s been this way for time immemorial, more egregious today than earlier.

Johnson & Johnson is the latest corporate predator outed, the leading baby products company, its talc sales greater than all competitive products combined.

According to a Reuters report, its executives knew about carcinogenic asbestos in its baby power for decades – yet failed to correct the problem and concealed it from the public.

According to HHS, the EPA, and International Agency for Research on Cancer,

“there is sufficient evidence that asbestos causes mesothelioma (a relatively rare cancer of the thin membranes that line the chest and abdomen), and cancers of the lung, larynx, and ovary.”

“(M)esothelioma is the most common form of cancer associated with asbestos exposure. There is limited evidence that asbestos exposure is linked to increased risks of cancers of the stomach, pharynx, and colorectum.”

Asbestosis “is a chronic lung disease caused by inhaling asbestos fibers. Prolonged exposure to these fibers can cause lung tissue scarring and shortness of breath,” the Mayo Clinic explained.

J&J’s indifference to public safety and health leaves the company vulnerable to thousands of potential lawsuits.

“J&J didn’t tell the FDA that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as ‘rather high,” Reuters reported.

According to the World Health Organization and other health authorities, there’s no safe level of exposure to asbestos. Even minute amounts can cause cancer and other diseases years later in life.

Asbestos and most other carcinogens have long latency periods, taking years for illness to occur. It’s unclear if J&J talc today is asbestos-free. What they sold decades ago was tainted, cancer and other diseases showing up years after use.

J&J’s longstanding “Safety First” motto belied its practice regarding talc, perhaps other products as well.

Many of America’s foods, drugs, and related products are hazardous to human health. Federal agencies run by corporate executives are part of the problem, largely gone unaddressed.

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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.

There are spies among the Jihadis in Idlib.  Movements, storages and plans are well known to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their Russian allies.  Recently, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that European intelligence agents were inside Idlib, and planning a chemical attack, which would be blamed on the Syrian and/or Russian military.  The professional video troupe, The White Helmets, is also present ready to begin their upcoming role in the drama. French and Belgian agents inside Idlib were observed by informants in their midst, though the French Foreign Ministry accused Russia of lying.

When the battle to free East Aleppo was over in December 2016, the civilians came streaming out, and the next task was to interview them to determine who was an innocent civilian, and who had actually been a terrorist, but had not managed to escape. Under-cover informants were able to identify the innocent from the terrorists. Time and time again, from battle to battle, valuable information was leaked to the SAA through their vast network of informants on the ground, behind enemy lines, among the terrorist groups they were fighting.

Ever since the war began in 2011, chemical weapons use, or merely the threat, has played a role.  Syrians watched videos made in 2012 by terrorists in which rabbits were killed with chemicals, in an effort to scare the civilian population, and it worked.  People were scared, and the fear was coming from the Turkish border, as the chemicals in the video were clearly made in Turkey.  In March 2013, Khan al Assal was attacked by chemical weapons. The dead were 25 civilians and 16 SAA soldiers guarding the town after a previous terrorist attack.

The live TV coverage of the hospital with the gasping victims, and the dead in a local hospital shocked Syrians nationwide, while the Syrian deputy foreign minister, Faisal Meqdad, said Syria would file a protest with the U.N. Security Council, which was followed up by requests by the Syrian government for UN investigators to come and inspect the crime scene and victims.  The UN repeatedly stalled citing security concerns, finally in August 2013 the team arrived in Damascus, but before they could begin a new chemical attack happened, and the video caused outrage around the world, as viewers were convinced the Syrian government had used sarin gas on hundreds of civilians.

There were skeptics, who wondered why the Syrian government would repeatedly plead for UN investigators to come and see Khan al Assal, and just as the UN arrives after months of delay, the same government would use chemicals right under the noses of the UN inspectors? In the science of criminal investigation, the first question the UN investigators must ask is: “Who will benefit from this crime?”  Obviously, the crime benefitted the terrorists.  They had made a priceless video, uploaded to the internet, and made available free of charge globally.  News media from the four corners of the world were showing it repeatedly.  By watching it over and over, the audience was convinced they knew the culprit, though no evidence was ever supplied.  Even US Secretary of State John Kerry, without any fact based evidence cited, said it was evident from the video that Syria was to blame.

Snap judgments based on amateur videos became routine in Syria.  Yahya Ababneh was on the ground in Damascus just days after the event, and interviewed armed men fighting the Syrian military.  Named eye witnesses told about chemicals coming in from a Saudi Arabian, but without proper instructions on how to deal with, or use them.  Jibhat al Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, tasked their allies in the Free Syrian Army in the handling and use of the chemicals, which resulted in deaths of terrorists as well as civilians.

President Obama had stated the use of chemicals in Syria was a red line.  His threat was aimed at the Syrian government, and the terrorists who were supported by the US saw this threat as their ‘green light’.  The red line threat gave birth to the strategic and repeated use of chemicals by the terrorists as a tool which would be used to punish the Syrian government, and could have potentially brought US-NATO military intervention into Syria.  The terrorists, and their military advisers in NATO, and the Arab Gulf, used chemicals when they faced defeat.  When the Syrian forces, and their allies, were in a strong position they would pull the chemicals out of their bag of tricks, knowing that it would always be blamed on the Syrian side.

In the current situation in Idlib, the terrorists of Jibhat al Nusra face certain military defeat.  They are a hated group in Syria, and are recognized internationally as terrorists.  It would appear no one loves them; however, the US-NATO war machine that started the war in 2011 is not ready to let them be exterminated by the Syrian-Russian forces.  The strategic use of a chemical incident in Idlib now could serve to stop the seemingly certain progress of a military victory in Syria.  That is the US-NATO goal: they know they can no longer win the war, unless they were to conduct a full-scale invasion, which would bring them face to face in confrontation with Russia, so instead they stop the progress of the war, and deprive their enemies of victory.

Former Sec. of State John Kerry always referred to Plan B, though he never explained exactly what it was.  Idlib hangs in the balance, and is the last jihadist occupied territory in Syria.  Is the possible upcoming staged chemical event Plan B?

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The situation in Syria is remaining relatively stable amid the continued limited ISIS attacks on the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and ceasefire violations in the Idlib de-militarized zone.

Over the past few days, pro-militant sources have repeatedly claimed that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and even the Russian Aerospace Forces have delivered strikes on so-called “opposition targets” in northern Hama and southern Idlib. While these reports are mostly propaganda exaggerations, the situation there is in fact complicated with both sides attacking each other on more or less constant basis.

At the same time, the SAA and Russian forces achieved an important success and finally started evacuation of civilians from the al-Rukban refugee camp via opened humanitarian corridors. Pro-government sources claim that when all civilians are evacuated, the US would lose the formal pretext to keep forces on the Baghdad-Damascus highway in the area of al-Tanf. However, even if this development happens, this does not mean that US will voluntarily withdraw from this key area anytime soon.

The SDF repelled a series of ISIS attacks on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The most notable incident happened near al-Hissan when the group eliminated an ISIS suicide bomber.

Meanwhile, media activists are speculating that Teheran has delivered a new batch of weapons and equipment for pro-Iranian groups to the T4 airbase. This development came amid the worsening relations between Iran and the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Iran and Iraq have agreed to cooperate in the area of air defense to fend off the challenges facing their air spaces, Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri told reporters on April 7 after meeting with his Iraqi counterpart, Lt. Gen. Othman al-Ghanimi. Maj. Gen. Baqeri said that this coordination is aimed at facing any aerial threats that may come from Iran’s western borders obviously referring to possible US or Israeli actions from this direction.

On April 8, the Trump administration announced that it is designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organization,” accusing the force of financing and promoting terrorism in the region. Earlier, Advisor to the Secretary of State Brian Hook claimed that Iran is responsible for the deaths of at least 608 US service members in Iraq in the period from 2003 to 2011.

In response, the Iranian Supreme National Security Council designated the United States Central Command a “terrorist organization”. These developments show that Washington has taken course on a new round of the escalation with Iran. In the coming months, the US will likely undertake more measures both diplomatic, economic and maybe even military to increase pressure on the Iranian government and to limit its influence across the Middle East. An expanded US-Israeli campaign against supposed Iranian targets in Syria is named as one of the options that are currently considered by the US.

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It’s designed to give the US more leg room in the sanction stakes but may end up having its own hemming consequences.  The designation by the Trump administration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation was meant to expand options for the US while shutting others out.  While Trump attempts to defrost matters with North Korea, Iran has played the convenient bug bear.  

As President Donald Trump outlined in a statement,

“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognises the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

The policy had an inevitable resonance in Israel, where it cheered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prior to the Tuesday national poll.  Designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guards “as a terrorist organization” kept “the world safe from Iran aggression and terrorism”.  Such a consequence may well be wishful thinking.  Jacob Heilbrun opines rather pessimistically that such a policy shift is bound to be disruptive; the president “has allowed himself to be captured by a neocon contingent, housed at the Foundation of Defense for Democracies, that is thirsting for a new crusade to vanquish the mullahs in Tehran.”   

The IRGC has certainly made its effective, often bloody mark on Middle Eastern affairs.  As US-led forces blundered in Iraq, leaving a security vacuum rich with opportunity, Iran saw a golden chance to increase its influence and harass the invaders.  The role played by IRGC’s Quds Force in supplying Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to militants in Iraq was cited in 2015 as a key reason for US policy makers to abandon the Iran nuclear deal. 

“I understand,” claimed Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex) in a July 29, 2015 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, “that the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency has a classified list of roughly 500 American soldiers who were murdered by Iranian IEDs.” 

US Central Command revealed a different figure: between November 2005 and December 2011, the number of US combatant deaths arising from EFP “events” stood at 196. 

Dissecting such figures forensically is less significant for the anti-Iran hawks than reining in the broader effect of Tehran’s influence.  Training to its proxies has been forthcoming and consistent; the Syrian civil war has further opened the gates, leaving Israel jittery.  Washington’s ally, Saudi Arabia, has similarly baulked, and seeks to plug the Shia breach in Yemen with bloody resolve.  Operating behind the scenes is the IRGC.

The issue is complicated from another perspective.  In so designating such an arm of the Iranian government a terrorist outfit, it stymies trading done with any Iranian entity from powers in the international scene untidy.  (The IRGC’s economic tentacles are not only thick, but lengthy.)  This is bound to have a localising effect.  In immediate proximity of Iran and Iran’s influence, Lebanese and Iraqi authorities risk being barred from dealing with the IRGC and its surrogate arms.  Asian and European companies, who do not have the same qualms in dealing with the theocracy, also risk facing the ire of Washington.  In Trump’s own words, “If you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism.”   

The concept is strikingly simplistic, ignoring the myriad of entanglements that follows from IRGC involvement in the Iranian economy proper.  It also side steps the possibility that the Trump Organization, in signing contracts in 2012 with developers behind the Trump Tower Baku project, had indirect dealings with Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company controlled by the IRGC.  (Azarpassillo was awarded contracts in 2008 by then Azerbaijani transport minister Ziya Mammadov, who had been the key contact for Trump’s company.)

Till this point, the approach to the IRGC has been one of economic encirclement featuring attempts to get to the organisation via other entities.  The move to target the IGRC was already underway in other branches of the US government.  The Treasury designated the Quds Force in 2007 a supporter of terrorism, sanctioning entities connected with it.  It has assumed pride of place on the US Specially designated Global Terrorist List.  The IGRC itself, as former Under-Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is on record as saying, “is already fully sanctioned”, making the issue one of superfluous classification and needlessly provocative.  

Then comes the issue of Iran’s direct response.  What is good for the goose is invariably good for the unfortunate gander.  Various Trump officials, to that end, were none too keen by the decision, claiming that retaliation would follow against US intelligence officers and troops.  Former State Department official Jason Blazakis, who spent his time in the terrorist labelling business, suggested that the commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, could well call upon his Shi’ite militias “to take actions against US assets in places like Baghdad’s Green Zone.” In consistently upending fashion, Trump also gave his emissaries in the Middle East very little time to ponder matters, leaving no guidelines as to how to enforce the designation.  On such points, White House national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hold courtly sway.

Rhetorical retaliation was not long in coming and seemed almost casual.  The US was branded as a “state sponsor of terrorism” with its military elements in the Middle East duly designated as “terrorist groups”.  The move, suggested Iranian state TV, had as much to do with US dislike of Tehran’s influence in the region as it did with its success in “fighting Islamic State”.  Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in calling the move on Trump’s part “a major strategic mistake”, insisted that the new designation by Tehran would include “US military bases and their military forces in the region” and “confronted accordingly”.  Araghchi, like Trump, was merely stating the obvious, and dangerous turn in relations.

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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Three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, coalition forces led by the US army entered Baghdad and formally occupied it on April 9, 2003. The city’s infrastructure was seriously damaged. The Al-Yarmouk Hospital in the south received about 100 new patients every hour at the time of fighting. And many treasures at the National Museum of Iraq—from ancient Mesopotamia and early Islamic culture—were stolen or broken while the Iraqi National Library and National Archives housing thousands of manuscripts from civilisations dating as far back as 7,000 years were burned down and many of its items destroyed.

Like it was an attack on the past, the invasion, from when it occurred, has also proved to be an attack on the future of civilisation. But to most Iraqis, that was obvious from the get-go.

In his eyewitness account of “liberated” Iraq in May 2003, Radio France Internationale’s Tony Cross recalled seeing daily protests against the Americans. Of witnessing western boys of 18-25 years-old standing with their tanks and advanced military equipment, looking fearful (and helpful sometimes) of the host population whose language none of them understood. The most interesting contradiction he points to was between the widely held believe among Iraqis that there was a Zionist-American plot to wipe out their history and subdue them through prolonged occupation, versus a 23-year-old US marine’s statement that,

“I talked to a few Iraqis yesterday and some of them said that they didn’t really like us being here. But we liberated them, so I hope they appreciate it.”

Years later, ordinary people in the west still don’t understand the true nature of the horror that it brought to Iraq. In an April 2013 poll by ComRes supported by Media Lens, 44 percent of people estimated that less than 5,000 Iraqis had died since 2003, while 59 percent believed that fewer than 10,000 had died—out of 2,021 respondents. The more likely estimate, according to most independent sources, is in excess of one million.

In 2010, WikiLeaks’ disclosure of 391,832 US army field reports of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 exposed that the army itself recorded 109,000 deaths among which 66,081 were civilians. Aided by these documents, Iraq Body Count, which has compiled the most comprehensive record of deaths caused by the war, confirmed the death toll to have exceeded 150,000 in 2010 with roughly 80 percent of them being civilians.

The leaks moreover revealed information about the torture of Iraqis, including by British forces. Adding to the worldwide condemnation that followed Seymour Hersh’s disclosure on the gruesome and humiliating torture carried out by American soldiers on Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. In his 2004 report published by The New Yorker, Hersh had earlier shed light on a 53-page report by Major General Antonio Taguba, who wrote that

“between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of ‘sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses’ at Abu Ghraib.”

That included:

“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

Such brutality naturally created resentment. And that resentment could just as well have inspired the formation of forces such as ISIS and their ferocious treatment of those they saw as their enemy or opponent.

Yet, it was as if no lessons were learned by western governments. Who used the same blueprint of exploiting lies and deceptions to concoct new wars. In the case of Syria, by fostering tensions between Shiites and Sunnis, to cause its government to overreact by increasing paranoia of an imminent coup, and use that to get Islamic extremists to act against the Syrian government.

And also in Libya, through similar destabilising efforts, followed by more direct intervention which overthrew its government and created a quagmire in what was the wealthiest country in all of Africa before the 2011 NATO intervention—a country where less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands, where there is now a thriving slave market according to the UN.

As former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi warned prior to him being overthrown by NATO—and sodomised with a bayonet and killed by extremist forces on live television—without a unified and stable Libya, there would be no one to control countless migrants from Africa and the Middle East from fleeing to Europe. And that is exactly what happened since, turning American political scientist Samuel Huntington’s theory of Clash of Civilisation now into near reality.

So what should we make of the fall of Baghdad 16 years ago, or the broader invasion and destruction of Iraq, which by now has clearly turned out to be one of the most important events of the 21st century?

One, that greed for power often causes leaders of powerful countries to lie their citizens into waging wars against less powerful nations. And given the sophistry of modern weaponry, those wars are now costlier in terms of destroying human lives than ever.

Two, this is especially true for democracies, where, as Julian Assange explains, “wars are a result of lies”—lies such as Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi is providing Viagra to his soldiers to rape women, Assad is attacking unarmed Syrian civilians, etc., all of which have now been proven untrue.

Third, had these lies been exposed early enough, there is a chance that all these wars could have been avoided, and millions of lives spared. However, as most mainstream media outlets became the “stenographer of great power”, as John Pilger describes it, opting to spread lies and propaganda, rather than tell truth to the public and report the facts, the exposure of these lies came too late.

Fourth, the public has entered a state of mind where they can repeatedly be lied into wars. Where through some form of mental gymnastics, they seem to convince themselves time and again that: “this time they are taking us to war for humanitarian reasons, not for greed or for power.” Giving the impression that they are suffering from some sort of mass mind-control. Which is the ultimate goal of propaganda.

That is why it is so important for alternative sources to inform the public about the true nature of wars. To record and reveal the real history of events that shape our world and to counter propaganda with facts. Because if we are to learn anything from the Iraq War and its subsequent events, it is that: “If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.”

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Eresh Omar Jamal is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. His Twitter handle is: @EreshOmarJamal

Somalia achieved independence only in 1960, and major general Said Barre took power in a coup in 1969. By the 1970s, Somalia was prospering, free of British/ Italian ‘protection’, socialist, a model third world state from the Soviet point of view, not yet targeted by the US. Ethiopia had a Nasser-like military coup in 1974 promising socialism next door. Sudan was at peace and pursuing a Nasserist policy under Colonel Gaafar Nimeiri. Nkrumah’s dream of a united socialist Africa looked like it might actually be coming true.

At the top of the world, Afghanistan was following a similar trajectory, though somewhat delayed. It had been left in peace since the 1920s, recognizing and living peacefully with the socialist monolith to the north, slowly modernizing. But, just as in Somalia, its intelligentsia was attracted to socialism.

The Soviet Union was a good neighbour, providing aid and education. It also supported Afghanistan on the Pashtunistan issue. Pakistan, Afghanistan’s bug bear, was especially anti-communist, hostile to socialist India over Kashmir, a ‘strategic ally’ of the US. The uninspiring king was overthrown by his cousin, who wanted ‘Pashtunistan’, in 1973. The Soviet Union was not interested, and when the communists were arrested in 1978, they took power. But the world was a different place than 1969. The Afghan communists never had a chance.

Despite their similar beginnings and very different trajectories, both countries ended up as failed states, still being droned and bombed by the US in the pursuit of empire.

Swashbuckling histories, imperial revenge

Somalia has a population of 12.3m vs Afghanistan’s 32m. It has one of the most illustrious histories among Muslim states, prosperous for thousands of years as a trading nation perched on the strategic Horn of Africa, an early convert to Islam. As with all of Africa, it went into sharp decline in the late 19th century, after the Berlin conference of 1884, when European powers began the “Scramble for Africa”.

In the last heroic resistance to imperialism, the Dervish leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan rallied support from across the Horn of Africa and begin one of the longest colonial resistance wars (20 years). Hassan emphasized that the British “have destroyed our religion and made our children their children” and that the Christian Ethiopians in league with the British were bent upon plundering the political and religious freedom of the Somali nation.” While all other Muslim states fell to Christian invaders, Somalia held out.

When the Ottoman caliphate collapsed and Britain ‘won’ WWI, Churchill was free to use the new aeroplanes in 1920 to bomb the “mad mullah” and Somali forces, just as Churchill was doing in Iraq. It took four invasion attempts before Hassan’s Dervish state was defeated, and territories turned into a British ‘protectorate’.

So, in 1921, the British took the southern half, Italy took (most of) the northern half. The two colonial powers were busy drawing artificial borders as if in a reality Great Game. They argued politely over Ogaden, but the US was calling the shots in the post-WWII era of decolonization, and Christian Ethiopia was able to get US support for the region (where borders were vague and most inhabitants ethnic Somali pastoralists) in 1954.

Britain and Italy, the ‘protectors’ of Somalia, had no say in the matter. The colonial border was a line right through the middle of Ogaden, populated mostly by Somalis, made by actors in London, Rome and Washington. When Somalia finally achieved independence in 1960, it was left a time bomb ticking on the border with Ethiopia.

Afghanistan has a shorter history as a unified nation, but equally illustrious. Before Islam was introduced, people of the region were mostly Buddhists and Zoroastrians. In the early 16th century, Babur made Kabul his capital before invading India to found the Mughal Empire. Afghanistan became a separate nation only in 1737 under Ahmad Shah Durrani.

It waged three wars against British imperialism in the 19th century (killing all troops and British civilians in 1842). Britain finally forced Amir Abdur Rahman Khan to sign an agreement in 1893, dividing Afghan’s Pashtuns from those across the border in Britain’s Raj, the so-called Durand Line, a time bomb exactly like the southern border of Somalia.

Time bombs

Pashtunistan and the Durand line created a burning resentment that prompted the Afghan Shah’s cousin Daoud to oust him. But the Soviets were not interested in supporting a war with Pakistan. They were playing the ‘great game’ by detente rules. So the nationalist Daoud turned against the Afghan communists, prompting them to carry out a coup in 1978. This created the conditions for civil war and their overthrow.

This was the identical scenario as Somalia and Ogaden When Barre tried to fashion a new (reasonable) border on his own terms in 1977. The Soviets were trying to play by detente rules and refused to support this. This sparked war with Ethiopia and the collapse of socialist Somalia.

Image below: Toppling Hassan, Somalia’s national hero 1991

The US propped up the now discredited socialist Barre (‘our S.O.B.’) and then arranged his ouster in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. After Barre fell, Somalia was ruled by warlords, awash with lethal western arms. ‘Black Hawk down’ was a wake-up call in 1992.

The same warlord scenario was playing out in Afghanistan in the 1990s as well. The last communist leader, Najibullah, was murdered in 1995. The same reaction –rural, devout Islamists, with a burning hatred of the US, filling the power vacuum.

Counterfactuals

Instead of undermining both countries, why couldn’t the US have played by detente rules? Worked with the Soviets in Africa, pushing Barre out of his ‘greater Somalia’ in 1980, to keep a lid on Muslim extremists, and arrange a negotiated settlement with Ethiopia?

And in central Asia, help stabilize the socialist secular regime of Babrak Karmal in 1980, also alongside the Soviets, to fight the Muslim extremists?

If the US had worked with the Soviets, rather than playing a zero-sum game, both Ogaden and Pashtunistan could have been managed.

The 1970s were the years of detente, which should have meant peaceful negotiations, a modicum of trust. The Soviets did not support Barre’s invasion of Ethiopia, nor did they want to send troops to a faltering Afghan regime. They were eager for cooperation with the US.

Alas, the US under Reagan launched old-fashioned war and subversion of anything that was socialist (Islamist was okay for the time being in Afghanistan). Their victories against the Soviet Union were pyrrhic, leaving only rubble and terror in Somalia, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, a ‘solution’ which continues to plague the world in the form of ISIS (terrorisme san frontieres).

So is there any good news, any lessons from Somalia for Afghans? For the US?

Refugees

US policy in Somalia and Afghanistan from 1979 on helped reduce these countries to failed states (don’t forget Ethiopia). It created massive refugee populations, trying to squeeze into the imperial centre, where there was much less terrorism and lots of commodities to buy. This was not intended though it should have been foreseen, and has been a headache for the West ever since.

There are more than one million Somali refugees, spread from Sweden to the US, and Somalis abroad are forced to downplay the clan system, though it still exists where enough of one clan can form a community. But the second generation exiles are not interested.

The deadly clanism of Somalis is tempered in the West. Somali exiles are almost like a new set of clans. The American Somalis are “a bit more outgoing, they like to push things harder.”

One star of the Somali American diaspora is Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has rocked Capitol Hill since she gained her seat in 2016. Who would have thought a Somali woman would peacefully upset US political life? And to do so in the face of Trump’s travel ban on Somalis?

For three decades, Afghanistan has been the largest refugee-producing country in the world. The US and International Security Assistance Force countries grudgingly took in only a small number of Afghans that worked with their respective forces.

Far fewer made it to the far-off West than did Somalis (130,000 Afghans in the US and Canada in 2016). So, not much of a gravy train of US dollars remitted to Afghanistan by emigres, unlike Somalia, with its greater western diaspora and smaller size. On the contrary, the billions in foreign ‘aid’ from the US and its NATO henchmen have disappeared, like the Taliban were supposed to.

The most famous Afghan emigre is Zalmay Khalilzad, who, though unelected (unlike Omar), was at the heart of US strategy in the 1980s–2000s for Afghanistan, actually responsible for the disaster of Afghan policy. The most infamous emigre was the tragic Omar Mateen, who gunned down 49 gay nightclubbers in Orlando Florida in 2016 before turning his gun on himself.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims flooding into the West undermines “Judeo-Christian civilization”, but that is really just a pseudonym for imperialism, with little sign of anything ‘Jewish’ or ‘Christian’. These Muslims are by definition anti-imperialist and are forcing the West to deal with Islam, now an integral part of western society. Even Mateen is a wake-up call for a society that has lost its moral compass.

New kinds of foreign aid

Despite the US travel ban, Somalis are remitting billions of dollars to relatives in their devastated homeland, doing far more good than bureaucratic official aid, much of which is embezzled and otherwise used as the West sees fit, rather than as the locals would like and need.

This in turn is pushing westerners who really, really want to help, to restructure aid programs to meet local needs — microloans, cell phone banking, hands-on local infrastructure, using traditional techniques tweeked by modern technology, giving a ‘basic income’ to penniless peasants.

No Shabab, no Taliban!

Like the Afghan Taliban, the Somali taliban (Shabab) are still strong, the US refusing to give either a place at the table, instead bombing them. The opportunity presented itself in Somalia in 2006, when  the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a coalition of Islamists including Shabab coalesced, but the US nixxed it (‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists.’).

The US continues to bomb and drone anyone it decides is a terrorist in both nations, causing thousands of casualties, increasing the number of recruits. In addition to its presence in Afghanistan, the US has at least 500 troops in Somalia illegally, and an assortment of mercenaries. This does not go unnoticed to the Shabab.

The lesson here is for the US to learn: stop killing Shabab/ Taliban, pull the ‘Crusader’ troops out, let the Shabab/ Taliban have real power.

The ICU is an idea for Afghanistan — a salvation committee including the (few) brave, uncorrupt elements in the US-backed regime and the Taliban, who would be given amnesty. The US missed the opportunity in 2006 in Somalia, and left it a mess, a training camp for drone practice. Trump is negotiating with the Taliban, but so far with no results.

Phoenix from the ashes?

The West pushed to establish a (western-backed) Transitional National Government (TNG) in Somalia in 2000, just as they were doing for Afghanistan, even before 9/11, but without complete withdrawal of US troops, no government can have any credibility.

At least in Somalia, the US didn’t just parachuting in its own choice of leaders, as in Afghanistan, where the Karzai ‘national government’ was supposed to be not a transitional one, but, immodestly, the final solution.

In 2009, a colourful Somali emigre, Mohammad (Tarzan) Nur was appointed mayor of Mogadishu. He was disappointed that the US refused to let the ICU function. “The ICU are the right people to make peace in Somalia. No more clan rubbish.” Like Karzai in Afghanistan in the 1990s, he was willing to work with ICU and their ‘student’ allies, despite their radical Salafism, and hoped to be a bridge with the West, where he had established himself and his family.

Nur’s stint as mayor 2010–2014 was harrowing, with warlords controlling half of Mogadishu, and constant phone threats to kill him. Particularly tragic was the attack on a modest street festival in 2011 celebrating peace and reconstruction, where four civilians (including the brass band leader) were gunned down, and Nur barely escaped alive.

Finally, the warlords packed up and left Mogadishu two months after the festival debacle, and Nur was able to rebuild the power grid, pave roads, build schools, create a modest nightlife for Somalia’s capital. Mogadishu mayor Nur was not corrupt, like Karzai (jokingly referred to as the ‘mayor of Kabul’), And he was not handicapped by US troops on street corners and making night raids. His success as mayor is grounds for hope. Imperialism is not ‘the only alternative’.

Somalis like the remittances from relatives abroad, but they also resent the fact that emigres lived a relatively easy life when most Somalis were suffering at home, much as do Afghans, which means that it is not the Karzais and Nurs who must lead the country.

The imperial saga continues to unfold. Somalis’ and Afghans’ dreams of socialism are more or less dashed, but for Somalis and Afghans old enough to remember, their days of socialism in the 1970s are fond memories, before the lure of empire (Somalia) and secularism (Afghanistan) took over, masterfully manipulated by the US. The future of both countries is still sorry, but the experience of their collapse and struggle is rich with lessons for both, and for the US.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: EricWalberg.com

All images in this article are from the author

Eleven years ago at NATO’s April 2008 summit in Bucharest, it was agreed the former Soviet states of Georgia and the Ukraine “will become members of NATO”. Early that same month, America’s increasingly unpopular president George W. Bush was also present in the Romanian capital, so as to reaffirm his nation’s desire to “welcome Georgia and Ukraine” into NATO.

A few weeks later in June 2008 Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, remarked that should Georgia accede to the United States-run organization it “would lead to another stage of confrontation”.

Following extensive skirmishes in summer 2008 along Russia’s southern frontier, on 7 August of that year Moscow-led forces launched an intervention into Georgian territory – a military incursion that experienced Russian expert Richard Sakwa, of the University of Kent, described as “a response to the threat of NATO enlargement” and also “in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement'”.

It may be important to briefly recall the modern history of Georgia, a country which shares a 700 kilometre border with Russia along the vast Caucasus region: Georgia comprised part of the Russian empire for well over a century until 1918, and was subsequently under the USSR’s sphere for seven decades before the latter dissolved in 1991. Georgia has an ingrained association with Russia which cannot be erased by Western flattering and assurances.

By 13 August 2008, after a week of fighting Russian troops captured Gori in central Georgia, a small and seemingly inconsequential city comprising about 50,000 people. Though the significance of taking Gori may have been lost on many westerners, that town was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin in December 1878. Stalin remains the longest serving head of state in Russian history, having ruled under a dictatorship for almost three decades until his death in March 1953, aged 74.

As is well documented, Stalin was a despot responsible for terrible massacres like the Great Purge. Yet his name is still a prominent one today in both Russia and Georgia. The principal reason behind this is that Stalin presided over the victory against Hitler’s Reich, which stands as the bloodiest battle in world history costing more than 25 million Soviet lives.

Despite the impending danger to Moscow in late autumn 1941, which Hitler planned to completely destroy, Stalin did not flee eastwards but remained put in the Kremlin. Though the Soviet dictator merits justified condemnation for his crimes, he could not be accused of cowardice in the face of Hitler’s attack.

Meanwhile, the Russian assault on Gori and destruction of Georgian military bases in and around the vicinity, was a psychological blow inflicted upon the country’s then Western-backed figures – such as Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president who received part of his education in private universities in New York and Washington. Saakashvili later described American senator John McCain as “the world’s greatest statesman”, while long after the US invasion of Iraq he praised president Bush II for being “a decisive and visionary leader”.

During the conflict in Georgia, by mid-August 2008 Russian units had advanced to within 25 miles of the capital Tbilisi in the south-east; just at that point, they were ordered to cease advancing and turn about northwards. The war’s conclusion bore witness to Russia’s recognition of the Caucasus territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia while installing army bases there, through which thousands of Russian soldiers remain.

A few days ago, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg highlighted in a speech to Congress in Washington that America is the “backbone of our alliance”, and there would not be a peaceful Europe “without the sacrifice and commitment of the United States”. Stoltenberg made no reference to the illegal US-NATO invasion of Yugoslavia 20 years ago, that killed thousands of people through which various war crimes were committed, while destabilizing much of the Balkans region.

Last month, Stoltenberg stated unequivocally during a trip to Tbilisi “that Georgia will become a member of NATO”. In recent weeks, ending on 29 March, there were “NATO-Georgia military exercises” near Tbilisi which represented another clear provocation of Moscow. It is not too dissimilar to the US patrols in South Korea which have driven the North Koreans to distraction, as one can appreciate.

Should Georgia move towards NATO integration, another intervention from the north may well ensue. On this occasion, Russian forces would be likely to advance as far as Tbilisi to occupy the Georgian heartland. One can only ponder how the Americans would react in such a case.

Last August, Russia’s prime minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Washington’s coercing of Georgia to join NATO “could provoke a terrible conflict. I don’t understand what they are doing this for”. NATO’s ongoing efforts to entice more states bordering Russia to accede (after Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), are further increasing the risk of a devastating nuclear war between the US and Russia. This is openly recognized by scholars and non-profit organizations such as the bulletin of atomic scientists.

Little reported by commercial media, is the presence of dozens of US nuclear weapons in the military bases of four EU countries: Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands; while to the south NATO member Turkey also holds American nuclear devices. These states are, in actual fact, five de facto nuclear nations.

Russia has herself constituted the status of nuclear superpower for decades, and there is consequently little doubt that NATO’s march eastwards has become an existential threat to humanity.

It is remarkable to witness the strong support that NATO retains from famous institutions and elite figures who are, as a result, actively encouraging a nuclear conflict.

The New York Times, on 14 January 2019, outlined under a heading of “new concerns over Russia” that NATO is a “military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years” while the Ukraine and Georgia are “two non-NATO members with aspirations to join the alliance”.

There is no mention in the New York Times’ analysis pertaining to NATO’s rapid growth following Soviet disintegration, and the grave danger to our world should the Ukraine and Georgia merge to the organization. Nor does the New York Times’ evaluation discuss NATO aggression directed at Afghanistan, Libya, etc.

NATO leaders, in reality Washington, have sought policies that George Kennan, former US ambassador and diplomat, lamented “would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves”. Over the past generation, NATO has degenerated into what is a criminal and far-reaching branch of US imperialism.

In relation to Russia, readers of mass media will also have to do much digging upon discovering that the country has repeatedly been attacked in modern history. Huge invasions of Russia occurred across consecutive centuries, firstly by Charles XII of the Swedish Empire (in 1708), just over a hundred years later through Napoleon Bonaparte of the French colonial empire (in 1812), and lastly by Hitler of the Third Reich (in 1941). These assaults were eventually repelled, but not before the Russian state endured some of the most staggering losses ever seen.

In the meantime, the Daily Telegraph assures its readers that NATO has been a “cornerstone of the continent’s security” and bolstered “by the fact that America possesses the second biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world”. However, the Telegraph complains that “the ambitions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia have changed the picture” as “Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine” and “then invaded eastern Ukraine”.

As with the New York Times, there is not a word expounded in the Telegraph account of NATO itself having “changed the picture” with its march to Russia’s very boundaries. In mainstream accounts, there is quite often a most glaring lack of historical understanding and perspective on display, along with a presumably deliberate omission of important facts.

The core issue regarding Russia’s “seizure of Crimea” is seldom ever addressed amid the reams of press coverage rebuking the Kremlin on this subject. Moscow’s March 2014 takeover of the Crimea came as a riposte to the February 2014 US-sponsored coup in the Ukraine –which has continuously been described in shoddy press reports as “a pro-democracy revolution” which “turned it [the Ukraine] away from Russia and towards the West”.

In reality the “pro-democracy revolution” was an illegitimate putsch involving firm American backing, as let slip by president Barack Obama on CNN in February 2015; which overthrew a democratically elected president and established an elite rabble, that further contained far-right individuals like Andriy Parubiy, Dmytro Yarosh and Oleh Makhnitskyi. The Western public are routinely spared such unpalatable details, nor are they informed that 30% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their first tongue, much of whom reside in eastern Ukraine.

The Crimea itself, a strategically vital peninsula located on the Black Sea, comprised part of Russia’s empire from 1783 to 1917, and was subsequently under Soviet domain for 70 years. The Crimea’s two million inhabitants are made up of two thirds ethnic Russians. Over 80% of Crimeans profess their native lingo to be Russian, in comparison to less than 5% of the populace who speak Ukrainian as a first language.

Russia has inevitably influenced some of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, a nation it shares a 1,000 kilometre western border with. Moscow may further intervene militarily in the Ukraine, should NATO forge ahead with plans to absorb that country, and it could again lead to nuclear weapon engagement between the US and Russia. One can imagine how America would react, were a Russian-backed coup to oust Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

In the Guardian, a recently retired British senior diplomat wrote last week of his view that, “After two decades of discretionary wars, NATO has come back home, giving top priority to the security of allies in the face of Russia’s aggressive military posture and reckless behaviour”.

The comment relating to NATO’s “discretionary wars”, such as the illegal invasions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, provides another useful insight into the disregard that Britain’s elites hold for international law. In the post-1945 era, British author Mark Curtis outlines in his books – with much supporting evidence – that Britain has been the world’s second biggest outlaw state (with America in poll position). The USSR or Russia do not enter the fray.

British governments, both Conservative and Labour, have in the post-World War II years reverted to a long list of illicit measures, in order to cling on to vestiges of her evaporating empire; they have partly instituted or supported a range of dictatorships in South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, while backing flagrant neo-Nazi regimes in the likes of Chile and South Africa.

The typical British elite has much preferred to support a dictator that will promise the UK access to mineral riches, rather than provide backing to a president legitimately elected by popular vote. Should the despot start killing his own people, be it Suharto of Indonesia or Pinochet of Chile, it has not unduly concerned influential Britons. Indeed, London has sometimes paved the way by supplying arms and material assistance to the death squads.

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister for over a decade until November 1990, described the brutal mass murderer General Suharto as “One of our very best and most valuable friends”. Along with US president Ronald Reagan, Thatcher furnished much military aid to Suharto, and the tyrant received separate invitations to London, including a trip to Buckingham Palace in 1979.

Other dictators like the Shah of Iran have been distinguished too with state visits to the English capital, also enjoying outings to mingle with Britain’s royalty. Propped up by America and Britain, the Shah ruled Iran for a quarter of a century until 1979, compiling a deplorable human rights record. Unperturbed, the Shah was a friend to the West throughout, with Thatcher heralding him in 1978 as “one of the world’s most far-sighted statesmen, whose experience is unrivalled. No other leader has given his country more dynamic leadership”. So it continues.

Under another decade of appalling premiership with Tony Blair until June 2007, the historian Curtis noted that during his tenure, “the Blair government is seriously out of control – an outlaw state, undertaking its foreign policy in open contempt for international ethical standards, including riding roughshod over the United Nations… but it has been obscured by a web of government propaganda and media and parliament’s failure to disclose the reality of state policy”. Due to such factors as these, the grim truth often underlining state power is largely shielded from public scrutiny.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Last week a jury in Boston Federal Court convicted Rwandan asylum seeker Jean Leonard Teganya of fraud and perjury for lying on his immigration papers about his involvement in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. In other words, yet another racist, chauvinist, Western court convicted yet another African of participating in mass violence that the US and its Western allies engineered in order to expand their imperial influence in East and Central Africa at the expense of France. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

In July 1994, Teganya crossed from Rwanda into Congo with millions of other Rwandans, mostly Hutus, who were fleeing the advancing Tutsi army led by General Paul Kagame. Teganya later used a false Zimbabwean passport to enter Canada, where he reunited with his Rwandan girlfriend, married, started a family, and applied for political asylum. Canada repeatedly denied him asylum on the grounds that he had committed crimes during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which he in turn denied. Fearing for his life if deported to Rwanda, he went into hiding in Canada, then illegally crossed the Canadian border into the State of Maine to apply for US political asylum in 2014. His trial became a de facto trial for genocide crime because the prosecution had to prove that he was guilty of that to prove that he had lied on his asylum application.

In 1994, Teganya was a third-year medical student at the National University of Rwanda in Butare. He testified that when the understaffed hospital was overwhelmed by wounded patients, he volunteered cleaning wounds and administering intravenous fluids in the emergency room. Former teachers and fellow students from both Rwanda and the Rwandan diaspora came to confirm his story and testify to his character, while prosecution witnesses from Rwanda accused him of rape and murder.

The jurors’ verdict was based wholly on their conclusions about the credibility of witnesses. There is no hard evidence of what happened inside Butare Hospital after General Paul Kagame and his army assassinated the Hutu presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi, then launched their final military offensive to seize power in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. One former medical student and witness for the defense testified that in the ensuing chaos, violence, and social collapse, he and his friends at the university in Butare protected themselves by staying close to one another and concentrating on how they might eat from one day to the next. He said that trucks and jeeps full of soldiers or civilian militias would drive by from time to time, but that he and his friends could never be sure who they were or where they were going.

US broke its promise not to penalize refugees for illegal entry

The United States and Canada are both signatories to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, by which they promised not to impose penalties for illegal entry on refugees coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened. The Protocol expanded the rights guaranteed by the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees to refugees fleeing because of events that occurred after 1951:

Article 31

REFUGEES UNLAWFULLY IN THE COUNTRY OF REFUGE

1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities, and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.

2. The Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into another country. The Contracting States shall allow such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain admission into another country.

Nevertheless, the prosecution built much of its case on the fact that Teganya had entered Canada on a false document and then crossed into the United States illegally. They even asked the defendant on the witness stand why he walked into Congo, which was then Zaire, without a visa, even though he was fleeing Kagame’s army with millions of other refugees. This was all meant to evidence that Teganya was not an honest man, that he had already lied and broken the law to enter Canada and the US, and that it was therefore reasonable to believe that he had lied to gain refugee status.

One jury member told the Boston Globe that he voted to convict primarily because the defendant had used a fake African passport to enter Canada and because he said on the stand that he would do anything not to go back to Rwanda with its current government.

A priori assumption that only Hutus committed genocide

None of the premises about what actually happened in Rwanda in 1994 were questioned during the trial. As at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, the court’s a priori assumptions were that Hutu extremists massacred Tutsis from April to July in 1994—which did happen. However, they also assumed that only Hutus had committed crimes, and therefore only Hutus should be prosecuted.

Sticking to the particulars of what happened at Butare Hospital in the course of a week, the defense did not introduce the body of evidence that the Tutsi army also committed genocide against Hutu people.

This is not to say that Teganye’s federal public defender erred by sticking to the particulars of the case. Murder is against the law regardless of its political context, so the defense had little choice but to argue the particulars as evidenced by witness testimony. However, Western propaganda about the Rwandan Genocide has been so triumphant that a Rwandan Hutu on trial in the West faces inevitable jury bias. In “Enduring Lies, Rwanda in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later,” Edward S. Herman and David Peterson wrote that:

According to the widely accepted history of the 1994 ‘Rwandan genocide,’ there existed a plan or conspiracy among members of Rwanda’s Hutu majority to exterminate the country’s minority Tutsi population. This plan, the story goes, was hatched some time prior to the April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died when his Falcon 50 jet was shot-down as it approached the airport of the capital city of Kigali. The killers allegedly responsible for this crime were ‘Hutu Power’ extremists in positions of authority at the time. Although Habyarimana was Hutu, the story continues, he was also more moderate and accommodative toward the Tutsi than ‘Hutu Power’ extremists could tolerate; they were therefore forced to physically eliminate him in order to carry out their plan to exterminate the Tutsi. The mass killings of Tutsi and ‘moderate Hutu’ swiftly followed over the next 100 days, with perhaps 800,000 or as many as 1.1 million deaths. The ‘Rwandan genocide’ came to an end only when the armed forces of Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front drove the ‘génocidaires’ from power, and liberated the country.

We refer to the above-version of the events that transpired in Rwanda 1994 as the standard model of the Rwandan genocide. And we note, up front, that we believe that this model is a complex of interwoven lies which, when examined closely, unravels in toto.

Nevertheless, its Truth has been entered into the establishment history books and promulgated within the field of genocide studies, in documentaries, in the official history at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and even proclaimed from on-high by the UN Security Council in April 2014.

The institutionalization of the ‘Rwandan genocide’ has been the remarkable achievement of a propaganda system sustained by both public and private power, with the crucial assistance of a related cadre of intellectual enforcers. The favorite weapons of these enforcers are reciting the institutionalized untruths as gospel while portraying critics of the standard model as ‘genocide deniers,’ dark figures who lurk at the same moral level as child molesters, to be condemned and even outlawed. But we will show that this is not only crude name-calling, it also deflects attention away from those figures who bear the greatest responsibility for the bulk of the killings in Rwanda 1994, and for the even larger-scale killings in Zaire and the Democratic Republic of Congo thereafter.

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected].

Greens are political activists and can be found in every movement for economic, racial and environmental justice as well as peace. They do not organize as Greens but as people who are part of the popular movement. The article below about the week of protests against NATO highlights Greens who participated, often as organizers with other peace and justice activists. There were many more Greens at these events than are mentioned. I apologize to those who are omitted. 

Last week was one of contrast over the issue of war and militarism as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came to Washington, DC. “No to NATO” protests began on March 30 and continued until the meeting of NATO foreign ministers on April 4. While people were opposing NATO’s aggressive militarism, the two Wall Street and war parties were giving the NATO General Secretary standing ovations.

Many Greens, working with other peace and anti-imperialist activists, helped to organize the week of actions and many other Greens participated. The Green Party showed itself to be the alternative to the two-winged War Party of the Democrats and Republicans, a party that stands for an end to militarism and imperialism.

The protests began on March 30, 2019, with a mass rally and march across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. The event was organized by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) whose national co-coordinator is Joe Lombardo, a Green Party member from Albany, NY. Lombardo, an antiwar organizer since the Vietnam War era, immediately announced a response to NATO when their meeting was made public. Lombardo framed the protest as stopping wars abroad and at home emphasizing the wars at home when the April 4 date was chosen by NATO. It was important to highlight militarized police and police abuse in communities of color, especially on the anniversary the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being killed by the government in 1968 and his important speech, Beyond Vietnam, which called for an end to war given one year before his murder.

Ajamu Baraka (center) and the Black Alliance or Peace (BAP) at No to NATO protest on March 30, 2019, in Washington, DC. On left Paul Pumphrey of the Maryland Green Party and Freinds of the Congo, to the right of, Ajamu Baraka, YahNé Ndgo formerly of the Pennsylvania Greens currently a traveling Green and Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture of the Pennsylvania Greens active in BAP and the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign Campaign.

Ajamu Baraka, the former Green Party vice presidential candidate who is the national organizer of Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), was also involved in organizing the week of events. BAP had a large presence at the events and on the evening of April 4 held a commemoration of BAPs founding two years ago. Baraka emphasized that the working class, black and white, should not be risking their lives to defend western capitalism. Baraka called for an end to US imperialism around the world with a special emphasis on Venezuela, which is now being threatened by the United States that is conducting an economic war against it.

The 2012 vice presidential nominee also participated in the events. Cheri Honkala (pictured in the featured image holding the banner) leads the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). She decried the mass spending on militarism when there are many unmet human needs including poverty, homelessness, and economic insecurity. At the NATO protests, PPEHRC announced the Poor People’s Army that will advocate for a shift in spending from weapons and war to housing, healthcare, ending poverty and free education from pre-K through college.

These views were consistent with those expressed by Howie Hawkins, who just announced an exploratory committee for the Green presidential nomination. He scheduled his announcement so he could be in Washington, DC to be part of the NATO protests. Hawkins joined in calling for the end of NATO and at least a 50% cut in federal spending on the military. At a rally at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Hawkins called for an Economic Bill of Rights that would confront the triple evils identified by King — racism, militarism, and capitalism — in the context of an ecosocialist Green New Deal. Hawkins was the first person to run a campaign calling for a Green New Deal when he ran for governor of New York in 2010.

Video by Tony Ndege of the North Carolina Green Party and a co-chair of the Green Party of the United States.

Pat Elder, a Green from Maryland who ran against Steny Hoyer in 2018 and a leader  with World Beyond War, helped to organize a Peace Festival on April 3 and the protests at the State Department and Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on the 4th. Pat’s work with Civilian Exposure focuses on how the military poisons the environment. He described how NATO poisons the Earth by using chemicals at military bases that cause genetic mutations.

Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese along with Jan Weinberg take the street outside the State Department by sitting-in when ordered to move by the police. On the right is Tighe Barry of the Statehood-Green Party, on the left is Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK who is Green-friendly. Also photographed Ariel Gold of CODE PINK.

Popular Resistance, which I co-direct with Margaret Flowers, MD, also helped to organize the week of events through the newly organized Peace Congress, which formed out of the successful campaign to stop the Trump military parade. The Peace Congress worked for unity around the NATO protests to ensure the multiple peace groups involved in the planning worked together to form a cohesive peace force against NATO.

Flowers, a 2016 Green Party US Senate candidate and co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, said, “We need a strong unified peace movement at this time of never-ending war and record-setting military budgets. The United States is a fading empire that continues to cause chaos and destruction around the world. It is time for the transformation of US foreign policy from war and domination to diplomacy and cooperation with other countries.”

Tom Violett and Diane Moxley, Greens from New Jersey along with independent Jan Weinberg were also at the week of actions. They are all members of the Peace Congress and are organizing a New Jersey Peace Congress meeting this June.

The Green Party has long been an anti-militarist party whose platform calls for peace and disarmament. This includes the abolishment of nuclear and chemical weapons, a no-first-strike policy and a major reduction in military spending as well as a prohibition on arms sales to foreign governments. Peace is one of the four pillars on which the Green Party is built.

Greens who were involved in organizing the ‘No To NATO’ protests are one example of many that demonstrate that Greens are leading organizers of political movements for economic, racial and environmental justice as well as peace. Greens who run for office bring those views into elections and impact the priorities of the nation. The Green Party strives to be the political party of the popular movement for transformational change.

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This article was originally published on Independent Political Report.

Kevin Zeese co-directs Popular Resistance and is on the coordinating council for the Maryland Green Party.

It’s unclear at this confusing moment whether the reports about serious “deep state” divisions in Sudan are real or not, but even in the event that they’re just an infowar component of the ever-escalating Hybrid War being waged on the country, they nevertheless spell bad news for President Bashir.

The Northeast African state of Sudan has been mired in Hybrid War unrest over the past couple of months since economic protests quickly became political and saw thousands of demonstrators demand the end of President Bashir’s decades-long rule. The embattled leader sent signals last month that he’s considering a “deep state”-led “phased leadership transition” after imposing a state of emergency and then stepping down as head of the ruling party, though he importantly stopped short of resigning from the presidency, initially suggesting that it might still take time for the “African Spring” of non-electoral regime changes to succeed in his country.

It now appears as though events are accelerating, however, after reports at the beginning of this week that the army intervened to stop the riot police from breaking up a rowdy protest, something that the Sudanese Defense Minister immediately denied when he went on air to state that the security services won’t permit attempts to divide them. Whether these reports are real or just an infowar component of the ever-escalating Hybrid War being waged on the country, they nevertheless spell bad news for President Bashir because they show that a serious effort is underway to split his “deep state” at this pivotal moment of what seems to be his country’s “phased leadership transition”.

It should also be added that Sudan has started to experience Venezuelan-like total energy blackouts which could either be the result of dilapidated infrastructure or foul play. Whatever the real reason may be, it can be expected that certain forces have an interest in pinning the blame on the government, implying that decades’ worth of oil revenue from now-independent South Sudan had been pilfered instead of being spent on modernizing the electricity grid, a narrative that’s also being spun in Venezuela as well in order to delegitimize Maduro and his allied “deep state”.

In fact, while Venezuela appears to have set a precedent for Sudan thus far in many ways, it might be what happens in Sudan next that influences the course of the events in Venezuela. It’s no secret that the US and its Latin American allies are trying to drive a wedge between Maduro and the military wing of the “deep state”, ergo one of the reasons behind the sanctions regime imposed against them both in order to deprive the state of the revenue needed to continue subsidizing its monopoly on force. If the US succeeds in creating a serious split in the Venezuelan “deep state” like it’s seemingly done in Sudan, then the South American nation might rapidly experience its long-planned regime change.

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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.

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Lying, which has always been done by human beings, was made legal in all free market political economies in 1892 when an English Court of Appeal validated Puffery. It consists of exaggerated and even false claims mainly about products or services.

In political contexts, any subject can be puffed. People often say, “all politicians are liars.” Yet many are bewildered by the current chaotic state of American politics. The President is a prolific and inveterate liar, yet his supporters believe him even when the falseness of his claims is evident. Conventional wisdom, however, seems to hold that normal people reject propositions that evidence shows are untrue, so those who accept known falsehoods are thought to be brainwashed, ignorant, and even stupid. Yet no one seems to notice how much that is false or unknown to be true plays in people’s lives. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, people do not easily relinquish their beliefs.

Consider the vast role religious beliefs play in people’s lives. Even the only nominally religious, who rarely practice what they preach, seldom abandon their beliefs when chided for hypocrisy. Of course, religious dogma is never known to be true, but religious people accept it as though it were. The actual status of the belief is irrelevant. Although the United States has no state religion, its officials routinely ask an unnamed and unidentified God to bless it, and when nothing happens, no one seems to care. The world of religious belief is unrelated to secular reality.

Aspects of religious belief can be used to explain what people find bewildering. A person who continues to believe something after it has been shown to be false is nevertheless convinced of its truth. That conviction must have some foundation. For the religious, the source is scripture which conveys the infallible word of God. Belief in scriptural maxims, even when experience shows them to be false, cannot be questioned. The conviction of a true believer is so absolute that it cannot be abandoned. Regardless of what the religious person sees with his own eyes, he believes the religious maxims which have been revealed in scripture.

When scripture is mentioned, most people think of the Bible or the Koran, but scripture takes numerous forms. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations functions as scripture; so does Karl Marx’s Das Kapital because many consider the contents fundamentally true, beyond question. Capitalism and Communism are both ideologies and the books are their Bibles. But the free market economy of Adam Smith in two centuries has not demonstrated its effectiveness in providing for the welfare of people in general. Nevertheless economists believe in it without serious objection and ignore criticisms of it. Beliefs which cannot be dismissed even when shown to be dubious ideologies. Religions are ideologies; so are economic theories.

The unquestionable conviction of true believers is the only thing that explains the hypocritical reality of believing what has been shown to be false. These ideologies are the creeds men live by. In this sense, all people are true believers. Believing is woven into the fabric of our DNA.

Even scientific and technological activities are founded on faith in an ideology. Scientists believe that the scientific method will yield knowledge that is beneficial to mankind. The belief is rarely questioned, but no evidence supports that view. That scientific knowledge is beneficent is just another belief. Science has brought humanity environmental pollution, global warming, and atomic bombs. What comparable benefits has it produced? The belief in science is no more certain than the belief in a second coming. The ultimate benefits of scientific knowledge are not obvious; yet people are rarely made aware of that, because the value of the ideology cannot be questioned.

Human beings are credal; they are not rational. Beliefs rather than knowledge guides their lives. Except for the processes of alimentation, excretion, and reproduction, every other activity is governed by one or more ideologies. People are regularly told to “stand up for their beliefs.” No one is ever told to “stand up for knowledge.”

Groups adopt ideologies. When two incompatible ideologies clash, resolution is unlikely; violence is. Faith in beliefs is not a reliable guide to living. Today the Earth’s population seems to be comprised of numerous incompatible ideological groups. As long as faith, belief, and opinion are strong influences on behavior, most people will continue to endure deplorable human conditions. Humanity’s only salvation is a revival of morality based on a simple maxim that all can understand. Something like the Hippocratic Oath. Do no harm to anyone! Otherwise, humanity’s future is grim.

But the bewilderment mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay can easily be dissolved. In a democracy, when people vote, they generally believe they are voting for a person. They are not! People vote for an ideology, and nothing the candidate says that is not directly related to it has any relevance. It’s just puffery.

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John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Libya has been in a state of the constant chaos since the NATO intervention in 2011. After the fall of the government of Muammar Gaddafi, the country fell into the hands of warrying armed factions, many of which were linked to radical Islamist groups. Al-Qaeda and then ISIS strengthened and expanded their presence in the country. The erupted humanitarian crisis has never been fully overcome. A high level of violence, crime and unsolved humanitarian issues turned Libya in one of the key hubs of arms, drugs and even trafficking. A large number of the refugees moving to Europe uses Libya as a transfer point.

NATO contributed very little efforts to change this situation, defeat terrorism and restore the order. One of the reasons is that the Western-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, is itself largely linked to radicals. Groups that declared their support to the GNA control a part of northwestern Libya. The only real anti-terror effort undertaken by pro-GNA forces and their foreign backers took place in 2016, when they moved to chuck ISIS out of the coastal city of Sirte. Despite this, ISIS cells kept a notable presence in the county. The GNA receives support from the US, various EU states, Qatar and Turkey.

The southwestern part of the country is controlled by local Tuareg and Tabu militias. Central, northeastern and southeastern Libya is in the hands of the Libyan National Army (LNA) and the allied to it House of Representatives based in the city of Torbuk.

Over the past few years, the LNA under the leadership of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar has consolidated control over a major part of the country, sometimes by forming pacts and alliances with local communities like in the south and sometimes by defeating radical militant groups by force. The LNA has also carried out a successful operation against militant and criminal groups in southern Libya. This effort was officially coordinated with the governments of Niger and Chad. Egypt, the UAE and France are often mentioned as the LNA backers. An interesting fact is that wilde media speculations about Russian mercenaries, Special Forces and, if we take into account the British mainstream media, even military bases allegedly deployed and created to support the LNA are barely linked with the reality on the ground. The real Kremlin involvement in the conflict has so far been mostly limited to diplomatic contacts with representatives of at least formally constructive local forces.

On April 4, Field Marshal Haftar officially announced a start of counter-terrorism operation in the area of Tripoli. In the following days, the LNA has made a series of advances capturing large areas south of the city, including Tripoli International Airport, and reached the vicinity of the city. According to local sources, over 40 people were killed or injured in clashes between the LNA and pro-GNA forces. The sides even employed their existing air forces in order to deliver strikes each against other.

However, a coalition of pro-GNA forces, which includes the al-Nuasi Brigade, the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade, the Special Deterrence Force, the al-Mahjub Brigade, the 33rd Infantry Brigade, the Abu Obeida al-Zawia Forces, the al-Halbus Brigade and the Usama al-Juwayli Forces, appeared to be able showing some resistance to the LNA only when Haftar-led forces reached the city’s vicinity.

On April 7, the U.S. Army Africa Command (AFRICOM) announced that it had evacuated its troops from the Libyan capital “in response to the evolving security situation” there. This means that Washington expects clashes in the city itself.

The LNA claims that its move to capture Tripoli is not a part of political struggle, but an operation against terrorists who are hiding there. Nonetheless, it’s clear that the LNA advance is another move made in the framework of the previous LNA attempts to put an end to the division of the country into feods controlled by local warlords and to consolidate the governmental power, including the right of use of force, in one hands. In the event of success, it will allow to restore a kind of order in the major part of he country and to crack down on local militant and criminal armed groups that operate freely in the existing power vacuum.

On the other hand, the LNA advance faced a wide criticism on the international level. Foreign powers use the collapse of Libya to exploit its territory and energy resources in own favor are opposing the LNA actions under the banner of the need to defend democracy and prevent humanitarian crisis.

In the event of their success the humanitarian and security situation in Libya will likely continue to deteriorate creating a room for the further expansion of radical groups, first of all ISIS and al-Qaeda, in and contributing to the continuing flow of migrants to Europe.

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In a recent interview in the Polish media, retired General Waldemar Skrzypczak spoke of the possibility of NATO launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Russian Federation. His remarks not only serve to remind of the danger of a thermonuclear war between the world’s nuclear powers in the new era ‘Cold War’ -an issue which is disturbingly underplayed in the public discourse on global security- they should also serve to concentrate the minds of the Polish people on the question of the survival of their nation in the event of a nuclear armageddon.

Wlademar Skrzypczak’s comments recorded by the media conglomerate Wirtualna Polska speak of the hardline, anti-Russian attitude of many influential establishment figures in former Eastern Bloc nations who have welcomed NATO’s eastward expansion towards Russia’s borders, as well as the deployment of innovative weaponry such as missile shields.

But the idea of a nuclear ‘First Strike’ has perilous implications for Poland.

It was always understood at the time of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War that Poland would be wiped off the map in the event of a nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The same can be argued today if a war of similar magnitude developed between NATO and the Russian Federation.

Skrzypczak’s thinking is reminiscent of the dangerous expositions of Herman Kahn who believed in a “First Strike” doctrine and a winnable nuclear war. Yet, if he is truly serious about this, he may have to bear in mind the ‘Demographic Precaution Plan’ suggested by Tadeusz Tuczapski, a senior Polish general during the Cold War. The plan provided that Poland could only be preserved by building a special bunker housing a hundred men and two hundred women who would form the germ of a reconstituted Polish nation after a nuclear holocaust.

Tuczapski, who like many of his counterparts was alarmed at the prospect of Poland having to bear the brunt of a nuclear attack, outlined his theory to Polish leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski at a training briefing in the General Staff:

I stood up and told Jaruzelski, “General, more should be given to Civil Defence so that a good, solid bunker could be built, lock up in that bunker a hundred Polish men, some sort of real good fuckers and two hundred women so that we can rebuild the Polish nation. Give some money for that.”

Jaruzelski was apparently offended either by what he perceived as Tuczapski’s flipancy or the tastefulness of his remarks. Perhaps both. But Tuczapski felt that he was being a realist. Many senior Polish generals were worried that Poland would not survive even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons in a conflict which was often envisaged would start off with conventional battles that were certain to inflict great damage on Poland’s civil and military infrastructure.

Whatever the shortcomings may be of her internal administration, the narrative of Russian aggression does not stand up to objective scrutiny. Indeed, what may be termed as ‘aggression’ has come from the West: NATO’s eastward expansion in breach of agreements reached between the leaders of America and the Soviet Union as a condition of the reunification of Germany, the abrogation by the United States of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces regime, and the deployment of a missile shield system.

Conflicts involving the Russian armed forces near and at a distance from its borders can be persuasively argued to have been reactive rather than proactive in nature: the response to Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the absorption of Crimea in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev which threatened Russia’s security interests in the Black Sea, and the NATO-supported infiltration into Syria by Islamist militias which mirrored covert US support for Chechen Jihadists.

Remarks of the sort made by Skrzypczak were rare during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War because leaders on both sides were careful to seek to diffuse tensions and not intensify them. It is time for the leaders of Poland, the Baltic nations and others to begin speaking in terms of dialogue and diplomacy; not war. Otherwise the Polish nation must begin seriously considering the Tuczapsk Demographic Plan.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. 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

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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   

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West Finds New Anti-China Puppet in Wake of Thai Elections

By Tony Cartalucci, April 08, 2019

With a population of 70 million people, the 2nd largest economy in Southeast Asia, and transforming into a key regional partner for Beijing and its One Belt, One Road initiative, the US and its partners sought to propel opposition parties into power during recent elections held in March.

The US’ Plans to Designate the Iran Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as “Terrorists” Aren’t Just for Show

By Andrew Korybko, April 08, 2019

The US plans to use this possibly impending designation as the basis upon which to “justify” forthcoming Hybrid War measures against the Islamic Republic aimed at dismantling its “deep state” network in the Mideast, including through possible strikes against the IRGC and its Hezbollah allies in Syria.

Let the People See: Emmett Till, and Why They Don’t See

By Prof Susan Babbitt, April 08, 2019

Till, 14, was abducted, beaten and shot in August 1955, his body sunk in the Tallahatchie River. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open casket because she wanted to “let the people see what they did to my boy”.  It was the “first great media event of the Civil Rights movement”.

Mexico to Spain and Vatican: Apologize for Your Crimes!

By Andre Vltchek, April 08, 2019

So did, recently, a left-leaning President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who wrote a letter to King of Spain, Felipe VI, and to Pope Francis, demanding apology for the ‘abuses that were committed during the conquest of Mexico.’

Venezuela Under Siege

By Hugo Turner, April 08, 2019

America’s war on the world continues to escalate. The arrogance of mad emperor Trump and his minions seemingly knows no bounds. The cowardice and insanity of the “resistance” is revealed yet again in their support for Trump’s plot to destroy Venezuela.

Trump’s Neocons See Erdogan as Their Ticket to a Region-Wide Middle East War

By Mike Whitney, April 08, 2019

Turkish troops and armored units are massed along Turkey’s southern border awaiting orders to invade northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to clear a ten mile-deep swath of land east of the Euphrates River in order to remove terrorist-linked militants (YPG) currently occupying the territory.

This Israeli Election Is Between the Right Wing and the Even More Right Wing

By Jonathan Cook, April 08, 2019

Israel’s election campaign, now in its last days, must be the first in which a sitting Israeli prime minister has sought to win over voters by boasting about how much he insulted a president of the United States.

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This article was originally published on January 18, 2018.

Last November, an American military inspection team visited the Azov Battalion on the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war to discuss logistics and deepening cooperation. Images of the encounter showed American army officers poring over maps with their Ukrainian counterparts, palling around and ignoring the Nazi-inspired Wolfangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves.

Azov is a militia that has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and is considered one of the most effective units in the field against pro-Russian separatists. But it also widely known as a bastion of neo-Nazism within the ranks of the Ukrainian military that has been criticized by international human rights groups, tied to an international fascist network and even a major terror plot.

According to Lower Class Magazine, a leftist German publication, Azov maintains a semi-underground outfit called the “Misanthropic Division” that recruits heavily among the ranks of neo-Nazi youth in France, Germany and Scandinavia. Foreign fighters are promised training with heavy weapons, including tanks, at Ukrainian camps filled with fascist fellow travelers. They even include military veterans like Mikael Skillit, a Swedish former army sniper turned neo-Nazi volunteer for Azov.

“After World War Two, the victors wrote their history,” Skillit told the BBC. “They decided that it’s always a bad thing to say I am white and I am proud.”

Foreign Azov volunteers are driven by the call of the “Reconquista,” or the mission to place eastern European nations under the control of a white supremacist dictatorship modeled after the Nazi Reichskommissariat dictatorship that ruled Ukraine during World War II. The mission is promoted effusively by Azov’s chief ideologue, Andriy Biletsky, a veteran fascist organizer who leads the Social National Assembly in Ukraine’s parliament. Biletsky’s assembly has pledged to outlaw interracial contacts and vowed “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital.”

Perhaps the most notorious of the racist European youth drawn to the military training camps of Ukraine was a 25-year-old French farm worker named Gregoire Montaux. In June 2016, Moutaux was arrested on Ukraine’s border by the country’s SBU security services with a staggering arsenal of assault rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition and 125kg of TNT explosives. He had even managed to gain possession of two anti-tank grenade launchers.

Driven by hardcore neo-Nazi ideology, Moutaux planned to blow up a “a Muslim mosque, a Jewish synagogue, tax collection organizations, police patrol units,” and attack the Euro 2016 soccer championship. According to the SBU, the would-be terrorist had been in communication “with military units fighting in Donbas” — the eastern Ukrainian area where Azov maintains its training camps.

While mobilizing racist youth across Europe, Azov leadership has also managed to foster a warm relationship with the American military. In one photo posted to Azov’s website last November, an American military officer can be seen shaking hands with an Azov officer whose uniform was emblazoned with the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel patch that serves as the militia’s symbol. The images highlighted a burgeoning relationship that has been largely conducted in secret, but whose disturbing details are slowly emerging.

Though Washington has not embarked on anything in Ukraine like the billion dollar train-and-equip program it implemented in Syria to promote regime change through a proxy force of so-called “moderate rebels,” there are clear and disturbing similarities between the two projects. Just as heavy weapons ostensibly intended for the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army went straight into the hands of Salafi-jihadi insurgent forces, including ISIS, American weapons in Ukraine are flowing directly to the extremists of Azov. And once again, in its single minded determination to turn up the heat on Russia, Washington seems willing to ignore the unsettling political orientations of its front line proxies.

In recent months, a wide spectrum of observers of the Ukrainian civil war have documented the transfer of heavy weapons made in the USA to the Azov Battalion, and right under the nose of the US State Department.

Made in Texas, tested by Azov

The story of how American arms began flowing towards the Nazi-inspired militia began in October 2016, when the Texas-based AirTronic company announced a contract to deliver $5.5 million dollars worth of PSRL-1 rocket propelled grenade launchers to “an Allied European military customer.” In June 2017, photos turned up on Azov’s website showing its fighters testing PSRL-1 grenade launchers in the field. The images raised questions about whether Ukraine was AirTronic’s unnamed “customer.”

Two months later, the pro-Russian military analysis site Southfront published a leaked contract indicating that 100 PSRL-1 Launchers worth $554,575 — about 1/10th of the total deal — had been produced in partnership with a Ukrainian arms company for distribution to the country’s fighting units.

In an interview last December with the US-backed Voice of America, AirTronic Chief Operating Officer Richard Vandiver emphasized that the sale of grenade launchers was authorized through “very close coordination with the U.S. Embassy, with the U.S. State Department, with the U.S. Pentagon and with the Ukrainian government.”

Finally, this January, the transfer of the lethal weapons to Azov was confirmed by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL). Aric Toler, a DFRL researcher, asserted that

“the US Embassy did absolutely help facilitate this transfer, and I’m not sure if they were aware that Azov would be the first to train with them.”

As NATO’s de facto lobbyist in Washington, and one of the most fervent advocates in Washington for arming the Ukrainian military, the Atlantic Council was an extremely unlikely source for such a disclosure. While the think tank’s motives for exposing Azov’s use of American arms remains unclear, its researchers wound up highlighting a truly scandalous episode of semi-covert American support for neo-Nazis.

A day after the Atlantic Council reported on Azov’s acquisition of American arms, the Ukrainian National Guard insisted in an official statement that the grenade launchers were no longer in Azov’s possession. Meanwhile, the heightened scrutiny prompted Azov to delete all photos of its soldiers testing the weapons.

When the House of Representatives passed its Defense Appropriations act last September, it included a provision ensuring that “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” But the provision has yet to be authorized. Back in 2015, pressure from the Pentagon prompted Congress to strip out a similar restriction, and questions remain about whether it will ever be enforced.

In the meantime, Azov officers like Sgt. Ivan Kharkiv have revealed to American reporters that “U.S. trainers and U.S. volunteers” have been working closely with his battalion. And as the photographs posted in November on Azov’s website indicated, US officers have met with Azov commanders two months to provide them with  “training, or other assistance” that is explicitly forbidden by the congressional provision.

“Your struggle is our struggle”

The American government’s collaboration with committed Nazi ideologues to undercut Russian geopolitical goals is not new, nor has it been a particularly well-kept secret. In his 1988 book length expose, “Blowback,” investigative journalist Christopher Simpson lifted the cover off the CIA’s program of rehabilitating former assets of Nazi Germany, including documented war criminals, and revealed how it employed them counter the spread of communism in Europe.

According to Simpson, the CIA recruited Mykola Lebed, a Gestapo-trained leader of the Ukrainian OUN militia who oversaw the torture and slaughter of Jews in Krakow, to help bolster West Germany’s intelligence services in 1947. Two years later, the CIA smuggled Lebed into the US under a false name. He was promptly hired by the Pentagon and dispatched on widely promoted speaking tours that rallied support for Ukrainian guerillas. For the next several decades, Lebed advanced the anti-communist cause through the Prolog Research Corporation, a New York City-based publishing house that was eventually revealed as a CIA front.

In his 1991 book,

“Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, journalist Russ Bellant provided a new layer of disturbing detail to the history of US collaboration with former Ukrainian Nazis. Bellant documented how the Ukrainian OUN-B militia reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of “complete OUN-B fronts.”

The Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky, serving as ambassador to the Bahamas, and his daughter, Paula, sitting on the National Security Council. Reagan even welcomed Jaroslav Stetsko, a Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.

“Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. “Your dream is our dream.”

The “imaginary Nazis” come to life

The relationship came full circle after the corrupt but democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in the 2014 coup known as Euro-Maidan. From the ranks of the neo-fascist street toughs that waged a pitched battle against national riot police in Kiev’s Maidan Square, the Azov Battalion was formed to do battle with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east. The militia’s commander, Andriy Biletsky, had earned his stripes as a leader of the fascist group, Patriot of Ukraine. And he made no secret of his Nazism, proclaiming that his mission was to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival… against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

At the time, supporters of the NATO-inspired coup painted any and all reports of the presence of neo-Nazis in post-Maidan Ukraine as Kremlin propaganda. Jamie Kirchick, a neoconservative operative, made the most obtuse attempt at spinning the fascist surge in Ukraine, erasing militias like Azov as “Putin’s Imaginary Nazis.” Liberal historian Timothy Snyder also dismissed the problem of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, defending the Maidan putsch as “a classic popular revolution.”

But it was not long before the wave of Nazi nostalgia and anti-Semitism sweeping across the country became impossible to deny. In Ukraine’s parliament, the veteran fascist Social-National Party founder Andriy Parubiy has risen to the role of Speaker. Vadym Troyan, a leader of Biletsky’s neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine organization who served as a deputy commander of Azov, was appointed police chief of the province of Kiev.

Massive torchlit rallies pour out into the streets of Kiev on regular occasions, showcasing columns of Azov members marching beneath the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel banner that serves as the militia’s symbol. Author and columnist Lev Golinkin noted that the neo-Nazis who violently paraded through Charlottesville, Virginia last year bore flags emblazoned with the another symbol displayed by Azov: the Sonnengrad, or Nazi SS-inspired black sun.

Across Ukraine, Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera have been celebrated with memorials and rallies proclaiming them as national heroes. Bandera was the commander of the wartime militia the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), which fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Despite his OUN-B militia’s role in the massacre of Jews and ethnic Poles during the war, including a pogrom that left 7,000 Jews dead in Lviv, a major boulevard in Kiev has been named for Bandera. In today’s Ukraine, even mainstream nationalists revere Bandera as a freedom fighter.

Last May, Azov supporters held a torchlit rally in Lviv, in honor of General Roman Shukhevych, the late commander of the UPA insurgent militia that helped massacre thousands of Jews in Lviv. (Ironically, the massacre has been documented in detail by Timothy Snyder, the historian-turned-apologist for Ukraine’s government).

Two months later — on the anniversary of the pogrom — the city of Lviv held “Shukhevychfest,” celebrating the blood stained general as a “successful musician, an athlete, a businessman.” During the festival, neo-Nazis tossed a molotov cocktail into a local synagogue and vandalized the Jewish house of worship with graffiti reading, “Yids, remember July 1 [the date of the Lviv massacre].”

The explosion of pro-Nazi memorials across Ukraine has provoked harsh condemnation from the World Jewish Congress and prompted anti-Nazi activist Efraim Zuroff to openly lament that “Ukraine has more statues for killers of Jews than any other country.” But even as Ukraine’s Jewish community reels at the developments in horror, the US government has been mostly silent.

American reporters who visited Azov in the field have had a much harder time denying the uncomfortable reality of Nazi mobilization, however. When USA Today’s Oren Dorell toured an Azov training camp, he met a drill sergeant named Alex who “admitted he is a Nazi and said with a laugh that no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis.” The Azov soldier also told Dorell he “supports strong leadership for Ukraine, like Germany during World War II.”

“[Alex] vowed that when the war ends, his comrades will march on the capital, Kiev, to oust a government they consider corrupt,” Dorell reported.

Another Azov volunteer told the Guardian that Ukraine needs “a junta that will restrict civil rights for a while but help bring order and unite the country.”

While the hapless liberal-oligarchic government in Kiev struggles for legitimacy, the neo-Nazis of Azov yearn for the “Reconquista.” Until their dream is realized, however, the militia is likely to be bogged down in an intractable conflict with pro-Russian forces and hoping that an influx of American weapons can turn the tide.

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Featured image: Left: Members of the Azov Battalion offer a sig heil salute. Right: US military advisors meet with Azov commanders in the field in November, 2017.

“Here we go again in #Haiti. Another messy morning in #PAP where getting gas has become a matter of who you know because pumps are only delivering on a privilege basis. This station at Bois-Patate says it’s only giving diesel to intl organizations”. This tweet from Miami Herald’s Caribbean correspondent, Jacqueline Charles, on April 2, 2019, captures the mood of what Haitians face on a daily basis..  And not just for fuel.

In June 2017, President Jovenel Moise made a big promise: “I give myself between 18 and 24 months for Haiti to have (24-7) electricity’’, he said. Twenty-ninemonths later, most parts of Haiti are still facing daily blackouts. Some of them can last up to eight days.

What’s behind Haiti’s gas shortage and power blackout? Try $ 80 million in unpaid bills, the Miami Herald revealed on January 18^th. But the Haitian government has never explained the real cause of the recurring fuel shortages that, among other things are contributing to the blackouts. As for the newspaper article, unfortunately only few Haitians will understand it because most of them don’t read or understand English, if they can read at all.

Those who do understand had better not complain on Twitter. You might find yourself slapped with a summons to appear before the Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor to explain yourself. That is what happened to Maarten Boute when he let his frustrations out on Twitter in January during a month long fuel shortage. Boute is the Haiti Chairman and CEO of Digicel, a multinational telecom company and one of the government’s biggest tax payers.

A dreadful chaos

The specter of chaos has been hovering over Haiti for several decades. However, the country’s current situation has never been so difficult in the last 30 years.

“Even the coup period of ’91 doesn’t compare with this anarchy Paul Denis, a former Haiti justice minister said. “Fear lies in the heart all of all citizens. Armed groups impose their law in every corner of the country. Legitimate authorities have lost the monopoly of force for the benefit of bandits”[1], he asserts.

Even diplomats are not immune. On March 28^th, as he visited a program financed by his government, Chile’s ambassador to Haiti, Patricio Utreras Díaz, accompanied by his wife and a Chilean delegation, were attacked by five heavily armed men. Their visit to Boutin, a village in Croix-des-Bouquets on the west side of the capital, “was brutally interrupted around 11:30 am when 5 individuals armed with AK-47s attacked and opened fire on the procession of the Embassy of Chile (about 18 people) leaving many bullet impacts on their vehicles,“ reported Haiti Libre, an online publication. Although the Embassy’s security agents responded and managed to regain control, ‘’a Haitian volunteer from the NGO “América Solidaria,” Frantz Eliancin, died while the ambassador’s driver was shot in the wrist’’[2]. This attack on a diplomatic convoy was a first for Haiti and showed the degradation of criminal acts in the country.

Samuel Madistin, a lawyer who serves as Chairman of the Borad of the human rights group, Fondation Je Klere (FJKL) describes the current situation as ‘’unprecedented’’.

Like Denis, he too, says it is worse than in the early 90’s when the Organization of American States“and the international community started sending the first contingents of [UN peacekeepers] and stabilization mission to Haiti.”

“The state is totally absent and the citizens are left to fend for themselves, while neighborhoods around the capital are controlled and led by gang leaders. We are in an explosive situation that can lead to any disaster at any time,’’ he says.

Madistin and Denis’ warnings come as the latest U.N. peacekeeping mission prepares to come to a close.Can a volatile Haiti, which has seen over 200 demonstrations since December — including 10 days of violence in February — finally take responsibility for its own security?, Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald asks in her latest piece.

‘’It’s the duty of any state to ensure the security of its territory and the protection of its citizens,” Madistin responds. For the human rights lawyer, the international community has contributed to the security degradation of the country.

‘’It did not help us. On the contrary, it wasted millions of dollars for nothing by participating in a so-called stabilization of the country, which in fact, put Haiti in this total failure,” he says.  

Haiti National Police Director Michel-Ange Gédéon says he has confidence in the training of officers to take over once U.N. forces leave the island nation. Butseveral police officers have been killed these past months, including at least two were burned alive. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Gédéon concedes that‘’there are weaknesses, from the need for more vehicles and firepower to the lack of logistics capabilities.’’In addition, protecting human rights remains a serious issue. Not for Haitians but also for members of the US Congress.

Last month, 104 members of Congress sent a bipartisan letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing concerns that police used excessive force against protesters during the recent civil disturbances. That letter was triggered by the recent human rights allegations about extrajudicial killings in the community of La Saline in November 2018 and the Haitian government’s overall lack of accountability. Human rights groups in Haiti have reported that as many as 71 individuals were killed, while women and girls were raped and houses looted.[3]

A harsh political indifference

Haiti is just not in the throes of a political crisis, but an economic crisis as well. The Gourde, Haiti’s national currency, has been falling drastically for the past seven years. Under the administration of former President Michel martelly and his PHTK political party, this devaluation got even worse. Haiti’s current president, Moise, was hand-picked by Martelly to be his successor. He describes himself as a businessman, but has never held political office or worked in government prior to assuming the presidency in 2017.

For the past two years, “Moise has been widely criticized by politicians and citizens alike for failing to publicly respond to the demands of the people. He has also been vilified for his government’s lack of transparency and its ineffectiveness,” writes Sandra Lemaire of the Voice of America.[4]

Source: Twitter

Haiti’s Institute of Statistics and Informatics (IHSI) says the country’s unemployment rate is 45.6 percent. Others put it much higher. Either way, it’s safe to say that at least half of the Haitian population does not work and most jobs are in the informal sector.

It is also widely known that the PHTK party, which remains in power under Moise, has little use for qualified professionals who do not share their political views. The disregard for university graduatse could be seen in former president Martelly’s own words – a now famous tirade from his days on the presidential campaign. ‘’Plomas, plomas plomas, what’s the deal with these diplomas?’’. Martelly himself has no diploma. In the 2011 elections, he asked the Haitian people to reject Mirlande Manigat, a highly recognized intellectual and university professor, and to choose” between a 30-year old system’’ and the change he represented. Meanwhile, Martelly said he symbolized “honesty”.[5]

Questions about the characterization of his own character and tenure has been crystallized through what is believed to be the biggest embezzlement in the history of Haiti: the PetroCaribe fund. Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors has detailed cited disastrous management practices and the suspected diversion of nearly $2 billion (€1.7 billion) from the fund, which is part of an oil alliance Haiti has with Venezuela.

A report published by the auditors has added fuel to the PetroCaribe Challenge, a grassroots movement against widespread corruption in Haiti that began on social media and now has spread to all corners of Haiti. Indeed, Martelly represented so much honesty that Haiti today  is ranked 161 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Indifference. Disdain. This is how the current and past PHTK’s administrations treat the Haitian people. Haiti has become the land of their so-called, ‘’legal bandits;’’ A land to flee from by any means necessary.

This week, at least 15 Haitians died while in search of a better life when their boat capsized off the Turk and Caicos islands. Not a word or a tweet from Moise after the tragedy.

‘’In just over a month, a total of 43 compatriots have died at sea fleeing misery, aggravated by the failure of governance and the disastrous economic and financial record of the man of the banana’’, wrote the Nouvelliste, Haiti’s oldest daily newspaper, referring to the president. “Haitians die because your administration does not rule, President Moise’’, titled the day’s editorial.

Duval than went on to list all the missed opportunities and lack of sound economic policies. Then he concluded: “Haiti can no longer meet the minimum requirements of the international community to receive funds. Haiti cannot even meet the minimum requirements of its own law on public accounting.”[6]

Ironically, the same day Duval’s editorial ran, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince was announcing the first visit of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Haiti, Canada, and the Caribbean, Cindy Kierscht. Her mission? To “highlight how the United States and Haiti (can) work together toward a more safe, secure, and prosperous Haiti”. Haitians on Twitter thought it was a joke; an April Fools’ Day prank.  It was not.

Why support such a regime as PHTK? Why would the United States support a president as despised and incompetent as Jovenel Moise? How much more suffering will the Haitians have to endure for the international community to come to its senses? It is clear that the countrywill not survive three more years of this misery.

In the meantime, the UN Security Council met in New York on Wednesday, April 3, 2019 to discuss the end of the United Nations Mission for the Support of Justice in Haiti (MINUJUSTH). While the interventions of the other members of the Council only recounted the missteps of the current administration, the United States of America was practically the only country in this meeting to claim that everything is going well in Haiti.

‘’Nations like Haiti don’t ‘fail’ because of their people, but because they’ve been relentlessly exploited by the more ‘developed’ world,’ ’Amy Wilentz, an American journalist and writer, wrote three years ago in The Nation.

She made the following point: ‘’Haiti’s ongoing crisis is the product of global forces, and only huge, unlikely changes in international behaviors—especially on the part of the biggest, most abusive nations and organizations—will allow the Haitians themselves to turn things around”. When will the international community understand that?

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Nancy Roc is an independent Canadian journalist with over 30 years of experience. Originally from Haiti, she is specialized in political analysis and her work has been published in many Canadian newspapers, such as La Presse de Montreal, Le Devoir, Jobboom, Le Soleil or L’Actualité magazine; as well as on websites, such as, l’Observatoire des Ameriques, Gaiapresse.org and Alterpresse.org She has also collaborated numerous times as a political analyst with Radio Canada and CBC News Canada. Her other research topics’ specializations are the environment, climate change, violence against women, women’s empowering and autonomy.

Notes

[1] Loop Haïti: En 30 ans, Haïti n’a jamais eu une crise aussi aiguë, selon Paul Denis, March 15th, 2019.

[2] Haiti Libre, Haiti – FLASH: The procession of the Embassy of Chile attacked with weapon of war, January 28^th 2019.

[3] Jacqueline Charles, U.N. is set to end peacekeeping in Haiti. Can the country’s police force do the job?,Miami Herald. April 2, 2019.

[4] Sandra Lemaire, Haitian President to People: ‘I Hear You’, February 15^th, 2019.

[5] Haiti Libre – Haïti – Élections : Premier débat Manigat – Martelly, March 9th 2011.

[6] Frantz Duval, Des Haïtiens meurent parce que votre administration ne gouverne pas, président Moïse, Le Nouvelliste, April 1st, 2019.

Tomorrow, the Court of Appeal in London will hear an appeal brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) to overturn a 2017 High Court judgment which allows the UK Government to continue to export arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. In May 2018 CAAT was given permission to appeal against the original verdict. This followed a hearing in front of two Court of Appeal judges, Lord Justice Irwin and Lord Justice Flaux.

The case will be heard on 09, 10 and 11 April, with the first day and a half expected to be public. The hearings will begin at 10:30. A vigil will take place outside the Court at 09:30 on Tuesday 09 April (Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2A 2LL).

CAAT’s legal team is led by Martin Chamberlain QC, assisted by Conor McCarthy and lawyers from Leigh Day. They will argue that the decision to grant the licences was against UK arms export policy, which clearly states that the government must deny such licences if there is a ‘clear risk’ that the arms ‘might’ be used in ‘a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law’. The case will also include a joint intervention from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Rights Watch UK and one from Oxfam

As set out in the claim, a range of international organisations including a UN Panel of Experts, the European Parliament and many humanitarian NGOs, have condemned the ongoing Saudi air strikes against Yemen as unlawful. The violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) found by the bodies listed include:

• A failure to take all precautions in attack as required by IHL
• Attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects.
• A failure to adhere to the principle of distinction and/or the targeting of civilians and civilian objects and those not directly participating in hostilities.
• The destruction of Cultural Property and/or a failure to adhere to the immunity to be afforded to such property during armed conflict.

A recent report from Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni based human rights group, has linked UK-made bombs to attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including:

• £2.7 billion worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
• £1.9 billion worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

In reality the figures are likely to be a great deal higher, with most bombs and missiles being licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

UK-made weapons have played a central role in the four year Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen. The results have been catastrophic, with tens of thousands of people killed and vital infrastructure destroyed. We believe that these arms sales are immoral, and are confident that the Court of Appeal will agree that they are unlawful.

Rosa Curling of Leigh Day said:

There is strong global concern over the actions of Saudi-led forces in Yemen. The United Nations, the European Parliament, Select Committees and many NGOs have raised concerns about the clear violations of international humanitarian law taking place against the Yemeni people. Despite this, the UK government continues to grant licences to allow arms to be sold to Saudi Arabia. Our client firmly believes that these licences are being issued unlawfully and we look forward to putting forward their arguments in the Court of Appeal.

The claim which will be considered calls on the Department of International Trade to suspend all extant licences and stop issuing further arms export licences to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen while it holds a full review into the compatibility of the exports with UK and EU legislation.

If you are planning to write about the case, or to attend the Court of Appeal hearings, CAAT can provide background details and briefings on the UK’s political and military relationship with Saudi Arabia.

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Featured image is from Yemen Press

Saudi Arabia threatens to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar if Washington passes a bill exposing the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to U.S. antitrust lawsuits.

The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC), which was introduced by Democrat Senator Herb Kohl in 2000 and received backing from Donald Trump in 2011, has never been approved and has little chance of being passed.

This legislative proposal aims to allow OPEC oil companies to be sued under the U.S. antitrust law for their attempts to set international prices by limiting oil supplies, a practice which has been regularly applied as a way of stabilizing the global market.

The Saudi Arabian threat makes visible a growing discontent over the way the U.S. treats OPEC countries. According to Reuters, senior Saudi energy officials have been analyzing the ditching-dollar-oil-trades possibility for several months and would have already mentioned reported it to U.S. officials.

In the unlikely event that Saudi Arabia were to adopt this new policy, it would undermine the dollar status as an international reserve currency, which could weaken in turn the U.S. ability to enforce economic sanctions on nation states.

“The Saudis know they have the dollar as nuclear option” and if Washington and Trump “let the NOPEC pass … it would be the U.S. economy that would fall apart,” the source added in comments to Reuters.

#US imposed sanctions this Friday to vessels and companies engaged in oil shipments between #Cuba and #Venezuela, a lawful activity under commercial contracts. These measures are an act of extraterritoriality, interference and imperial arrogance. 🇨🇺🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/vAt7j3kftF

— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) April 6, 2019

Russia, China and some European countries have been calling for reducing the dollar’s influence in international trade. If this happens, the U.S. would lose a significant part of its ability to control both the world economy and its own growth.

Due to President Trump’s aggressive foreign policy, however, Russia, Venezuela and Iran, all of which are being placed under harsh U.s. economic sanctions have been selling their oil in Euros, Yuans or other traditional or virtual currencies.

Non-dollar oil contracts are concrete challenges to the U.S. hegemony at the oil market. If Saudi Arabia makes a move in that sense, it would also mean a heavy blow to the U.S. geopolitical strategies.

Saudi Arabia, which controls a 10th of global production, made oil deals for US$356 billion in 2018, which made it the world’s biggest oil exporter.

At a price of US$70 per barrel, the global oil output is estimated to be about US$2.5 trillion. At least 60 percent of this amount is now being traded in dollars.

In addition, oil futures and options trading reached a nominal value of US$5 trillion in 2018, as reported by Reuters.

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Featured image is from OilPrice.com

In a conference call with Wall Street firms in April of 2017, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg lauded the Federal Aviation Administration’s “streamlined” certification process for enabling the aircraft manufacturer to rush its new 737 Max model into service.

“That’s helping us more efficiently work through certification on some of our new model aircraft such as the Max as it’s going through flight test and entering into service,” Muilenburg told the financial analysts. “So we’re already seeing some benefits there of some of the work that’s being done with the FAA.”

Four months later, the first 737 Max 8 commercial jet was brought into service. Since then it has become the giant aircraft makers’ best-selling plane, accounting for 30 percent of its profits, which grew 24 percent in 2018 to $10.5 billion.

It is this aircraft that crashed in Indonesia in October of 2018 and on March 10 of this year in Ethiopia, killing all passengers and crew on board, a combined total of 346 people. In both cases, investigators have identified an automated system designed to counter the plane’s tendency to stall, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), as a key factor in the fatal crashes.

Muilenberg’s touting of the gutting of serious government oversight points to the systemic subordination of safety concerns to profit and market share and the transformation of regulatory agencies into rubber stamps for the major corporations.

CNN reported Muilenburg’s remarks on Thursday, the same day that the Ethiopian Transport Ministry released the results of its preliminary investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 just six minutes after takeoff from the airport in Addis Ababa. As in the Lion Air disaster just five months before, which crashed just 13 minutes after takeoff, the plane repeatedly pitched downward and the pilots were unable to regain control.

The Ethiopian report, based on information from the recovered flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, as well as communications between the pilots and air traffic controllers, contradicted attempts by Boeing and some media commentators to imply that pilot error, not design flaws or faulty equipment and software, was responsible for the disaster. It concluded that just a minute into the flight, one of two angle of attack sensors on the plane began emitting false readings, triggering the MCAS anti-stall mechanism and forcing down the nose of the aircraft.

Particularly damning for Boeing and the FAA was its finding that the pilots followed the emergency procedures provided by Boeing to counter such a development and manually stabilize the aircraft, but were unable to regain control of the plane. This shattered the claims made by both Boeing and the FAA after the Ethiopian crash that the steps provided to pilots to overcome such an emergency and manually fly the plane were simple and easy to carry out, and their suggestions that the Flight 302 pilots had failed to follow the prescribed emergency procedures.

The preliminary report issued by the Transport Ministry’s Accident Investigation Bureau explained that the pilots disengaged MCAS, but the plane continued repeatedly to pitch downward despite their efforts to manually raise the nose. It further concluded that the manual control in the cockpit designed to lift or lower the nose, called the manual trim, failed to work.

The Initial Findings state, in part:

• After the autopilot disengaged, the DFDR (digital flight data recorder) recorded an automatic aircraft nose down trim command four times without pilot’s input.

• The crew… confirmed that the manual trim operation was not working

It was at this point, some four minutes into the flight, and only then that the pilots reengaged MCAS, presumably in a desperate, last ditch attempt to save the plane. In the event, MCAS forced the nose down at a 40 degree angle, leading the plane to plunge to earth at an impact speed of 575 miles per hour.

The report’s Safety Recommendations unambiguously place the onus for the disaster on Boeing and US regulators and imply that a far more serious and thorough examination is needed than the software patch on which Boeing is working before there is any return to service by the 737 Max.

• Since repetitive un-commanded aircraft nose down conditions are noticed in this preliminary investigation, it is recommended that the aircraft flight control system related to flight controllability shall be reviewed by the manufacturer.

• Aviation authorities shall verify that the review of the aircraft flight control system related to flight controllability has been adequately addressed by the manufacturer before the release of the aircraft to operations.

This evaluation was underscored by Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges at a press conference in Thursday. She said, “The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft.”

Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the American Airlines pilots union and 737 pilot, was quoted Friday in the New York Times as saying:

“The captain was not able to recover the aircraft with the procedures he was trained on and told by Boeing.” Speaking of the MCAS system, he continued, “It was too aggressive. They left the pilot with no ability to gain control of the aircraft if it went to the full limit.”

Muilenburg, in a statement Thursday following the release of the Ethiopian report, acknowledged for the first time that faulty sensor data and MCAS played a role in the crash of Flight 302. However, the company and the FAA are planning only to add a software patch to MCAS that will prevent the system from being triggered by only one, instead of both sensors, and moderate the aggressiveness of its downward push of the nose.

However, virtually nothing is being said about the highly unusual design that allowed MCAS to be triggered by only one sensor in the first place. The standard design for systems that are critical to the safety of a commercial aircraft has always included some form of redundancy, so that the malfunction of a single sensor does not lead to disaster. Why the 737 Max was designed without such redundancy for the critical MCAS function, and why no change was made after the Indonesian crash last October, has not been explained.

Even as Muilenburg and Boeing reaffirmed the “fundamental safety” of the 737 Max, the company announced Thursday that it had discovered another problem requiring an additional software patch, further delaying the implementation of changes to the MCAS system. While a company spokesman called the new problem “relatively minor,” the Washington Post cited two officials “with knowledge of the investigation” as saying the new problem related to software affecting flight control hardware and was there classified as “critical to flight safety.”

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There was no official leak, but this must have been discussed when Presidents Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron met last week in Paris. After all, Macron has been posing as a staunch defender of the environment and the self-attributed MC of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

It’s certainly not being discussed as part of the current election campaigns in India. And, in Washington, the issue does not seem to even register.

The Hindu Kush Himalayan region extends for 3,500km across eight nations. It is the earth’s de facto Third Pole, considering the immense amount of ice it holds. The area is an absolutely critical water source for about 250 million mountain dwellers across Asia, as well as the staggering 1.65 billion people living in the river valleys below.

Now, a detailed report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the result of five years of research by over 350 analysts and policy experts from 22 nations and 185 organizations, has come to a stark conclusion.

Even if the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century is met – and everyone attuned to realpolitik knows that it won’t – that would cause the melting of nothing less than one-third of glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region.

Considering that the Paris Agreement goal won’t be realistically met, that translates into current emissions leading to no less than five degrees (5C) in warming and the melting of two-thirds of the Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers by 2100. Imagine that spectacular succession of glacier-covered peaks across the region being mostly reduced to bare rock in less than a century.

The full report is here.

Flooding, flooding everywhere

The hyper-complex Hindu Kush Himalayan system crisscrosses Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Glaciers in this region feed the Ganges, the Indus, the Yellow River, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy – among 10 major river systems. Directly and indirectly, these glaciers supply 1.65 billion people with clean air, food, energy – and jobs.

The path towards environmental disaster is eerily straightforward. Melting glaciers flow into rivers and lakes. Bursting lakes inevitably translate into more floods. And that means extra glacier runoff into major rivers, more flooding and inevitable destruction of crops.

Late last year in my travels in the Karakoram I saw quite a few receding glaciers. The photo above, of the Hopper glacier in Gilgit-Baltistan in northern Pakistan, gives an idea of what a receding glacier looks like, at very close range.

The ICIMOD report stresses how about one-third of the 250 million mountain people in the Hindu Kush Himalaya live on less than US$1.90 a day. More than 30% don’t have enough to eat, and around half may be “facing some form of malnutrition.” 

Compare that to the fact the hydropower potential of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region is immense – enough, according to the report, to power half a billion homes across the eight nations.

In northern Pakistan, I saw how scores of mini-hydropower plants have been set up, as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Still, more than 80% of the rural population across the eight HKH nations relies on firewood and dung. And around 400 million people, especially in India, still don’t have basic access to electricity.

Amazon forests also doomed?   

Meanwhile, the alarming prospects for the Hindu Kush Himalayan region are mirrored in the tropics by what lies in store for the Amazon rainforest.

The new administration of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro looks set to destroy every single political, legal and trade-system impediment to transform a great deal of the Amazon into Soyaland – to the delight of the powerful agribusiness lobby.

The land rights of indigenous Brazilian populations have already been severely limited. Deforestation, even during the presidential election campaign, from August to October 2018, shot up 50%. 

By late 2018, no less than 75% of China’s soyabeans were already being imported from Brazil – and that figure is rising. After all, Brazil has got what it takes: command of the necessary infrastructure, and an immense, “unexploited” land area. Beijing faced no problems whatsoever; the entire US shortfall, because of the US-China trade war, was instantly replaced by Brazil.

Predatory casino capitalism is about to coin a new motto: Had enough of Himalayan floods? Go plant soya in the Amazon.

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Featured image: The Hopper glacier in Gilgit-Baltistan in northern Pakistan. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, celebrated its 70th Anniversary on April 4, 2019. Some of us don’t see anything worth celebrating about an incredibly expensive, dangerous and harmful alliance which should have been closed down exactly 30 years ago.

Why 30 years ago? Because in 1989, the First Cold War in the Western sphere – Europe – between the Warsaw Pact and NATO came to an end thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

When that happened and the Berlin Wall came down, NATO too should have been dissolved.

Its raison d’etre until then had always and unambiguously been the very existence of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact (which, by the way, was established 6 years after NATO, in May 1955) and its socialist/communist ideology.

But NATO instead continued to expand – today 29 countries of which 10 former Warsaw Pact members – against all promises about the opposite given to the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev. And it has caused much harm even in peacetime.

Let’s look at some dimensions that will remain untold at this Anniversary.

How is NATO unlawful?

If – like this author – you believe that it is wrong and even unlawful for an organisation to ignore and violate its own treaty/statutes/laws, NATO is an unlawful alliance which systematically violates both its preamble and treaty provisions.

I’m pretty sure that most people – including those in politics and media – have never even glanced through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s treaty text. Since most people have also never read the United Nations Charter either, about 99% of humanity has no idea of how close the two legal documents are to each other at least when it comes to stated purposes.

Neither do they have a clue about NATO’s full commitment to adhere to the UN Charter provisions.And those provisions aim at abolishing war and make peace by peaceful means and only use – UN-organised – military means as a last resort (Chapter 7) when everything civilian has been tried and found to be in vain.

Are you surprised? Then read the NATO Treaty Preamble (my emphasis in bold):

“The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.

They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.”

Article 1:

“The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Article 5:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations…”

Self-explanatory and meaningful. But completely ignored.

Only self-defence, defensive weapons and postures

Imagine if NATO adhered to such principles in its day-to-day policies. Today it does the exact opposite and wraps it all in boringly predictable rhetoric and the three mantras to explain and legitimize whatever it does: Security, stability and peace – none of them having emerged yet in the real world, neither 1949-1989 nor since.

A new NATO that would thus go back to its original Treaty provisions and build its new policies on them, would be very acceptable to the world, seen as no threat to anybody.

It would be entirely defensive and only take action if one of its members were first attacked. That’s a basically defensive posture and in complete unity with moral principles and international law.

And it would adhere to the Kantian categorical imperative about world peace: Do only yourself what can be elevated to a general principle adhered to be all others in the system without endangering that system.

Defensive postures – self-defence – can be done by everyone without upsetting the system. Offensive “defence” is nonsense and simply can’t, it will lead to eternal armament and militarism.

That’s why the UN Charter’s Article 51 talk about self-defence.

Yes, for sure – and I say that without being a psychologist. It’s not really important to diagnose precisely. The problem is that what NATO does today is devoid of fact-based analyses of the world around it. It is based, instead, on internal dynamics which is the sum total of its member states’ MIMACs – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complexes.

Thus, NATO has only one answer to every problem it sees: More money and more weapons.

To legitimize its operations, it has to constantly develop/maintain enemy images, see one enemy here and see another enemy there and interpret the whole world as though it is “out to get us”.

With this sophisticated but deliberately deceptive “fear-ology” – i.e. making citizens pay without too much protest by considerable information and propaganda (fake and omission) operations that guarantee that people fear these constructed enemies – it continues ad absurdum while the world around it changes rapidly.

At every given moment and occasion: Make the enemy look gigantic and ourselves at least a little inferior and therefore in need of new weapons, doctrines, exercises, expansions and what not.

And what is the reality outside this – absurd – reality show?

Well, there are many indicators of military strength but if you want just one which allows for comparisons in fixed prices and over time, the best single measurement is military expenditures.

Based on this single indicator, NATO’s military strength is overwhelming if compared with the military expenditures of the one-country enemy, Russia.

Here are the figures:

US military expenditures as of today is between US 700 and 1100 billion depending on what is included. The lower is Pentagon-only, the higher includes home security, pensions, costs for veterans etc. Russia’s military expenditures were US 69 billion in 2016, 55 in 2017 and likely further reduced in 2018.

In crude terms and based on reliable research including SIPRI’s statistics, facts are that the US military expenditures alone is 13-20 times higher. Rule of thumb is that the US stands for about 70% of NATO’s total expenditures.

If you sit in Moscow you need to add the expenditures of the 28 other NATO member, some of which – like Germany, France, Italy and Britain – are among the highest in the world. And either own or hosts nuclear weapons close to your country.

And as if that wasn’t enough, NATO’s military expenditures is increasing. The US demands up to 2% of the member states’ GDP. NATO recently decided to further increase its military expenditures by US 100 billion. That is, believe it or not, almost twice the total Russian military expenditures.

To learn more and find out how much you are not told when you listen to NATO’s representatives and advocates arguing permanently for higher and higher contributions from all members. The relevant figures are here and here and here.

NATO’s Mausoleum 2018

What type of psychological illness?

So what to make of an alliance that for 30 years has been unable to define its post-Cold War mission, has violated international law and its own treaty time and again?

What to make of NATO’s militaristic elites who are vastly and increasingly superior their self-defined enemies in terms of expenditures and technological quality, but feel they must shout and scream constantly about all the existentially threatening enemies they see (Russia, Iraq, China, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, and who is next?) and must attempt to force even allies to line up behind policies that clearly violate international law such as the sanctions on Iran?

What to make of a US-managed NATO elite who constantly threatens others with war, place sanctions on them, seek to isolate them, speak bad about and demonise them, and accuse them of doing what they themselves do to a much larger extent?

What should we call it? Paranoid? Psychotic? Autistic? Insane? Should we say that NATO is losing the grip, thrives on invented images, live in a fantasy world filled with illusions and self-deception?

Or, should we just say that it suffers from dangerous ‘groupthink’ which excludes the possibility that NATO’s decision-makers are ever seeing or hearing counter-views and counter-facts and therefore increasingly believe that they are – exceptionally – chosen by God to lead the world and that they are always right and can’t be wrong?

I’m not sure what defines the illness better or that a precise diagnosis is necessary. But I am sure that NATO is unhealthy and dangerous.

Any group that keeps twisting reality to suit only its own inner structural needs, continues to interpret reality so as to maximize its own utility in it and for decades avoid reality checks and lessons learned is, by definition, a dangerous enterprise.

Over time, such an alliance – and its declining leader – are likely to become a victim of its own propaganda, mistaking it for the reality and the truth. Military secrets are well-protected from outside scrutiny. Even better protected, it seems, are the ways of thinking, the values and the manifest absence of self-criticism: “It’s ours to dominate and we have so much firepower that we don’t have to think!”

The whole structure and power ideology, the mission and the discrepancy between political conduct and its own treaty make NATO its own worst enemy. It will be the last to see that NATO now is the acronym of the North Atlantic Treaty Obsolescence.

“We have met the enemy and he is us” says Pogo. It applies beautifully to militarism that can never produce peace

But wait…

The problem, however, is that the ageing alliance sits on huge arsenals of nuclear weapons (not mentioned in its treaty). It builds on a nuclear doctrine that permits it to plan and, if necessary, conduct a nuclear war. It finds it right to be the first to use nuclear weapons and even against a conventional attack. And it is dominated by the US Empire and the US nuclear doctrine.

The problem, furthermore, is that when they gather, its leaders could feel emboldened by a megalomaniac illusion that they are omnipotent and should be rulers of the world.

When we observe what they decide on a day-by-day basis, I’d say that in reality, they are anti-intellectuals who lacks the basics of ethics. Worse, to possess so much destructive power, you must be utterly careful and humble. No sane person can possible perceive NATO and its dominant countries as humble.

NATOs constructive contribution to humanity’s future is infinitely small compared with its destructive impact, its confrontational attitude, its expansion and its members’ warfare, particularly in the Middle East.

We could actually live in a peaceful world if it wasn’t for NATO and its member states. But no other group of countries has conducted more warfare for so long, killed so many and destroyed so much as they have.

Nobody has had so many resources – including information and media influence – at their disposal to threaten millions of citizens into fearful submission. (We need a taxpayer revolt against military expenditures…)

Think of all the good that could have been done in the world for just a tiny fraction of what NATO and its member states have squandered over the years on their military and on warfare, death and destruction.

Where is the stability, security and peace that NATO has promised us over the last 70 years? If you have promised to achieve something for 70 years that has still not materialized, it doesn’t require a professor to judge that it is time to say ‘Goodbye’!

NATO’s 70th Anniversary self-celebration is tragic and should never have happened. Its new Alliance headquarters should be seen as a mausoleum over militarist folly and vanity.

Its members’ squandering of scarce resources in times of the West’s multi-crisis with not a single successful war to show while hatred against the West is on the rise everywhere, NATO is a major reason that the West is falling. In the process, it has of course to blame everybody else.

When NATO is gone, what could this be used for?

Only someone who has been fooled, brainwashed or paid well can believe that this alliance is for the common good of its own members and of humanity.

Scrap it as soon as possible or turn it into something constructive for us all!

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All images in this article are from The Transnational

“Vaccines are often administered before a diagnosis of combined immune deficiency is made. …live vaccines may produce chronic infections in patients with combined immune deficiency.” – Infectious Diseases Society of America (2013)

“It is now known that vaccine viruses can be serially transmitted through human hosts, and may revert genetically toward wild-type transmissibility and virulence.” — U.S. and European health officials (2008)

Vaccine Strain Live Viruses Can Infect Others

Just like people with viral infections can shed and transmit wild-type virus, 86 people given live virus vaccines can shed and transmit vaccine strain live attenuated virus. 87 Like wild-type virus, vaccine strain live virus can be shed in body fluids, such as saliva, 88 89 nasal and throat secretions, 90 breastmilk, 91 92 urine and blood, 93 94 stool, 95 and skin lesions. 96 Shedding after vaccination with live virus vaccines may continue for days, weeks or months, depending upon the vaccine and the health or other individual host factors of the vaccinated person.

Vaccinia Virus Shedding for Two to Three Weeks

After primary smallpox vaccination, vaccinia virus is shed for two to three weeks and can be transmitted to others through body secretions and especially through skin contact with the open vaccinia virus lesions at the site of the vaccination until the lesion scabs over and separates from the skin. The CDC states:

“After a person is vaccinated with vaccinia, the vaccination site contains infectious virus from the time of papule formation until the scab separates from the skin (a period of approximately 2–3 weeks). During this period, a risk exists for inadvertent inoculation to another body site or another person. The most frequently reported sites of vaccinia infections caused by unintentional transfer are the face, nose, mouth, lips, genitalia, anus, and eye.” 

In 1961, the Sabin live attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV) was licensed and soon U.S. public health officials recommended that all infants and children be given OPV instead of the inactivated, injectable Salk vaccine, which had been licensed in 1955 and widely used. OPV contains three vaccine strain polioviruses given orally by liquid drops in the mouth and public health officials adopted the Sabin live attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV) as the preferred polio vaccine because OPV not only vaccinated the recipient but also “passively” vaccinated those coming in close contact with a recently vaccinated child shedding vaccine strain live polioviruses in the stool, saliva and nasal secretions.”

Millions Infected with Polio Vaccine Strain Viruses

In 2008, U.S. and European health officials analyzed eight outbreaks of paralytic polio between 2000 and 2005 in Hispaniola, Indonesia, Egypt, Philippines, Madagascar (2), China and Cambodia that were caused by circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV). The officials admitted “it is now known that vaccine viruses can be serially transmitted through human hosts, and may revert genetically toward wild-type transmissibility and virulence.” — U.S. and European health officials

Acute Flaccid Paralysis Cases Increase Dramatically in India

Following two decades of repeated child vaccination campaigns using OPV (oral polio vaccine) in India, the World Health Organization in early 2014 pronounced India “free” of wild-type polio.

The controversial declaration comes at a time when India has been experiencing a huge increase in reported cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).

In 2004, 12,000 cases of non-polio paralysis were reported but that number had increased by 2012 to 53,563 cases for a national rate of 12 per 100,000 children.

Two pediatricians in India compiled data from the national polio surveillance project and discovered a link between the increase in OPV use among children during stepped-up polio eradication campaigns and the increasing cases of NPAFP among children.

In a 2012 article published in a medical ethics journal, the doctors stated, “Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received.” Because polio is among the more than 200 related viruses in the Picornaviridae family of enteroviruses, the doctors suggested that public health officials investigate “ the influence of strain shifts of enteropathogens induced by the [polio] vaccine given practically every month.”

Majority of Babies Shed Vaccine Strain Live Virus

In one study, MedImmune reported that after FluMist vaccination 89 percent of babies between six and 23 months of age shed vaccine strain live influenza virus and 20 percent of adults between 18 and 49 years old shed vaccine virus.

Vaccine-strain virus shedding reached a peak between two and three days after FluMist was inhaled and shedding was generally finished by day eleven.

MedImmune also measured transmission of live vaccine-strain live influenza virus between several hundred young children in a daycare setting: “A prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was performed in a daycare setting in children younger than 3 years of age to assess the transmission of vaccine viruses from a vaccinated individual to a non-vaccinated individual…

At least one vaccine strain was isolated from 80% of FluMist recipients; strains were recovered from 1-21 days post vaccination…One placebo subject had mild symptomatic Type B virus infection confirmed as a transmitted vaccine virus by a FluMist recipient in the same playgroup.”

A 2011 published study of children aged six to 59 months in a daycare setting found that most of the children given trivalent live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) shed more than one vaccine virus within 11 days of vaccination.

Warning for the Immuno-compromised

However, CDC warns that

“Persons who care for severely immunosuppressed persons who require a protective environment should not receive LAIV, or should avoid contact with such persons for 7 days after receipt, given the theoretical risk for transmission of the live attenuated vaccine virus.”

Majority of Vaccinated Infants Shed Vaccine Strain Rotavirus for A Week or Longer

In the 2013 RotaTeq product information insert, Merck reported that vaccine-strain rotavirus shedding was documented in the stool of 32 of 360 (8.9 percent) patients following one dose of RotaTeq and appeared as early as one day and as late as 15 days after vaccination.

The drug company acknowledged that “Transmission of vaccine virus strains from vaccinees to non-vaccinated contacts has been observed post-marketing.” 238 The CDC reported that

“Fecal shedding of rotavirus antigen was evaluated in all or a subset of infants from seven studies in various countries. After dose 1, rotavirus antigen shedding was detected by ELISA in 50% to 80% (depending on the study) of infants at approximately day 7 and 0 to 24% at approximately day 30. After dose 2, rotavirus antigen shedding was detected in 4% to 18% of infants at approximately day 7, and 0 to 1.2% at approximately day 30. The potential for transmission of vaccine virus to others was not assessed.”

Measles, Mumps, Rubella Viruses and Live Attenuated Measles, Mumps, Rubella Viruses

Measles virus is a paramyxovirus, genus Morbillivirus with a core of single-stranded RNA. It is rapidly inactivated by heat and light and has a short survival time (less than two hours) in the air or on objects. Measles is highly contagious and causes a systemic infection that begins in the nasopharynx.

The virus is shed through respiratory secretions (nasal discharge, coughing sneezing) for four days before symptoms appear until three to four days after rash onset, when it is most easily transmitted.

The incubation period from exposure to symptoms is 10-12 days and symptoms start with fever, cough, runny nose, conjunctivitis, white sports in the mouth and progresses to a rash that starts on the face and spreads to the rest of the body and lasts for about a week.

Complications include very high fever, diarrhea, otitis media, seizures, pneumonia, encephalitis (0.1% reported) and very rarely subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) and death.

Merck’s MMR Vaccine

The live attenuated combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine used in the U.S. is manufactured by Merck and contains the following warnings about vaccine strain measles virus infection and shedding:

• “Measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE), pneumonitis and death as a direct consequence of disseminated measles vaccine virus infection have been reported in immunocompromised individuals inadvertently vaccinated with measles-containing vaccine;” although Merck also states that “Children and young adults who are known to be infected with human immunodeficiency viruses and are not immunosuppressed may be vaccinated” and that “The ACIP has stated that “patients with leukemia in remission who have not received chemotherapy for at least 3 months may receive live virus vaccines.
• Short-term, low- to moderate-dose systemic corticosteroid therapy, topical steroid therapy (e.g. nasal, skin), long-term alternate-day 6 treatment with low to moderate doses of short-acting systemic steroid, and intra-articular, bursal, or tendon injection of corticosteroids are not immunosuppressive in their usual doses and do not contraindicate the administration of [measles, mumps, or rubella vaccine].”
• Excretion of small amounts of the live attenuated rubella virus from the nose or throat has occurred in the majority of susceptible individuals 7 to 28 days after vaccination. There is no confirmed evidence to indicate that such virus is transmitted to susceptible persons who are in contact with the vaccinated individuals. Consequently, transmission through close personal contact, while accepted as a theoretical possibility, is not regarded as a significant risk. However, transmission of the rubella vaccine virus to infants via breast milk has been documented.”
• “There are no reports of transmission of live attenuated measles or mumps viruses from vaccinees to susceptible contacts.”
• “It is not known whether measles or mumps vaccine virus is secreted in human milk. Recent studies have shown that lactating postpartum women immunized with live attenuated rubella vaccine may secrete the virus in breast milk and transmit it to breast-fed infants. In the infants with serological evidence of rubella infection, none exhibited severe disease; however, one exhibited mild clinical illness typical of acquired rubella.”
• “There have been reports of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) in children who did not have a history of infection with wild-type measles but did receive measles vaccine. Some of these cases may have resulted from unrecognized measles in the first year of life or possibly from the measles vaccination.”

Vaccine Strain Measles Reported

There have been published reports of vaccine strain measles with clinical symptoms that are indistinguishable from wild-type measles.

There are also a few reports of measles vaccine strain virus shedding and lab confirmed infection in children following MMR vaccination.

In 2002, there was a published report by researchers in France of “a child presenting with fever 8 days after vaccination with a measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Measles virus was isolated in a throat swab taken 4 days after fever onset. This virus was then further genetically characterized as a vaccine-type virus.”

In 2010, Eurosurveillance published a report about excretion of vaccine strain measles virus in urine and pharyngeal secretions of a Croatian child with vaccine-associated rash illness.

A healthy 14-month old child was given MMR vaccine and eight days later developed macular rash and fever. Lab testing of throat and urine samples between two and four weeks after vaccination tested positive for vaccine strain measles virus. Authors of the report pointed out that when children experience a fever and rash after MMR vaccination, only molecular lab testing can determine whether the symptoms are due to vaccine strain measles virus infection. They stated: “According to WHO guidelines for measles and rubella elimination, routine discrimination between aetiologies of febrile rash disease is done by virus detection.

However, in a patient recently MMR-vaccinated, only molecular techniques can differentiate between wild type measles or rubella infection or vaccine-associated disease.

This case report demonstrates that excretion of Schwartz measles virus occurs in vaccinees.” In 2012, a report was published describing a healthy 15-month old child in Canada, who developed irritability, fever, cough, conjunctivitis and rash within seven days of an MMR shot.

Source: author

Blood, urine and throat swab tests were positive for vaccine strain measles virus infection 12 days after vaccination. Addressing the potential for measles vaccine strain virus transmission to others, the authors stated,

“While the attenuated virus can be detected in clinical specimens following immunization, it is understood that administration of the MMR vaccine to immunocompetent individuals does not carry the risk of secondary transmission to susceptible hosts.”

Not Known How Long Vaccine Strain Measles Virus Infection and Shedding Lasts

In 2013, Eurosurveillance published a report of vaccine strain measles occurring weeks after MMR vaccination in Canada. Authors stated,

“We describe a case of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine-associated measles illness that was positive by both PCR and IgM, five weeks after administration of the MMR vaccine.”

The case involved a two-year-old child, who developed runny nose, fever, cough, macular rash and conjunctivitis after vaccination and tested positive for vaccine strain measles virus infection in throat swab and blood tests.

Canadian health officials authoring the report raised the question of whether there are unidentified cases of vaccine strain measles infections and the need to know more about how long measles vaccine strain shedding lasts.

They concluded that the case they reported ”likely represents the existence of additional, but unidentified, exceptions to the typical timeframe for measles vaccine virus shedding and illness.”

They added that “further investigation is needed on the upper limit of measles vaccine virus shedding based on increased sensitivity of the RT-PCR-based detection technologies and immunological factors associated with vaccine-associated measles illness and virus shedding.”

Vaccine manufacturers and the medical community caution susceptible individuals, including pregnant women, newborns, and those with a compromised immune system to avoid close contact with anyone who has been recently vaccinated with either live varicella zoster (chickenpox) or herpes zoster (shingles) vaccines.

Conclusion

Live vaccine virus shedding is a possible source of transmission of vaccine-strain viral infection but how frequently that occurs is unknown

There is no active surveillance of live virus vaccine shedding and most vaccine strain virus infections likely remain unidentified, untested and unreported.

The risks associated with exposure to someone vaccinated with one of the live attenuated vaccines can be greater or lesser, depending on the vaccine and the general health of an unvaccinated (or vaccinated) person.

Some passively acquired immunity to vaccine-strain viruses may occur with widespread use of live virus vaccines in populations but it is unknown how long that immunity lasts.

It is also not known how many vaccine strain infections, which occur in vaccinated persons or close contacts, lead to chronic health problems or even death.

The development of experimental genetically engineered live virus vaccines and virus vectored vaccines, especially those that are being “fast tracked,” have the potential to cause unknown negative effects on human health and the environment. There is a vacuum of knowledge about the potential of live attenuated and genetically engineered vaccine viruses to mutate and recombine with other viruses and create new viruses that will cause disease or affect the integrity of the human genome, human microbiome and healthy functioning of the immune and neurological systems.

The impact of vaccine-strain virus shedding infection and transmission on individual and public health is a question that deserves to be asked and more thoroughly examined by the scientific community.

The fact that children and adults given live virus vaccines have the potential to pose a health risk to both unvaccinated and vaccinated close contacts should be part of the public conversation about vaccination.

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On 6 April 1994, the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, their top military staff and six French crew members were assassinated when surface-to-air missiles shot down the Rwandan presidential jet on approach to Kigali airport. It is now well established that the assassination plot that decapitated the Hutu-led governments was executed by Rwanda’s now president and strongman-for-life, then Major General Paul Kagame, commander of the terrorist Tutsi-Hima army that invaded Rwanda from Uganda. 

Now, 25 years later, while Kagame and the Rwanda genocide industry commemorate the 25th anniversary of the so-called 100 days of genocide, U.S. taxpayers continue to pay millions of dollars for yet another bogus asylum show trial targeting another genocide survivor and fugitive from the terrorist Kagame regime.  Meanwhile, reporting on the trial in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston newspapers have not challenged the vested-interests of their quoted sources or the machinations of the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

The wreckage of the presidential Mystere Falcon airplane, shot down on approach to Kigali airport on 6 April 1994, at rest after air-to-surface missiles caused it to crash into the presidential compound.  Photo by Cranimer, New Vision newspaper, Kampala, Uganda.

Jean Leonard Teganya, 46, is a wanted man who has spent much of his adult life trying to start over and recover from the atrocities he survived in Rwanda.

Teganya was a medical student who volunteered at the hospital in Butare, Rwanda in the spring of 1994, treating the sick and wounded when no doctors or nurses were available (due to the large numbers of casualties).

Mr. Teganya was also a victim of the violence in 1994, rescued by fellow students after being attacked by an armed militia in Butare. He fled Butare around 20 June 1994, after killings intensified in the region in parallel with the arrival of the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

In June of 1994 Mr. Teganya fled Rwanda during the mass exodus of some 2 million Rwandans to neighboring countries. Mr. Teganya ended up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) at Nyakavogo, a (mostly) Hutu refugee camp that in September of 1996 was attacked by Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in violation of international humanitarian law.

A trial in a federal court in Boston commenced against Jean Leonard Teganya on 11 March 2019. Photographs of the scars of his wounds were shown to the Boston jury by the attorneys from the public defenders office that are representing him.

Witnesses for the prosecution, flown in from Rwanda for the trial in Boston, swore under oath that Mr. Teganya wore the hats, shirts and scarves of the ‘extremist Hutu’ parties. Prosecution witnesses described in great detail the insignia that was on Mr. Teganya’s hat: a machete and tool. He helped commit genocide, the U.S. prosecutors and immigration agents in Boston said, then tried to claim asylum.

“‘The defendant had a problem,’ Assistant US Attorney Scott L. Garland told a jury in US District Court in Boston during opening arguments in the trial against Teganya,’ reported the Boston Globe.  ‘His problem was that his application for asylum would be denied if the US found out what he had done in Rwanda, because persecutors cannot claim asylum.'”

More than two weeks of hearings later, witnesses for the defense described Mr. Teganya as an amicable, quiet man devoted to helping other people. They described an intelligent, sensitive and caring fellow student who did not participate in party politics. More than 15 witness stated under oath that Jean Leonard Teganya never wore the signature clothing of the more radical Hutu political parties.

Where and how were the Rwandan prosecution witnesses to Mr. Teganya’s alleged crimes identified and who identified them? These are some of the pivotal questions that an ICE agent on the witness stand at Mr. Teganya’s trial was unable or unwilling to answer with conviction.

Did the ICE agent commit perjury?

Hutu, Death Agents, Have Becomes Its Victims

As the cataclysm unfolded in Rwanda in 1994, the western media reported from behind the RPA lines. The RPA narrative became the mainstream establishment narrative (that remains the predominant one): Tutsis as victims, Hutus as killers.

When the United Nations High Commission for Refugees special rapporteur Robert Gersony reported on the RPA’s widespread killing of scores of thousands of Hutu inside Rwanda, the report was squashed: all Hutus were killers, all Tutsis were victims. Gersony went silent and stayed silent.

As a survivor of the mass atrocities and genocide that occurred in his home country of Rwanda during the civil war, Jean Leonard Teganya was one of millions of innocent non-combatant Rwandans uprooted and driven from his homeland.

Forced to flee at the age of 21, from one country to another, he was for all practical purposes a fugitive from injustice (at the hands of the RPA), forced to survive or perish under the constant nagging memory of the horrors that he witnessed and the threat of arrest and persecution by the current regime in Rwanda.

His real crimes? He is a Hutu. He is an intellectual. He is a survivor. He had a U.S. government issued work permit and (for over two years) he was working at a prestigious university.

Mr. Teganya persevered in finding a new home, building a new life, raising a family.

And the worst crime of all? Jean Leonard Teganya was on the path of gaining asylum in the United States of America.

When president Paul Kagame and his Directorate of Military Intelligence in Rwanda learned that Mr. Teganya was legally employed as a laboratory technician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge Massachusetts, and that Mr. Teganya was about to gain legal U.S. residency status through the formal immigration process, they set about manufacturing a case against him.

The RPA slaughtered hundreds of thousands of unarmed non-combatant Rwandans–mostly Hutu women, children and elders–and also uncountable Congolese citizens during the Rwandan and Ugandan invasion of Zaire in 1996 and 1997.

Read complete article here

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