Haiti is back in the news with popular revolts against political corruption. Ordinary Haitians are being frustrated every step of the way as they strive to enjoy a better quality of life as is their right.
The discovery of a huge US$20 billion gold reserve in Haiti is no panacea since gold mining has always been surrounded by intrigue, skullduggery, and, perhaps, international plunder and piracy.
Americans, Canadians, and politically well-connected present and past Haitian political leaders stand to reap vast profits from the apparent plundering of Haitian gold.
Haitian workers, meanwhile, are paid a measly US$6.25 a day for working in the muddy, gold-mining pits.
Political Background
The historical evolution of Haitian society has been one in which the ordinary people have been exploited, brutalised, and oppressed – starting from the turn of the 19th century up until 1990, with Haiti’s very long history of American political and military interventions, dictatorship, militarism, cronyism, and official corruption.
There was a period from 1957 to 1971 when Haiti was ruled by François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. Political opponents were suppressed by the infamous paramilitary group, the Ton-Ton Macoutes.
Following his death in 1971, Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier took power.
The political economic climate of these repressive regimes was aimed at maintaining “business-friendly environment”.
Popular revolt, like we are seeing in Haiti today, led to the collapse of the oppressive Duvalier rule.
Following this, in 1990, a progressive Catholic priest, President Jean Bertrand Aristide, was elected, winning 67 per cent of the popular vote.
President Aristide attempted many populist reforms, then in September 1991, a military coup d’état removed him from office.
He was again re-elected president in 2001. Then in 2004, right-wing paramilitaries, aided and abetted by foreigners, violently removed him from power.
President Aristide was put on a plane and dumped in a remote area of Africa.
The Clinton Connection
Haitians were once again going through the back and forth of corrupt governments under which politicians, the ruling elites, and foreigners got wealth while the ordinary people suffered.
Then came the 2010 earthquake and the entry of the Clinton Foundation, ostensibly to help with reconstruction.
Over 200,000 people were killed and a further 300,000 reportedly injured. Many poor neighbourhoods were devastated.
The Clinton Foundation and the Red Cross raised an estimated US$1 billion, but no one can say what happened to this money.
As to the work of the Clinton Foundation, well, what about it?
Tony Rodham is the brother of Senator Hilary Clinton. It was his company, VCS Mining, that according to the Daily Mail, was given a ‘very lucrative gold-mining contract’.
VCS Mining will pay one of the lowest royalty rates in the world. The Haitian government charged a rate of 2.5 per cent over a 25-year period, with renewal. In comparison, Peru charges a royalty rate of 12 per cent, while Ecuador charges between five and eight per cent for its royalty rate of gold mining.
Political Cronyism
VCS Mining is a Delaware-registered company with a “foreign qualification service” designation, allowing it to work overseas. Its board members include former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive along with former Clinton and Obama administration officials.
Georgianne Nienaber published a detail, well-sourced article, in Opednews, that reviewed leaked internal documents, showing VCS Mining’s connection to ‘cronyism and political corruption”.
“This is a complicated story fraught with intricate detail and begins with the fraudulent installation of a crooked Haitian president, a Korean trade deal, an industrial park facilitated by the Clinton Foundation,” and other unsavory elements, Georgianne Nienaber reports.
Nienaber quoted leaked emails that showed how a USAID-funded power plant, instead of supplying Haitian homes with electric power, was used to supply electric power to VCS Mining operations.
“It would be scandal enough if Tony Rodham and VCS Mining benefited from a gold mine permit in Haiti, but the potential electrical power lines for that gold lead straight to one of the biggest lies to come out of Haitian ‘reconstruction’,” the report stated.
“Meanwhile, there are severe environmental risks associated with gold mining. These risks include the possibility of cyanide spills poisoning the water-supply system.
The Future
Since gold mining will continue in Haiti, what then can be a reasonable expectation for the future?
At present, half of Haiti’s US$1 billion budget comes from foreign aid. Despite this, it is unclear if future gold-mining royalty payments will be placed in a National development fund.
Many nations do this. If this was done, it would certainly help to set aside money to further develop the country and to help the Haitian poor people.
The Haitian government must:
Seek better royalty terms for mineral mining;
Set up an independent, transparent national development fund to put some returns from gold exploration and mining towards improving the Haitian people’s lives, while;
Set up and maintain an effective, disaster-management agency to help mitigate the possibility of a disaster.
Meanwhile, as Haitian gold continues to enrich a handful of people, the dislocated many, who sought refuge in America, are now being driven away by the Donald Trump administration.
In short, it is fine to say: ‘Haiti, give me your gold but not your weak and weary’.
This is the very, very, very sad, bitta truth!
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Norris McDonald is an economic journalist, social researcher and political analyst. Email feedback to [email protected] and [email protected]
It was bound to happen sooner than later, but Indian media finally decided to play the “Pakistan card” by attempting to connect their neighbor’s ISI intelligence agency to the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks, a desperate narrative move that says a lot more about the Indian incumbent’s political vulnerability during the ongoing month-long electoral process than anything about Pakistan’s purported culpability in this tragedy.
The Cheap Shot That The Whole World Saw Coming
It was only a matter of time before Indian media predictably blamed Pakistan for the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks, which just happened earlier this week in a piece by Vicky Nanjappa for “Oneindia” about “How ISI radicalised Sri Lanka through the Pakistan High Commission“. The writer wasted no time in reminding the reader about a years-long scandal in Sri Lanka initiated by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) and claiming that a Pakistani diplomat on the island nation was responsible for plotting a Mumbai-style attack in South India, never mind the fact that the incident that this allegedly masterminded one was being based on was actually a false flag. In fact, it can be argued that one of the consequences of the Mumbai attacks is that India capitalized on the manufactured notion that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency was behind it in order to portray its rival as a regional bogeyman who all of South Asia had to be suspicious of from then on out, so it’s logical in hindsight why India’s RAW intelligence agency would also cook up a conspiracy about this in Sri Lanka in an attempt to weaken historically strong Pakistani-Sri Lankan relations.
Convoluted And Conspiratorial Claims
The enduring motivation to divide Pakistan from its regional partners and opportunistically misportray it as a “state sponsor of terrorism” is what’s also behind the latest attempt trying to connect it to the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks. Mr. Nanjappa reminds his reader about the fake news claims that the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Buddhist nationalist organization is supposedly being bankrolled by the ISI, which is more than likely another weaponized narrative that ultimately originated with RAW. According to Mr. Nanjappa’s far-reaching theory, the Pakistani diplomat supposedly responsible for organizing a Mumbai-style attack in South Asia also paid the BBS to incite anti-Muslim violence in order to improve the ISI’s recruitment prospects of local Muslims afterwards, with the clear innuendo being that this somehow makes Islamabad responsible for last weekend’s Easter suicide bombings. This convoluted narrative is understandably confusing for most people to follow, but for as much as it turns off readers from outside the region, it nevertheless is meant to be ultra-intriguing for its intended audience in South Asia, especially the Indian one.
Fearmongering For Votes
It can’t be forgotten that Prime Minister Modi is battling for his political life during his country’s ongoing month-long electoral process and that he’s hoping to win re-election on a platform that heavily emphasizes national security. India was just utterly humiliated, however, following the dogfight that it initiated with Pakistan in late February after the Bollywood-style “surgical strike”, which led to New Delhi’s rival capturing one of the downed pilots prior to releasing him as a gesture of peace and then Modi’s own Defense Minister later publicly contradicting her own government by admitting that not a single person was injured in the Balakot attack. For a political leader who prides himself on his notion of national security, these events were certainly embarrassing and reduced his dwindling credibility among the electorate, hence the need to distract voters with more fearmongering scandals in the meantime so that he can improve his re-election odds. Therein lays the relevance of the ridiculous claims that Pakistan is conspiring with Russia and China to wage Hybrid Wars against the entire world and specifically India, respectively.
The BJP’s Hybrid War On India
In reality, these public accusations by the state and civil society are actually a form of Hybrid War in and of themselves, one that’s being waged not only on the minds of the international audience that India intends to trick into thinking that Pakistan is a “state sponsor of terrorism” and therefore should be subject to unilateral US sanctions and multilateral UN ones, but also against its own citizens who these perception management practitioners want to imbue with a deep sense of fear that they can then exploit to mislead their targets into thinking that India can only be protected by re-electing Modi and continuing his “muscular” foreign policy. I predicted in my piece earlier this week about my “Initial Assessment Of The Terrorist Attacks In Sri Lanka” that “it’ll be tempting for some [international forces] to imply that their rivals’ intelligence agencies might have had a hand in the latest events, or at the very least present themselves as super tough on terrorism for domestic political reasons (e.g. Modi during the elections)” which is exactly what India is now doing.
Political Purposes
India’s “Hindi Heartland/Cow Belt”, the stronghold of the BJP’s support, has yet to go to the polls but is about to real shortly in the election’s upcoming phases, so spinning the narrative that Pakistan might have indirectly had a hand in the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks is meant to ensure that as many of Modi’s supporters come out to vote as possible in order to help him win this neck-and-neck election. As an added benefit, New Delhi would be delighted if Sri Lankan media picked up on Mr. Nanjappa’s piece and provoked one of their pro-Indian politicians to publicly praise it and/or demand an investigation into what India is framing as “Pakistan’s Hybrid War” in the country. Even better, since his article was written in English, international media further abroad might republish it too, especially some of the forces that have an interest in sparking a so-called “Clash of Civilizations”. It would be a dream come true for Modi if these weaponized fake news claims eventually made it to the UN, too.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s unsurprising that an Indian writer decided to opportunistically spin a convoluted and conspiratorial story purporting to link Pakistan’s ISI to the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks since the fake news claims and attendant innuendo being put forth appeal to the preconceived notions of the BJP’s base and will probably succeed in improving voter turnout for this constituency during the next phases of the country’s ongoing month-long electoral process. The introduction of this weaponized narrative into the Internet’s information ecosystem also carries with it the chance that it’ll be picked up by Sri Lankan media and consequently provoke a pro-Indian politician there to publicly praise the piece in order to trigger a crisis in Pakistani-Sri Lankan relations. Moreover, it’s too early to rule out the possibility of other forces republishing it with the intent of intensifying the so-called “Clash of Civilizations”, which might have the horrifying effect of inspiring right-wing “reprisal” attacks against the Western-based Pakistani diaspora in an attempt to trigger more inter-civlizational violence that would superficially advance this false divide-and-rule narrative.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Katja Hermann, director of the West Asia Unit at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in Berlin, in conversation with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (Mubadara), about the impact of the Israeli elections on the lives of everyday Palestinians.
***
Katja Hermann (KH): The preliminary results of the Israeli election show a likely victory for Benjamin Netanyahu from Likud and the right-wing coalition. What would that mean for the developments in the occupied Palestinian territories? [interview shortly prior to elections]
Mustafa Barghouti (MB): It is a very dangerous development. It means that the Israeli public has opted for extreme right wing parties that adopted a system of racism and national discrimination, the same parties that passed the Jewish Nationality Law, meaning systematic discrimination against Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or of the Occupied Territories. Unfortunately, I would say that this is a vote for a system of apartheid. Taking into consideration that Netanyahu was elected three days after he declared his plan to annex the settlements, which means practically annexing the West Bank, this was a vote to end the dream of the two-state solution.
KH: If the two-state solution is no longer feasible, what kind of alternative scenarios do you envision?
MB: There are only two alternatives: one is what the Israeli government wants, which is apartheid, a system of racial discrimination keeping Palestinians in ghettos and Bantustans hoping they will eventually leave the country. Our alternative is the following: if they killed the two-state solution intentionally, we have nothing left to fight for but a one-state solution with full democratic rights, and unify all Palestinians in a struggle to end apartheid and racial discrimination and try to win people from Israel who believe in justice over to our camp against the system of apartheid.
KH: Do you believe that both societies, Palestinian and Israeli, are ready for a one-state solution?
MB: At the moment, of course, Palestinian society is much more ready, while Israeli society does not seem to be ready for any solution. In my opinion, to use a phrase that my friend Daniel Barenboim keeps using, “sometimes the impossible is easier than the difficult.” What we face here is a clear choice. It is not about us wanting to depart from the two-state solution and adopt a one-state solution, it is about the fact that Israel just killed the two-state solution. You cannot opt to dream about a dead option, you have to find an alternative option – out of necessity, out of objective reality.
KH: People here are talking about a new era, that a new chapter will be opened. How would you comment on that?
MB: I would say it is the end of the Oslo era, which means we have to go back to an era before Oslo, a time when the non-violent Palestinian resistance adopted three principles that I always believed in and practiced: self-organization, self-reliance, and defying injustice – whether of occupation or apartheid. To keep waiting for others to help us is not feasible. We have to rely on ourselves, we have to rebuild our structures, we have to self-organize, and we have to build a national unified front. That should be a democratic national front, because one major problem in Palestine now is the absence of democracy and the disappearance of democratic structures that we have built over the years, and the shrinking spaces of civil society.
That’s why I think that it’s time for us to think about democratic participation as well as building a unified national front. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should be that structure if it opts to separate itself from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and return to its role as a leader of the Palestinian national movement.
KH: Where would you situate the Gaza Strip in these scenarios?
MB: Gaza is part of Palestine. Israel is trying to separate Gaza from Palestine because this is part of the so-called “Deal of the Century.” You separate Gaza but keep it under siege, that is the Israeli plan. The situation is one of an open prison – not even open, only an open sky, everything else is closed. We cannot have a Palestinian state without Gaza and we cannot have a state only in Gaza – that is nonsense. Gaza is a very small territory; it’s less than 1.5 per cent of Palestine and has two million people living there, the most densely populated area in the world. Gaza and the West Bank should be one unit.
KH: Alongside a new government in Israel we are also expecting a new government in Palestine to be announced in the coming days. What would the main challenges for the new Palestinian government be?
MB: There are many challenges, but the first challenge is how to bring back unity to the Palestinians. The Palestinian National Initiative (Mubadara) decided not to join this government, although we were offered to, mainly because we were afraid that forming this government would even deepen internal division and transform it into complete separation. Additionally, we don’t want to take a position in any government without being elected by the people, especially after dissolving the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). The last elections happened in 2006 and we should have new elections soon, very soon. That’s why we’ve proposed not to form this government but to have a transitional national unity government for six months, prepare the ground for elections, hold elections, and then form the government.
I think the problem of internal division is a big one, but now this Israeli government and how it is cutting off our tax revenues and imposing its own legislation and arrangements on the PA is the biggest problem. The whole PA now faces a major challenge to either be completely obedient and submit to Israeli pressure or revolt against it. I think they should revolt.
KH: In light of these challenging developments, do you see another popular uprising on the horizon?
MB: Yes, I do, and I want it to be non-violent. I work for it to be non-violent. We spent the last 15 years not only demonstrating models of successful non-violent resistance but also convincing other parties including Hamas of the effectiveness of a non-violent approach.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (Mubadara), a physician, and an activist. Follow his tweets at @mustafabarghoti.
In the past month, official resolutions against 5G have been adopted by the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Jura and Neuchâtelin Switzerland. These are the first four Swiss regions to pass ordinances against 5G installation (see chart below), comprising 1.5 million people (18.1% of national population).
Despite that, the majority state-owned Swisscom defied these laws on April 17, when they activated 5G stations in 102 locations in Switzerland, including Basel, Bern, Chur, Davos, Geneva, Lausanne (Vaud) and Zurich. They did so by upgrading existing antennas installed for previous generations of wireless technology.
“Under Swisscom’s plans, more than 90 percent of the population will be covered by the end of 2019,” said the company in its statement. …
One of the core concerns is the number of extra antennas that will needed – 5G can only transmit short distances – one reportedly every 10 to 12 metres. …
Experts are urging the EU to follow Resolution 1815 of the Council of Europe, asking for an independent task force to reassess the health effects of 5G.
Swisscom meanwhile is urging Switzerland to relax environmental laws which it claims are an impediment to rolling out 5G.
5G: A Technological Dictatorship?
It is important to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
If a law prevents a company from deploying their agenda because of harm to others, but the company does it anyway — and somehow the company and its executives escape immediate judicial or police action — then the Rule of Law is no longer in effect.
“Installation of the 5G in Geneva, despite in particular a moratorium voted by the great council and the opposition of civil society… ‘for what is technology, the dictatorship is obviously already in place’ (Eric Budry)” see full size post
The body of independent science, on 5G’s millimeter-wave and microwave radiation, is conclusive: these frequencies harm humans and all life. [see additional links to the science at bottom]
It is deeply ironic that within a nation historically recognized for its higher-minded values to not engage in war, wireless companies have now effectively declared war on all people living in this nation, by deploying 5G against consent and directly in violation of both official moratoria and independent science.
Because there are no studies indicating safety, these acts of 5G deployment against consent — in Switzerland and everywhere 5G is being deployed — also directly violate the Nuremberg Code, which states that one’s informed consent is absolutely necessary prior to any human experimentation.
Though, one truly begins to wonder if indeed this is experimentation, as such. One could make a very strong case that those behind 5G know exactly what they are doing to human biological health, since there were already 2300 studies on wireless compiled by military researchers in the 1970s.
So, in the guise of profit, progress and competition, a weapon is being deployed against all of us — whether it’s intended as such, or not. The science on this is clear.
What’s more: 5G is even intended to operate with beam-forming applications on the same frequency ranges used by military crowd-control weaponry.
And these studies identified many of the “mystery” symptoms of the chronic, germless epidemics and neurological conditions which see exponentially increasing today.
The inescapable truth is that the deployment of the innocently-named “5G” is a silent declaration of a quiet war against humanity.
As such, we must continue to increase our resolve and numbers, as we responsibly come together and address the root of the problem.
Henry Dunant, the Swiss humanitarian and Red Cross founder, whose memoir of the battle of Solferinoeventually led to the drafting of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and protocols, would be turning in his grave. For at least 5 percent of the world population has already been wounded and sickened by previous generations of wireless technology unleashed upon the world without safety testing.
And those 5% are just those who have come to realizethat their symptoms are related to wireless radiation exposure.
In light of everything you just read, would it not be appropriate to consider deployments of 5G as criminal acts of war upon humanity?
And would it not be just to address the corporate perpetrators, who are shattering these most basic codes of ethics, as criminals who must be held to account?
And would it not be wise to call all legislators into solidarity and accountability — in this, most human of causes — to protect the people, or else become liable themselves for criminal negligence?
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Josh del Sol Beaulieu is the creator of Take Back Your Power, a documentary about ‘smart’ meters which won the AwareGuide Transformational Film of the Year, the Indie Fest Annual Humanitarian Award, and a Leo Award for Best Feature Length Documentary. Josh is passionate about safe technology, human rights, consciousness, decentralized energy, and being a dad.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah held a private meeting this week with his top military commanders in which he warned them to prepare for a hot Summer because Israel plans to launch a surprise war against Lebanon. Sayyed Nasrallah has asked his men to share the reality of the situation and the possibility of war when briefing their men, families and people in the villages and cities in which Hezbollah operates.
He also prepared them for the likelihood of his assassination and the killing of Hezbollah’s first line of command in the event of such a war and that they will have to run the war on their own, as they were trained for.
“I may not remain among you for very long; it is possible that the entire first level of leadership could be killed, including myself. Israel may succeed in assassinating many leaders and commanders. The death of some key personalities will not be the end of Hezbollah, because the party doesn’t rely merely on individuals but rather on the entire society that is an essential part of its existence”, said Sayyed Nasrallah to the gathering.
He added that
“measures and procedures have already been taken to be ready even if this extreme case (the killing of top leaders including Sayyed Nasrallah himself) happens.”
The team protecting the leader of Hezbollah imposes tight security procedures on any visitor, regardless of rank or function. No mobile phones or personal rings or belongings are allowed; they must be removed before reaching the meeting place. Commanders gather in different locations and are transported in black curtained buses, in small number, for security reasons. At the end of the meeting, his personal security team leaves the place with Sayyed Nasrallah first and the gathering leaves afterwards, driven back to their desired destination.
“There are strong indications that this war will take everybody by surprise, like the 2006 war. Nevertheless, (the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin) Netanyahu is preparing himself, unlike (the former PM Ehud) Olmert who was hesitant, when the unprepared Israeli political decision was caught out in July (2006). Israel can surprise us all like it did in Gaza in 2008 with the objective of removing the threat on its borders once and for all. This is what our people (Hezbollah’s allies) should know, and they should from now on be prepared for the worse-case scenario”, Sayyed Nasrallah said.
Hezbollah believes Netanyahu has a unique opportunity to attack Hezbollah after forming his government, because Israel may not again enjoy a president in Washington like Trump who offers him (Netanyahu) unlimited support.
Hezbollah estimates that, in case of war, Israel will dislodge and relocate all Israeli settlements and villages bordering Lebanon from Naqoura to the Shebaa Farms. Israel would do this to prevent Hezbollah from crossing the borders and taking Israeli hostages. In this case, Hezbollah believes Israel would allow the militants to move in and encircle them from behind. This is called a mobile defensive strategy, with the aim of destroying the attacking forces.
“This is the first time Sayyed Nasrallah has offered such a bleak perspective, raising the chances of war with Israel from 50/50 to 70/30”, said a knowledgeable source.
No one within the Hezbollah leadership knows exactly when and how hard the next war with Israel will be. The first expectation is simple: Israel is expected to destroy between 1000 and 2000 objectives in the first days of the war.The Israeli military command believes it is possible to eliminate the threat from Hezbollah, Sayyed Nasrallah believes.
There is no doubt that Israel will start a war immediately if Sayyed Nasrallah is located. Domestic opinion in Israel would likely be able to digest a war for this price regardless of Hezbollah’s deadly retaliation.
Sayyed Nasrallah’s pessimistic expectation comes as a warning for his commanders to take all precautions and stay on alert for a sudden war, and to inform the people they are living with. He believes the Israelis, the USA, the British and many Arab states could all participate in the forthcoming war, which gives an indication of how destructive the next round is expected to be.
Moreover, Lebanon is going through a grave economic crisis in which the population can hardly afford a devastating war. The Middle East is entering a new configuration, with Israel expanding its relationship with Arab countries and certain to benefit from their financial and intelligence support in the case of war against Iran’s partners in Lebanon.
As far as Hezbollah is concerned, its arsenal seems sufficient. Its precious missiles are enough to sustain a long war against Israel with hundreds of rockets and missiles launched daily. Hezbollah has made sure no missiles are located next to civilian facilities to avoid casualties and financial losses. Sources believe the underground work in the south of Lebanon has become like the tunnels under Paris, similar to Gruyere cheese. Financially, Hezbollah is no longer in need of a high budget since its presence on the front line in Syria is significantly reduced.
For these reasons, would Israel tolerate the presence of a highly trained, organised and irregular army on its borders when the Prime Minister Netanyahu has changed his military strategy?
Sayyed Nasrallah believes Netanyahu is no longer following David Ben Gurion’s policy of being content to move the battle into the enemy’s territory. He is taking the initiative to eliminate threats anywhere in the region. Under Netanyahu, the Israeli Air Force bombed Iraq (Hashd al-Shaabi Iraqi security forces) on the borders with Syria. Every time he perceived the presence of a sophisticated arms shipment he bombs it immediately regardless of the consequences. He has destroyed warehouses and arms manufacturers in Syria to cripple the Syrian army. Not only that, Netanyahu is now living in a world where the Arab armies are absent or destroyed: they represent no danger to the existence of Israel. For Israel, the only remaining threat is Hezbollah. Why would Netanyahu put up with such a menace on his borders?
Russia, a superpower present in Syria and looking to gain a foothold in Lebanon, is not expected to react against Israel on the ground. Maybe at the UN, yes. But it is to the advantage of Russia to see Syria weaker and not dependant on a strong ally like Hezbollah. Russia can make a deal with the US over Syria – once Hezbollah is eliminated or weakened enough – to remove President Assad from power in exchange for regaining control of Idlib and re-taking the North-East currently under US occupation. Washington would be thrilled with such an option and Trump would be happy with a similar outcome ending the presence of his forces in Syria.
But why this sudden pessimism and increase likelihood of war in Lebanon?
Hezbollah is watching the movements of the US Air Force and Navy in the region, the behaviour of Netanyahu with Gaza (giving the Palestinians what they want to keep them – with Egypt as a guarantor – quiet in case of war against Hezbollah), the US’s unlimited support presenting a unique opportunity for Israel to take what it wants, Arab support for Netanyahu, the classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist country by more countries, the repeated warnings of the US establishment to Lebanon against embracing Hezbollah, the enmity against Iran by the Arab states and the tightening of sanctions on the Levants, the “Deal of the Century” scheduled for this summer and the extreme right-wing victory in Israel.
But how will Hezbollah and Iran react? Both are on the defensive and are not expected to take the initiative and attack first. Iran may develop its nuclear capability and surprise the world with an ultimate step to turn the tables and stop the war.But Hezbollah is not going to sit and watch. Measures are being taken to counter Israel’s bank of objectives. Hundreds of locations have been emptied and abandoned around the country. Its military leadership has been distributed and delegated and reserves have been prepared for the worse-case scenario.
Lebanon may not be far at all from paying the price. In 2008, Hezbollah occupied the capital Beirut when the government wanted to disrupt its communication system. It can do much more if there is a danger to its entire existence.
This is the pessimistic view that Hezbollah’s commanders are preparing for: they are preparing for the worst. It could well be that Israel is not preparing a military war and is happy to see the US working on its behalf– through economic sanctions on Lebanon, Syria and Iran. But the summer is not far away, a perfect time for Israel to start a war while the sky is clear. Will the Lebanese be able to enjoy a peaceful summer this year or should they instead be preparing to become refugees?
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
In what critics denounced as the Trump administration’s latest attack on women’s rights across the globe, U.S. officials are reportedly threatening to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution seeking to end the use of rape as a weapon of war over its language on reproductive health.
According to the Guardian—which first reported on U.S. opposition to the measure late Monday—Trump officials are objecting to the resolution’s “language on victims’ support from family planning clinics.”
“In recent months, the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any U.N. documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions,” the Guardian reported. “It has also opposed the use of the word ‘gender,’ seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights.”
The Trump administration’s opposition to the measure, proposed by Germany, quickly sparked international outrage.
“If we let the Americans do this and take out this language, it will be watered down for a long time,” an anonymous European diplomat told the Guardian. “It is, at its heart, an attack on the progressive normative framework established over the past 25 years.”
Heather Barr, acting co-director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, tweeted:
“In the latest step in Trump’s war on women, U.S. opposes healthcare for survivors of rape during war. Yes, you read that right.”
Others also took to Twitter to condemn the Trump administration’s efforts:
The Trump administration is so obsessed with ensuring women remain walking incubators that it is willing to destroy an anti-rape resolution.
US threatens to veto UN resolution on rape as weapon of war, officials say https://t.co/Gk8vQ5m39h
— Jonathan "Boo and Vote" Cohn (@JonathanCohn) April 22, 2019
Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, told the Guardian that the resolution’s passage is now in serious doubt due to U.S. opposition.
“We are not even sure whether we are having the resolution [Tuesday], because of the threats of a veto from the U.S.,” Patten said.
The resolution seeks to improve monitoring of sexual violence in conflict, punish perpetrators, and increase support for victims.
Patten said the language on reproductive health “is being maintained for the time being and we’ll see over the next 24 hours how the situation evolves.”
“It will be a huge contradiction that you are talking about a survivor-centered approach and you do not have language on sexual and reproductive healthcare services, which is for me the most critical,” said Patten.
*
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled. Ivan Katchanovski investigates.
***
Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014, was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow.
Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was the best documented case of mass killing in history, broadcast live on TV and the internet, in presence of thousands of eyewitnesses. It was filmed by hundreds of journalists from major media in the West, Ukraine, Russia, and many other countries as well as by numerous social media users. Yet, to this day, no one has been brought to justice for this major and consequential crime.
Police in Hrushevsky Street, Kiev, Feb. 12, 2014. (Wikimedia)
From the start, the dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western governments and mainstream media has placed the blame for this tragedy firmly on the Yanukovych government. It contends that forces loyal to former President Victor Yanukovych — either snipers and/or the Berkut, a special anti-riot police— massacred peaceful Maidan protesters on the direct orders of Yanukovych himself. Such charges against Yanukovych, his ministers and commanders and a special Berkut unit—whose five ex-members were tried for the murder of 48 Maidan protesters on Feb. 20, 2014 — are generally taken at face value. With some limited exceptions, challenges to this narrative are treated dismissively.
For the most part, mainstream news media in the U.S. and other Western countries ignored trial evidence, public statements by officials and politicians and scholarly studies that put the standard narrative under question. This includes non-reporting about my own academic studies of the Maidan massacre.
Killing Protesters and Police
My work found that this was an organized mass killing of both protesters and the police, with the goal of delegitimizing the Yanukovych government and its forces and seizing power in Ukraine. Oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan movement were involved in this massacre. For this reason, the official investigation was fabricated and stonewalled. I presented studies to support this as well as several online video appendixes with various evidence at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco in 2015 and Boston in 2018, the 2017 World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York in 2017, and a joint conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies in 2018, and published their summary in an academic press volume.
The prosecutor general of Ukraine recently announced that the investigation of the Maidan massacre is complete. He cited reconstructions of the Maidan massacre by a New York architecture company, working with a team of Ukrainian “volunteers” to provide a 3D model, as definite evidence that the Maidan protesters were massacred by the Berkut police and that snipers did not massacre the protesters.
This model was featured by The New York Times, in its May 30, 2018,report “Who Killed the Kiev Protesters?” as a proof that the Berkut police massacred Maidan protesters.
However, no expert knowledge or familiarity with the Maidan massacre or Ukraine is needed to see blatant misrepresentation of elementary data in that 3D model.
The wound locations of the killed Maidan protesters in the 3D model do not match the wound locations in the forensic medical examinations of the bodies. The reports of those examinations were used in this simulation to determine the locations of the shooters. They are published in Ukrainian and English on the linked website. According to one such report, Ihor Dmytriv was shot in the “right side surface” and the “left side surface” of the torso “from the right to the left, from the top to the bottom, and a little from the front to the back” with the entry wound 20.5cm (8 inches) higher than the exit wound. However, in the simulation, his wounds have been moved to the front and the back and made nearly horizontal.
Actual wound locations of Dmytriv and their misrepresentation.
A Maidan lawyer visually confirmed at the Maidan massacre trial that these wounds locations of were in the right and left sides. In the video of their examination of Dmytriv right after his shooting, Maidan medics also indicate such locations of his wounds with no wounds visible in the front area, contrary to the 3D model. The forensic medical reports also state that Dmytriv was wounded in his right shoulder from bottom to top direction, with this entry wound 5 cm lower, but the 3D animation also misrepresents this direction.
The wound locations of the other two victims have been similarly altered. The 3D model moved the exit wound location from around the middle line of the back of Andriy Dyhdalovych’s body in forensic medical and clothing examinations significantly to the right. It also changed a similar large vertical angle from a top and bottom direction and 17 cm difference in height of entry and exit wounds to nearly horizontal level.
Actual wound locations of Dyhdalovych and their misrepresentation.
In the case of Yuriy Parashchuk, forensic medical examinations found that his entry and exit wounds were in the back of his head on the left side. But the 3D analysis moved the entry wound location to the front area and changed its somewhat top-to-bottom direction to nearly horizontal. Frames from a video by a French photographer shows a large bullet hole in the back of Parashchuk’s red helmet. How can he be shot in the back of his head by the Berkut police on a nearly similar horizontal level?
Changing the wound locations invalidates the entire reconstruction and, therefore, the conclusions of the SITU analysis and The New York Times article, that these and other Maidan protesters were shot from the Berkut positions.
One does not need to be a ballistic expert to see that locations of wounds in the back and on the sides and top-to-bottom directions of wounds specified in forensic medical reports and positions of these three killed protesters facing the Berkut in the videos cannot physically match with Berkut police positions located on a similar horizontal level on the ground in front of them. The forensic medical examinations conducted for the government investigation and made public at the Maidan massacre trial revealed that the absolute majority of the protesters were shot not in front and not from horizontal or near horizontal directions that are consistent with police positions. Rather, they were shot from a top-to-bottom direction and in sides or the back that are consistent with shooting from the Maidan-controlled buildings.
Government Investigation
The government investigation, conducted after the Maidan government came to power after this massacre, and which charged the Berkut police behind the barricades with killing these three protesters, raises the same concerns.
The complex medical examinations, which were published on the SITU website and which are presented by the government investigation in Ukraine as a key evidence that the Berkut police massacred the protesters, showed the same bullet trajectories as the 3D model. The text of these examinations, which are available in Ukrainian and in English translations, shows that these bullet trajectories were determined not by ballistic experts butby medical experts without any calculations or explanations.
Synchronized videos, which were used by the SITU to determine that the Berkut police behind a truck barricade killed Parashchuk, actually show that he and other protesters were in a blind spot below the line of police fire from behind a truck. It was physically impossible for the police behind the wide and tall truck to shoot at him below over the top of this truck. Dozens of other Maidan protesters who were killed and wounded around the same spot were in the same situation.
Parashchuk in the blind spot below the line of fire from the police behind the truck.
The locations of the forces of the Yanukovych government during the massacre are well known, and they are identified in my studies, the government investigation charges, numerous videos, and in the SITU 3D model.
At the time of the killings of these three protesters, Berkut policemen were behind the barricades on Instytutska Street on the government side, while the protesters who were killed were in between Berkut and the Hotel Ukraina.
Forensic examinations of bullet holes by government experts described numerous bullet holes on the second, third, and higher floors and the roof of the Hotel Ukraina on the side that faced the government forces. But they did not identify a single bullet hole on the first floor on the Berkut facing side of the hotel behind these protesters. Simple positioning of the bullet hole locations described in these forensic reports clearly shows that almost all bullets from the Berkut and other positions flew above the heads of the protesters there or targeted poles, trees, and a flower box. This is also shown in vide and photos — including some I took there after the massacre — and in videos and reports of shooting at journalists in the hotel with a Google Street View image from the first Berkut barricade.
This confirms my study findings that the special Berkut police unit and the Omega unit of snipers of Internal Troops were shooting at snipers in the Hotel Ukraina.
After five long years, the failure by the Poroshenko government’s investigation to determine bullet trajectories by ballistic experts or conduct on-site investigative experiments for the same purpose — even after the Maidan massacre trial judges ordered them two years ago to do so — is therefore hardly surprising. It is impossible to bend physical reality. In a literal cover-up, large fences were recently erected on the crime scene for the construction of the Maidan massacre memorial, which would completely alter the landscape. The fences and the memorial would make it impossible to determine bullet trajectories on-site, which still has not been done by the investigation for five years after this mass killing.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Poroshenko, outside Presidential Palace in Kiev, Feb. 5, 2015, during Kerry’s first round of meetings with the new government. (State Department via Flickr)
The SITU reconstruction also missed bullet holes that appeared in Dmytriv’s shield and in a shield of another protester in front of Dyhdalovych in videos of their shooting that were used in the reconstruction. The locations of these bullet holes are inconsistent with shooting from the Berkut barricades.
But these shields with clear locations of the bullet holes, like the helmet of Parashchuk and almost all the shields and helmets of protesters who were killed or wounded, mysteriously disappeared after the massacre, along with a lot of other crucial evidence, such as bullets and security-camera footage.
Similarly, crucial testimonies of Maidan protesters, who witnessed the killings of Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, are ignored by the Times’ report, SITU and the official Ukrainian investigation. Dyhdalovych’s wife stated in her Ukrainian media interview that another protester told her that he saw that Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the roof of the Bank Arkada. This protester was filmed following Dyhdalovych when they both went to evacuate Dmytriv after he was shot. The Bank Arkada is a tall green building in the front and to the right of both Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, and it appears to match the apparent directions of their wounds. My Maidan massacre studies video appendices showed that it was in the Maidan-controlled area and that snipers on its roof during the massacre were reported by both numerous Maidan protesters, including many wounded who spoke at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation, and by Security Service of Ukraine commanders and snipers.
SITU diagram of victims’ locations and names.
A female Maidan medic during the massacre was pointing to the top of this green building and shouting about snipers. But her words were translated in a BBC report as referring to six protesters killed by the snipers in that area. A Maidan protester and another Maidan medic, who were wounded near the same spot where these two protesters were killed, both testified at the Maidan massacre trial that they were shot from this building. Government ballistic experts confirmed this during on-site investigative experiments.
Western Press Silence
These revelations were not reported by any Western media. This includes The New York Times, which on April 5, 2014, profiled this wounded protester against the backdrop of an unquestioned report by the acting government in Kiev that blaming “former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, his riot police and their suspected Russian assistants for the violence that killed more than 100 people in Kiev in February.”
It also includes CNN, which filmed the shooting of this medic and attributed it to the government forces.
The government investigation simply denies that there were any snipers there and in other Maidan-controlled buildings, and refuses to investigate them. This is done despite videos of such snipers and testimonies of the absolute majority of wounded protesters at the trial and investigation and more than 150 other witnesses about snipers in these locations.
The assumption in the 3D model that Dmytriv was shot by the single bullet is also contradicted by testimony of another protester who saw that Dmytriv was shot by “a sniper” from the Hotel Ukraina. My Maidan massacre studies and their video appendices showed that this hotel was then controlled by the Maidan forces.
The New York Times article described collaboration of the New York architecture firm with a Ukrainian “volunteer” in creating the 3D model. It did not report 2017 admissions by the prosecutor general of Ukraine on Facebook that his government agency funded the work of a group of anonymous “volunteers,” including this Ukrainian graduate student, in compiling and synchronizing various videos of the Maidan massacre in collaboration with a People’s Front party outlet.
Some of the People’s Front party leaders were accused by various Ukrainian politicians and Maidan activists, such as Nadia Savchenko, and by five ex-Georgian ex-military members in Italian and Israeli TV documentaries, of direct involvement in this massacre. Meanwhile, the Times lauds the Ukrainian government’s investigation and Maidan lawyers for drawing on such analyses by these “citizen investigators” and treats a New York architect firm as providing key evidence in the Maidan massacre trial.
Brad Samuels is a founding partner of Situ Research, the New York architecture company that produced the 3D model of the killing of three protesters, which was presented by the Times as proof that such snipers did not exist and that 49 protesters were massacred by the Berkut police.
Samuels said in a video [start at 55:16] that “…eventually, there is a consensus that there was a third party acting. It is clear from forensic evidence that people were shot in the back. Somebody was shooting from rooftops.” His striking observation was not included anywhere in the SITU 3D model report that he produced. Nor was it reported by the Times.
Cases of protesters, who were shot in the back, were omitted from the SITU model. But even in the deliberately selected cases of the three protesters, who were presented by this simulation as shot in front, their actual wound locations suggest that they were also shot from a Maidan-controlled building, which was located in front and to the right of them.
There was not a single report in English-language media concerning testimonies at the Maidan massacre trial where 25 wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shootings Berkut policemen are charged, who stated that they were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings or areas.
Video still from trial.
Major outlets likewise neglected to cover the testimonies by 30 wounded protesters who said they witnessed snipers in those locations or were told about them by other protesters. This is stunning since these testimonies are publicly available in live online recordings of the Maidan massacre trial and they are complied with English-language subtitles into an online video appendix to my study. These testimonies represent the majority of wounded protesters with whose shooting Berkut was charged. They are consistent with video testimonies by about 100 witnesses in the media and social media and at the trial and the investigation. But the official investigation in Ukraine simply denies that there were any such snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, even though the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine previously stated that snipers massacred many protesters from the Hotel Ukraina and other buildings.
Similarly, not a single media outlet reported segments of the Belgian VRT News video that showed Maidan protesters shouting during the massacre that they saw snipers in the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina shooting Maidan protesters, pointing towards them, and asking them not to shoot. These segments were only shown to a small number of people at the Maidan massacre trial and are included in my online video appendix on YouTube. Other segments from this same video, however,were broadcast to some several hundred million viewers by major television networks in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and Ukraine, and many other countries as evidence that the government forces massacred the Maidan protesters.
With the notable exception of an Associated Press story quoting the charismatic politician Nadia Savchenko, news agencies have ignored the public remarks of several Maidan politicians and activists who said that they witnessed the involvement of specific top Maidan leaders in the massacre.
Testimonies by five Georgian ex-military members in Italian, Israeli, Macedonian and Russian media and their published depositions to Berkut lawyers for the Maidan massacre trial have also been ignored. They stated that their groups received weapons, payments, and orders to massacre both police and protesters from specific Maidan and Georgian politicians.
They also said that they received instructions from a far-right linked ex-U.S. Army sniper and then saw Georgian, Baltic States, and Right Sector-linked snipers shooting from specific Maidan-controlled buildings.
Western media silence also greeted a recent statement by Anatolii Hrytsenko, one of the top Ukrainian presidential candidates, who was also a Maidan politician and minister of defense, that the investigation of the massacre has been stonewalled because of the involvement of someone from the current leadership of Ukraine in this mass killing.
In contrast, there were no such testimonies admitting involvement in the massacre or knowledge of such involvement by the Berkut policemen, ex-police and security services commanders; nor by ex-Yanukovych government officials. No specific evidence of orders by then-president Yanukovych or his ministers and commanders to massacre unarmed protesters has been revealed by the trials, investigations or news reporting. Nonetheless, the Western mainstream media report existence of such orders as a matter of a fact.
Image on the right: Yanukovych with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (President of Russia)
Not a single major Western media reported that a forensic ballistic examination, conducted by government institute experts on the prosecution request with use of an automatic computer-based IBIS-TAIS system, determined that bullets extracted from killed protesters did not match a police database of bullet samples from Kalashnikov assault rifles of members of the entire Kyiv Berkut regiment. The latter included the special Berkut company charged with the massacre of the protesters. The same concerns the forensic examination findings that many protesters were killed with hunting bullets and pellets.
There are no Western media reports, at least in English, concerning the investigation by the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine. This investigation determined, based on protester’s testimonies and investigative experiments, that almost half of the protesters (77 out of 157) were wounded on Feb. 20 from other sectors than the Berkut police and that no one was charged with their shooting.
A female Maidan medic, whose wounding on the Maidan was highly publicized by Western and Ukrainian media and politicians and attributed to government snipers, is one of them. Since the official investigation determined that government snipers did not massacre the Maidan protesters, with a single implausible exception announced recently, this implies that these protesters were wounded from the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.
Medic sniper vicim. (Youtube)
There was Western media silence, including from the BBC, about revelations by the Prosecutor General Office that one of the leaders of far right party Svoboda, who was also a member of the Ukrainian parliament at the time of the massacre, occupied a Hotel Ukraina room from which a sniper in Maidan-style green helmet was filmed by the BBC shooting in the direction of the Maidan protesters and the BBC’s own journalists.
Similarly, there are no mainstream media reports of the visual examinations of bullet holes and their impact points by the government investigators that determined that one German ARD television room at the Hotel Ukraina was shot from the direction of the Main Post Office, which was at the time the headquarters of the Right Sector. The latter far-right group included radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations and football ultras. This bullet just narrowly missed a German ARD TV female producer. The government investigators also determined that another ARD room in the same hotel was shot at from the Music Conservatory building, which was then the headquarters of the Right-Sector-linked special armed Maidan Self-Defense company.
Likewise, nothing was reported about a forensic ballistic examination made public at the trial that revealed that an ABC Newsproducer was shot in his Hotel Ukraina room by a Winchester caliber hunting soft-point bullet that did not match a caliber of Berkut Kalashnikovs.
Misrepresentation of the Maidan massacre and its investigation by Western media and governments is puzzling.
American independence leader John Adams once defended the British soldiers charged with the Boston massacre in 1770. He regarded this defense as important for the rule of law to prevail over politics. He famously stated at the Boston massacre trial that “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” He not only won this politically charged case of a crucial massacre in U.S. politics and history but became U.S. president afterwards. The question is why this dictum is not heeded almost 250 years later in the case of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies and the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He held research and teaching positions at Harvard University, the State University of New York at Potsdam, the University of Toronto, and the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He received Ph.D. from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of “Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova.”
Comedy, it is often said, is unusual people in real situations and farce is real people in unusual situations. No doubt, it can be said that by electing comedian Vladimir Zelensky as their new president in a landslide victory in Sunday’s runoff, the people of Ukraine find themselves in a farcical situation. To be sure, the country’s embrace of an inexperienced showman represented a verdict on three decades of political failure.
Ukraine’s first president in the ‘post-Soviet’ era Leonid Kuchma told the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda,
“Ukraine is tired of its politicians, who for 28 years have been unable to organise life, deliver democracy, well-being or peace. The people are tired, and believe it’s time to turn over a new page.”
The Ukrainian voters perceived Zelensky as an upright candidate, a straightlaced and open person without a corruption-related past, who personified hope. He was quite tight-lipped about his policies or even about the team he’s picked to govern Ukraine. In fact, it’s a bit too early to form a full opinion about this political rookie.
Zelensky has offered most things to everyone: from fighting corruption to rising wages and ending the war in the east. But there has been little detail. His slogan was “No promises. No apologies”. It worked.
Then, there is the ‘known unknown’ — his exact relationship with one of the most obnoxious Ukrainian oligarchs, Ihor Kolomoisky, who lives in self-exile in Israel but has extensive business interests in Ukraine and has been linked to organised crime. Putin once openly called the billionaire a ‘crook’. A Reuters report warns that Zelensky’s relationship with Kolomoiskiy could prove an Achilles’ heel. Indeed, it will be a major test of Zelensky’s strength of character whether he will be able to stand his ground. The jury is out.
On the other hand, five years into the so-called ‘Euromaidan revolution’, a veritable coup that was funded and orchestrated by the West in 2014 to overthrow the elected ‘pro-Russian’ president Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. There’s hardly any foreign investment taking place, judiciary stands utterly corrupted along with the political class, and cronyism, nepotism and venality is rampant.
All that the West achieved in these past 5 years has been to turn Ukraine against Russia but then, the Ukrainian economy was inextricably linked to the Russian production chain and even as President Petro Poroshenko morphed into a hard-liner and a rabid nationalist with links to neo-Nazi groups, Moscow’s attitude also hardened.
Living standards are sliding. And then there’s the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine — the ‘Donbass question’ — and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. There aren’t any immediate prospects for a political solution in sight — not even for progress on the humanitarian front, for people on the front lines or for political prisoners.
Zelensky, like Poroshenko, favours Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and membership of the NATO and has promised to hold referendums to ascertain popular will. Russia will most certainly oppose the move. Arguably, everything concerning Zelensky’s presidency will largely depend on his equations with Moscow. Here, the signs are somewhat ambivalent. Some top Russian officials have voiced cautious optimism.
The Russian Prime Minister Dmirty Medvedev wrote on Facebook,
“The result showed an explicit request for new approaches in solving the problems of Ukraine.”
He added that there are opportunities for improving Russia-Ukraine relations.
“We need a pragmatic and responsible approach, which takes into account all the political realities in Ukraine, including primarily the situation in the east of the country,” Medvedev wrote.
Medvedev urged “sanity” and an understanding of the deep value of relations between the two peoples.
On the other hand, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskovtold reporters on Monday that it is premature to talk about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s congratulations to Zelensky or their cooperation until Zelensky takes concrete steps.
“It will only be possible to judge [Zelensky] by his actions.”
At the same time, back channels must be working and Moscow can be trusted to probe whether a new beginning is possible under Zelensky.
The defining fact in all this is that Ukraine straddles one of the world’s great fault lines. Zelensky’s best option might be to transform his country from being a battleground between east and west into a strictly neutral buffer state, a little like Finland used to be. But that is easier said than done. For that to happen, the regional balance of power ought to be symmetrical, which is, unfortunately, not the case.
Russia regards Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence, and has profound cultural links with it at the people-to-people, which is almost mystical. The EU, on the contrary, is loathe to concede Russia’s legitimate interests but is also not willing or committed to absorbing Ukraine (with its low standard of living, controlled markets and corruption) fully into its economic and financial structures.
Faced with these geopolitical realities, Zelensky’s best choice could be a neutral future for his country. The present situation is inherently unstable, for, unsurprisingly, Russia will fight for its interests in Ukraine. It is even possible that Moscow may test Zelensky’s resolve at some point, sooner rather than later. But the logjam cannot be broken easily, either. Plainly put, it will be impossible for any Ukrainian leader to seek partnership with Russia in a foreseeable future so long as Crimea and the Donbass question remain unresolved.
Having said that, everything really depends on the state of play in US-Russia relations. Arguably, it is not even so terribly important who is in power in Kiev. Through the past 5-year period, the US has programmed Ukraine into an ‘anti-Russian’ mode. And Washington holds the ‘software’. The bottom line is that the American calculus is also geared to ensuring the US’ trans-Atlantic leadership for which the sanctions against Russia provide a vital underpinning.
This is where the contradiction lies: the “enemy” image of Russia as ‘aggressor country’, which is the leitmotif of NATO’s force projection in Central Europe and the Black Sea, cannot be sustained if the Ukraine crisis gets resolved. Simply put, Zelensky needs to be ‘pro-Ukraine’ than ‘pro-West’ — that is to say, he should realise that if Ukraine has any chance of prospering, it must somehow normalise relations with Moscow, which remains its largest trading partner.
But will he be allowed by the West to open a dialogue with Moscow?Therefore, the big question is how long will the momentum out of the wave of optimism that led to Zelensky’s election last before it begins to dissipate? The promised fresh start is difficult and comes with the high risk of failure. To be sure, Zelensky cannot solve the daunting problems with the comedian’s wit, charm or funny YouTube videos.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image: Comedian Vladimir Zelensky sweeps to victory as Ukraine’s next president, Kiev, April 21, 2019 (Source: Indian Punchline)
While the European media is generally known to be mostly objective in its reporting, the highly partisan nature of British coverage into the events that shape our world view is, without any doubt deepening the political and social divide.
Broadsheets and broadcasters are typically consumed by the middle to upper class, whereas the tabloids are generally aimed at the working class. And as 60 per cent of Britons identifies themselves as working class, it is hardly any surprise that the tabloids are popular.
It is also known that a right-wing ideology and bias dominates British news. This was confirmed by a YouGov survey, that to be fair, only stated the obvious – The Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times were all identified as right-wing, but that is also outnumbered the leftist thinking of the Daily Mirror and The Guardian. The Independent was seen as slightly left of centre.
It is true to say then that the sensationalist ‘tabloids’ hold considerable political clout and sway over public opinion.
In the most recent example of analysis of this right-wing bias dominating our world view, one only has to look at a Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism analysis, which found that in the run-up to the Brexit vote, 41 per cent of articles about the Referendum was pro-Brexit, while only 27 per cent advocated remaining in the EU.
As expected, the UK’s leading newspapers – The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express – published a steady stream of anti-EU reporting – also known as to most of us as propaganda or fake news.
This distortion of the national narrative ought to be taken very seriously as we form our own opinions around what we see, read and experience and the mainstream media are very much a part of that.
One way of looking at this distortion is to analyse the number of complaints received by The Independent Press Standards Organisation or IPSO. It was established in September 2014 following the windup of the very public failure of the Press Complaints Commission, which had been the main industry regulator of the press in the United Kingdom since 1990.
IPSO exists (so they say), to “promote and uphold the highest professional standards of journalism in the UK” which given the record and type of complaints, is very hard to believe. It also states it is there to support members of the public in seeking redress where they believe that the Editors’ Code of Practice has been breached.
IPSO is a self-regulator paid for by its member publishers, therefore, it is hard not to see where a conflict of interests can arise.
The “Hacked Off” campaign that emerged as a result of the phone-hacking revelations and the Levison report, which campaigns for a free and accountable press for the public has described IPSO as a “sham” and “the illusion of reform.”
We analysed the last 800 complaints made by all manner of people. From distressed families suffering from the intrusion of the press to complaints of blatant lies, harassment, reporting inaccuracies and the like.
Each complaint is categorised by IPSO as either a ‘Breach, No Breach or Resolved – IPSO Mediation
In the period analysed we looked at the last 800 complaints listed:
95 were ruled as breaches of the code of conduct (12 per cent)
272 were ‘resolved’ through IPSP mediation (34 per cent)
433 complaints were dismissed after investigation (54 per cent)
For the analysis of breaches, we have grouped those outlets that are of the same entity such as The Times and Sunday Times, and only national newspapers – and excluded the likes of regional or local papers. Of those complaints that were upheld as ‘breaches’:
Daily Mail/Mail online/Mail on Sunday – 27
Express/Sunday Express – 18
The Sun – 18
The Times/Sunday Times 16
Daily Telegraph – 7
The Mirror – 7
Daily Star – 2
It should be noted that the Financial Times, The Independent and The Guardian newspapers do not subscribe to IPSO.
By no means do the numbers above give an indication of the total number of complaints received by IPSO.
For instance, in 2017 a large number of ‘multiple’ complaints, where more than one similar complaint was made about the same article, contributed to a high number of complaints received. The Sun topped the list with 4,847 complaints, followed by the Daily Mail at 4,176, Mail Online at 3,536, the Metro at 1,500 and The Mail on Sunday at 1,452. Here the Daily Mail, Mail Online and Mail on Sunday racked up well over 9,000 complaints between them.
In 2018, the Daily Mail was identified as by far the biggest offender of the year out of the publications monitored by IPSO. The Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times respectively limped on behind. In this year, the Daily Mail was found after a full investigation to have breached the code of practice on no less than 37 occasions – just for accuracy alone.
The Daily Mail is one of the most popular daily papers in the UK, with a just as successful online presence, but its awful record of breaching basic guidelines that it subscribes to is the reason why Wikipedia made the decision to classify it as an unreliable reference source in 2017.
In terms of circulation, the national papers continue to see a year-on-year sliding of performance. The 2019 Press Gazette reports (Feb 2019) those numbers as follows:
The domination by the Mail Online is clear to see.
In 2014, The Daily Mail was officially the UK’s most complained about newspaper, according to an analysis put out by the Press Complaints Commission. In 2019 under the guidance of a different regulator, nothing has changed. At the time, Hacked Off describes the PCC’s failure to publish a full list of complaints as a ‘cover-up’. Its biggest financial supporters were the Daily Mail group, Telegraph Media Group and News UK – did not come well out of the analysis.
In 2013, the Daily Mail managed to clock up 1,214 complaints alone, followed by The Sun with 638, Daily Telegraph with 300, Daily Mirror on 242, Mail on Sunday with 168 and so on. In total, nearly 3,000 complaints were received in just that one year. And that year was after, not before the Levison report and the very public scandals of press intrusion and tactics.
The Daily Mail also seems to garner the most amount of criticism racked up by ‘click-baiting’ consumers over health claims. The NHS publishes guidance on what consumers should know as facts through science, not the sensationalised claims made by the newspapers. The Daily Mail features prominently when it comes to correcting their headlines and claims.
Just four months ago The Guardian was found to be the most trusted newspaper in Britain as well as being the most read quality news outlet, according to industry figures produced by the Publishers Audience Measurement Company.
In the end, we would recommend that you read news through a mix of sources to get a balanced view and to steer clear from the click-baiters and propagators of fake news and propaganda like the Daily Mail, Express and Sun.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Increased prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, as well as heightened obesity and birth abnormalities were found in the offspring of lab rats exposed to glyphosate, a scientific study has found.
The new research is the first of its kind to look at the transgenerational effects of the world’s most commonly used herbicide, first sold as Roundup, showing its carcinogenic properties are passed down at least three generations.
“This study provides alarming new evidence supporting our public health call to take glyphosate off the European market,” said Génon Jensen from the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL).
Banned
“If a pesticide is showing harm which only occurs generations down the line, surely this is an opportunity for the European Commission to take more precautionary measures to protect our health.”
Despite the fact the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate to be a ‘probable human carcinogen’ in 2015, the herbicide was reauthorized on the European market for a period of five years in 2017.
A European Citizens’ Initiative petitioning to ban glyphosate has already been signed by 1.3 million people, and the European Commission recently appointed France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden to assess whether or not the pesticide should be banned after its current licence expires in 2022.
Toxicology
In theory it would be possible for the EU to take glyphosate of the market before 2022.
“As an emergency measure, both the EU and individual member states have the power to end the current glyphosate approval before the five year periods,” explains Yannick Vicaire from HEAL.
The organization Pesticide Action Network recently released a report listing a wide range of more environmentally friendly alternatives to glyphosate, showing a ban of the herbicide would also be technically feasible.
“The ability of glyphosate and other environmental toxicants to impact our future generations needs to be considered, and is potentially as important as the direct exposure toxicology done today for risk assessment,” the authors of the study stated.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist who writes about climate change, environment, health and migration. He tweets from @ArthurWyns.
John Bolton sent out the following tweet yesterday ahead of the rumored Israeli attack on Lebanon this summer that will target civilians (according to Israeli Major General Amir Eshel).
.
.
.
Today’s @StateDept announcement that they will be offering up to $10M for information on Hizballah’s global financial networks is another example of how the U.S. is continuing to expand the scope and scale of our maximum pressure campaign against Iran and its proxies. https://t.co/elHdOZqNOc
Hezbollah “is treated in an overly simplistic way by US officials, meaning the State Department sees no problem asking questions about donors and ties. It would be unthinkable, however, for them to make similar inquiries, offering large cash awards, for any other country’s major political parties’ donors,” writes Jason Ditz.
Now that Iran has designated the US military as a terrorist organization in response to the US declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group, it would be only fitting for the mullahs to offer a bounty for info on donors to the war party political class in the United States, in particular those calling for attacking Iran.
The Iranians might want to start with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. In addition to donating millions to politicos who have sworn loyalty to Israel, Adelson famously called for nuking Iran.
Imagine the response if Hassan Rouhani called for nuking the US (an impossibility, of course, as Iran does not have nukes, unlike the US and Israel).
Considering the history of Israel and its use of political assassination, it is more than likely the outing of Hezbollah donors will result in murder. Normally, any such assassination would be considered terrorism, but the propaganda media in the US doesn’t report it that way.
Hezbollah’s track record on terror is largely speculative. There is no evidence the group kidnapped the president of the American University in Beirut, Davis S. Dodge, or is there conclusive evidence it attacked the US embassy in Beirut or truck bombed a US military barracks in Lebanon. A number of other murders, bombings, and airplane hijackings have been attributed to Hezbollah, again with scant evidence. However, for the neocons, evidence is not required. Big Lies suffice.
History is, of course, left out of the equation. Hezbollah was formed after Israel invaded Lebanon (to steal its water) and began imprisoning and torturing Shi’a Muslims, most notoriously at the Khiam detention center (see this Amnesty International report on the torture and ill-treatment of detainees at the Khiam facility).
Hezbollah is now an integral component of the Lebanese government and removing it wholesale from politics will prove to be impossible short of killing just about every Shi’a in Lebanon.
I believe this is what Israeli Major General Amir Eshel was talking about when he said the innocent will pay for Hezbollah resistance to Israeli plans in Lebanon.
The Israelis seem to believe killing thousands of civilians will turn the population against Hezbollah. Instead, it will strengthen the resolve of the Lebanese people to resist Israeli invasion and occupation.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The sun is hot in Spain this time of year. The Catholics too. Semana Santa (Holy Week) reminded us that Spain was once the world’s preeminent source of religious fundamentalism. Today, in contrast, it simply copies the nihilistic fundamentalism which flows out of Wall Street. It now is the source of nothing and believes in nothing. For better or worse, Spain has been emasculated, neutralized and mediocritized. The proof are its politicians. And for the powers that be, that’s just fine.
On April 28 Spain is holding a general election. It will be the fourth since Spain’s version of US capitalism began to implode at the end of 2008. Finance capital, and that hot sun, had created a property bubble the size of California. All of which turned into political crap, in 2012, when Spain had to submit to the same “economic medicine”which was crushing Greece at that precise moment – the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund).
Ever since 2012 Spain has been drifting nowhere. The reason being that post-Franco democracy is moribund. Or maybe it was never alive to begin with.
Franco (right) had ruthlessly wiped out Spain’s democrats a long time before his death in 1975. And after destroying them, he had imposed an unwanted king, and an unwanted alliance with the US military, upon the backs of the Spanish. And that was that.
Ever since the first post-Franco election, in 1977, these legacies of Spanish fascism have been hiding behind manufactured political parties: first the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and then the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP).
This political cage, however, has been battered and discredited by the economic crisis that engulfed Spain after 2008. The solution to the financial crash, for the post-Franco establishment, has been obedience to the financial markets – the Troika. And disobedience to the people of Spain. The word – austerity – sums up this treasonous solution.
In response, the Spanish people came out onto the streets. In 2011 the 15-M (May 15) Movement mobilized millions of ordinary Spaniards. Indignant about the naked appearance of financial fascism, the voiceless people took over the plazas of Spain. It was a ‘Spanish Spring’. The streets of Madrid had picked up the vibe of the Mediterranean, that then was emanating from Tunis and Cairo. However, the Spanish government were picking up the vibe of the CIA. And sent the cops into the plazas – to crack heads. The powers that be didn’t want freedom in the Mediterranean. Least of all in Spain.
And this geopolitical context is the key to understanding contemporary Spanish politics. Spain is a strategic gateway to many worlds: the Mediterranean, the European, the African and the Latin American. Because of its geographic location and history, Spain is a bridge. On the grand chessboard, Spain is more valuable than a pawn. And for this reason, Spain’s fate is not in Spain’s hands.
Franco knew this. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) he placed his fate not in the hands of the Spanish nation, but in the hands of Italian fascists, German Nazis and Moroccan mercenaries. And after World War Two, he instinctively turned to US imperialism. The once “great” Spain became a US colony.
“In 1953 Franco signed the Pact of Madrid…. The pact consisted of three separate, but interdependent, agreements between Spain and the United States. It provided for mutual defense, for military aid to Spain, and for the construction of bases there.” (El País)
This innocuous looking agreement is the deep foundation of today’s Spanish politics. Next to it, everything else is superficial – even the king and the banks and Catalonia. Franco’s gift to Spain was nothing less than a pact with the devil. It was an agreement with permanent war. It was a fascist pact.
The pact manifested itself immediately. In the mid 1950s, the US built its own ‘rock of Gibraltar’ near the city of Cádiz: the naval port of Rota. And it moved into the airbase of Morón – near the city of Seville. From these extremely strategic positions the US could access Africa and the Mediterranean Sea within minutes. And it could reach the Middle East within a few hours.
Meanwhile, the secretive CIA teamed up with Franco’s secretive state. So much so, that the great CIA whistleblower, Philip Agee, wrote in his account of 1970s Europe – ‘On The Run’: “The more they tried to get me to Spain, the more suspicious I was. I knew the Agency and the Franco services were as thick as thieves.”
The death of Franco changed nothing. Spain’s transition to ‘democracy’ was managed carefully – so as not to disturb US imperialism. In an important 1976 article, La CIA, Aqui, Ahora (in a Spanish magazine called Cambio 16), Spain’s place in the Empire is brilliantly described:
“….neutralism in Spanish foreign policy… is the real danger for the USA…Washington’s new strategic planning passes right through Spain, since the Iberian Peninsula is an extension of the African-Atlantic shelf. The Sahara, Angola, the independence movements in the Azores and Canaries, the Paris-Madrid-Rabat axis all form part of the same story….And it is no longer a matter of facing up to the Soviets, but [of blocking] the process of normalization in international relations…
…With the handover of [Western Sahara] to Morocco, the [CIA] gained the isolation of Algeria, the division of the Third World, and the security of the monitoring units on Ceuta and Melilla and the base on Tenerife….
Already the Americans have secured the oil route that passes through Las Palmas and along the coast of Angola and the monitoring of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet from the south, thus reinforcing NATO’s most vulnerable zone. And all of this would be put at risk if Spain were to become truly neutral.
…the United States would not be prepared to tolerate a Mediterranean Switzerland.”
And is the 2019 relationship between Spain and the USA any different? No. Indeed recent events suggest it has become much darker.
A 2015 El País headline stated: “Spain to negotiate turning Morón into US base for anti-jihadist operations“. While another El País headline that same year read: “US and Spain to sign deal making Morón main base for Africa operations”.
And in April 2017 US navy ships – based in Rota, Spain – attacked Syria without informing the Spanish government beforehand. In fact, Spain’s second class status, even within Spain, was underlined in February this year (2019) when the CIA brazenly broke into the Madrid embassy of North Korea and terrorized its occupants.
Will the Spanish government pushback? No. It continues to play the role the US has assigned for it. For example, when the US openly pressed for regime change in Venezuela last January, Spain’s socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, immediately supported the Americans. This being significant because Spain automatically leads official European opinion when it comes to Latin America.
So what’s the point of the April 28 Spanish general election? Its ideological. Its a lie or a joke the Spanish state tells itself so as to cover up its own impotence. The Spanish people, however, are beginning to feel it.
The new left leaning political party, Podemos (We Can), emerged out of the 2011 ‘Spanish Spring’ and has upset the established order. But it is fighting a rigged voting system that favors the conservative countryside – at the expense of the more critical ‘Podemos cities’. And it is being shadowed now by two new ‘made to measure’ (CIA?) right wing parties: Ciudadanos (Citizens) and Vox (Voice).
As the US gears up today for a few more wars (Iran and Venezuela) there seems to be no escape, for Spain, from its deep colonial status. Even Podemos don’t seem to be aware of the depth of the problem. The Spanish Spring complained about the EU straitjacket (austerity) but failed to see the US straitjacket (imperialism).
The Americans, therefore, seem to have Spanish sovereignty truly trapped. The basic fact is that Spain joined the USA (1953) before it joined the EU (1986). So for Spain to be free, it is necessary to go back to the source of the slavery: the 1953 Pact of Madrid. If Spain destroys this then the liberation will follow: the liberation from the US, the EU and the King. The Republic of Spain would be reborn. But is any Spanish politician offering this truly post-Franco vision?
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Aidan O’Brien is a hospital worker in Dublin, Ireland.
The heart of France is on fire. An inferno rocked France. Notre Dame, cultural icon of France and UNESCO declared World Heritage, was burning. The flames devastated the wooden roof and the spire. They caused, at first sight, only light damage on the 12th century cathedral’s structure and historic treasures, as most of the latter were either removed for the ongoing renovation, or were removed just in time by firefighters. Some damage to religious artifacts may have been caused by the enormous amounts of water used by the 500 firemen who dozed the blaze which took about 12 to extinguish. Given the circumstances – a bone-dry wooden roof and spire, largely unprotected from fire hazards – the 850-year-old gothic master piece was lucky for having been saved at all.
While it is not clear yet, at least not publicly, what caused the blaze, fire safety protection measures were insufficient. First, the burnability of hundreds of years old solid oak was underestimated. Second, according to Benjamin Mouton, the architect who oversaw the fire protections, and as reported by the NYT,
“The system was based on the assumption that if the cathedral ever caught fire, the ancient oak timbers in the attic would burn slowly, leaving ample time to fight the flames.” He added, “The fire alarms in Notre-Dame did not notify fire dispatchers right away. Instead, a guard at the cathedral first had to climb a steep set of stairs to the attic — a trip that would take a “fit” person six minutes.”
Therefore, there was already a built-in delay of about 20 minutes for the firemen starting to fight the flames, an important time span at the beginning of a fire.
This is an significant detail, considering the speed with which the flames spread through the wooden roof and the spire. Some islamophobes already point their fingers to a terror attack, especially on a Christian house of worship in the week before Easter, resurrection of Christ, the Christians holiest celebration.
*
The socially most disturbing factor is the speed with which the French billionaires – later they were joined by international oligarchs – pledged their (tax-deductible) donation to fix the cathedral. Within just a couple of days, more than a billion euros in donation were pledged by the richest of the rich French billionaires.
First estimates of damage came in as between € 500 and € 700 million. Once the pledges were in, nobody talked about cost estimates anymore. It will be interesting to see, who gets the excess money. – Maybe the poor Frenchmen, who have to survive on €500 a month, live in the street, or in tent cities on the periphery of Paris, and whose children go hungry to bed – if they have a bed – every night. Though, I don’t think it was the intention of the billionaires that ‘left-overs’ should go to the poor.
Macron, with gleaming eyes went on TV – his moment to detract from his fierce opponents, the Yellow Vests – promising that “we will rebuild this monument even more beautiful than it was before”. He called for an international bidding process to assure that the best architects will work on the reconstruction of this world renown icon.
Macron even postponed ‘indefinitely’ talking about the reform measures he was planning after the three months of ‘debate’ intended to end the weekly Yellow Vest protests. But he didn’t. And even if he would have made loads of concessions, the protests would not go away, short of Macron resining. That’s the level of trust he has left. Protests are fiercer than ever, because people are to see that the rich have no problem donating hundreds of millions, in sort of a contest of one-upmanship – ‘I’ll outdo you’type of corporate propaganda, while paying no or very little taxes.
If they were to pay their due in taxes, the Yellow Vests rightly argue, there would be no need for donations. The cultural restauration and rehabilitation fund would have plenty of money, and, in addition, there would be no justification for increasing taxes for the lower-earning echelons of society – exactly what Macron was doing and continues doing, taxing the poor into the ground. On Saturday 20 April, the day before Easter, 28,000 Yellow Vests rallied in Paris against the oligarchs spending generously and egocentrically for showmanship, but resist paying their taxes so that all of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen could live a decent life.
The Yellow Vest protesters passed by the blackened ruins of Notre Dame to pay their homage to the monument – showing that their demonstrations had nothing to do with rebuilding the church, but had much to do with how the impunity of shuffling money – and ever more money – from the lower strata of society to the billionaires, has reached a point of no-more-tolerance. It’s a catastrophe, and the Yellow Vests will not end their outcry for justice, unless Macron resigns and a direct democracy is installed. That’s what they are fighting for – and have been fighting precisely six months already. They are poised not to give up, no matter how Notre Dame is going to be rebuilt.
*
There is an even more nefarious angle to this – and other monuments. Hundreds of years of French exploitation of her colonies in Africa, of enslaving, raping, ravaging, killing and plundering Africa’s resources, has allowed France and many other European nations to amass insane amounts of stolen assets – with which they built and now boast about their monuments, castles, churches, with which they maintained their empires and today maintain their kingdoms. Theft and plunder are the basis for the rich culture and famous shrines the brave and wise Europeans conceived and built.
Notre Dame – a house of Christ – is one of those monuments that would possibly not exist, if France would not have had the illegally begotten resources from wars and pillaging the African Continent – something which France’s neocolonialism continues doing today, through the Banque de France’s controlled “former” West and Central African French colonies. Another shameful and ongoing occurrence, nobody dares talk about it – which allows France to rob untold billions from poor African countries – making sure that their development is stunted. It works, as long as they keep puppet dictators in power.
Today its NATO – with its swift wars and killing sprees that keeps colonialism alive, keeps the resources flowing from south to north, impoverishing the south, dividing the south by creating chaos for better control – and especially for guaranteeing the continuation of elite-enriching theft. – May Notre Dame – the House of God – her reconstruction, remind us that France’s oligarchs still benefit from the atrocious and illegal economic resources drain from Africa and the Middle East; that such injustice must to stop.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21stCentury; 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.
The Trump administration is laying siege to Iran. Taking pages from the Iraq War playbook, senior officials paint a picture of a rogue, outlaw, terrorist regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and whose “malign activities” are the cause of all the chaos in the Middle East. They know what they are doing. They have done it before. They are building a case for war.
The “maximum pressure” campaign by the White House, Treasury Department, and State Department accelerated this week with the announcement that the United States would force China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey to cease all imports of Iranian oil or face severe U.S. sanctions. The goal is to cut to zero all of Iran’s oil exports, which account for some 40 percent of its national income. This strategy is unlikely to force the capitulation or collapse of the regime, but it very likely could lead to war.
The United States has already reimposed all the nuclear-related sanctions lifted by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that successfully rolled back and effectively froze Iran’s nuclear program and put it under the most stringent inspections ever negotiated. The goals of the sanctions announced April 22, however, go way beyond nuclear issues.
“We have made our demands very clear to the ayatollah and his cronies,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeosaid in remarks to the press Monday morning. “End your pursuit of nuclear weapons. Stop testing and proliferating ballistic missiles. Stop sponsoring and committing terrorism. Halt the arbitrary detention of U.S. citizens.”
All are worthy policy goals. The first, of course, has been met. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. There is no evidence that the program has restarted. Instead, in true Trumpian fashion, the administration simply asserts the counterfactual. It claims that the program has restarted, with slippery phrases about seeking weapons or references to long-ended activities. The media, overloaded with the Mueller report and a daily cascade of lies, does not challenge these claims.
The Role of Bolton
It is no accident that National Security Advisor John Bolton, the man who declaredunequivocally in November 2002, “We are confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq,” is now the chief strategist behind the drive towards war—with Mike Pompeo happily riding shotgun.
Both are manipulating a distracted and largely uninformed president into a confrontation he may not actually want. Although Trump came into office promising to cancel the JCPOA painstakingly negotiated by the Obama administration and our allies, he was initially held in check by the united front of his military, intelligence, and diplomatic advisors.
Then, Trump ousted Rex Tillerson and replaced him with Mike Pompeo. He fired H.R. McMaster and appointed John Bolton. He accepted the resignation of Jim Mattis as secretary of defense and replaced him with a former Boeing executive more interested in contracts than policy. Bolton has had a clear field ever since. With minimal or no inter-agency discussion, Bolton quickly dispensed with the Iran accord, but he did not stop there.
By Christmas 2018, Bolton had dismantled what remained of U.S.-Iran relations. The United States reinstated all sanctions on Iran that were previously lifted by the Iran accord, and the State Department pulled out of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the United States and Iran, which provided a “legal framework for bilateral relations.” As a result, Iran’s currency hit a historic low and the country witnessed waves of economic protests. Bolton used his national platform to publicly send bellicose warnings to the regime with statements like, “If you cross us, our allies, or our partners…there will indeed be hell to pay.”
The Terrorism “Connection”
The “maximum pressure” campaign escalated in 2019. When terrorists attacked the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—an official branch of Iran’s military—killing 27 and wounding 13, the State Department offered no condolences. When widespread flooding devastated Iranian cities and infrastructure, claiming 60 lives in one week, the United States faulted the regime for the “mismanagement that has led to this disaster.”
The campaign hit a crescendo on April 8, 2019—exactly one year to the day after Bolton’s appointment—with the unprecedented move of designating the IRGC a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” It now appears alongside the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram on this list. That day Pompeo delivered a statement to the press and public in which the words “terror,” “terrorism,” and “terrorist” appeared 21 times.
This designation brings at least the IRGC and perhaps the entire nation within arm’s reach of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, legislation originally written to provide a legal basis for the invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. The 2001 AUMF gives the president wide scope for the unilateral use of force against any parties or individuals associated with the 9/11 attacks, a point not lost on Pompeo.
For over a year, the Trump administration, and Pompeo in particular, has been exaggerating the connection between Iran and al-Qaeda to claim legal justification for military action against Iran under the 2001 AUMF. In 2017, the CIA released additional records from the bin Laden files, ostensibly “to enhance public understanding of al-Qaeda.” Wrote former CIA analyst Ned Price:
But this release by Pompeo wasn’t about transparency. Pompeo is playing politics with intelligence, using these files in a ploy to bolster the case against Iran by reinvigorating the debate on its terrorist ties. While the politicization of intelligence is more than sufficient cause for concern, the fact that he appears to be returning to the Bush administration’s pre-Iraq war playbook underscores the danger. This effort reeks of former vice president Dick Cheney’s consistent false allegations of links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, a nexus the Bush administration debunked only after we had lost too much in blood and treasure.
Bolton, Pompeo, and their allies in and out of government continued to hype the Iran-al-Qaeda link. In May 2018, announcing the U.S. abrogation of the nuclear agreement, Trump made a point of saying that “Iran supports terrorist proxies and militias such as…al-Qaeda.” In a speech at the Heritage Foundation later that month, Pompeo said:
“Today we ask the Iranian people: Is this what you want your country to be known for, for being a co-conspirator with Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda?”
Experts have disparaged the administration’s claims, noting the longstanding hostility between Iran, a Shia-majority nation, and the radical Sunni group. A definitive New America study published in late 2018 found no evidence that Iran and al-Qaeda collaborated in carrying out terrorist attacks. That hasn’t stopped the administration from continuing the insinuations.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo went out of his way to construct explicit connections between al-Qaeda and the IRGC with multiple statements like:
“there is no doubt there is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Al-Qaeda. Period, full stop.”
Invoking the AUMF
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) zeroed in to the subtext of Pompeo’s repetitive al-Qaeda-Iran connections. If the administration determines a valid link between al-Qaeda and the Iranian government, it may be able to declare war on Iran by using the 2001 AUMF, bypassing Congress entirely. So, Senator Paul pressed Pompeo on that point, asking him if he believes that the 2001 AUMF applies to Iran or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Pompeo dodged the question: “I would prefer to leave that to the lawyers, Senator.” Neither Bolton nor Pompeo has yet provided a clear answer.
The administration’s plan is clear: keep beating the twin drums of terrorism and nuclear threat. Bolton and Pompeo will use both to justify more sanctions and more provocations. They have a highly disciplined, coordinated messaging strategy. They establish the following false claim, as Bolton did this January in a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel: “Despite getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, despite the sanctions, we have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons.” The claims are then echoed, as this one was in a Twitter video a few weeks later. And again by U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, in a New York Times op-ed, demanding that Iran “behave like a normal, peaceful nation: end the pursuit of nuclear weapons, stop testing ballistic missiles, stop sponsoring terrorist proxies.” And again this week by Pompeo, in announcing the oil sanctions, when he demanded that Iran “end [its] pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
It does not matter that U.S. intelligence assessments—as well as Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency—confirm that Iran is complying with the JCPOA. Or that Saudi Arabia has likely funded al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist groups. Or that the US invasion of Iraq is the principle cause of Middle East chaos today. Trump officials will cherry-pick information, package it, and amplify it across a willing echo chamber—exactly as the Bush administration did in the lead up to the Iraq war.
The real question is whether America will fall for it again.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Joseph Cirincione is the president and Mary Kaszynski is the deputy policy director of the Ploughshares Fund, which provides financial support to LobeLog.
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.
The land of the rising sun prepares for a new dawn. An emperor’s departure and another’s ascension. Emperor Akihito will abdicate on April 30, and May Day in Japan will see his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, become the 126th occupant of the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Japan is a land of contradictions. An emperor in a democracy. An economic powerhouse, once considered, and feared to be, on the verge of global dominance, now suffers from a sense of drift and malaise. The reign of wartime emperor Hirohito is described as showa (enlightened harmony). A democracy where the Liberal Democratic Party (not liberal but deeply conservative) has been in power for all but of a handful of years since 1955. Japan’s pacifist constitution is viewed as an obstruction by the right to re-armament and may soon be, as the government puts it, reinterpreted again before being changed for the first time. A land where tradition is honored has undergone profound upheavals under each modern-era emperor.
Akihito was the fifth emperor since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the shogunate, a system of feudal military rulers, collapsed and the emperor was plucked from relative political obscurity in Kyoto to reside in Tokyo. He was meant to symbolize stability and a link to the past. It is this harking back to other eras that has bedeviled a country noted for its Blade Runner cityscapes.
In Japanese folklore the first emperor was Jimmu (about 650 BC), making it, according to legend, the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy. Concubinage was only abolished in 1926, the year Akihito’s father, Hirohito, became emperor. The Americans, the occupying power after WWII, realized that this system had produced a number of possible competing claimants to the throne. This fear resulted in the Imperial Household Law, introduced in 1948, which limited the succession to male descendants of the emperor, Hirohito.
The only succession most Japanese recall was Akihito’s in 1989 when the past was another country. But so was the future. Back then the mood was of unbridled optimism. The country was an economic superpower. From the debris of war, it had rebuilt itself, and was challenging the United States for pre-eminence.
Today, Japan is frustrated at its lost economic opportunities since the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s. In December 1989 the Tokyo stock exchange closed at 38,916. Today its closing price is about 22,500. A remedy has remained elusive to its leaders. And the rise of China has led to a sense of vulnerability that was missing in 1989. The imperial family, the only institution in Japan not beset by scandals, have been portrayed as the last bastion of ‘good, traditional values’’.
In any country with a monarchy, succession is a time for rejoicing. It helps reaffirm the country’s values and gives people a sense of identity and hope for the future. But there is a dark side to Japan’s succession.
Rightists groups will portray the Shinto rituals, especially the rite of enthronement where the new emperor is in “symbolic communication with deities”, as evidence of the “real Japan’’.
The restoration, or Meiji (enlightened rule) from 1868 to 1912, saw a drive to modernization, catching up with the West, with a focus on Britain (children going to school in sailor uniforms is one of the consequences) and Germany (more accurately, Prussia, with the onus put on military prowess). From 1912 to 1926 saw the Taisho (great righteousness) era, when Yoshihito became emperor. He did not enjoy good health but during his reign democracy was established and Japan gained territory in China after WWI. The Showa era (enlightened harmony), which began in 1926, witnessed Japan’s rapid economic development, but it also encompassed the rise of militarism and WWII.
Ambivalence shrouds the three decades of Akihito’s rule, the Heisei era, (achieving peace). The period saw the end of the bubble economy and deteriorating relations with China. Many will forever associate it with the 1995 terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway, the Kobe earthquake, and the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and consequent nuclear power station meltdown in Fukushima in March 2011.
Japan has not been involved in a conflict since 1945, but the pacifist constitution is under siege. The official English translation of article 9, which renounces war, is refreshingly clear.
“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.’’
In direct contravention of this article, Japan has the world’s fourth-most powerful military and the eighth-largest military budget. With 240,000 personnel, its annual defense budget is nearly $50 billion.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (with Trump in 2017) has vowed to push for a wholesale revision of the Japanese constitution, to further boost its military and allow it to play a greater role in global affairs, to be enacted before the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
“By 2020, I think Japan will have completely restored its status and been making great contributions to peace and stability in the region and the world,” he said.
This commitment may not be totally unrelated to the timing of the emperor’s abdication. Even before he ascends the throne, confusion surrounds the word chosen to define the new imperial era. Japan’s Foreign Ministry says that Reiwa means “beautiful harmony’ and not the more assertive and militaristic “command” or “order” as has been suggested. That such ambiguity exists may not be an accident.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Tom Clifford is an Irish journalist based in China.
This relevant article was first published on GR in June 2018.
The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Or it will end in tragedy.
The Australian government and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have an historic opportunity to decide which it will be.
They can remain silent, for which history will be unforgiving. Or they can act in the interests of justice and humanity and bring this remarkable Australian citizen home.
Assange does not ask for special treatment. The government has clear diplomatic and moral obligations to protect Australian citizens abroad from gross injustice: in JulianE’s case, from a gross miscarriage of justice and the extreme danger that await him should he walk out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London unprotected.
We know from the Chelsea Manning case what he can expect if a US extradition warrant is successful — a United Nations Special Rapporteur called it torture.
I know Julian Assange well; I regard him as a close friend, a person of extraordinary resilience and courage. I have watched a tsunami of lies and smear engulf him, endlessly, vindictively, perfidiously; and I know why they smear him.
In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the US Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”.
This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution” and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech.
Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.
The irony is that no one told these journalists what to do. I call them Vichy journalists — after the Vichy government that served and enabled the German occupation of wartime France.
Last October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Sarah Ferguson interviewed Hillary Clinton, over whom she fawned as “the icon for your generation”.
This was the same Clinton who threatened to “obliterate totally” Iran and, who, as US secretary of State in 2011, was one of the instigators of the invasion and destruction of Libya as a modern state, with the loss of 40,000 lives. Like the invasion of Iraq, it was based on lies.
When the Libyan President was murdered publicly and gruesomely with a knife, Clinton was filmed whooping and cheering. Thanks largely to her, Libya became a breeding ground for ISIS and other jihadists. Thanks largely to her, tens of thousands of refugees fled in peril across the Mediterranean, and many drowned.
Leaked emails published by WikiLeaks revealed that Hillary Clinton’s foundation – which she shares with her husband – received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the main backers of ISIS and terrorism across the Middle East.
As Secretary of State, Clinton approved the biggest arms sale ever — worth $80 billion — to Saudi Arabia, one of her foundation’s principal benefactors. Today, Saudi Arabia is using these weapons to crush starving and stricken people in a genocidal assault on Yemen.
Sarah Ferguson, a highly paid reporter, raised not a word of this with Hillary Clinton sitting in front of her.
Instead, she invited Clinton to describe the “damage” Julian Assange did “personally to you”. In response, Clinton defamed Assange, an Australian citizen, as “very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence” and “a nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator”.
She offered no evidence — nor was asked for any — to back her grave allegations.
At no time was Assange offered the right of reply to this shocking interview, which Australia’s publicly-funded state broadcaster had a duty to give him.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ferguson’s executive producer, Sally Neighour, followed the interview with a vicious re-tweet: “Assange is Putin’s bitch. We all know it!”
There are many other examples of Vichy journalism. The Guardian, reputedly once a great liberal newspaper, conducted a vendetta against Julian Assange. Like a spurned lover, the Guardian aimed its personal, petty, inhuman and craven attacks at a man whose work it once published and profited from.
The former editor of the Guardian,Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published in 2010, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. Awards were lavished and celebrated as if Julian Assange did not exist.
WikiLeaks’ revelations became part of the Guardian’s marketing plan to raise the paper’s cover price. They made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks and Assange struggled to survive.
With not a penny going to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously abused Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”.
They also revealed the secret password Julian had given the Guardian in confidence and which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables.
With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, who had enriched himself on the backs of both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, stood among the police outside the embassy and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.
The question is why.
Julian Assange has committed no crime. He has never been charged with a crime. The Swedish episode was bogus and farcical and he has been vindicated.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape summed it up when they wrote,
“The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.”
This truth was lost or buried in a media witch-hunt that disgracefully associated Assange with rape and misogyny. The witch-hunt included voices who described themselves as on the left and as feminist. They willfully ignored the evidence of extreme danger should Assange be extradited to the United States.
According to a document released by Edward Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. One leaked official memo says:
“Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.”
In Alexandra, Virginia – the suburban home of America’s war-making elite — a secret grand jury, a throwback to the middle ages — has spent seven years trying to concoct a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted.
This is not easy; the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. Assange’s crime is to have broken a silence.
No investigative journalism in my lifetime can equal the importance of what WikiLeaks has done in calling rapacious power to account. It is as if a one-way moral screen has been pushed back to expose the imperialism of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare and the division and degradation of “unworthy” lives: from Grenfell Tower to Gaza.
When Harold Pinter accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, he referred to “a vast tapestry of lies up on which we feed”. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” of the Soviet Union were well known in the West while America’s imperial crimes “never happened … even while [they] were happening, they never happened.”.
In its revelations of fraudulent wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) and the bald-faced lies of governments (the Chagos Islands), WikiLeaks has allowed us to glimpse how the imperial game is played in the 21st century. That is why Assange is in mortal danger.
Seven years ago, in Sydney, I arranged to meet a prominent Liberal Member of the Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull.
I wanted to ask him to deliver a letter from Gareth Peirce, Assange’s lawyer, to the government. We talked about his famous victory — in the 1980s when, as a young barrister, he had fought the British Government’s attempts to suppress free speech and prevent the publication of the book Spycatcher — in its way, a WikiLeaks of the time, for it revealed the crimes of state power.
The prime minister of Australia was then Julia Gillard, a Labor Party politician who had declared WikiLeaks “illegal” and wanted to cancel Assange’s passport — until she was told she could not do this: that Assange had committed no crime: that WikiLeaks was a publisher, whose work was protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Australia was one of the original signatories.
In abandoning Assange, an Australian citizen, and colluding in his persecution, Prime Minister Gillard’s outrageous behaviour forced the issue of his recognition, under international law, as a political refugee whose life was at risk. Ecuador invoked the 1951 Convention and granted Assange refuge in its embassy in London.
Gillard has recently been appearing in a gig with Hillary Clinton; they are billed as pioneering feminists.
If there is anything to remember Gillard by, it a warmongering, sycophantic, embarrassing speech she made to the US Congress soon after she demanded the illegal cancellation of Julian’s passport.
Malcolm Turnbull is now the Prime Minister of Australia. Julian Assange’s father has written to Turnbull. It is a moving letter, in which he has appealed to the prime minister to bring his son home. He refers to the real possibility of a tragedy.
I have watched Assange’s health deteriorate in his years of confinement without sunlight. He has had a relentless cough, but is not even allowed safe passage to and from a hospital for an X-ray .
Malcolm Turnbull can remain silent. Or he can seize this opportunity and use his government’s diplomatic influence to defend the life of an Australian citizen, whose courageous public service is recognised by countless people across the world. He can bring Julian Assange home.
*
This is an abridged version of an address by John Pilger to a rally in Sydney, Australia, to mark Julian Assange’s six years’ confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. www.johnpilger.com
Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.
We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.
If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.
The very corporations that are responsible for the problem are denying global warming, with immediate consequences for the whole world.
Carbon emissions from the burning of oil, gas and methane are heating the planet, creating a crisis of rising sea levels, droughts, extreme weather, poisoned ground water and polluted air that puts all life at risk.
Is that problem reversible?
The United States and China are the largest consumers of coal and oil. The choices made by the leaders of the two largest industrialized economies are having an impact on climate and on air quality for everyone.
But the decisions being made in these two countries are going in totally different directions. Their choices reveal a lot about the different social and political bases of each country.
In China, dramatic changes in major population centers show that it is possible, if decisive actions are taken, to restore the environment and dramatically improve the quality of life.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, is not only ignoring the consequences of global warming, but actively and aggressively denying it. Meanwhile, he’s pushing forward with coal mining, fracking and other methods of oil extraction, doing away with Environmental Protection Act clean air regulations and opening up drilling in pristine areas of Alaska’s Arctic preserves.
While this is immediately profitable for a few, it has dangerous consequences for the planet and all life forms. Regardless of who is president, U.S. policy is set by the needs of the largest oil, gas and industrial corporations to maximize profit. U.S. policies are set by the relentless drive for wars to defend their empire. The Pentagon is the world’s biggest polluter, the largest user of oil and many more dangerous chemicals. Their wars have created the worst environmental devastation and humanitarian disasters.
Trump’s actions embolden other arrogant climate deniers. The extreme right-wing president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has decided to more forward with massive clear-cutting of trees in the Amazon region, the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
Capitalist media on China’s choices
It is especially noteworthy that major capitalist business publications are concerned with the implications of China’s drive for sustainable energy.
Their worry is not about the survival of the planet. It is whether China will get an economic advantage over Wall Street.
As a Jan. 11 headline in Forbes business magazine put it, “China is set to become the world’s renewable energy superpower.” Journalist Dominic Dudley cited a report issued that day by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, which laid out the geopolitical implications of the changing energy landscape.
The commission’s report, said Dudley, showed that China had become “the world’s largest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles.”
“The report argues that the geopolitical and economic consequences of the rapid growth of renewable energy could be as profound as those that accompanied the shift from biomass to fossil fuels two centuries ago,” wrote Dudley. It will “change patterns of trade and the development of new alliances. It could also spark instability in some countries that have grown dependent on oil and gas revenue.”
However, Olaf Grimsson, chair of the commission that wrote the report, added that this shift is also bringing “energy independence to countries around the world.”
“[T]hrough a combination of subsidies, policy targets and manufacturing incentives” had “spent more on cleaning up its energy system than America and the EU combined.”
Back on Jan. 5, 2017, an article in the London-based Financial Times titled “Wave of spending tightens China’s grip on renewable energy” quoted Tim Buckley, director of the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, who cautioned Wall Street: “As the U.S. owned the advent of the oil age, so China is shaping up to be unrivalled in clean power leadership today.”
A report from the same institute released a year later confirmed yet again that China continues to lead the world in clean energy investment.
China’s socialist revolution made the difference
Learning more about what China is doing to clean the environment and understanding why it is structurally and politically able to do so should open the eyes of environmental activists about what is possible.
To evaluate the historic significance of these gains, it is first important to understand that China is coming from a position of great poverty and semicolonial underdevelopment.
The revolution in China, led by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, triumphed in 1949 after a generation of armed struggle. It ended 150 years of foreign occupation and civil war, which had produced uncontrollable droughts and famines.
U.S. corporate power had sided with the corrupt landlord and military grouping around Gen. Chiang Kai-shek as their best option for continued Western domination of China. After its defeat on the mainland, this grouping, with U.S. assistance, militarily occupied the island of Taiwan.
After 1949 the U.S., in an effort to economically strangle the revolutionary determination of the People’s Republic of China, imposed a total embargo on all trade and investment. This blockade lasted until the 1972 visit of President Richard Nixon to China, which normalized political relations — but China was still cut off from world trade and economic development.
Special economic zones: a compromise
In 1979, in an effort to gain access to modern technology and world markets, the Chinese government, then led by Deng Xiaoping, created four Special Economic Zones to attract Western corporations dominating the world economy to invest in China.
Western corporations surged into these zones. Their goal was to set up assembly factories and maximize profits through cheap labor costs by employing what had been a largely peasant population in zones with few regulatory restrictions. They also dreamed of overturning the Chinese government.
These corporations gave little thought or planning to their impact on the environment.
The British-controlled colony of Hong Kong sits at the tip of the Pearl River Delta just south of China. Especially attractive to foreign investors was a Special Economic Zone established in a rural area of China north of Hong Kong, where land was easily available and close to a world-class seaport.
These investors used the same tactics in China that had been used a century or two earlier when building thousands of capitalist factories created the crowded, polluted, industrial cities of London, Manchester, Chicago and Buffalo.
After opening up to foreign investment in the 1980s, China surged through 35 years of uneven rapid industrialization. Tens of millions of Chinese peasants, a floating migrant population, flooded into the newly created economic zones. They worked incredibly long hours for six months to two years and were then sent home when orders declined.
Even as capitalist private enterprises flourished in socialist China, state-owned industries in essential economic areas also gained strength through joint ventures and government investments. The contradictions and dangers were enormous.
This compromise policy of opening up to foreign capital, allowing the growth of Chinese capitalists and modernizing state-owned industries, is called “building socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
North of Hong Kong, the primarily agricultural area of the Pearl River Delta and Guangdong Province careened through an unprecedented growth spurt. In 30 years, it became the largest contiguous urban region in the world, according to the World Bank.
Its population in the 2015 census was 108 million. The zone had a staggering growth rate of 40 percent a year from 1981 to 1993. The Pearl River Delta is now the biggest economic hub in the country.
The city of Shenzhen in the Delta grew from a population of 30,000 in 1979 to a megacity today of 20 million, with the largest migrant population in China. It became a polluted factory town of sweatshops spewing out clouds of dark toxic smoke.
Shenzhen’s economic output ranks third, after Beijing and Shanghai, among 659 Chinese cities. It has the second-busiest container terminal in mainland China and the third busiest in the world.
Just north of Shenzhen, the city of Guangzhou, formerly known by its European name of Canton, became China’s most polluted city.
Over the years, factory production in the megacities of the Pearl River Delta went from predominantly labor-intensive consumer goods like toys and clothing to light industry, then heavy industry like machinery, chemical products and autos. Now it is focused on producing high-tech electronic equipment.
While the hundreds of factories and power plants drove economic growth forward, they also polluted the air, water and soil to the tipping point.
Turning point
Five years ago, on March 4, 2014, China made a serious national decision. The 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress voted to reassert greater national control over development through conscious plans to reduce poverty, increase social programs and benefits, combat extreme pollution and build a sustainable environment.
This was a break from China’s 35-year policy of stressing economic growth ahead of the environment and of health and social benefits for the working class.
An article titled “Four years after declaring war on pollution, China is winning” ran in the March 12, 2018, New York Times: “To reach these targets, China prohibited new coal-fired power plants in the country’s most polluted regions, including the Beijing area. Existing plants were told to reduce their emissions. If they didn’t, coal was replaced with natural gas. Large cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, restricted the number of cars on the road. The country also reduced its iron- and steel-making capacity and shut down coal mines.”
Shenzhen and Guangzhou: cities reimagined
Today, some of the most interesting and radical changes undertaken through environmental experiments are in the Pearl River Delta, which has become a new model of urbanization due to extensive state planning and spending.
“Science is so important,” says Tonny Xie of the Clean Air Alliance of China. “If you have better planning, you will have better air.” (BBC World News, March 7, 2017)
Shenzhen in five years’ time has become one of the most livable cities in China, with extensive parks, tree-lined streets and the largest fleet of electric buses in the world (16,000), along with all-electric cabs. The city aims to have 80 percent of its new buildings green certified by 2020. It is now full of apartment blocks, office towers and modern factories with advanced equipment manufacturing, robotics, automation and giant tech startups.
Once-smoggy Guangzhou, after extensive clean up and rebuilding, is now considered China’s most livable city. The Guangzhou-Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Corridor is a creative plan for future development.
All the cities of the Pearl River Delta are well connected by high-speed trains and modern highways. The world’s longest bridge-tunnel sea crossing connects Shenzhen, Macau and Hong Kong.
Even the World Economic Forum says the world can learn from China’s example. Some 90 percent of the world’s estimated 385,000 electric buses are in China today. Only 1.6 percent of the world’s electric city buses are in Europe, and less than 1 percent are in the U.S.
In just four years since the launch of its war on pollution, Chinese cities by 2018 had already cut concentrations of fine particulates in the air on average by 32 percent.
150 coal plants eliminated
Other decisions in the war on pollution included the dramatic decision to stop or delay work on over 150 planned or under-construction coal plants.
A newly formed Ministry for Ecology and Environment has broad powers and responsibilities to oversee all water-related policies, from ocean water to groundwater. It oversees policies on climate change that were once scattered among different departments.
It is important in a crisis to understand the problem and evaluate the direction in which developments are going. The changes happening in major population centers of China show that it is possible, if decisive actions are taken, to restore the environment.
The problem in the U.S. that holds back and even reverses programs to mitigate pollution and climate change is that this highly developed country is dominated by a decaying capitalist system and ruling class desperate to maximize its quarterly profits at the expense of any long-term planning.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on Workers World.
Sara Flounders has traveled twice to Syria in solidarity delegations during the U.S. war against that country. She is co-director of the International Action Center and helps coordinate the United National Antiwar Coalition, the Hands Off Syria Campaign, and the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. Sara Flounders is a frequent contributor to Global Research
On Monday, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel rubber-stamped Manning’s unlawful imprisonment.
It her cruel solitary confinement punishment to continue, a flagrant 8th Amendment breach. More on this below.
Manning is one of America’s best, a genuine heroic figure. Maliciously oppressed for doing the right, she acted above and beyond the call of duty despite great personal risks to her safety and welfare.
Wrongfully imprisoned for exposing US high crimes of war and against humanity, the Trump regime imprisoned her again for invoking her First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights, along with the constitutional right to remain silent, refusing to answer questions from law enforcement or court officials, an internationally recognized right.
Her fundamental rights aren’t good enough in police state America, the rule of law long ago abandoned, anything goes replacing it.
A post-9/11 window of hysteria made anything goes possible, including elimination of fundamental constitutional rights at the whim of ruling authorities – rubber-stamped by Congress and the courts, especially the highest one stacked with majority right-wing extremists, discarding the rule of law, opposing what just societies cherish.
Trump is a front man for Wall Street, America’s military, industrial, security complex, corporate empowerment, and the imperial state – co-opted straightaway in office to serve their interests, his own at the same time.
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are martyred behind bars for the “crime” of truth-telling.
When governments fail their people, the way things are today in the West and elsewhere globally, they forfeit their right to rule.
Civil disobedience becomes an essential tool for change, popular revolution the only solution. Nothing else can work. Freedom loving people have a choice – resist or lose everything. There’s no in between.
In early April, Manning’s legal team filed a motion with the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, seeking her immediate release on bail while her unlawful arrest order is appealed.
Under US law, she’s entitled to bail while appealing charges against her. She poses no flight risk, nor a danger to anyone. According to her legal team, denying her bail violated appellate rules, requiring the court to explain in writing why bail was refused.
District Court Judge Claude Hilton failed to follow proper procedure. He ordered Manning remanded into federal custody with no further explanation – no written denial or justification.
Manning and her legal team responded to Monday’s judicial ruling, saying the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel affirmed the lower court’s wrongful contempt charge, denying her motion for release on bail – without citing a legal reason or other explanation for its ruling.
Her legal team may appeal to the Fourth Circuit’s en banc panel – all its judges or to the Supreme Court, despite long odds against hardline judges ruling in her favor, Manning saying:
“While disappointing, we can still raise issues as the government continues to abuse the grand jury process. I don’t have anything to contribute to this, or any other grand jury,” adding:
“While I miss home, they can continue to hold me in jail, with all the harmful consequences that brings. I will not give up. Thank you all so very much for your love and solidarity through letters and contributions.”
Member of her legal team attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen called her subpoena to give grand jury testimony and imprisonment for invoking her constitutional right an abuse of power, saying:
“We are of course disappointed that the Circuit declined to follow clearly established law, or consider the ample evidence of grand jury abuse.”
“It is improper for a prosecutor to use the grand jury to prepare for trial. As pointed out in Ms. Manning’s motions and appeals, since her testimony is not necessary to the grand jury’s investigation, the likely purpose for her subpoena is to help the prosecutor preview and undermine her potential testimony as a defense witness for a pending trial.”
“We believed that the Appeals court would consider this, as it is strong evidence of an abuse of grand jury power that should excuse her testimony.”
Since March 8, Manning has been held in punishing solitary confinement, a form of torture when prolonged this long.
The Trump regime’s aim is three-fold – punishing her again for revealing US high crimes of war, why she was unlawfully imprisoned for seven years until Obama commuted her unjust sentence, along with forcing her to unwittingly self-incriminate herself and provide testimony to be used against Julian Assange.
Manning is redoubtable. Ahead of her re-incarceration on March 8, she said the following:
“Yesterday, I appeared before a secret grand jury after being given immunity for my testimony. All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013.”
“I responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.’ ”
“In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available.”
“My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.”
Today in America, the fundamental rights, safety, and welfare of everyone are greatly endangered – what persecuting truth-tellers for peace, equity and justice is all about.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The world is not so much a stage as a simulacrum for those who think it so. And if the stage goes bad, it is fitting that those who get thrown onto it change it in the most daring and provocative way. Politics is now as much a director’s production as it is an estranging show for the participating voter. The shock to such formulae is when a political aspirant decides to either reject the director’s cut entirely or, as in the case of Ukraine, embrace it as a mocking demonstration of bankruptcy. We know it is a joke: vote for me as a true expression of the authentic.
The sheer scale of repudiation by the voters on Sunday is striking, saying as much about the victor as the defeated. Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s triumph in an election without precedent (almost 40 presidential candidates, and victory for a Jewish one) was crushing, coming in at 73% over incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Holographic presence on screen – a comedian playing a character in a series who becomes president after a video rant on corruption goes viral – turned reality. “Could I ever imagine that I, a simple guy from Kryvyi Rih, would be fighting for the presidency against a person who we confidently and definitively elected President of the Ukraine in 2014?”
Hope is often a devalued currency, but its vigorous circulation can be gathered in the measurements of public opinion by the Kyiv-based International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted this month. Deputy Chief Anton Hrushetskiy reported findings of 2004 respondents to the question “Which of the following should the president do in the first 100 days?”
The list is meaningfully desperate and vengeful against state officials: a touch under 40% wish a slash in utility rates; 35.5% demand a removal of immunity for lawmakers, judges and the president; 32.4% wish for an opening of investigations and a speeding up of current ones into corruption-related crimes and abuses; 23.3% hope for commencing talks with Russia; 18.4% demand a reduction of wages of top officials. All this stands to reason: Zelenskiy offers something others have not: a tabula rasa upon which voters can impose their vision. In contrast, Poroshenko, candy billionaire with an acid aftertaste, offered the usual cluttering: Army, language, faith.
The broom for cleaning is being readied. Remarks had been made, some floated from the quarters of Poroshenko, that the new administration would include elements of the old regime. Former Finance Minister and advisor to Zelenskiy, Oleksandr Danyliuk, was adamant on Ukraine’s ICTV this would not be the case:
“Regarding the comment that Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s new team will include old staff of the Presidential Administration, the Cabinet of Ministers… I’d like to say this is absolutely not true, this is one of the fake news and bogeyman stories that your [Petro Poroshenko’s] headquarters is spreading.”
Political regulars and strategists have brought out their calculators and have been left wanting. Moscow, along with other readers of political entrails, did not see this victory in the offing. Poroshenko offered an ideal target: divisive, army hugging entho-nationalist, with an anti-Russian fixation. He could therefore be, over time, worn down, his country packaged as resoundingly anti-Semitic, fascist and hateful of the Soviet Union’s exploits against Nazi Germany. Preference would have been for Yuriy Boyko, backed by the pro-Russian Viktor Medvedchuk. The results did give their party 16% of the vote, making them second behind Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People, which received 26%. Not quite happy days, but perhaps less anxious ones.
From what can be gathered from the new president, some measure of rapprochement towards their fraternal, giant neighbour might be in the offing, even if accompanied by what he terms “a very powerful information war” to end the eastern conflict. Baby steps include lifting restrictions on the use of Russian in the country, which would also entail an end to blocking cultural exchanges and restrictions on accessing Russian social media networks. But to perceive a total change on that front would be to wonder in the realms of fantasy. In the words of head spokesperson at Zelinskiy’s election headquarters, Dmitry Razumkov, “The return of the occupied territories of the Donbass and Crimea must proceed exclusively on Ukraine’s terms. Russia, as always, is trying to turn everything on its head and do everything backwards – by holding elections first.”
The stage in Ukraine has been going to seed for some years, manuring away in decay and poverty, bleeding in the Donbass region and plundered by self-enriching elites. It took Zelenskiy to come to the fore by stepping off the screen and, quite literally, onto a live stage. Whether he is capable of directing his own show, mastering his own brief, as it were, will be a wonder. For one, parliamentary elections are due in October, leaving the virgin premier with six months of potential obstruction. Poroshenko, for his part, promises to be a vulture in the galley, awaiting any slipups: “I am leaving office, but I want to firmly underline that I am not leaving politics.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr. 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]
Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange is incarcerated in a UK prison that has been called “Britain’s Guantanamo.” His crime was exposing actions the US government, the media, the Democratic–Clinton machine, Israel, and others wanted kept hidden, including war crimes and torture.
***
Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has finally been imprisoned, an objective long sought by powerful parties he helped to expose over the past dozen years.
Assange’s “crime” was revealing deep, embarrassing, sometimes deadly, malfeasance by numerous actors, including the U.S. government, the media, the Democratic Party-Clinton machine, and Israel.
Wikileaks revealed the U.S. government’s cover up of torture, cruelty, the killing of civilians, spying on its own citizens and others. It exposed Democratic Party cheating and manipulation, the fraudulence of “Russiagate.” It unmasked Israeli plans to keep Gaza on the brink of collapse, to use violence against Palestinian nonviolence, to make war upon civilians. All of this will be detailed below.
Without Wikileaks’ exposés, many of these actions would quite likely have remained hidden from the general public, as the perpetrators hoped.
The actual charge against Assange is allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning “to commit computer intrusion,” violating a somewhat problematic law with what one expert terms “overly expansive wording.”
The government seems to have resorted to this charge after the Justice Department had concluded in 2013 that it could not charge Assange for publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs (which revealed various U.S war crimes detailed below), because government lawyers said this would also require charging various U.S. news organizations and journalists.
The Washington Postreported that Justice officials “realized that they have what they described as a ‘New York Times problem.’ If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper.”
Even the current charge, when examined closely, turns out to be problematic on free press grounds. As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“Assange is charged with helping a source preserve anonymity, a common practice by investigative reporters.”
This article will quote from these valuable articles and others, and will also present additional information about Wikileaks’ exposés on Israel, which have largely gone unmentioned.
The arrest
Journalist Pepe Escobar writes that April 11th, the date of Assange’s arrest, “will live in infamy in the annals of Western ‘values’ and ‘freedom of expression.’ The image is stark. A handcuffed journalist and publisher dragged out by force from the inside of an embassy…”
“The U.S. magically erases Ecuador’s financial troubles, ordering the IMF to release a providential $4.2-billion loan. Immediately after, Ecuadorian diplomats ‘invite’ the London Metropolitan Police to come inside their embassy to arrest their long-term guest.
“Let’s cut to the chase. Julian Assange is not a U.S. citizen, he’s an Australian. WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based media organization. If the US government gets Assange extradited, prosecuted and incarcerated, it will legitimize its right to go after anyone, anyhow, anywhere, anytime.
“Call it The Killing of Journalism.”
Media attacks and government black propaganda campaign against Wikileaks
Many others in addition to Escobar have noted that the persecution of Assange threatens all journalists. Yet, the media have a history of largely opposing or ignoring Assange.
“Once the documents and videos provided by Manning to Assange and WikiLeaks were published and disseminated by news organizations such as The New York Times and The Guardian, the press callously, and foolishly, turned on Assange. News organizations that had run WikiLeaks material over several days soon served as conduits in a black propaganda campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.”
“In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the US Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”.
“This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of ‘exposure [and] criminal prosecution’ and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech.
“Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.”
“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.
“When Assange was still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, Harding joined police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”
Media watchdog FAIR reports that virtually all the mainstream media, from left to right, have cheered Assange’s recent incarceration, concluding:
“It seems clear he shares virtually nothing in common with those in positions of influence in big media outlets, who have been only too happy to watch his demise.”
“It’s abundantly clear that Mr. Assange was focused on exposing documented evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan without so much as a thought for the journalists who faithfully parroted the U.S. military’s talking points when we could have been investigating information that ran contrary to that narrative—does he realize how that makes us look?”
Media half-truths
British journalist Jonathan Cook lays out the media’s sins of omission and commission.
“For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and ‘experts’ telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a ‘mainstream’ voice was raised in his defense in all that time.
“From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of Wikileaks – a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record.
“Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper.
“The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden. They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the charges, only for them to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda.
“They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden….”
Cook concludes:
“This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russia-gate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the U.S. Deep State doing everything in its power to crush WikiLeaks and make an example of its founder.”
What caused the US government and others to desire Assange and Wikileaks’ destruction? Let’s look at what they revealed.
Some of the topics Assange’s Wikileaks exposed:
Wikileaks published a number of diplomatic cables and emails that exposed Israeli plans and actions, and U.S. collusion, that Israel and its partisans wished to keep hidden. Below are some of them.
A Palestinian family sits in the ruins of their home in Gaza, 2009 (Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch) Wikileaks documents revealed that US Ambassador Susan Rice tried to prevent an investigation of the Israeli invasion, in which Israeli forces killed 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, many of them children. Another Wikileaks document disclosed that Israel was preparing for an even more violent war against Gaza in the future.
Israel planned to keep Gaza on “brink of collapse”
In 2008 Wikileaks published a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Washington, that Israel had designated Gaza as a “hostile entity.”
The cable said:
“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed [to U.S. officials] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
The U.S. cable, classified “secret,” recommended that the U.S. try to persuade Israel to abandon this policy.The cable said that the U.S. should encourage Israel to “review its present policies (as requested by the Office of the Quartet Representative and the PA) while pressing the Israelis to approve as much funding each month as possible under security constraints…”
Israel used control over Palestinian money to control Gaza
The leaked cable also described how Israel used its control over Palestinian currency to control Gaza. The cable said Israel’s “monetary policy towards Gaza is consistent with its declaration that Gaza is a ‘hostile entity.’
The cable reported that Israel “believes that maintaining the shekel as the currency of the Palestinian Territories is in Israel’s interests.”It reported that Israel “treats decisions regarding the amount of shekels in circulation in Gaza as a security matter.” Requests by Palestinian banks to transfer shekels into Gaza are approved or denied by the National Security Council (NSC), an organ of the Israeli security establishment, not by the Bank of Israel.
The cable reported that Israel’s NSC “has the final say in permitting new liquidity into Gaza” and used this power to suppress Gaza’s economy.The cable reported that Israel had decided “that Gaza should receive just enough money for the basic needs of the population but it is not interested in returning the Gazan economy to a state of normal commerce and business.”
Israel colluded with PA and Fatah
A 2007 U.S. diplomatic cable, also marked secret, revealed the way in which Israel was using the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas.
The cable, from the U.S. embassy, reported information given the by Israeli Security Agency (ISA) Head Yuval Diskin to U.S. officials.
Diskin was concerned that Fatah’s weakness compared to Hamas “bodes ill for Israel,” especially since Israel had “established a very good working relationship” with the Palestinian Authority. He said that PA security agencies were sharing almost all the intelligence they collected with Israel. Diskin said: “They understand that Israel’s security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank.”
Israel planned violence against Palestinian nonviolence
A 2010 U.S. cable published by Wikileaks was entitled: “IDF PLANS HARSHER METHODS WITH WEST BANK DEMONSTRATIONS.”
The cable, again from the U.S. embassy, reported that Israel was greatly concerned by Palestinian nonviolence.
A diplomat wrote: “Less violent [Palestinian] demonstrations [were] likely to stymie the IDF. As MOD Pol-Mil chief Amos Gilad told USG interlocutors recently, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”
The cable reported that an official “expressed frustration with ongoing demonstrations in the West Bank.” He said that the IDF would start to be “more assertive in how it deals with these demonstrations, even demonstrations that appear peaceful.”
The cable reported that the official said Israel would “start sending trucks with ‘dirty water’ to break up these protests, even if they are not violent… (NOTE: dirty water is a reference to the IDF’s chemically treated water that duplicates the effects of skunk spray. End note.)”
The cable reported that Israeli officials had ordered the Palestinian security force commanders “that they must stop these demonstrations or the IDF will.”
Israel’s nuclear monopoly, helping Israel by opposing Assad
Wikileaks posted an email memo to Hillary Clinton saying: “What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot not talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.
”The memo recommended: “The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability [sic] is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.” It reported: “Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.”
The 2012 memo was apparently by James P. Rubin, assistant secretary of state during the Bill Clinton administration (and husband of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour). Rubin emailed it to Hillary Clinton, who then forwarded it to her aide to print out for her.
Susan Rice worked to protect Israel at the UN
Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch reported on diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. They showed Rice working to stymie a UN investigation into Israel’s 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza, an investigation that led to the Goldstone report.
“In one pointed cable,” Lynch wrote, “Rice repeatedly prodded U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to block a recommendation of the board of inquiry to carry out a sweeping inquiry into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.
“In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the president of the International Criminal Court, Sang-Hyun Song, that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with the United States at a time when the new administration was moving closer to the tribunal. ‘How the ICC handles issues concerning the Goldstone Report will be perceived by many in the US as a test for the ICC, as this is a very sensitive matter,’ she told him, according to a Nov. 3, 2009, cable from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.”
Another cable reveals that “Rice assured Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during an Oct. 21, 2009, meeting in Tel Aviv that the United States had done its utmost to ‘blunt the effects of the Goldstone Report’ and that she was confident she could ‘build a blocking coalition’ to prevent any push for a probe by the Security Council, according to an Oct. 27, 2009 cable.”
Lynch wrote that the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks “provide a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the U.N. as American diplomats sought to shield Israel’s military from outside scrutiny of its conduct during Operation Cast Lead.”
They “also demonstrate how the United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an ‘independent’ U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.”
Eizenstat worked to influence Hillary on Israel
A 2015 Wikileak consisted of an email from former U.S. Ambassador to the EU Stuart Eizenstat to top Clinton foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan that was also sent to Hillary Clinton. The email revealed Eizenstat’s close ties to Israel and is another example of how advisors like Eizenstat and Rubin work to influence Clinton’s positions.
Eizenstat had held numerous influential positions in both Israel and the U.S., including Chief Domestic Policy Adviser under President Jimmy Carter and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton.
His bio states that Eizenstat “served as the presidents’ special representative on Holocaust-related issues and negotiated major Holocaust restitution agreements with a number of European countries, and at the time of his ambassadorial nomination, he sat on the following boards: the Weizmann Institute of Science, The Jerusalem Foundation, Brandeis University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council for Excellence in Government Center for National Policy, the Overseas Development Council, the International Management and Development Institute, the American Jewish Committee and the UJA Federation of Greater Washington. He was chairman of the Feinberg Graduate School of the Weizmann Institute and served on the board of directors of Hercules Incorporated; PSI Energy, Inc.; and the Israel Discount Bank of New York.”
For his work, the Government of Israel presented Eizenstat with the Courage and Conscience Award.
Eizenstat noted in his email that the widely known Obama-Netanyahu animosity placed “Hillary in an extremely difficult position, caught between the President she served and the organized parts of the Jewish community.” He advised her on how to maneuver this.
Eizenstat wrote: “Permit me to suggest some points she might make. By way of background, I have very deep connections to the State of Israel and to its elected officials and leading academics. I go to Israel two to three times a year, perhaps 50 times since my first visit in 1965. My grandfather and great-grandfather are buried in Israel, and I have scores of relatives and friends there.”
Eizenstat explained his central role in US. Israel policies:
“During the Clinton Administration, I was responsible for the economic dimension of the peace process, working with Yasir Arafat, the Jordanians and the Israeli government…” He said that he co-chaired with Dennis Ross the Jewish People’s Policy Institute of Jerusalem (JPPI), a think tank funded by the Jewish Agency and major American Jewish federations and foundations, “focusing on strategic challenges facing Israel and the Diaspora around the world.”
Eizenstat recommended that Hillary “should stress the enduring commitment of the United States to Israel’s security interests, not only direct military threats, but attacks against Israel in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, on campuses in the U.S. and Europe. She should express grave concern for the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe and violent attacks by radical Islamic terrorists (Obama refuses to use this term; she will need to decide what language to use and then stick with it)…
“Third, and critically, she should express a strong feeling that Israel MUST remain a bipartisan issue, as it has been since its formation. She should sharply criticize those in the U.S. and in Israel who are injecting Israel into a partisan context…”
Hillary’s campaign team advised that she only talk about Israel at private fundraisers
Wikileaks published emails showing that in 2015 Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was concerned that mentioning Israel during election speeches would alienate Democratic party activists.
Campaign manager Robby Mook emailed that they “shouldn’t have Israel at public events.” He was especially concerned about “activists.”
After some debate about strategy, speechwriter Dan Schwerin suggested a basic text for her to use that omitted Israel. He said, “Then she can drop in Israel when she’s with donors.”
Israeli general admits that US and Israeli security interests “often clash”
A 2009 diplomatic cable describing a meeting Assistant Secretary of Defense Ambassador Alexander Vershbow with senior Israeli defense officials in Israel reported that an Israeli general “acknowledged the sometimes difficult position the U.S. finds itself in given its global interests, and conceded that Israel’s security focus is so narrow that its QME concerns often clash with broader American security interests in the region.”
The cable also showed Israeli officials promoting the belief that Iran was about to acquire nuclear weapons. The cable shows that US diplomats were skeptical, the report including the parenthetical comment: “It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States.”)
Israeli Chief of Staff reveals Israel is preparing for a war against civilians
Wikileaks posted a Dec. 23, 2009 secret diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv that described a briefing by IDF Chief of General Staff Lt General Gabi Ashkenazi of a U.S. Congressional delegation consisting of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D, MO), Representative Steve Israel (D-NY), and Representative Tim Murphy (R, PA).
The cable reported: “Ashkenazi began the meeting by expressing his appreciation for the Committee’s support for Israel over the years.”
Ashkenazi “said he is preparing the IDF for a big war” and said that the next battle would be conducted in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
The cable also quoted Ashkenazi as telling the US representatives “the IDF cannot allow a situation in which it is restricted from operating in urban areas,” suggesting that the Israeli military would be even more violent than its invasion of Gaza a year before, in which Israeli forces killed about 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, many of them children. Middle East expert Juan Cole writes: “Planning to bomb civilian areas with foreknowledge that you will thereby kill large numbers of civilians is a war crime.
Ashkenazi admitted that “there were mistakes made.” The report said: “He noted that Israeli soldiers were also hit by mistake. The same tank battalion that hit the house of Dr. Abul Eish and killed his two daughters also hit an IDF infantry unit.”
Cole reports that Ashkenazi had told a delegation “that Israeli unmanned drones had had great success in identifying rocket emplacements in southern Lebanon, and that it had been aided in this endeavor by the US National Security Agency, which spies on communications.”
According to Cole, “Israel could have a peace treaty with Syria and Lebanon tomorrow by giving back the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms, and by accepting a two-state solution. Instead, its Dr. Strangeloves are planning out massive bombings of areas thick with innocent civilians and willing to subject Tel Aviv to two months worth of rocket fire.”
The impact of Israel’s actions on the U.S.
Cole discussed what this could mean for the United States:
“Nor will the United States be held harmless from the blowback in the region caused by another Israeli war of aggression. Before September 11, Israel hawks used to make fun of Americans who warned that eventually there would be hell to pay for the Israeli strangulation of the Palestinians (for the argument, see this posting). And, imagine what a war would do to gasoline prices and to the world economy.”
Cole concluded: “My deepest fear is that US support for Israeli militarism, and the terrorism that support inevitably engenders, will be what finally finishes off the civil liberties enshrined in the American Constitution.”
Former US Treasury Undersecretary and journalist Paul Craig Robertsworries that this is already in process: “As the grand jury [for Assange] 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.”
Israel misled public about Hamas; Israel opposes a lasting ceasefire
Another secret US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks reported on a trip to Israel by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (R-NY). Gillibrand’s group was briefed on “the Gaza security situation” by the IDF Southern Command and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) on September 2nd and 3rd, 2009.
(At the time, Gillibrand was facing an upcoming fight to retain her position in the Senate in what was expected to be a close election in 2010 – she had been appointed by the governor to the seat after Hillary became Secretary of State).
The cable reported: “Israel Major General Yoav Gallant told the CODEL [Congressional Delegation] that the Southern Command’s role is to manage the threat from Gaza.”
While Israel publicly portrays Gaza as filled with extremists who hate Israel because of Islamic extremism, the Wikileaks disclosure shows that privately its officials tell a different story.
Gallant was quoted as telling Gillibrand: “Sixty percent of Gaza’s population is under the age of twenty and the average income is one-twenty-fifth of the average income of Israelis in Sderot (a relatively poor Israeli town). Gaza has no natural resources except for fishing. Those factors would be reason enough for Gazans to fight, even without religious extremism.”
Gallant admitted that Israel opposed a lasting ceasefire with Hamas, since “a lasting ceasefire is likely to lead to a stronger Hamas.”
An Israeli official said that one of the reasons that Fatah couldn’t make concessions to reconcile with Hamas was “because of the U.S. position,” suggesting that the US has played a role in the continuing division between Hamas and Fatah.
The briefing disclosed that Israeli officials were displeased that Egypt didn’t always do what Israel government told it to do. An Israeli official complained “that Shin Bet and the Mossad gave Egyptian intelligence the names of the top 300 smugglers in the Sinai, but Egypt did not act against any of them.”
While Israel always blames Hamas for any and all violence against Israel, the cable revealed that privately Israeli officials are aware that other, newer groups are often responsible.
Israeli Officials said that these groups “oppose the rule of Hamas,” which has tried to suppress them.
Israel & US decide to hide delivery of US bunker busting bombs to Israel (for targeting Iran)
A secret 2009 diplomatic cable reported on the “Executive Session of the 40th Joint Political Military Group (JPMG)”. The US group was led by Andrew Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. They met with top Israeli officials.
The cable reported that the combined group decided that the upcoming delivery of GBU-28 bunker busting bombs to Israel “should be handled quietly to avoid any allegations that the USG [United States Government] is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran.”
The cable also reported: “The GOI [Government of Israel] made the case for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.
Israeli was concerned about Russia & Turkey
The same 2009 secret cable reported that Israel was extremely concerned about Russia, reporting:
“The GOI [Government of Israel] was not confident that Moscow will be helpful in any Iranian sanctions effort — GOI participants opined that Russia is considered a ‘mystery’ with respect to their views on Iran. The GOI raised the Russian S-300 sale to Iran, noting that the transfer is still pending. GOI participants argued that Moscow seeks a return to superpower status.” (This suggests that Israel’s continual concern about Russia could be a factor in the promotion of the widespread – and dangerous – anti-Russia discourse in the US.)
Israel was also worried that Turkey wasn’t toeing the Israeli line:
“The GOI raised the current direction the Government of Turkey has taken toward Syria and Iran — and away from Israel. Israeli participants argued that Turkey has been supportive of Hamas in Gaza while pursuing a more ‘Islamic’ direction with the goal of becoming a regional superpower. The GOI argued that the Turkish military is losing its ability to influence government decisions and strategic direction. After this past year, GOI participants said they have a ‘bad feeling’ about Turkey.”
Efforts “at the highest levels” of the US government to remove restrictions for Israelis concerning dual citizenship
The same 2009 secret cable discussed above also revealed that there were efforts at the top levels of the US government to allow dual Israel citizens in the US to have access to sensitive technology:
“The GOI raised the issue of dual citizenship within the context of access to sensitive technology. U.S. participants acknowledged Israeli concerns, noting that the issue is being worked at the highest levels of the USG to reach consensus on how to proceed.”
(Dual citizenship used to be prohibited in the United States, until this was overturned in 1967 on behalf of Israel; Abe Fortas was the swing vote.)
Wikileaks revelations about the U.S.
Since 2006 Wikileaks has exposed a multitude of misdeeds of governments throughout the world (e.g. exposing corruption in Kenya.) Below are some of the exposés about the U.S.
U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan
Chris Hedges reports: “The half a million internal documents leaked by Manning from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, provided copious evidence of the hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence, and routine use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation by the U.S. government in its foreign relations and wars in the Middle East. Assange and WikiLeaks allowed us to see the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this they became empire’s prey.”
Jonathan Turley writes: “The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the famous Pentagon Papers case. He cannot discuss how Democratic and Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program.”
Below are some of the Wikileaks revelations about U.S. war crimes, as reported by BBC:
“One of the Wikileaks documents shows the US military was given a video apparently showing Iraqi Army (IA) officers executing a prisoner in the northern town of Talafar.
“The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him,” states the log, which also names at least one of the perpetrators.
“In another case, US soldiers suspected army officers of cutting off a detainee’s fingers and burning him with acid…..
“In one incident in July 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed by a helicopter, about half of them civilians, according to the log.
“Another record shows an Apache helicopter gunship fired on two men believed to have fired mortars at a military base in Baghdad in February 2007, even though they were attempting to surrender. The crew asked a lawyer whether they could accept the surrender, but were told they could not, “and are still valid targets”. So they shot them.”
The Guardian also summarized some of the Wikileaks’ revelations:
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
US and UK officials insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
“The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.
“As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”
“The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record “no investigation is necessary” and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.
“A Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times this week that under its procedure, when reports of Iraqi abuse were received the US military ‘notifies the responsible government of Iraq agency or ministry for investigation and follow-up’.
“The logs also illustrate the readiness of US forces to unleash lethal force. In one chilling incident they detail how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.
“The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at base told the pilots: ‘You cannot surrender to an aircraft.’ The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.”
(In reading about the actions in Iraq, it’s important to recall that pro-Israel neocons were a major factor in the US invasion.)
The Democratic Party/Clinton machine rigged the Democratic primaries to prevent the nomination of Bernie Sanders.
Wikileaks stated that it had “exposed how those at the top of the US Democratic Party had worked tirelessly to tilt the scales in favour of Hillary Clinton as she faced off against Bernie Sanders in the race to be the Democrat presidential candidate.
”These revelations eventually prompted the resignation of five of the most senior members of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the Democratic Convention, including DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Hedges reports: “Assange, who with the Manning leaks had exposed the war crimes, lies and criminal manipulations of the George W. Bush administration, soon earned the ire of the Democratic Party establishment by publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials. The emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
“The Podesta emails exposed the donation of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State, to the Clinton Foundation.
“It exposed the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe. It exposed Clinton’s repeated mendacity. She was caught in the emails, for example, telling the financial elites that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best positioned to manage the economy, a statement that contradicted her campaign statements.
“It exposed the Clinton campaign’s efforts to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Trump was the Republican nominee.
“It exposed Clinton’s advance knowledge of questions in a primary debate.
[These were given to Hillary by prominent Democratic activist and former CNN commentator, now Fox News pundit Donna Brazile. The scandal quickly blew over. Salon reported in 2016 that Brazile was “far-from-contrite” and “recycled her discredited claims that the hacked emails that exposed her perfidy against presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders were somehow altered by Russian intelligence agents.” Turley points out that Brazile is “now back on television, but Assange, however, could well do time.”]
“It exposed Clinton as the primary architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.”
CIA hacked and spied on American citizens & friendly nations
Hedges reports:“WikiLeaks has done more to expose the abuses of power and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. In addition to the war logs and the Podesta emails, it made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency and their interference in foreign elections, including in the French elections.”
“[Wikileaks] intervened to save Edward Snowden, who made public the wholesale surveillance of the American public by our intelligence agencies, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Snowden leaks also revealed that Assange was on a U.S. ‘manhunt target list.’” (More on Snowden here.)
Wikileaks’ publication of Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed, “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency,” revealed that the CIA “had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.”
The documents revealed that the CIA’s “exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”
Inaccurate claims about “Russiagate”
Hedges notes: “The Democratic leadership, intent on blaming Russia for its election loss, charges that the Podesta emails were obtained by Russian government hackers, although James Comey, the former FBI director, has conceded that the emails were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary. Assange has said the emails were not provided by ‘state actors.’”
Pilger reports: “The Guardian 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.”
The Vault 7 documents revealed that some of the CIA’s tools enabled it to make hacking, emails, etc. appear to come from a different source, calling into question claims about alleged Russian hacking.
Former top CIA analyst Ray McGovern and former NSA Technical Director William Binney, in a detailed article disputing Russiagate contentions, wrote that Wikileaks’ Vault 7 documents revealed that the CIA had the ability to “break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs (like Cyrillic markings, for example).”
U.S. plans for regime change in Syria and Venezuela
John Pilger writes that Wikileaks documents provided “the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown. It is all available on the WikiLeaks site.”
British military’s secret document calling investigative journalists “a major threat”
Pilger reports: “A decade ago, the Ministry of Defense 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.”Assange’s Wikileaks revealed all this to us, and more.
Extradition to the US could place Assange’s life in danger
And now Assange is in “Britain’s Guantanamo,” awaiting possible, perhaps probable, extradition to the U.S. If this happens, his lawyers say, “he may risk torture and his life would be in danger.”
UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has issued a statement warning that extradition “could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Melzer urged the British Government “to refrain from expelling, returning or extraditing Mr. Assange to the United States or any other jurisdiction, until his right to asylum under refugee law or subsidiary protection under international human rights law has been determined in a transparent and impartial proceeding granting all due process and fair trial guarantees, including the right to appeal.”
A few days ago Assange was honored with the 2019 “Award for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information,” sponsored by European parliamentarians. Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, who has nominated him for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, collected the award on his behalf.
One thing is clear. The perpetrators don’t want Americans to know, and are trying to shoot the messenger.
But to prevent countless lives from being destroyed abroad, and eventually, at home, it’s essential that Americans learn the profoundly disturbing actions that Wikileaks revealed.
And then for everyone, across the political spectrum, to demand that these actions stop.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.
As a result we presently do not cover our monthly running costs which could eventually jeopardize our activities.
Do you value the reporting and in-depth analysis provided by Global Research on a daily basis?
In an interview with the Atlantic last Friday, outgoing French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud made headlines after emphatically stating that Israel is already “an apartheid state” and that the Trump administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century” aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is “99 percent doomed.”
The real “deplorable” in today’s United States is the continuation of a foreign policy based on endless aggression to maintain Washington’s military dominance in parts of the world where Americans have no conceivable interest. Many voters backed Donald J. Trump because he committed himself to changing all that, but, unfortunately, he has reneged on his promise, instead heightening tension with major powers Russia and China while also threatening Iran and Venezuela on an almost daily basis.
Despite its widespread use, the popular weedkiller has been called into question as a possible health hazard within the past several years. Thousands of Roundup users have filed lawsuits alleging that they have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, b-cell lymphoma, leukemia, or other forms of cancer after using the product.
After a nearly two-year investigation, culminating in a 448-page report, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election but found insufficient evidence to prove the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. Mueller did not decide, however, if Trump obstructed justice.
Twenty years ago, on 23 April 1999, a NATO missile attack on Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) headquarters killed 16 employees of the state broadcaster.
There is a plan for the future of India and most of its current farmers don’t have a role in it. Successive administrations have been making farming financially unviable with the aim of moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like the number of jobs required.
Whether in Cuba or the U.S., the fundamentalist opposition takes the moral high road of “freedom of artistic expression” for Cuba. However, they are viewing Cuba with U.S. blinders. They take it as a given that in the U.S., there is freedom of artistic expression (along with other types of expression) in the cultural realm. The logic goes that there are no cultural restrictions in the U.S. like the ones being brought in in Cuba.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The announcement by India’s Oil Minister that his country will replace US-sanctioned Iranian oil imports with those from “major oil-producing countries” despite the dramatic Bollywood show that New Delhi has made up until this point out of “defying” US sanctions makes one seriously wonder whether India’s preparing to ditch Russia next if the US imposes CAATSA sanctions against it over the S-400s.
Shattering The “Indian Illusion”
The “Indian Illusion” has been shattered after India’s Oil Minister tweeted that his country will replace US-sanctioned Iranian oil imports with those from “major oil-producing countries” such as the Islamic Republic’s hated GCC foes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE that America said will step up their exports in order to stabilize global prices after Washington announced that it won’t renew its anti-Iranian oil sanction waivers. New Delhi made a dramatic Bollywood-like show over the past year out of “defying” US sanctions, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announcing last May that India will only obey UNSC sanctions and not those unilaterally imposed by the US in contravention of international law.
The Oil Minister himself said back in October before the waivers were issued that India will continue buying Iranian oil in spite of the US sanctions, later crediting Prime Minister Modi a month later when the US eventually granted it the waiver. Adding “credibility” to the illusion that India’s perception managers were masterfully creating, it was then reported that the country will use rupees instead of dollars when trading with Iran, a bold move that even fooled an RT columnist who headlined his op-ed on this development as a “response to US global bullying“. As is now known, however, appearances can be very misleading, and in actuality the same country that was vowing to “defy” the US actually ended up quietly implementing its new patron’s will.
This proves that senior Indian officials such as the Minister of External Affairs and Oil Minister were lying to the world this entire time, publicly claiming to oppose the US while secretly working in coordination with it behind closed doors to ensure that their country doesn’t suffer from Trump’s sanctions. The over-hyped “oil-for-rupee” payment plan was ultimately nothing more than a temporary workaround that New Delhi evidently didn’t care too much about to continue in truly opposing the US following the expiration of its sanctions waiver early next month. It can therefore be said that India was relying on multipolar/”multi-alignment” rhetoric in order to disguise its secret subservience to the unipolar hegemon.
The Path Towards CAATSA Sanctions
This stunning realization has major implications for Russian-Indian relations because the US is considering sanctioning the South Asian state for its planned purchase of the S-400s, a threat that still hangs over New Delhi’s head like a Damocles’ sword over half a year since the original agreement was signed during President Putin’s visit to the country. Judging from the Iranian precedent, India will probably pull out of the S-400 deal if the US does indeed impose CAATSA sanctions against it over this purchase, which Washington might seriously pursue in order to deal a deathblow to Russian-Indian relations just like it recently did to Iranian-Indian ones through the latest oil sanctions.
The argument against sanctioning India over the S-400s is that it needs these systems in order to “defend” against China and Pakistan, but the latest Indo-Pak dogfight ended in a total humiliation for India and exposed it as an aggressive rogue state instead of the peaceful one dutifully following international law to a tee like it had meticulously misrepresented itself as being up until that point. Recognizing the truth that India won’t fall victim to regional aggression but is actually the state initiating hostilities in the first place, the US might no longer consider the S-400s to be of primary national security concern for the South Asian state enough to warrant a sanctions waiver for them.
Russia’s Pakistani Recourse
In the event that the US sanctions India for this purchase, it would be doing so as part of a power play to “poach” this lucrative arms market from Russia and replace the country’s wares with Western ones from its own military-industrial complex and that of its French and “Israeli” partners’ too. Russia, left flatfooted by this possibly impending betrayal by its “bhai” (from the Soviet-era slogan of “Rusi-Hindi Bhai Bhai”, “Russians and Indians are brothers”), might then seriously consider clinching a deal with Pakistan to sell it the upwards of $9 billion of equipment that the Deputy Director of the influential Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) think tank estimated is in the cards in his organization’s recently released book “Pakistan: Beyond Stereotypes“.
It should be noted that Russia’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are under the powerful influence of the Indophile lobby, but the increasingly public divisions that have recently emerged between that faction and the “balancing” pragmatics led by Russia’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov have only intensified after the latest Indo-Pak dogfight but have seen the unquestionable victory of the latter following Moscow’s offer to mediate between the two Great Powers as part of its grand “Return to South Asia“. In this very sensitive context, any Indian betrayal of Russia in response to the US’ CAATSA sanctions would discredit the Indophiles once and for all and expose them as either unprofessionally naive or worse after they put their careers on the line claiming that this would never happen.
It’s beyond obvious at this point that the S-400s wouldn’t retain the balance of power between India and its potential adversaries but disrupt it after the latest regional events revealed that New Delhi is an aggressive rogue state instead of a peaceful one dutifully abiding by international law, yet Russia won’t voluntarily scupper the deal because it stands to gain a lot of much-needed money from it that takes on a higher significance against the backdrop of the West’s anti-Russian sanctions. Having said that, however, the deal is worth a little more than $5 billion, meaning that Russia could conceivably replace its lost profits if it sells slightly more than half of the military equipment that CAST estimates the global pivot state of Pakistan is looking to purchase.
Concluding Thoughts
India’s betrayal of Iran in response to impending American sanctions and its energy pivot towards the Islamic Republic’s hated GCC foes worringly suggests that it might soon betray Russia in response to the possible imposition of CAATSA sanctions over the S-400s and militarily pivot towards the Eurasian Great Power’s Western competitors instead. The writing was on the wall the entire time in both instances, though the Indophile “deep state” faction in both Iran and Russia misled their leaderships because they were unprofessionally naive and truly believed the assurances made by their Indian counterparts (in the “best-case” scenario), but it’s now becoming obvious that New Delhi was deceiving both of them all along by disguising its clandestine unipolar actions with public multipolar rhetoric.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The Made by FBI indictment of Julian Assange does look like a dead man walking. No evidence. No documents. No surefire testimony. Just a crossfire of conditionals.
But never underestimate the legalese contortionism of US government (USG) functionaries. As much as Assange may not be characterized as a journalist and publisher, the thrust of the affidavit is to accuse him of conspiring to commit espionage.
In fact the charge is not even that Assange hacked a USG computer and obtained classified information; it’s that he may have discussed it with Chelsea Manning and may have had the intention to go for a hack. Orwellian-style thought crime charges don’t get any better than that. Now the only thing missing is an AI software to detect them.
Assange legal adviser Geoffrey Robertson – who also happens to represent another stellar political prisoner, Brazil’s Lula – cut straight to the chase (at 19:22 minutes);
“The justice he is facing is justice, or injustice, in America… I would hope the British judges would have enough belief in freedom of information to throw out the extradition request.”
That’s far from a done deal. Thus the inevitable consequence; Assange’s legal team is getting ready to prove, no holds barred, in a British court, that this USG indictment for conspiracy to commit computer hacking is just an hors d’oeuvre for subsequent espionage charges, in case Assange is extradited to US soil.
All about Vault 7
John Pilger, among few others, has already stressed how a plan to destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was laid out as far back as 2008 – at the tail end of the Cheney regime – concocted by the Pentagon’s shady Cyber Counter-Intelligence Assessments Branch.
It was all about criminalizing WikiLeaks and personally smearing Assange, using “shock troops…enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.”
This plan remains more than active – considering how Assange’s arrest has been covered by the bulk of US/UK mainstream media.
By 2012, already in the Obama era, WikiLeaks detailed the astonishing “scale of the US Grand Jury Investigation” of itself. The USG always denied such a grand jury existed.
“The US Government has stood up and coordinated a joint interagency criminal investigation of Wikileaks comprised of a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) including: CENTCOM; SOUTHCOM; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA); Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA); US Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for USFI (US Forces Iraq) and 1st Armored Division (AD); US Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU); 2nd Army (US Army Cyber Command); Within that or in addition, three military intelligence investigations were conducted. Department of Justice (DOJ) Grand Jury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of State (DOS) and Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). In addition, Wikileaks has been investigated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Office of the National CounterIntelligence Executive (ONCIX), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the House Oversight Committee; the National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and the PIAB (President’s Intelligence Advisory Board).”
But it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic; that’s when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA’s vast hacking/cyber espionage repertoire.
This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart.
WikiLeaks got Vault 7 in early 2017. At the time WikiLeaks had already published the DNC files – which the unimpeachable Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) systematically proved was a leak, not a hack.
The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was that “the Russians” hacked the DNC servers. Assange was always adamant; that was not the work of a state actor – and he could prove it technically.
There was some movement towards a deal, brokered by one of Assange’s lawyers; WikiLeaks would not publish the most damning Vault 7 information in exchange for Assange’s safe passage to be interviewed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI director James Comey killed it. The question is why.
It’s a leak, not a hack
Some theoretically sound reconstructions of Comey’s move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew – via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it was a leak.
Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again (see here) how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources; one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel.
There was nothing for Comey to “investigate”. Or there would have, if Comey had ordered the FBI to examine the DNC servers. So why talk to Julian Assange?
The release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in “Grasshopper” and the “Marble Framework” were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran, or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework “destroys this story about Russian hacking.”
No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”, usually manipulated by Russia.
Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7, has not faced a US court yet. There’s no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he aggress to testify against Julian Assange.
It’s a long and winding road, to be traversed in at least two years, if Julian Assange is ever to be extradited to the US. Two things for the moment are already crystal clear. The USG is obsessed to shut down WikiLeaks once and for all. And because of that, Julian Assange will never get a fair trial in the “so-called ‘Espionage Court’” of the Eastern District of Virginia, as detailed by former CIA counterterrorism officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Meanwhile, the non-stop demonization of Julian Assange will proceed unabated, faithful to guidelines established over a decade ago. Assange is even accused of being a US intel op, and WikiLeaks a splinter Deep State deep cover op.
Maybe President Trump will maneuver the hegemonic Deep State into having Assange testify against the corruption of the DNC; or maybe Trump caved in completely to “hostile intelligence agency” Pompeo and his CIA gang baying for blood. It’s all ultra-high-stakes shadow play – and the show has not even begun.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter and OPEC’s largest producer, has influenced the oil market and oil flows since the middle of the 20th century.
Shortly after the 21st century began, one of Saudi Arabia’s key customers made its first steps toward becoming one of the Kingdom’s main competitors on the global oil market: the United States began fracking for oil in the mid-2000s. By the end of the 2010s, the U.S. is now the world’s biggest crude oil producer, having surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to claim the crown.
Sure, Saudi Arabia is one of the most important factors in global crude trade and oil market participants are lapping up every word and hint from the top oil officials in the Kingdom.
But as the U.S. has started to rely on fewer imported barrels, Saudi Arabia’s power to sway the market has diminished. Another large Saudi customer, China, now has more leverage over Saudi Arabia’s oil flows, Dafna Maor, a columnist for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writes.
U.S. crude oil imports from all over the world have declined from their peak of 10.126 million bpd in 2005, while imports from Saudi Arabia have also been down in recent years, to average below 1 million bpd in 2017, for the first time since 2009, according to the latest EIA data. Meanwhile, U.S. production is breaking records, despite a slowdown in shale growth in recent months as a result of the 40-percent oil price slump in the fourth quarter of 2018.
In recent years, the Saudis have had stiff competition in what is now the world’s largest oil importing nation, China. In the past three years, Saudi Arabia has lost its status of China’s number-one supplier—to none other than its ally in the OPEC/non-OPEC production cut deal, Russia.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, but its dominance over the global oil market has started to crack in recent years. Now the Kingdom influences the market and oil prices as much as (or probably less than) the Permian basin in West Texas does, Haaretz’s Maor argues.
The Saudis don’t want to lose control over OPEC’s oil production policies, which the cartel publicly says are always aimed at a “balanced oil market”, while many OPEC members, including the de facto leader Saudi Arabia, actually need oil prices at least as high as their budget-balance needs. In Saudi Arabia’s case, this is around $80 a barrel Brent Crude or slightly higher.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia claims it wants to diversify its economy away from over-reliance on oil.
As per OPEC figures, the oil and gas sector generates around 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product (GDP), and accounts for some 70 percent of its export earnings.
The so-called Vision 2030 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has grand plans about billions upon billions of U.S. dollars in investments into the Saudi economy and renewable energy. Ironically, the Kingdom relies on proceeds from oil, including from the much-hyped but still-on-hold listing of 5 percent in its oil giant Aramco, to fund the transformation.
Yet, until this transformation begins to take place, if at all, Saudi Arabia is aggressively pursuing long-term downstream deals in the world’s fastest-growing oil demand center, Asia, with the goal to lock in future demand for its crude oil.
Aramco has signed in recent months a number of agreements in China to take part in refinery projects. One of the latest deals, buying a 9-percent stake in Zhejiang Petrochemical’s 800,000-bpd integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in Zhoushan, says that “Saudi Aramco’s involvement in the project will come with a long-term crude supply agreement and the ability to utilize Zhejiang Petrochemical’s large crude oil storage facility to serve its customers in the Asian region.”
Despite plans to transform its economy from over-reliance on crude oil and despite gradually losing its dominant position as the single biggest oil price mover, Saudi Arabia is not willing to give up its geopolitical and market power that comes with its current status of the world’s largest oil exporter.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
“Nell’emergente mondo di conflittualità etnica e di scontri tra civiltà, la fede occidentale nella validità universale della propria cultura ha tre difetti: è falsa; è immorale; è pericolosa”
(Samuel P. Huntington)
Cara amica, ho letto l’importante domanda che mi hai posto sul futuro del mondo secondo il punto di vista dei neoconservatori americani. Questa domanda ti è venuta in mente, piuttosto naturalmente, mentre leggevi l’intervista rilasciata da uno dei più entusiasti sostenitori di questa scuola di pensiero –Thomas Barnett– autore del controverso libro “The Pentagon’s New map: War and Peace in the twenty-first century”.
Certamente, qui ci stiamo occupando di una questione rilevante la cui comprensione è una conditio sine qua nonper decifrare sia le contingenze storiche sia le tendenze dominanti che caratterizzano l’evoluzione delle relazioni internazionali, in particolare dalla fine della guerra fredda.
Infatti, i disordini e gli sconvolgimenti che il mondo sta vivendo dall’inizio del terzo millennio, segnatamente nella regione che dovrebbe essere per te di massima importanza – ovvero il mondo arabo-musulmano – costituiscono una delle più significative manifestazioni del processo di cambiamento multidimensionale in corso. Molto probabilmente, questi sono i segni precursori del “mondo che verrà” –per usare le parole di Malek Bennabi– un mondo completamente differente da quello che abbiamo conosciuto dalla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale alla caduta del muro di Berlino e il conseguente collasso dell’impero sovietico nel 1992.
La successiva nuova realtà internazionale –la progressiva affermazione degli Stati Uniti d’America come unica superpotenza globale– si è rivelata essere di improbabile realizzazione poiché, a sua volta, si è dissolta per la crisi sia finanziaria che economica esplosa nel 2007-2008, che continua tuttora, e l’ascesa di nuovi determinati attori internazionali, inclusi i membri del BRICS (Brasile, Russia, India, Cina e Sud Africa).
Con tutta probabilità, questo nuovo “mondo che verrà” sarà multipolare. E ciò rappresenta una prospettiva terribile per i sostenitori della perpetuazione del Vecchio Mondo fondato dall’Occidente e per l’Occidente molti secoli fa. É, quindi, piuttosto naturale che l’Occidente, sotto l’egida della sua guida americana egemone, stia appassionatamente tentando di impedire la realizzazione di questa inesorabile prospettiva.
Nel primo capitolo del mio libro, ho provato ad analizzare le ragioni di questa “paura”, alla base delle quali vi è indubbiamente la persistenza dell’ideologia imperiale che prese il controllo della politica americana dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale: il Neo-conservatorismo.
Come è spiegato in un articolo su Wikipedia, il neoconservatorismo è un movimento politico nato negli Stati Uniti durante gli anni ’60 del ventesimo secolo tra i Democratici di orientamento conservatore disillusi dalla politica estera del partito e dalla cultura della “Nuova Sinistra”. I primi scritti della corrente neoconservatrice apparvero sulla rivista mensile ebraica di New York Commentarypubblicata dall’American Jewish Committee. Ed il primo teorico neo-conservatore ad aver adottato questo termine, considerato perciò il fondatore di questa ideologia, è stato Irving Kristol (che, in gioventù, fu un militante trotskista). Egli è il fondatore del famoso think-tankneoconservatore: Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Il neoconservatorismo arrivò all’apice della sua influenza durante l’amministrazione repubblicana di Ronald Reagan la cui dottrina politica era guidata dall’anticomunismo e dall’opposizione all’influenza globale dell’URSS. Raggiunse il suo acme all’inizio di questo secolo con la Dottrina Bush della “esportazione della democrazia” anche mediante la forza militare se necessario. I periodici neoconservatori più rilevanti sono Commentarye Weekly Standard. Ci sono anche think-tankneoconservatori in politica estera, come l’AmericanEnterprise Institute(AEI), l’Heritage Foundation, JINSA (Jewish Institute for NationalSecurity Affairs) e, naturalmente, il PNAC.
In politica estera, i Neocons difendono “il potere militare degli Stati Democratici nelle relazioni internazionali al fine di fondare un nuovo ordine internazionale”. In un manifesto del PNAC pubblicato nel 1996 esposero il loro pensiero e principi essenziali in questo modo:
Più chiarezza ed egemonia benevolente;
Prevenire la comparsa di un potere nemico;
Fine della “compiacenza” verso le dittature;
Rifiuto del declino del potere americano poiché è il primo potere democratico del mondo;
Ammodernamento dello strumento militare per rispondere alle aggressioni.
I Neoconservatori affermano di volere un nuovo ordine internazionale basato sulla libertà, secondo piani che non sono quelli di Kant e di Wilson, a cui essi rimproverano l’impotenza, ma che traggono dagli scritti di Mosè Maimònide e di Sant’Agostino. Essi criticano le Nazioni Unite e il diritto internazionale in nome della moralità. Nelle conferenze internazionali più importanti essi preferiscono le coalizioni più piccole secondo il principio per il quale “la missione definisce la coalizione”. Appoggiano Israele. La loro dottrina politica è l’interventismo. Perciò, gli Stati Uniti “devono essere riconosciuti come la nazione guida dei diritti umani e devono esportare la democrazia e la libertà in tutto il mondo, se necessario con la forza”.
Tra le idee emblematiche dei Neoconservatori compare principalmente la teoria del “caos creativo”, sviluppata soprattutto da Michael Ledeen, un ex corrispondente da Roma della rivista New Republic. Si tratta di un progetto che mira a “stabilire uno stato di guerra e di permanente instabilità in Medio Oriente tale da consentire agli americani e agli israeliani di mantenere i loro obiettivi geostrategici nella regione, anche ridisegnandone la mappa”. I Neoconservatori non considerano la stabilità del mondo un bene da preservare ma, al contrario, promuovono i vantaggi della destabilizzazione.
Tale era l’idea di Robert Kagan, co-fondatore insieme a William Kristol del PNAC. Kagan era l’autore della lettera del 26 gennaio 1998 inviata a Bill Clinton per chiedergli di condurre un’altra politica in Iraq, con l’intenzione di rovesciare Saddam Hussein per preservare gli interessi americani nel Golfo. La stessa cosa può essere detta su Robert Cooper, un fautore britannico del neoconservatorismo che sostiene una dottrina del “liberalismo imperialistico” che concede il “diritto” ai “paesi civilizzati” di usare la forza contro i loro “nemici stranieri”.
Si deve, tuttavia, al Presidente George W. Bush l’aver avallato e messo in pratica questi principi neoconservatori. Lo fece invadendo nel 2001 l’Afghanistan e nel 2003 l’Iraq attraverso una strumentalizzazione estrema degli sfortunati ma “miracolosi” eventi dell’11 settembre 2001. Nel suo Discorso sullo Stato dell’Unione del 31 dicembre 2005, egli spiegò che non c’era alcun dubbio sul fatto che la soddisfazione del “falso benessere dell’isolazionismo” conduceva a “pericolo e declino”. L’America doveva guidare il mondo: era un imperativo per la sicurezza. “L’alternativa alla leadership americana è un mondo molto più pericoloso e preoccupato”. Dal suo punto di vista, l’America doveva perciò continuare ad “agire coraggiosamente in favore della libertà”. E come nel 1945 “quando l’America liberò i campi di concentramento, dovette accogliere la chiamata della storia per liberare gli oppressi”, la metà del mondo vive in una democrazia, egli disse. “Noi non dimentichiamo l’altra metà, in paesi come la Siria, Birmania, Zimbabwe, Nord Corea e Iran perché le rivendicazioni di giustizia e la Pace del mondo pretendono anche la loro libertà”.
Per fare ciò, il Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite, sebbene fino ad allora condannato dai neoconservatori, diviene lo strumento privilegiato per condurre rischiose spedizioni militari con conseguenze caotiche per alcuni Stati “recalcitranti” ed i loro popoli, in particolare nella regione del Medio Oriente e del Nord Africa (MENA). George W. Bush nominò come suo Ambasciatore all’ONU John Bolton, un “falco” neoconservatore che raccontò la sua esperienza alle Nazioni Unite in un libro con un titolo molto significativo.
Quasi un decennio dopo, e malgrado la sconfitta dell’unilateralismo e dell’interventismo militare che egli aveva incessantemente propugnato, Robert Kagan continua ad esercitare una forte influenza sull’establishmentamericano. Nel suo libro pubblicato nel 2012, egli si è sforzato di respingere la tesi del “Declino dell’America”. Questo libro si dice sia diventato il libro preferito del Presidente Barack Obama che nel suo Discorso sullo Stato dell’Unione del gennaio 2012 dichiarò: “L’America è tornata. Chiunque vi dica diversamente, chiunque vi dica che l’America è in declino o che la nostra influenza è finita non sa di cosa sta parlando”.
Questa visione è condivisa da Steve Bannon, la mente della nuova amministrazione del Presidente Donald Trump (prima di esserne escluso). Come è stato spiegato in un eccellente articolo di Pepe Escobar, Steve Bannon “un uomo che si nutre a colazione di saggi storici e di teoria politica (…) un Machiavelli post-verità dietro il più potente dei Principi”, considera la nostra attuale congiuntura geopolitica come “la battaglia finale tra il Bene e il Male (no, il verdetto di Nietzsche per lui non vale), il ‘Bene’ nel nostro caso essendo rappresentato dalla civiltà cristiana con la sua storia di due millenni –con un posto d’onore per l’Illuminismo e la Rivoluzione industriale mentre il suo opposto, il ‘male’, è veicolato da tutta una serie di “minacce esistenziali”– dalle élitepost-moderne, tecnocratiche e secolarizzate (il nemico interno) all’Islam (il nemico in generale)”.
Per una comprensione più approfondita delle radici di questa ideologia neoconservatrice e il suo impatto sulla politica che oggi caratterizza gli Stati Uniti, suggerisco di leggere l’analisi elaborata da Paul Fitzgerald e Elizabeth Gould. Dotati di uno stile di scrittura affilato e di fonti notevolmente documentate, gli autori esaminano la storia della “presa di controllo” degli Stati Uniti da parte dei Neoconservatori, attraverso un processo distinto in quattro stadi presentati in questo modo:
L’imperialismo americano conduce il mondo alla visione dell’inferno di Dante;
Come i Neocons spingono per la guerra falsificando le carte;
Come la CIA creò una falsa realtà occidentale per la “guerra non convenzionale”;
L’ultima fase della “presa di possesso” dell’America da parte delle élitemachiavelliche.
I Neocons, il mondo arabo e Israele
Cara amica, dopo aver delineato questo lungo ma indispensabile quadro d’insieme storico e geostrategico, vengo all’altra rilevante questione che sta alla base del problema che hai sollevato: Perché il mondo arabo-musulmano è la principale vittima di questa ideologia neoconservatrice americana che costituisce apparentemente il sostrato del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale e il culmine ultimo di un lungo processo storico giunto al termine –secondo un altro teorico neoconservatore: Francis Fukuyama? Sappiamo ora che la Storia non finì; al contrario, stiamo assistendo ad un’accelerazione senza precedenti, e l’Impero americano, lungi dal portare pace e prosperità al mondo, ha condotto il genere umano sulla strada verso il grande disordine nel mondo e il caos distruttivo nel mondo arabo-musulmano, specialmente attraverso le cosiddette “Primavere arabe”.
Aiutato da un formidabile “rullo compressore mediatico” nella sua impresa di dominio globale nell’interesse di un cosiddetto “destino manifesto” messianico, l’impero americano s’impegnò a ridisegnare la mappa geopolitica mondiale in modo da poter fondare, nel lungo termine, una sorta di “Stato mondiale” o “Governo mondiale”. Ciò che presuppone la distruzione delle nazioni mediante il loro dissolvimento in regioni e poli continentali. Questo è probabilmente ciò che Herbert Marshall McLuhan, sociologo canadese e consulente vaticano –noto, in particolare, per aver coniato l’espressione “il mezzo è il messaggio”– aveva in mente quando scrisse nel 1968 “War and Peace in the Global village”, il suo libro rivoluzionario nel quale egli raffigurò un pianeta reso sempre più piccolo dall’uso delle nuove tecnologie, e impiegò il concetto di “glocal”, un misto di globale e locale, anticipando la fondamentale architettura del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale.
Come è stato ben esemplificato in un articolo pubblicato nel 2012, dopo la caduta del comunismo, l’epicentro di questa politica venne fissato in Medio Oriente “dove si trovano non solo le più grandi riserve di idrocarburi ma anche lo Stato di Israele, la vera casa madre del Globalismo, che, sin dalla sua creazione, ha ostacolato tutti i tentativi di pace in questa regione del mondo”. La configurazione geografica di questa parte del pianeta è stata, per lungo tempo, ridisegnata in seno ai think-tankebreo-americani e per opera dei comandi militari i cui obiettivi ultimi sono la frammentazione delle nazioni su basi etniche e religiose (lasciando Israele come unica superpotenza regionale), spingendo l’Islam a compiere il suo “Vaticano II” così da essere integrato un domani nel vasto nascente mercato mondiale. Poiché l’Europa “è (come se fosse) in Dormizione, che ci piaccia o meno, l’Islam è l’unico argine difensivo contro la morsa totale della finanza di Tel Aviv e Washington sul mondo”. Questa volontà di soffocare l’Islam mira anche a “creare un’unica religione” (che dovrebbe riunire tutte le attuali religioni). E questo scopo verrà raggiunto attraverso la separazione dei musulmani, in Sunniti e Sciiti. In vista di questo obiettivo, si possono facilmente comprendere anche i motivi per i quali è stato pianificato il sacro “Stato Islamico”, che include La Mecca e Medina, per meglio controllare l’Islam ed integrarlo nel nuovo ordine mondiale, ciò che adesso non è ancora possibile. Infatti questa (nuova) religione non possiede una gerarchia riconosciuta.
Nel suo eccellente libro, “Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age”, David Livingstone afferma che gli occidentali, poiché sono fin troppo ignoranti circa la storia del resto del mondo, informati soltanto dei traguardi raggiunti dalla Grecia, da Roma e dall’Europa, ci hanno fatto credere che le loro società rappresentano gli esempi migliori di civiltà. Quest’idea, continua Livingstone, discende dall’influenza occulta di coloro che credono ed insegnano che la storia raggiungerà il suo compimento quando l’uomo diventerà Dio e produrrà le sue proprie leggi. Livingstone conclude dichiarando che questa (influenza/idea) si trova alla base della propaganda che è stata utilizzata per promuovere uno “scontro di civiltà” per mezzo del quale il mondo islamico viene gabellato come ostinatamente attaccato all’idea anacronistica di “teocrazia”. Dove, un tempo, l’espansione della Cristianità e la civilizzazione del mondo venivano utilizzati come pretesti per la colonizzazione, oggi un nuovo “White Man’s Burden” fa uso dei diritti umani e della democrazia per giustificare le aggressioni imperiali. E poiché, dopo secoli di decadenza, il mondo islamico si è dimostrato incapace di mobilitare una difesa, i poteri occidentali, nell’ambito della secolare strategia del “divide et impera”, hanno favorito l’ascesa del fondamentalismo islamico sia per servirsene come agente-provocatore sia per diffamare l’immagine dell’Islam.
Poche settimane dopo l’invasione americana dell’Iraq, Ari Shavit scrisse un pezzo stimolante sul quotidiano israeliano Haaretz,dal significativo titolo “White Man’s Burden”, in cui egli affermò che la guerra contro l’Iraq si basava su una “fede ardente diffusa da un piccolo gruppo composto di 25 o 30 neoconservatori, quasi tutti ebrei, quasi tutti intellettuali (una lista parziale include: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Elliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), persone che sono amici comuni e si coltivano l’uno con l’altro, convinti che le idee politiche costituiscono la principale forza che muove la storia. Essi ritengono che la giusta idea politica implica l’unione della forza e della morale. dei diritti umani e del coraggio. Il sostegno filosofico dei neoconservatori di Washington proviene dagli scritti di Machiavelli, Hobbes e Edmund Burke. Essi apprezzano anche Winston Churchill e la politica perseguita da Ronald Reagan”.
Citando William Kristol, Shavit aggiunge che la guerra contro l’Iraq si basò anche sulla “nuova Weltanschauungamericana secondo la quale qualora gli Stati Uniti non riescano a modellare il mondo a propria immagine, il mondo riuscirà a modellare gli Stati Uniti a sua immagine”. Ad un livello più profondo, secondo Kristol, si tratta di “una guerra più importante finalizzata alla formazione di un nuovo Medio Oriente. Una guerra pianificata per cambiare la cultura politica dell’intera regione. Perché ciò che accadde l’11 settembre 2001, sostiene Kristol, fu che gli americani si guardarono attorno e videro che il mondo non era ciò che essi pensarono che fosse. Il mondo è un posto pericoloso. Perciò gli americani ricercarono una dottrina che consentisse loro di affrontare questo mondo pericoloso. E l’unica dottrina che essi trovarono fu quella neoconservatrice”.
La stessa idea è ovviamente condivisa da Charles Krauthammer per il quale “la guerra in Iraq è stata combattuta per sostituire l’accordo diabolico che l’America fece, decenni or sono, con il mondo arabo. Quell’accordo recitava: voi ci invierete il petrolio e noi non interverremo nei vostri affari interni (…). Quell’accordo di fatto decadde l’11 settembre 2001, afferma Krauthammer. Da quel giorno, gli americani compresero che “se essi avessero lasciato agire il mondo arabo nel suo modo esiziale –repressioni, disastri economici, disperazione– esso avrebbe continuato a fabbricare sempre più Bin Laden. L’America, quindi, arrivò alla conclusione che non aveva altra scelta: doveva assumere su di sé il progetto di ristrutturare il mondo arabo. Di conseguenza, la guerra all’Iraq rappresenta veramente l’inizio di un enorme esperimento storico il cui scopo è quello di operare nel mondo arabo come fu fatto in Germania e in Giappone all’indomani della Seconda guerra mondiale”.
L’articolo si conclude con l’opinione leggermente differente di Thomas Friedman, editorialista del New York Times, che non fa parte del gruppo, anche se egli non si oppose alla guerra ed era convinto che “lo status quoin Medio Oriente non è più accettabile. Lo status quoè finito. E, quindi, è urgente provocare una riforma nel mondo arabo”. Friedman pensava: “è la guerra che i neoconservatori volevano. È la guerra che i neoconservatori hanno commercializzato. Quelle persone avevano intenzione di vendere quando l’11 settembre arrivò, ed essi vendettero. Ragazzi, essi vendettero la guerra. Dunque, non fu una guerra richiesta dalle masse. Questa è una guerra dell’élite. (…) Potrei fornirvi i nomi di 25 persone (delle quali tutte si trovano, in questo momento, nel raggio di cinque isolati da questo ufficio) che, se voi aveste esiliato su un’isola deserta un anno e mezzo fa, la guerra in Iraq non avrebbe avuto luogo”. Tuttavia, egli era dell’idea che “non si trattò di qualche fantasia inventata dai neoconservatori. Non si trattò di 25 persone che presero in ostaggio l’America. Non porti una così grande nazione in una così grande avventura con Bill Kristol e il Weekly Standard ed altri cinque o sei influenti editorialisti. In ultima analisi, ciò che fomentò la guerra fu la reazione eccessiva dell’America all’11 settembre. Il senso autentico della preoccupazione che si diffuse in America dopo l’11 settembre. Non furono soltanto i neoconservatori che ci condussero nei sobborghi di Baghdad. Quello che davvero ci portò nei sobborghi di Baghdad fu proprio una combinazione americana di ansia e di arroganza”.
Echeggiando Ari Shavit, Stephen Green afferma che “dall’11 settembre, un piccolo gruppo di neoconservatori –molti dei quali sono ufficiali superiori presso il Dipartimento della Difesa, il Consiglio di Sicurezza Nazionale e l’Ufficio del Vice Presidente– hanno di fatto distrutto –essi direbbero riformato– la tradizionale politica estera e di sicurezza americana”. Dopo aver esaminato le esperienze pregresse relative alla sicurezza interna di alcuni dei più noti tra di loro, Green conclude che “essi avevano secondi fini, mentre manifestavano di lavorare per la sicurezza interna degli Stati Uniti contro i nemici terroristi”.
Bill Christison e Kathleen Christison pervengono alla medesima conclusione. Essi sostengono che “sin dai giorni, ormai dimenticati, nei quali la politica del Dipartimento di Stato in Medio Oriente era gestita da un gruppo di cosiddetti Arabisti, la politica americana su Israele e il mondo arabo divenne sempre più il campo di applicazione di funzionari noti per le loro tendenze verso Israele. (…) Queste persone, che possono essere correttamente chiamate lealiste di Israele, si trovano ora in tutti i livelli di governo, dai funzionari del Dipartimento della Difesa fino al livello di vice segretari sia al Dipartimento di Stato che alla Difesa, come pure nel personale del Consiglio di Sicurezza Nazionale e nell’ufficio del vice presidente”.
“Un esame del cast dei personaggi presenti nella cerchia dei decisori politici dell’amministrazione Bush –essi proseguono– rivela un’impressionante rete pervasiva di attivisti pro Israele, e una disamina dei voluminosi scritti dei neo-cons mostra che Israele emerge costantemente come punto di riferimento, sempre indicato assieme agli Stati Uniti come il beneficiario di una politica fortemente consigliata e sempre connesso agli Stati Uniti laddove sono in discussione gli interessi nazionali”.
I due autori rivelano un esempio indicativo riguardante la stesura, da parte di Feith, Perle, David e Meyrav Wurmser, di un documento politico, pubblicato nel 1996 da un think-tankisraeliano, scritto per il primo ministro israeliano Netanyhau appena eletto. Attraverso questo documento, essi “sollecitarono Israele a provocare un ‘taglio netto’ (clean break) rispetto al perseguimento del processo di pace, in particolare i suoi aspetti connessi al principio ‘terra in cambio di pace’, che gli autori consideravano la soluzione per lo sterminio di Israele. (…) Gli autori del documento compresero che la minaccia principale per Israele stava arrivando, non dovremmo essere sorpresi di scoprire ora, messi in guardia da Iraq e Siria, che con il rovesciamento di Saddam Hussein si presero due piccioni con una fava e si bloccarono le ambizioni regionali della Siria”.
Secondo i Christison, Elliott Abrams “è un altro sfacciato sostenitore del diritto di Israele, che ora sta portando i suoi contatti con Israele nell’ambito dei servizi americani” dopo la sua “nomina a direttore del programma del Medio Oriente in seno al Consiglio di Sicurezza Nazionale”.
Stranamente, i Christison erano dell’idea che “il duo lealista nell’amministrazione Bush aveva dato un impulso ulteriore allo sviluppo di una tensione messianica del fondamentalismo cristiano che si era alleato con Israele in preparazione della cosiddetta Fine dei Giorni. Questi pazzi fondamentalisti considerano il dominio di Israele sull’intera Palestina alla stregua di una tappa necessaria verso il compimento del Millennio biblico, ritengono che qualsiasi rinuncia di territorio in Palestina sia un sacrilegio e vedono nel conflitto tra ebrei e arabi il preludio, ordinato da Dio, all’Armageddon. (…) che aumenta le possibilità, spaventose ma reali, di una guerra apocalittica tra cristiani e islamici”.
In un commento scritto per un recente numero della rivista Foreign Policy, Elliott Abrams –ella sua qualità di membro del Consiglio per le Relazioni Estere (CFR) per gli studi mediorientali– prevede che “anche nello scenario migliore, con lo Stato Islamico sconfitto che perde il suo controllo su uno ‘stato’, esso può continuare ad esistere come gruppo terroristico– e in ogni caso al Qaeda e gli altri gruppi jihadisti non scompariranno”. Ciò, Elliott conclude, “non metterà fine al nostro coinvolgimento nei conflitti mediorientali che, in realtà, può portare ad un aumento degli stessi. Non ci saranno repliche di guerre irachene, con grande dispiegamento di truppe di terra, ma ci sarà bisogno di una estensione prolungata del tipo di impegno che osserviamo oggi”.
Come è stato chiarito da Alison Weir nel suo libro, “pochi americani sono oggi consapevoli che il sostegno statunitense ha reso possibile la creazione del moderno Israele. Addirittura molti di meno sanno che i politici americani hanno spinto questo tipo di politica contro l’energica opposizione degli esperti diplomatici e militari”. Questo libro, ampiamente documentato, riunisce scrupolosamente “molte fonti di prova per illuminare una realtà che differisce assolutamente dalla narrativa prevalente. Esso fornisce una chiara visione della storia che rappresenta il fattore chiave per comprendere uno dei più importanti problemi politici dei nostri giorni”.
Tutto ciò di cui sopra si attaglia perfettamente alla tesi del “Nuovo Sykes-Picot” che ho sviluppato nel mio libro.
In conclusione, io penso di poter affermare che se gli uomini sono il motore principale degli accadimenti che fanno la storia mondiale, essi non sono certamente i protagonisti del loro destino. E questo –come scrisse il grande pensatore algerino Malek Bennabi nel suo libro più importante “L’Afro-asiatisme”– si compie “malgrado la volontà degli uomini, poiché la ragione umana si rivela inutile se non coincide con l’evoluzione dei fatti che impongono la volontà di Dio sulla Storia. Sarebbe sacrilego se essa volesse deviare il corso della storia come se volesse opporsi alla volontà di Dio e ai suoi fini”.
Ricercatore algerino in relazioni internazionali, autore del libro L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot(Editions Alem El Afkar, Algeri, 2014), fervente sostenitore del futuro vitale “dialogo di civiltà”, la scelta alternativa rispetto a ciò che, nel mondo attuale sempre più globalizzato e polarizzato, è lo “scontro di civiltà”. Consultabile in francese qui: http://www.mezghana.net/amir-nour.pdfein lingua araba qui: http://www.mezghana.net/Sykes-Picot.jadeed-REAL.LAST.pdf.
SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON,Lo scontro delle civiltà e il nuovo ordine mondiale, Garzanti, Milano, 1997, p. 462.
Un futur qui vaut la peine d’être créé: interview du docteur Thomas Barnett, 8 agosto 2004,
William Kristol e Robert Kagan, Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, in Foreign Affairs, luglio/agosto 1996.
ROBERT COOPER, The Breaking of Nations: Order and chaos in the twenty-first century, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2003; trad. it., La fine delle Nazioni. Ordine e caos nel XXI secolo, Lindau, Torino, 2004.
Si v. CORINE LESNES, L’Amérique doit ‘conduire’ le monde, selon Bush, in Le Monde, 1 febbraio 2006.
Questo episodio è stato analizzato da Hardeep Singh Puri, Rappresentante Permanente dell’India a Ginevra e New York (tra il 2002 e il 2013) nel suo libro Perilous Interventions: the Security Council and the Politics of chaos, HarperCollins, New York, 2016.
JOHN BOLTON, Surrender is not an option: Defending America at the United Nations and abroad, Threshold Editions, New York, 2008.
ROBERT KAGAN, The World America Made, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012.
PEPE ESCOBAR, “Will Andrew Jackson Trump Embody the Bannon Doctrine?”, in Sputnik News, 9 febbraio 2017, https://sptnkne.ws/d5jV.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN, QUENTIN FIORE, War and Peace in the Global village, Bantam Books, New York, 1968; trad. it., Guerra e pace nel villaggio globale, Apogeo, Milano, 1995.
Les coups tordus de l’Empire, in Réfléchir et agir, n. 40, inverno 2012.
Secondo un riadattamento dei confini dell’area geografica islamica ipotizzato da Ralph Peters, membro del PNAC, in un articolo intitolato How a better Middle East would lookapparso su Armed Forces Journalnel giugno del 2006: http://armedforcesjournal.com/blood-borders.
Si v. L’Iran un pays en sursis, in Nexus, n. 66, gennaio-febbraio 2010.
DAVID LIVINGSTONE, Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age, Sabilillah Publications, 2013.
L’espressione deriva da una celebre poesia di Rudyard Kipling del 1899: The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands.
ARI SHAVIT, White Man’s Burden, in Haaretz, 3 aprile 2003,
Bill Christison è stato un ufficiale superiore della CIA. Prestò servizio come funzionario di intelligencee come Direttore dell’Ufficio di analisi politica e regionale della CIA.
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, si v. p. 29.
ELLIOTT ABRAMS, The United States Can’t Retreat From the Middle East, in Foreign Policy, 10 luglio 2017.
ALISON WEIR, Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the United States was used to create Israel, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot, Op. Cit
MALEK BENNABI, L’Afro-Asiatisme, conclusions sur la Conférence de Bandoeng, Il Cairo, Imprimerie Misr S.A.E, 1956.
“[Kushner] is so rational, and he is so pro-Israeli also, that he may neglect the point that if you offer the Palestinians the choice between surrendering and committing suicide, they may decide the latter. Somebody like Kushner doesn’t understand that.” — French Ambassador Gerard Araud
***
In an interview with the Atlantic last Friday, outgoing French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud made headlines after emphatically stating that Israel is already “an apartheid state” and that the Trump administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century” aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is “99 percent doomed.”
Araud — whose first government post was in France’s Tel Aviv embassy, and who was the French ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006 — made the claim after being asked about his views on the Israel-Palestine “peace process.” After stating that he enjoys a “close” relationship with Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law who has spent the last two years drafting a “peace plan” for the Trump administration — Araud noted that Kushner’s “proposal is very close to what the Israelis want.”
This outcome has long been noted by many media outlets based on Kushner’s close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his family’s role in funding illegal West Bank settlements; and, more recently, statements made by those familiar with the negotiations and the fact that the Palestinians have refused to negotiate with Kushner’s team since the Trump administration decreed Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital in December 2017.
“Smart, no guts”
Araud, who first became France’s ambassador to the U.S. in 2014, later described Kushner as “extremely smart, but he has no guts. He doesn’t know the history.” While Araud posited that there may be an advantage to not knowing the history of the conflict, he also noted that it was a double-edged sword, stating:
[Kushner] is so rational, and he is so pro-Israeli also, that he may neglect the point that if you offer the Palestinians the choice between surrendering and committing suicide, they may decide the latter. Somebody like Kushner doesn’t understand that.”
Like other politicians who have recently spoken about the “peace plan,” Araud has not seen the plan but was told that it was around 50 pages and very “precise.” Yet, drawing on his closeness to Kushner, Araud stated that the plan had been created based on three assumptions or “bets” made by Kushner, the first of which was that Trump would be “uniquely able to push the Israelis, because he is so popular in Israel.” The second bet, according to Araud, was that “the Palestinians may consider it’s their last chance to get limited sovereignty,” while the third element of the plan is “Kushner is going to pour money on the Palestinians.”
Despite the fact that Araud clearly likes Kushner and parts of his approach, he said that the plan was almost guaranteed to fail: “Is it doomed to fail? I should say 99 percent yes, but 1 percent, you never forget the 1 percent.”
Araud also raised the point that Israel’s government, despite all the concessions it has received from the Trump administration, would be uninterested in making any concessions, no matter how minor, as part of Kushner’s “peace plan:”
The problem is that the disproportion of power is such between the two sides that the strongest may conclude that they have no interest to make concessions… The status quo is extremely comfortable for Israel. Because they [can] have the cake and eat it.”
Arau summarized the status quo as follows:
They [Israel] have the West Bank, but at the same time they don’t have to make the painful decision about the Palestinians, really making them really, totally stateless or making them citizens of Israel.”
With Israel’s annexation of the West Bank looming following Netanyahu’s recent re-election, Araud further noted:
They [Israel] won’t make them [Palestinians] citizens of Israel. So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is an apartheid [sic]. There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already.”
Israeli apartheid: recognition brings resistance
Araud’s statement that Israel is “in fact already” an apartheid state is not surprising, in the sense that Israeli apartheid has long been a reality on the ground in occupied Palestine. However, it is remarkable, in the sense that Araud’s statements show that the reality is now near impossible to cover up or ignore and also that the reality of the situation is receiving more recognition than ever from the mainstream.
Indeed, if Araud — a former French ambassador to Israel who is close to Kushner and a well-entrenched figure of the Western political elite — is able to make such statements without being accused of “anti-Semitism,” it definitively shows that Israel’s status as an apartheid state is quickly becoming an accepted truth in mainstream, Western political discourse.
While Araud has been characterized for his “bluntness” in the past and as “direct to the point of discomfort,” his status as a member of the Western political elite that has long shielded Israeli apartheid and decades-long ethnic cleansing of Palestine from scrutiny highlights the dramatic yet unambiguous nature of the situation.
As mainstream recognition of Israeli apartheid accelerates, so too will efforts to resist it, particularly among countries and political groups that have opposed apartheid in other places around the world, like South Africa. Such pushback for those who reject apartheid systems wherever they may occur appears to be a “bet” that Jared Kushner failed to consider when drafting his “peace plan.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
The common understanding and most noted description for democracy in the West has many descriptions but can be broadly defined as: a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. It is widely understood that democracy is by far the best method of managing a nation and its economy for the benefit of all citizens. Whilst you may disagree with that statement, one only has to look at life in authoritarian countries to see some of the worst abuses of human rights and inequality imaginable.
However, the Western world is changing politically and is doing so rapidly. This change, as widely recognised by many economists as being firmly based in the late 1970s when Thatcher and Raegan agreed that neoliberal capitalism – that the free-market should dominate both economic and political policy. Over the following four decades, the political pendulum swang from social democracy to rapidly rising commercial liberalisation with an American style of doing business that sought out profit at almost any cost. Its crest manifested itself as the global financial crash, caused by the wealthiest people working in the financial services industry that subsequently sucked trillions of dollars out of the global economic system, only to be shouldered by the least well off in an ideology (not an economic model) called austerity.
A decade later, anger has turned into action, most notably against the failed authority of the establishment. Subsequent protests and rising dissent has then seen a rise of populism. And populism is on the rise globally.
The worlds largest democracies are now led by populist leaders – India (pop 1.3billion), United States (pop 329m), Indonesia (pop 268 million), Brazil (pop 209 million) and Mexico (pop 129 million). This group represents 2.2 billion people or 28.6 per cent of the 7.7 billion total world population.
Of the largest ten nations by population in the world, no one country is classified as a full democracy, with two – China and Russia being authoritarian and three, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh, being classed as hybrid regimes. India, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico are classed as ‘flawed democracies’.
Of all countries in the world, only 20 can call themselves a full democracy. Another 55 are flawed democracies, 39 are hybrid regimes and 53 are authoritarian.
Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles.
Flawed democracies are nations with free elections but weighed down by weak governance, an underdeveloped or declining political culture and low levels of political participation
Hybrid regimes are nations where consequential irregularities exist in elections, regularly preventing them from being fair and free. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opponents, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media and anaemic rule of law.
Authoritarian regimes are nations where political pluralism has vanished or is extremely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meagre significance. Infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair and free, the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and there is omnipresent censorship and suppression of governmental criticism.
Hybrid regimes were the most widespread political systems in the world towards the end of the twentieth century but democracy (in all its forms) at the beginning of the 21st century has that title now.
Image below: European national parliaments with representatives from right-wing populist parties in June 2018: (Light blue) Right-wing populists represented in the parliament (Blue) Right-wing populists involved in the government (Dark Blue) Right-wing populists appoint prime minister (Source: TP)
In the European Union, all are classed as full democracies or flawed democracies with 10 of the top 20 democracies in the world being EU member states. Of them, Romania, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria rank the lowest out of the current 28 members of the EU.
The Top ten democracies in the world are regularly listed each year but they also happen to be small nations in terms of population size. Number one to top the worlds best democracies is Norway, followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Finland, Australia and Switzerland. Together, their combined population is just 106 million, with seven of those with a population below 10 million. Canada and Australia have a combined population of less than 62 million and both are inside the top ten worlds largest countries by land mass.
Greenland is the 12th largest land mass of any country and is of Danish territory with just 56,000 citizens. Greenland is one of the EU countries’ overseas countries and territories (OCT). Citizens of Greenland are, nonetheless, EU citizens within the meaning of EU treaties and Danish nationality law and is, therefore, listed as a full democracy.
Right-wing populists are now politically represented in almost every country in the EU and gaining ground. In political science, the terms radical right and populist right have been used to refer to the range of European far-right parties that have grown in support since the late 1970s. Populist right-wing groups have shared a number of causes, which typically include opposition to globalization, criticism of immigration and multiculturalism, and opposition to the European Union itself.
This is where caution is required as the surge towards radical right-wing politics is now endemic and a cause for great concern. The ideological spectrum of the radical right extends from right-wing populism to white nationalism and neo-fascism.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The real “deplorable” in today’s United States is the continuation of a foreign policy based on endless aggression to maintain Washington’s military dominance in parts of the world where Americans have no conceivable interest. Many voters backed Donald J. Trump because he committed himself to changing all that, but, unfortunately, he has reneged on his promise, instead heightening tension with major powers Russia and China while also threatening Iran and Venezuela on an almost daily basis. Now Cuba is in the crosshairs because it is allegedly assisting Venezuela. One might reasonably ask if America in its seemingly enduring role as the world’s most feared bully will ever cease and desist, but the more practical question might be “When will the psychopathic trio of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams be fired so the United States can begin to behave like a normal nation?”
Trump, to be sure, is the heart of the problem as he has consistently made bad, overly belligerent decisions when better and less abrasive options were available, something that should not necessarily always be blamed on his poor choice of advisers. But one also should not discount the likelihood that the dysfunction in Trump is in part comprehensible, stemming from his belief that he has numerous powerful enemies who have been out do destroy him since before he was nominated as the GOP’s presidential candidate. This hatred of all things Trump has been manifested in the neoconservative “Nevertrump” forces led by Bill Kristol and by the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” prominent on the political left, regularly exhibited by Rachel Maddow.
And then there is the Deep State, which also worked with the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama to destroy the Trump presidency even before it began. One can define Deep State in a number of ways, ranging from a “soft” version which accepts that there is an Establishment that has certain self-serving objectives that it works collectively to promote to something harder, an actual infrastructure that meets together and connives to remove individuals and sabotage policies that it objects to. The Deep State in either version includes senior government officials, business leaders and, perhaps most importantly, the managed media, which promotes a corrupted version of “good governance” that in turn influences the public.
Whether the Mueller report is definitive very much depends on the people they chose to interview and the questions they chose to ask, which is something that will no doubt be discussed for the next year if not longer. Beyond declaring that the Trump team did not collude with Russia, it cast little light on the possible Deep State role in attempting to vilify Trump and his associates. The investigation of that aspect of the 2016 campaign and the possible prosecutions of former senior government officials that might be a consequence of the investigation will likely be entertaining conspiracy theorists well into 2020. Since Russiagate has already been used and discarded the new inquiry might well be dubbed Trumpgate.
The media has scarcely reported how Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), has been looking into the activities of the principal promoters of the Russiagate fraud. Horowitz, whose report is expected in about a month, has already revealed that he intends to make criminal referrals as a result of his investigation. While the report will only cover malfeasance in the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, the names of intelligence officers involved will no doubt also surface. It is expected that there will be charges leading to many prosecutions and one can hope for jail time for those individuals who corruptly betrayed their oath to the United States Constitution to pursue a political vendetta.
A review of what is already known about the plot against Trump is revealing and no doubt much more will be learned if and when investigators go through emails and phone records. The first phase of the illegal investigation of the Trump associates involved initiating wiretaps without any probable cause. This eventually involved six government intelligence and law enforcement agencies that formed a de facto task force headed by the CIA’s Director John Brennan. Also reportedly involved were the FBI’s James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, and Admiral Michael Rogers who headed the National Security Agency.
Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee.
In other words, to make the wiretaps appear to be legitimate, GCHQ and others were quietly and off-the-record approached by Brennan and associates over their fears of what a Trump presidency might mean. The British responded by initiating wiretaps that were then used by Brennan to justify further investigation of Trump’s associates. It was all neatly done and constituted completely illegal spying on American citizens by the U.S. government.
The British support of the operation was coordinated by the then-director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan who has since been forced to resign. Brennan is, unfortunately still around and has not been charged with perjury and other crimes. In May 2017, after he departed government, he testified before Congress with what sounds a lot like a final unsourced, uncorroborated attempt to smear the new administration:
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals.”
Brennan’s claimed “concerns” turned out to be incorrect. Meanwhile, other interested parties were involved in the so-called Steele Dossier on Trump himself. The dossier, paid for initially by Republicans trying to stop Trump, was later funded by $12 million from the Hillary campaign. It was commissioned by the law firm Perkins Coie, which was working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The objective was to assess any possible Trump involvement with Russia. The work itself was sub-contracted to Fusion GPS, which in turn sub-contracted the actual investigation to British spy Christopher Steele who headed a business intelligence firm called Orbis.
Steele left MI-6 in 2009 and had not visited Russia since 1993. The report, intended to dig up dirt on Trump, was largely prepared using impossible to corroborate second-hand information and would have never surfaced but for the surprise result of the 2016 election. Christopher Steele gave a copy to a retired of British Diplomat Sir Andrew Wood who in turn handed it to Trump critic Senator John McCain who then passed it on to the FBI. President Barack Obama presumably also saw it and, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper,
“If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller’s investigation.”
The report was leaked to the media in January 2017 to coincide with Trump’s inauguration. Hilary Clinton denied any prior knowledge despite the fact that her campaign had paid for it. Pressure from the Democrats and other constituencies devastated by the Trump victory used the Steele report to provide leverage for what became the Mueller investigation.
So, was there a broad ranging conspiracy against Donald Trump orchestrated by many of the most senior officials and politicians in Washington? Undeniably yes. What Trump has amounted to as a leader and role model is beside the point as what evolved was undeniably a bureaucratic coup directed against a legally elected president of the United States and to a certain extent it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams. One can only hope that investigators dig deep into what is Washington insiders have been up to so Trumpgate will prove more interesting and informative than was Russiagate. And one also has to hope that enough highest-level heads will roll to make any interference by the Deep State in future elections unthinkable. One hopes.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Near the end of the first 100 days of the presidency ofJair Bolsonaro – the first radical-right Brazilian president since the moderated transition from military dictatorship in 1985 to a democratic regime – the first meaningful protests, apart from some popular mocking and chants directed against him during Carnaval in February, took place since he assumed office on January 1st of this year.
The protests were occasioned by the order Bolsonaro gave on March 25th to commemorate inside army barracks and military institutions the 55th anniversary of the Brazilian military coup of 31 March, 1964. Bolsonaro stated that he does not regard the military dictatorship as a dictatorship at all but as a regime that had ‘some problems’.
A few days later, world famous Brazilian novelist Paolo Coelho described in detail how he was tortured during the dictatorship and asked Bolsonaro if he is indeed keen on celebrating this. On the same 31st of March various cities all over Brazil saw demonstrations against this commemoration, and also smaller acts in favour of the dictatorship which led to violent scuffles in the center of Sao Paulo.
Commemorating ‘Some Problems’
An interesting footnote is that the previous commemorations of the coup by the army were only stopped by former president Dilma Rousseff in 2011. In this way, the parallel political universe maintained by the Brazilian army made itself public and official with Bolsonaro’s presidency. On the day of the latest anniversary of the coup a video, narrated by a paid actor, was sent out on the official Whatsapp channel of the presidential office, defending the coup as an emergency measure against the threat of communism.
Nobody took responsibility for the video initially. The vice-president said he didn’t know who made it, and the president’s spokesperson said he did not know who released it. Only three days later, the owner of the steel company Bendsteel, Osmar Stábile said he had financed the video, which had no imprint or logo of any official government organ. While the president himself kept silent on the issue, his vice-president later added that the president had not known about the video being sent out. Even close allies of Bolsonaro, like Joao Doria, the governor of Sao Paulo, criticized the video and said that the coup was a coup, and nothing positive.
A second protest movement had taken to the streets a day earlier on 30 March. This was a revival of the truckers’ strike of May 2018 that paralysed the economy of the country for 11 days. This time around the strike was much smaller and led only to some minor blockades in the states of Parana and Minas Gerais, similar to a slightly larger mobilization of December 2018. The fact that a new, albeit smaller, truckers’ strike took place shows that the issues behind it remain unresolved.
The truckers were seen as one of the groups backing Bolsonaro, yet neither Bolsonaro’s support for the strike in May 2018 (he changed his mind a week after endorsing the strike) nor the backing of the vast and fragmented group of truckers for the right-wing politician was firm. The central issues regard the temporary and incomplete measures taken in 2018 to alleviate the truckers’ problems and that have since ceased on 31 December. Among them are minimum freight prices and monthly instead of daily changes in the price of gasoline. These have not been renewed by the new government.
The announcement of the strike in March led Petrobras to go back to a 15-day rhythm for changing the price of gasoline. Bolsonaro’s response to the strike threat is typical of the hap-hazard measures of his style of governing. He promised in a video one day before the strike that some 8000 new planned speed radars will not go into operation, and that contracts for older speed radars will not be renewed. Thus a measure designed to enhance road security for everyone was abandoned in favour of short-term gains for truckers – whose representatives also felt dumbfounded after hearing Bolsonaro’s speech.
These two instances during the last weekend in March indicate the character of the first 100 days: a hard line regarding ideological and political issues and an unrestrained embrace of repression and violence, and the lack of any strategy to address social conflicts and political problems. The repression also took a material form with the massacre of nine youths by police in Rio de Janeiro who were fleeing from them and which was defended by the state governor of Doria. There is also the case of the killing of a musician and the wounding of others in Rio by army soldiers who fired 80 bullets into the car the musician was driving his family in; a bystander was also killed. The musician’s vehicle was probably targeted on the basis of a false suspicion. Suffice to say, the victims were members of the black majority of the population in both cases.
Similar to the government of Trump, the chaos and hap-hazard decisions are accompanied by disastrous decisions that will have a massive impact on the poor majority of Brazilian citizens. But, other than in the case of Trump, business elites are aghast at the incompetence of the president and his entourage already after three months, while his vice-president General Mourão has turned into the darling of those elites due to his supposed more reasonable actions – which tends to hide that Mourão’s political positions are not much different from Bolsonaro’s.
The main events during the first 100 days were the environmental disaster/crime at the Brumadinho dam of the Vale mining company that led to more than 300 deaths, the scandal around the corruption investigation Lava Jato (aka Operation Car Wash) and the skirmish between Bolsonaro and the president of the Brazilian parliament, Rodrigo Maia.
Corruption and Scandals
The permanent background music to those larger events are several corruption investigations and scandals involving figures close to the president. The investigations involving bank transfers by employees of Flavio Bolsonaro, a son of the president, to a middleman who was Flavio’s chauffeur, are lingering on. The former president of Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) Gustavo Bebianno, an important figure, had to step down due to the high amount of public election monies that went to an unimportant candidate two days before the election. Similar investigations against the Minister of Tourism continue, and the education minister Damares faced accusations due to her adoption of a girl from an indigenous community years ago that was never officialized, and that was called kidnapping by relatives of the girl. For a supposed anti-corruption government this track record in just three months is remarkable.
What was more damaging was the scandal around the corruption investigation itself. State oil company Petrobras which is at the center of the Lava Jato scandal has also faced investigations in the USA. The indemnization that Petrobras had to pay to U.S. authorities was lowered to $853-million (all sums in U.S. dollars) in September 2018. At the time, it was reported that 20 per cent of the sum remained with U.S. authorities, and that 80 per cent, some $682-million would go to the Ministerio Público in Brazil (that led the investigations) for unspecified social and educational programs. In addition, in order to settle a class-action lawsuit it was agreed that Petrobras pay $3-billion to shareholders who bought company stocks on the NY stock exchange between 2010 and 2014. Hence, Petrobras paid almost $4-billion while, in the end a higher amount of between $5 and $10-billion had been expected by market observers.
Only in March 2019 was it revealed that the basis of this reduction was a deal between Petrobras and the U.S. authorities, signed on 26 September 2018 by representatives of Petrobras, the U.S. Department of Justice and the respective U.S. state attorneys. The deal states the sum of $682-million will go to a private NGO run by the prosecutors in the Ministerio Público of Brazil, and that Petrobras keep the U.S. Department of Justice informed about its investments and business plans.
The agreement has caused a huge uproar and led to the cancelation of plans for the NGO in question. Raquel Dodge, the supreme state attorney blocked the deal after determining it violates the Brazilian constitution, so the sum of $682-million will remain with Petrobras. Most importantly, the deal discredited the image of the investigations among the public since the suspicion was confirmed that the investigations have as one of its goals the control of Petrobras by U.S. interests, and include the direct intervention of U.S. authorities in the political life of Brazil.
The arrest of former president Michel Temer, a week after the scandal, was interpreted as a move to regain legitimacy for the corruption investigations, even if Temer had to be released after seven days. But the arrest of Temer, and other politicians, was also seen as a sign of indirect blackmail of established politicians in Congress that were about to discuss the first draft of the law for pension reform. The signal was interpreted as: ‘if you don’t organize agreement on the reform, we will also arrest you for corruption.’
While Temer was not able to pass the reform, Bolsonaro has radicalized it. Poor pensioners who today have the right to receive a pension in the value of the minimum wage from the age of 60 onward (1000 Reals, about 250 Euros), shall now receive only 400 Reals from the age of 70 onward. At the same time, the generous pensions for military personnel – who receive full salaries as pensioners and which represent the larger part of the overall budget deficit – will be largely spared.
Pension Reforms
The conflict that unfolded in the second half of March over pension reform was over Bolsonaro’s refusal to rally the deputies of Congress to support the reform draft. This is usually a game of exchanging favours, deputies negotiating in favour of their clientele, and then being rewarded with posts, money or other political favours. Bolsonaro announced that he will not distribute any favours, the practice of which he designated as the “old politics.”
Nonetheless some engagement with deputies is necessary to get the pension reform approved, and this will require several changes to the constitution if Bolsonaro sticks to the plans. It was then that the president of Congress, Rodrigo Maia from the Democratic Party, a right-wing outlet with roots in the dictatorship, began to provoke Bolsonaro in a series of tweets demanding that he “start governing” and get off of Twitter. Bolsonaro responded angrily on Twitter. Maia’s aim was to exhibit the incompetency of Bolsonaro and to bring himself into play as an important negotiator.
It was a little after this exchange of insults between Maia and Bolsonaro – Maia wrote Bolsonaro should stop “kidding around” and start working, Bolsonaro said “Maia is stressed about family issues,” alluding to the arrest of Maia’s father-in-law together with Temer – that Bolsonaro came up with his dictatorship commemoration plans, only to be topped by his Minister of Exterior, Araujo, who declared that German Nazism was a left-wing project. Bolsonaro repeated this phrase on his visit to Israel a week later, maybe the worst choice of location for it.
This incredible mess and ideological madness led to a considerable drop in the popularity of the government and Bolsonaro himself, registering the lowest poll-ratings after the first three months for any first mandate since the first elected official, Fernando Collor de Melo – even Collor who was impeached quickly, had higher approval rates. Only Cardoso and Rousseff scored worse than Bolsonaro after three months, but this was in their second mandates respectively.
The Brazilian business elite which effectively decides who stays in power once elected is getting nervous. The amateurism of Bolsonaro and his government (it would be wrong to call it a team) is seen as a danger for the pension reform and bets are now that it will be considerably watered down. Pressure groups in Congress are already calling for exceptions for firefighters, teachers and the military police. While a cut in pensions for the poor will be most disastrous, it is the middle class and reasonably paid workers in the public sector that have the most to lose with the pension cuts.
Unemployment is up to around 12 per cent, the same level as a year ago, and there is no visible economic agenda of the government. The head of the mighty agrobusiness caucus recently had cause to vent his anger against Bolsonaro. Backing away from moving the Brazilian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the president instead announced the opening of a commercial office in the city, while one of Bolsonaro’s sons – who regularly intervenes on political issues without coordinating with anyone – tweeted “Hamas should detonate itself” after Hamas had criticized the opening of the office in Jerusalem. A considerable amount of meat exported by Brazilian agrobusiness goes to Arab countries and is specifically produced as Halal meat in the presence of Muslim religious representatives. Other producers from India and Turkey are waiting to take over this chunk of business. Despite all the ideological regression that emanates from the Brazilian business elite, it becomes very pragmatic when its commercial interests are at stake.
It is hard to say what can be expected from the next 100 days. It is obvious that the conflict between the military faction in the government and the ideological hardliners has hardened. Moro and Guedes as the neoliberal third-pole have not shown much political leadership and independent initiative in this scenario. The hard-core making the crucial decisions are until now Augusto Heleno in the important post of national internal security leader and vice-president Mourão who demonstratively met with the Palestinian ambassador to Brazil in January – business is treating Mourão already as a president in waiting for a lack of alternatives. But the lack of coordination on the economic front is set to worsen the economic situation of the country, and it will probably be a joint protest by workers and business, albeit for different reasons, that can cause serious trouble for Bolsonaro’s motley crew.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Jörg Nowak is a political scientist at the University of Nottingham (UK) and co-editor of the magazine Rupture. His latest publications are “The Spectre of Social Democracy” in the Global Labour Journal, issue 3/2018, and Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India (Palgrave, 2019).
The Trump administration announced on Monday that they would be cancelling waivers to eight countries buying oil from Iran as they tighten the economic blockade against the Persian Gulf nation.
***
The spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Abbas Mousavi, issued a statement on Monday that warned of “adverse consequences” if the U.S. ended their sanctions waiver on the Persian Gulf nation’s oil imports.
“Given the illegal nature of the U.S. sanctions, Iran has not and will not consider any value for the waivers granted,” Mousavi said. “However, in view of the negative effects in politics of these sanctions … Iranian Foreign Ministry has been continuously in touch with relevant domestic institutions while holding comprehensive consultations with many foreign partners, including Europeans.”
The Trump administration announced on Monday that they would be cancelling waivers to eight countries buying oil from Iran as they tighten the economic blockade against the Persian Gulf nation.
Mousavi said Iran will take appropriate actions to counter the U.S. move, adding that his government will make it public.
Not everyone in the Iranian government and military were as cordial as Mousavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, vowed to take harsher actions against the U.S.
Tangsiri vowed to close the important Strait of Hormuz, which would be a major blow to the U.S. Navy who is currently docked at their largest Middle Eastern naval base in Bahrain.
“If we are prevented from using it, we will close it,” Tangsiri said, as cited by the state-run Fars News Agency. “In the event of any threats, we will not have the slightest hesitation to protect and defend Iran’s waterway.”
Iran’s oil exports have dropped to about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) from more than 2.5 million bpd prior to the re-imposition of sanctions.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a briefing Monday, said “we’re going to zero across the board,” saying the United States had no plans for a grace period for compliance beyond May 1.
The White House intends to deprive Iran of its lifeline of $50 billion in annual oil revenues, Pompeo said, as it pressures Tehran to curtail its nuclear program, ballistic missile tests and support for conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
A senior administration official said President Donald Trump was confident Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will fulfill their pledges to compensate for the shortfall in the oil market. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Frank Fannon said Riyadh was taking “active steps” to ensure global oil markets were well supplied.
Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, in a statement on Monday, did not commit to raising production, saying it was “monitoring the oil market developments” after the U.S. statement, and that it would coordinate with other oil producers to ensure a balanced market. OPEC is next scheduled to meet in June.
While Saudi Arabia is expected to boost output again, analysts fear the U.S. move – along with sanctions on Venezuela – will leave the world with inadequate spare capacity.
The international Brent crude oil benchmark rose to more than $74 a barrel on Monday, the highest since November, due to the uncertainty surrounding increased supply from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, while U.S. prices hit a peak of $65.92 a barrel, the highest since October 2018.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
A clear shortage of fuel has forced the reduction of the quantity of gasoline sold to 20 liters every two days for private cars. In total, the sales would not exceed 200 liters of petrol per car per month and almost double that quantity for taxis.
Muhammad Khodhr, Lebanese Al-Mayadeen News Channel reporter in Syria wrote to almayadeen.net commenting on the pressing issue of the shortages in Syria. Mr. Khdhr’s article is in Arabic and we tried to translate it to our best to English.
The current crisis started on Saturday, April 6th, which the government attributes to the impact of US sanctions on the Syrian economy. Oil Minister Ali Ghanem said during a tour of the gas stations that the material was available at stations in an effort to reassure consumers who have just got out of a severe shortage in gas which stretched throughout the winter months and effectively ended with the start of the spring.
The US punishing the Syrian people for rejecting its intervention in their affairs
The main oil and gas fields in Syria went out of the government’s control in the early days of the crisis. Syria used to produce about 385 thousand barrels of oil per day before 2011, mostly from fields east of the Euphrates in the countryside of eastern Deir Al-Zour and Hasaka, and about 21 million cubic tons of gas, mostly from the central region. Production fell sharply to about 24 thousand barrels of oil per day.
Securing the Central Region and the rehabilitation of gas facilities helped increase the production of gas to 17 million cubic meters per day.
Overall estimated losses of this sector over the past eight years, according to official estimates, about 74.8 billion dollars, the most important losses, in the economic sense of any production sector in Syria due to the war.
The size of the depletion of oil production has exerted a strong pressure on the Syrian economy in all its details. For the first time, the government allowed the private sector to import its fuel and diesel oil to secure the work of factories and craft enterprises. The step that came into force was an attempt to circumvent US sanctions and access that material, but it is certainly not enough.
This was evident with very high prices for selling the material from its suppliers. The sale of diesel fuel was estimated at about 475 Liras per liter for industrialists according to Damascus Chamber of Industry, which decreased by simple margins due to competition but remained more than double the price at which the government sells diesel oil estimated at 185 Liras per liter.
In dealing with the issue of gas, efforts to double the production of local fields appeared to have reasonable results, especially as efforts continue to improve production according to official statements, while work is being done to import the difference between production and consumption.
The most important node today is the sanctions on the arrival of oil derivatives to the Syrian ports.
According to high-level government sources, the Suez Canal Authority prevented the passage of oil shipments from Iran to Syria in response to American pressure. It added to the difficulties faced by shipping companies to reach the Syrian ports in light of the complexities of insurance and fears of Western sanctions that would affect the work of these shipping companies. All these factors led to the suspension of the arrival of any shipment of oil to the Syrian ports for months, while the increased consumption, especially industrial with the return of tens of thousands of industrial and handicraft facilities in Aleppo, Hama and the countryside of Damascus, to double the features of the crisis.
No comprehensive solutions are soon coming, as per the given indications, regardless of government assurances. The current measures are aimed at managing the crisis through the sale of smaller quantities and the use of the smart card, and even the study related to raising the price of gasoline towards the liberalization of the price of quantities exceeding 100 liters per month for each car seems to be deferred now.
To end the current cycle may impose one of two solutions as long as the conditions of sanctions and restrictions on shipments to the Syrian ports, the first: to transfer these products by land from Iran through Iraq to Syria, and there is information about the possibility of adopting this option despite the length of the road and security risks on the border.
And the second: the restoration of rich oil fields east of the Euphrates to the Syrian state through a bold solution to the matter of East Euphrates as a whole. A solution seems more pressing today than ever before with the intensification of the pressure on the Syrians in their livelihood and economy and reconstruction plans… In this perspective can be understood the words of Syrian Defense Minister General Ali Ayoub during the high-level military meeting, which included the Chiefs of Staff of the Iraqi army, Othman Al-Ghanmi and The Iranian armed forces, Major General Mohammad Jafari, on March 18, and his assertion that the remaining card for the Americans in Syria is the “SDF” and “we will deal with it either by reconciliations or by liberating the land.”
Two solutions seem difficult but there is no substitute for them as long as there is no possibility in the foreseen future to circumvent the US sanctions which affects mostly Syria’s main ally Iran.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Roundup lawsuits claim the weed killer caused several types of cancer like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, b-cell lymphoma, leukemia, and others.
Monsanto faces 11,200+ Roundup lawsuits, including one in which the plaintiff received a jury award of $78.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Why are Roundup Lawsuits Being Filed?
Monsanto developed glyphosate in 1970 to kill the weeds and grasses that harm crops. Monsanto marketed the chemical as Roundup Weed Killer, and by 2007 it became the most used herbicide in the United States. An estimated 1.4 billion pounds of Roundup are used in more than 160 countries each year.
Roundup has increased in popularity since Monsanto introduced seeds for genetically modified organisms (GMO) resistant to glyphosate, allowing farmers to spray the product everywhere without worrying about killing crops. Roundup Ready crops, as they are called, include plants like corn, soybean, and cotton, and they account for over 270 million pounds of crops each year.
Despite its widespread use, the popular weedkiller has been called into question as a possible health hazard within the past several years. Thousands of Roundup users have filed lawsuits alleging that they have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, b-cell lymphoma, leukemia, or other forms of cancer after using the product.
Types of Blood Cancer Claimed in Roundup Lawsuits
Anaplastic Large T-Cell Lymphoma
Follicular B-Cell Lymphoma
Mediastinal B-Cell Lymphoma
Large B-Cell Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL)
Mantle Cell Lymphoma
High Grade Mature B-Cell Lymphoma
Hairy Cell Leukemia
Acute T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma
Thymic Lymphoma
Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
Does Roundup Cause Cancer?
There has been a lot of debate around the dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer. Conflicting studies have been released, and Monsanto representatives argue that most studies have not found a cancer risk from glyphosate exposure.
However, a 2015 assessment of glyphosate released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) looked at the safety of five pesticides on the market in an attempt to see if they could be considered carcinogenic. Through their investigation, the IARC labeled glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A). This category is used for substances that the IARC believes has sufficient enough to indicate a likelihood that the substance can cause cancer, but the evidence is not yet entirely conclusive.
Representatives of the IARC have stood by their evaluation, even speaking out as recently as February 2018 to defend their findings. The agency said the monograph is a crucial first step for further research into glyphosate and other pesticides to better determine carcinogenicity and what levels of exposure specifically can be linked to these various types of cancer.
Separately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) originally stated back in 1995 that glyphosate should be labeled as a probable human carcinogen. In recent years, however, the agency has changed its mind and argued that glyphosate is not carcinogenic and actually has low toxicity for humans, as long as it is used according to the label directions. In its most recent drafted assessment released in December 2017, the EPA went further to say that the pesticide showed virtually no toxicity to animals, including birds, that encounter glyphosate in the natural environment. The EPA’s final assessment on glyphosate is due in 2019.
Given the disparity in studies, it is still unclear to what degree glyphosate may affect human health or a person’s risk of cancer.
Potential Monsanto Collusion
According to Bayer’s 2018 Annual Report, approximately 11,200 cancer patients and their families have filed lawsuits against Monsanto, claiming the company has been aware of the potential dangers of glyphosate and failed to properly warn consumers. Nonetheless, Monsanto and Bayer refute these claims.
In one recent Monsanto lawsuit, unsealed documents and emails emerged suggesting Monsanto had ghostwritten several scientific studies to help ensure that glyphosate was found to be safe to use in the EPA’s evaluation of the widely used herbicide, a claim the company publicly denies. Roundup cancer lawyers claim that company executives worked with a former EPA employee to refute claims that glyphosate was dangerous and tried to squash an investigation of the pesticide. Monsanto allegedly received notice of the herbicide’s evaluation months before it was made public, allowing them to prepare for a public relations attack against studies supporting a cancer link.
Roundup Settlements and Verdicts
Monsanto faces thousands of lawsuits as a result of its Roundup cancer-causing ingredients. A Roundup class action lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Monsanto, claiming its advertising falsely stated that Roundup products were safe to use. The class action suit also claims the company deliberately falsified documents and concealed information that glyphosate is dangerous to humans and environmental health.
Roundup Multidistrict Litigation (MDL 2741)
Due to the growing number of lawsuits against Roundup, federal multidistrict litigation has been consolidated under MDL No. 2741 under U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California. There are over 624 lawsuits pending under the multidistrict litigation, with the next case set for trial in February 2019.
Featured Roundup Lawsuit: Dewayne Johnson
Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson is a former school groundskeeper for a California county school system who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of using Roundup weed-killer and other glyphosate-based herbicides. According to Johnson, he used the product as many as 30 times per year, and on at least two occasions spilled a substantial amount of the chemical on his body.
In January 2016, Johnson filed a Roundup lawsuit against Monsanto, claiming that his use of Roundup contributed significantly to the development of his cancer. Because he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, California state law allowed Johnson to seek a fast-track lawsuit – though, the case still took nearly two and a half years to reach a jury trial. He built his case around the classification of glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the fact that not enough testing has been done on Roundup’s formulation, which includes other chemicals in addition to glyphosate.
On August 10, 2018, the San Francisco jury returned with a verdict that awarded Mr. Johnson $289 million ($39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages) in his Roundup case. Monsanto appealed, asking for a new trial. However, in October 2018, a judge ruled against Monsanto, and the final amount awarded to Mr. Johnson and his family was $78.5 million.
Edwin Hardeman v Monsanto
Another early trial involved 70-year-old Edwin Hardeman, who used Roundup from the 1980s through 2015, when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Hardeman filed his lawsuit in 2016, claiming that Monsanto ignored and withheld evidence of Roundup’s link to cancer. The company also failed to warn consumers of the potential hazards of the weedkiller, according to Hardeman’s legal complaint.
In March 2019, a San Francisco jury decided unanimously in favor of Hardeman, confirming that Roundup was a “substantial factor” contributing to Hardeman’s lymphoma diagnosis. About a week after the verdict, the jury awarded $80 million to Hardeman in the damages phase of the trial, finding that Monsanto had filed to warn him and other consumers about the potential dangers of the Roundup formula.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Randy L. Gori received his J.D. with honors from the St. Louis University School of Law, and is licensed to practice law in several U.S. District Courts. Mr. Gori is an accomplished trial attorney who is currently involved in Roundup cases across the United States. He is dedicated to representing victims in their pursuit of claims against Monsanto.
Everyone should read this report. It documents the fake news, lies, violations of diplomatic standards and international law, and gratuitous aggressive actions taken against Russia during the period beginning May 18, 2016 and continuing through the issuance of the Mueller Report.
Without explicitly saying so, the report shows that neither the US government nor the American media has a nanoparticle of integrity. Both are criminal organizations that are willing to risk war with Russia in their pursuit of narrow policitized agendas.
This is important information for Americans and the rest of the world to have. Every person, every government and every private organization that supports Washington’s Russophobic policies is contributing to the growing threat of nuclear war.
One hopes also that the entirety of the Russian government, media, and population also read the report as it has equally powerful messages for Russia. The messages are no doubt unintended, but they nevertheless emerge from the embassy’s report.
The Russian government should marvel at its naivete in trusting Washington, US institutions such as Citibank, and US adherence to international law. For 121 pages the report lists transgression against Russia followed by transgression and lie followed by lie; yet the Russian government continued to send diplomatic notes that are never answered, requests for meetings that are never answered, requests for evidence that are never answered. One would think that month after month of abuse would have caused the Russian government to wonder where was the intelligence, “cooperative spirit,” reason, and “common interest in global security” that Russia’s responses to Washington assumed were present in Russia’s “partner.”
The Russian government’s naive and gullible response to Washington played into Washington’s hands. By responding to Washington’s orchestrated Russophobia as if it were some kind of mistake based on bad information, the Russian government allowed Washington to keep the process of demonization alive and thereby contributed to the ongoing demonization of Russia. If, instead, the Russian government had denounced the demonization of Russia as Washington’s act of preparing Americans for war with Russia and had taken a belligerant rather than a complaining stance, the realization that Washington’s policy had serious cost would have spread throughout the US and Europe and voices would have arisen against Washington’s dangerous and reckless policy. Today in place of the uniformity of voice against Russia, there would be dissent opposing Washington’s irresponsible provocations.
The danger of Russian self-delusion is not over. The embassy’s report expresses the hope that now that the Mueller report has concluded that the much heralded collusion has no basis in fact, relations between Washington and Russia can be normalized and cooperation achieved.
There is no such possibility. The Democrats are screaming “coverup” and demanding the resignation of attorney general Barr and Trump’s impeachment. The presstitutes are claiming that the Mueller report vindicates their reporting. Trump continues to use US foreign policy to commit criminal acts. He has declared that the president of Venezuela is the person he picked, not the one Venezuelans elected. He has given to Israel part of Syria as if Syrian territory is his to give. He threatens Iran with war as Israel requires. In other words, American arrogance rises to ever higher heights.
At some point the Russian government and Russian people are going to have to accept the fact that to reach an understanding with Washington Russia must either surrender her sovereignty or become as belligerent as Washington and replace Russia’s useless refutations of Washington’s accusations with accusations of her own. Otherwise, Washington is going to keep pushing until war is the only possible outcome.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Western imperialism was built off of the exploitation of African land and labor from the mid-to-late 15th century through the conclusion of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the consolidation of classical colonialism at the end of the 1800s.
Leading African historical scholars have documented the link between the tremendous profits accrued through the plantation system in the Caribbean, South America, Central America and North America and the rise of industrial capitalism. (See this)
The capitalist modes of production as exemplified in shipping, commerce, banking, commodities production and services all grew into formidable sectors during the period of the 18th and 19th centuries. By the dawn of the 20th century and the eventual advent of the First World War, heavy industry had become the engine for the competition between various imperialist states seeking domination of global markets.
Of course the resistance of African workers, including agricultural, domestic and extractive-manufacturing, developed rapidly as an inevitable response to the horrendous conditions under which people labored. Peasant societies were often turned into a rural proletariat when the character of their labor production was exclusively designed to enrich the colonial powers.
As African farmers were driven from their traditional lands to work in the mines, large-scale agricultural production businesses, docks, mining facilities and factories, the conditions were conducive to the creation of labor organizations. In the Union of South Africa, formed in 1910 as result of the compromise over the conflict between the Boer and British settler populations aimed at the consolidation of white-minority rule, African miners began to demand better pay and working conditions through work stoppages at Dutoitspan, Voorspoed and Village Deep mines in January 1911. Nonetheless, they were forced back into the mines by the repressive tactics of the bosses supported by their European worker counterparts. (See this)
When the white miners went out on strike in 1913, they were committed to raising the standard of living for the European workers only, leaving African workers isolated for the purpose of super-exploitation. After WWI, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) was formed under the leadership of Clements Kadalie of Nyasaland (Malawi).
South African Industrial and Commerical Workers Union during the 1920s.
During the period of 1920-22 there were strikes and violent unrest in the mines where both African and white workers put forward their demands. The mine bosses sought to divide African and European miners by laying off whites to hire Blacks at inferior wages.
By 1922, white workers were in revolt in the Rand and managed to seize control of several towns while waging a reign of terror against African workers, murdering numerous people. The capitalist-colonialist regime would put down the white miners’ rebellion through aerial strikes against their meeting places and the killing of hundreds of European workers. The disturbances prompted the passage of the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924 designed to win labor peace between the mine owners and European workers.
Eventually the racist government sought to deport ICU leader Kadalie from South Africa. A South African historical website says of the developments in 1926 that:
“Clements Kadalie, originally from Nyasaland, was targeted utilizing the South Africa’s pass laws, and was convicted for entering Natal without a permit. In a May Day address, Kadalie urges workers to overthrow capitalism and establish a workers’ commonwealth. However, by December, under the influence of a liberal coterie including Margaret Ballinger, the ICU adopted a motion at the national council meeting prohibiting members of the ICU from belonging to the Communist Party. Despite revolts at branches in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, the decision was endorsed at the seventh annual congress in April 1927. The Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926 firmly establishes the principle of the color bar in certain mining jobs. The South African Trade Union Congress (TUC) was formed. December saw an ultimatum being issued to the communists within the ICU to choose between the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and the ICU. Those who choose not to resign were expelled.” (See this)
Workers Fight Back in Africa Alongside the Independence Movement
These labor actions by African workers were not limited to South Africa. In West Africa there were strikes and rebellions in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast (Ghana). In Sierra Leone, still a British colony established after the conclusion of American war of separation, railway workers struck in January 1926 demanding higher wages. The work stoppage lasted for several weeks until broken by the colonial authorities.
Nigeria experienced the “Women’s War” of 1929-1930 when the threat of taxation and the restructuring of traditional life sparked a rebellion which lasted for several months in the eastern region of the country. Women torched colonial buildings and attacked British interests as well as warrant chiefs who had been collaborating with imperialism. The events represented the advent of a nationalist movement which transcended ethnic lines. (See this)
African Women’s War participants in Nigeria during 1929-1930.
Gold Coast public workers walked off the job in 1919 and 1921. Other strikes took place in the gold mines during 1924 and 1930. All through the decades of the 1930s there were industrial actions in the railway, mining and public works sectors. The most well-known strike took place among railway workers in 1939. During World War II, in 1942, there were ten major strikes in the British colony. (See this)
These developments were integral to emboldening of the struggle for national liberation after the conclusion of the second imperialist war. Two conferences held in Britain during 1945 were critical in raising the profile of African workers in the movement towards independence, Pan-Africanism and socialism.
The World Confederation of Trade Union (WFTU) was founded at a conference in England in 1945 and enjoyed the participation of African workers. In a forward to “The Voice of Colored Labor” by George Padmore, he noted:
“The wide and representative character of the Colonial delegation to the World Trade Union Conference in February was significant and encouraging. It was significant for the fact that for the first time in the history of international labor, colored Colonial workers – the most oppressed and exploited section of the world proletariat – were given the opportunity of voicing their grievances and of expressing their hopes and aspirations through their trusted leaders. It was encouraging because in discussing the question of a new international trade union organization, the white working class trade union movements of Europe and America, which have hitherto ignored the colored workers, are apparently beginning to recognize that ‘Labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself while Labor in the black skin is enslaved.’ This awareness was manifested in drawing the long-neglected and forgotten millions of Colonial workers into the world fraternity of labor.” (See this)
Padmore went on to emphasize the meteoric growth in organized labor activity in Africa and other regions of the colonial world during the WWII:
“Colonial delegates came from Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Gambia in West Africa; from Jamaica in the West Indies; British Guiana in South America; from Palestine, Cyprus, and elsewhere. It is noteworthy that the Northern Rhodesian Mineworkers’ Union was represented by a white man, for the Color Bar in that colony excludes African miners from entering the union…. The Nigerian Trade Union Congress, which came into being only three years ago, now boasts a membership of 500,000 and 56 affiliated unions, covering transport, mining, dock-labor, seamen, public works, government employees, etc.”
The Fifth Pan-African Congress was convened later in October 1945 in Manchester. This gathering was pioneering as a result of its mass character encompassing figures such as Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast, George Padmore of Trinidad, Amy Ashwood Garvey of Trinidad and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois of the United States. What made the summit so significant was the representation from African workers and farmers through their organizational formations.
Pan-African Congress Fifth Congress delegates in Manchester, England in October 1945.
A resolution passed at the Fifth PAC called upon the masses to rise up and fight for national liberation and social justice. Recognizing that independence was the initial phase in the movement for total freedom, the “Declaration to the Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals” says:
“The object of imperialist powers is to exploit. By granting the right to Colonial peoples to govern themselves that object is defeated. Therefore, the struggle for political power by Colonial and subject peoples is the first step towards, and the necessary prerequisite to, complete social, economic and political emancipation. The Fifth Pan-African Congress therefore calls on the workers and farmers of the Colonies to organize effectively. Colonial workers must be in the front of the battle against Imperialism. Your weapons-the Strike and the Boycott-are invincible.” (See this)
Two Independence Roads in the Quest for Continental Trade Union Unity: The All-African Trade Union Federation and the Organization of African Trade Union Unity
The struggle for the acquisition of national independence would swiftly emerge after WWII. From the rebellions and general strikes in the Gold Coast from 1947-1950; the Egyptian Officers Coup of 1952; the ascendancy of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in establishing a transitional government in the soon to be renamed Ghana from 1951-1957; Guinea-Conakry’s independence vote of 1958; the Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws in South Africa between 1952-1956; Sudanese declaration of independence in 1956; Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) war of independence from 1954-1961; etc., Africa was clearly on the move.
Organization of African Trade Union Unity conference held in Asmara, Eritrea.
As a working class specific counterpart to Pan-African gatherings such as the Conference of Independent African States in Accra in April 1958 and the All-African People’s Conference in the December of the same year, by 1961, the All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) was established in Ghana as well. The project was supported by the CPP of Ghana under direction of Nkrumah as a corollary of the aims of creating a United States of Africa under socialism.
After two preparatory meeting in Accra during November of 1959 and one year later in 1960, the first conference of the AATUF was held in Casablanca, Morocco in May 1961. From its inception there was a split between the Ghana Trade Union Congress (TUC) and other allied labor organizations on the one side against those groups which wanted to maintain affiliation with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) based in the United States.
AATUF took a position of non-alignment encouraging the non-affiliation with both the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU) and the ICFTU. Sensing the trends towards non-alignment, the WFTU urged support for the AATUF encouraging its affiliates on the continent to join wholeheartedly the Pan-Africanist formation. Those unions which rejected the concept of non-affiliation outside of Africa were subject to derision as Tom Mboya, the Kenya trade unionist and later government minister in Kenya, who was condemned by the AATUF as an agent of imperialism. The ICFTU had assisted in the establishment of the African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) founded in 1962 as an attempt to counter the influence of the AATUF. (See this)
However, by February 1966, the CPP government under Nkrumah was overthrown in a U.S.-backed military and police coup. The unelected regime made a rapid turn to the West and sought to eliminate all of the former policies initiated over the previous decade-and-a-half by Nkrumah. Losing one of its key supporters politically and financially, the AATUF was plunged into a deepening crisis. (See this)
By 1973, the AATUF had collapsed due to its waning support from various governments and lack of funding. The Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) was formed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the location of its secretariat.
Today OATUU has 73-affiliated labor organizations representing workers in 54 states across the continent and its headquarters is located in Accra, Ghana. Of course Ghana politics is far afield from the socialist and Pan-Africanist orientation of its early years under Nkrumah. The OAU was transformed into the African Union (AU) in 2002 in an attempt to move more urgently towards political unity, social sustainability and economic development.
An entry on its website says of the federation:
“The Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) was founded in April 1973 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Prior to the founding of OATUU there existed three Pan-African Trade Union Organizations, namely: All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF), based in Accra, Ghana; African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC), based in Dakar, Senegal; and, Pan-African Workers Congress (PAWC), based in Banjul, the Gambia. Each of the three organizations represented different trade union tendencies. The founding of OATUU put an end to the existence of the three Pan-African trade union organizations, having voluntarily dissolved themselves in Addis Ababa in April 1973. At the founding of OATUU, although the overwhelming majority of national trade union centers supported its creation, yet there were few national centers that had reservations. It was not until March 1975 at the first meeting of OATUU General Council in Accra, Ghana that all the national trade union centers in Africa eventually agreed to become fully-fledged members of OATUU, thereby ensuring the total unity of African workers.” (See this)
Conclusion: The Role of Workers in African Development and Unification
These events involving the evolution of trade unionism and organized worker activity in Africa mirrors the political trajectory of the continent since the rise of the independence movements during the post-WWII period. Although there have been fluctuations in the economic performance of independent African states over the last two decades, the continent remains largely dependent upon the exigencies of the world capitalist system.
Therefore, the plight of workers in regard to the distribution of real wages and national wealth is often overlooked in evaluations related to notions of growth and development. The individual wealthy of Africa and the rising salaries of the middle and upper income strata do not necessarily correlate with the status of the majority still made up of the working class, farmers and youth.
Africa can only achieve genuine development when the proletariat and farmers are empowered to make the necessary decisions guiding the future of the continent. Within the existing framework of neo-colonialism the people of Africa will remain second-class citizens to the dominant position occupied by the Western industrialized states utilizing their domination of the global markets and militarism.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
A supposed chemical weapons warehouse of Al Qaeda affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) near the city of al-Atarib in western Aleppo exploded on April 20. According to pro-government sources, the warehouse was one of the sites where militants were arming rockets and shells with toxic materials.
Members of the notorious propaganda organization “White Helmets” reportedly recovered the bodies of at least six people killed in the explosion. Three injured persons were evacuated to nearby hospitals.
The version of the events provided by pro-militant media outlets argues that the targeted facility was belonging to a local pharmaceutical company known as “al-Khalil” and stored “baby milk” only. Pro-opposition media added that the explosion was likely caused by an improvised explosive device. Nonetheless, it remains unclear who would need to blow up a baby milk storage facility.
Over the past few months, Russia and Syria have repeatedly warned that members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the White Helmets, with assistance from Western intelligence, are making preparations for staging chemical attacks that would be blamed on the Assad government.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Horas al-Din and several other radical groups have carried out a series of attacks on positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) near the so-called Idlib de-escalation zone. The most successful attacks took place in al-Saraya, northern Lattakia, where 5 SAA troops were killed and in western Aleppo, where over 15 SAA soldiers died.
Additionally, pro-militant sources as well as several Kurdish outlets, linked with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), came with a new round of speculations about supposed clashes between “Russian” and “Iranian” forces in the provinces of Aleppo and Deir Ezzor. The SAA denounced these claims as fake news.
These claims appear to be a part of a well-coordinated military psychological operation that’s aimed to undermine the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance. Similar reports repeatedly appeared over the past few years, but every time they were not supported by any evidence.
The situation remains tense in the desert area between the cities of Palmyra and Deir Ezzor. The ISIS news agency Amaq claimed on April 19 that ISIS members had ambushed an SAA convoy near the al-Bishri mount killing at least 20 soldiers and destroying 4 vehicles.
SDF-linked Kurdish insurgents continued their attacks on Turkish forces in the region of Afrin. On April 19, Kurdish fighters targeted alleged Turkish positions near Maryamayn and Villat al-Qadi with anti-tank guided missiles. Pro-Kurdish sources claim that 6 Turkish soldiers were killed. However, the Turkish military released no statements regarding its casualties. Therefore, most likely the attacked positions belonged to Turkish-backed militants.
Syria’s naval port of Tartus will be given for lease to Russia for 49 years, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told journalists on April 20 after meeting with Syria’s President Bashar Assad. Moscow will use the port for economic and logistical purposes.
Russia already has a naval facility in Tartus, which was set up at the second largest port. This military facility is currently undergoing modernization.
These developments took place amid the growing economic cooperation between Russia’s Republic of Crimea and Syria. According to official estimates, the cargo turnover between Crimea and Syria may reach 150,000t by the end of 2019. During the recent Yalta economic conference in Crimea, Syria and the local authorities reached even more agreements on the economic cooperation.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
After a nearly two-year investigation, culminating in a 448-page report, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election but found insufficient evidence to prove the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. Mueller did not decide, however, if Trump obstructed justice.
The special counsel detailed 10 acts that could constitute obstruction of justice. But based on a memo from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that says a sitting president can’t be indicted, Mueller refrained from concluding whether the evidence was sufficient to charge Trump with obstruction.
Mueller wrote:
If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
Yet, in spite of the fact that Mueller did not say the attorney general should decide whether Trump obstructed justice, William Barrtook it upon himself to exonerate Trump of obstruction, less than 48 hours after he received Mueller’s report on March 23.
When the special counsel’s redacted report was made public on April 18, it became clear that Barr had whitewashed Mueller’s analysis. Indeed, Mueller systematically and methodically laid out the case for obstruction of justice against Trump.
Barr Mischaracterizes the Probable Cause Standard
The standard a grand jury uses to decide whether to issue an indictment is probable cause. Grand jurors must determine whether “a federal crime has probably been committed by the person accused,” according to the Handbook for Federal Grand Jurors. Once an indictment issues, a jury decides whether the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a higher standard than probable case.
During the April 10 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) asked Barr whether Mueller found probable cause that Trump committed obstruction of justice. Although Mueller didn’t conclude whether a crime had been committed, he stated in his report that he could not exonerate the president. That, Reed told Barr, “suggests that there’s a possibility that probable cause existed for a crime.”
Reed noted,
“If there was no evidence of probable cause, then I would presume [Mueller] could’ve said very clearly that there was no crime committed, that he could in fact exonerate the president, as he seems to have done with the allegations of conspiracy between the campaign and Russia.”
After a long pause, Barr responded,
“Probable cause is a very low standard for determining when you start investigating something. A lot of things have probable cause.”
Barr’s characterization of the probable cause standard is incorrect. If a grand jury finds probable cause the defendant committed a crime, it will issue an indictment. Probable cause is not required to open an investigation.
Mueller Finds “Substantial Evidence” That Trump Obstructed Justice
In several places, Mueller found “substantial evidence” of obstruction of justice by Trump. For example, Mueller wrote:
Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s attempts to remove the Special Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the President’s conduct — and, most immediately, to reports that the President was being investigated for potential obstruction of justice.
Substantial evidence is the standard of review appellate courts use to determine whether to uphold the findings of a lower court. If the appeals court finds substantial evidence to support the judgment, it will affirm the conviction.
Mueller cited the three elements necessary to prove obstruction of justice: 1) an obstructive act; 2) a nexus [connection] between the obstructive act and an official proceeding; and 3) a corrupt intent.
An obstructive act can be established even if there is insufficient proof of guilt of the underlying crime. It is not necessary that the defendant impede the proceeding directly, if it was foreseeable to the defendant that a third person would act on the defendant’s instruction to obstruct the proceeding. Acting with a corrupt intent means consciousness of wrongdoing, in order to obtain an improper advantage for himself or another person.
Here is one example where Mueller found substantial evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent:
Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.
Mueller wrote that Trump’s intent can be judged by looking at all the evidence: “Judgments about the nature of the President’s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.”
The offense of obstruction of justice is complete when the defendant corruptly tries to obstruct justice. A prosecutor does not need to prove that justice was actually obstructed.
Mueller’s report is replete with examples of Trump ordering his underlings to obstruct the Russia investigation. He asked for former FBI Director James Comey’s loyalty. He asked Comey not to pursue an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. He asked Comey to say that Trump wasn’t the subject of an FBI investigation. He asked former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. And he asked Sessions to un-recuse himself and announce that the investigation would only pertain to meddling in future elections.
None of those people did what Trump asked. But the obstructive act is in the asking, whether or not those asked actually complied with Trump’s demands.
Trump also edited a statement for Donald Trump Jr., lying about the purpose of a June 2016 meeting between Russians and senior Trump campaign officials.
Mueller concluded,
“Taking into account that information and our analysis of applicable statutory and constitutional principles . . . we determined that there was a sufficient factual and legal basis to further investigate potential obstruction-of-justice issues involving the President.”
In 240 pages, Mueller’s report painstakingly analyzes the evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump.
“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” he wrote. “The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”
Although Mueller doesn’t make specific findings of probable cause that Trump obstructed justice, that’s because the Justice Department’s policy is that sitting presidents are unindictable.
“Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance.” Mueller wrote.
If a prosecutor was inclined to bring criminal charges, there is abundant substantial evidence against Trump, which adds up to probable cause.
Mueller carefully analyzed Trump’s pattern of behavior and made a record for his post-presidency indictment. The special counsel also laid out a virtual road map for Congress to conduct impeachment proceedings. Obstruction of justice was one of the articles of impeachment charged against both former presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
As Mueller wrote,
“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions of Euro pledges by the perversely rich) that the Notre Dame fire did.
However, if disastrous floods had hit 28 out of 31 provinces and affected 10 million people in some European country or in the US, I believe you would have heard about it from Day One.
But now it is Iran. Only the Iranians.
The situation is disastrous but not so much because thousands have died. Rather, because floods of this magnitude are likely to have terrible long-term consequences for agricultural and other production, infrastructure, energy production, transport and daily lives (see pictures below and on the links).
The basic facts about 3 weeks into the disaster are:
28 of 31 provinces affected, the area around Shiraz the most. 78 people have died and 1076 have been injured. 10 million Iranians have been affected and 2 million seem to be in direct need of assistance. More can be studied at the UN OCHA’s Reliefweb.
Please enlighten yourself also by some Iranian media sources and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif’s statements here. And here.
This comes on top of economic sanctions that have already hit virtually every single Iranian very hard when going about their daily lives. The author has seen how this was already bad in 2012-2016 – since then, everything has grown worse.
Yes, the corruption is everywhere in Iran but the US sanctions are extremely tight, the loss of oil export income is severe (to benefit Saudi Arabia and others).
The cruelty of not helping in this situation can only be condemned from a humanitarian, human rights and moral perspective no matter what one may otherwise think about Iranian politics and leadership.
Sanctions make humanitarian aid much more difficult
It is well known that the Trump administration wants others to think about Iran and how it puts pressure and threats to bear on other countries to prevent them from cooperating with Iran and bringing humanitarian aid in violation of these US sanctions.
Reuters reports the statement of the Iranian Red Crescent three weeks into the disaster:
“U.S. sanctions have prevented the Iranian Red Crescent from obtaining any foreign financial aid to assist victims of flooding that has killed at least 70 people and inundated some 1,900 communities, the group said on Sunday.”
As of today, the only Europeans to deliver assistance are Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany and France according to the UN OCHA’s Reliefweb.
The main reason, one may assume, is that the US has imposed sanctions on Iran since 1979 and now applies the toughest sanctions ever on the Iranian people (after having withdrawn from the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, in clear violation of international law, since it was embedded in a UN Security Council resolution).
Iran, you may say, is being punished for having fulfilled all its obligations of the JCPOA and accepting the most severe inspections ever.
The US also applies so-called secondary sanctions – sanctions against other countries which do not adhere to US sanctions but continue to deal with Iran. The US believes, it seems, that it can intimidate and financially punish countries – including NATO and EU – should they not adhere to US laws (and diktats) on their own territory
Such extra-territorial application of US laws should, of course, be unacceptable for any other sovereign states. And it goes without saying that the US would never accept foreign laws to be implemented on its territory. But the US seems to believe that it is so exceptional that others should make exceptional decisions in favour of this exceptionally unlawful US policy.
The Trump administration – also defiant of the UN Court ruling
What few have noticed is that Iran won a case at the UN International Court of Justice in October last year. Read Newsweek’s report here. The ICJ ruled and ordered that the United States remove sanctions that target humanitarian trade, food, medicine and civil aviation.
But instead of abiding by the ICJ’s decision, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announces with what must be termed outrageous arguments that the U.S. couldn’t care less.
Mainstream US-obedient media of course politely refrained from putting such a law-defying US statement on their front pages – omission being much more important than fake as I have pointed out time and again before.
As if this should not be enough, the US announced on April 8, 2019 – i.e. also Pompeo – that the US places Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on its list of terrorist organisations.
Listen very carefully to the justifications and the accusations. One doesn’t have to be psychologist or psychiatrist to get the thought that we are here witnessing a brilliant piece of psycho-political projection – projection of one’s own dark sides on somebody else.
This is also outrageous in the light of the fact that the Corps is a major agent in dealing with the flood disaster on the ground (as it has holds proportionately huge resources in the Iranian budget). Are we likely to soon hear the argument that no aid should go to Iran because it would go (also) to this “terrorist” organisation?
EU and NATO countries should practise civil disobedience in support of the Iranian people
One must wonder how much longer the United States will get away with such step-by-step measures and exceptional arrogance vis-a-vis the international “community” without loud and clear criticism and alternative action by EU and NATO countries.
As I say in the video above, it is high time that EU and NATO countries – and other countries for that matter – practise civil disobedience against US diktat. If only a few countries, companies and banks continue co-operating with Iran, it will be easy for US authorities such as US Treasury to pursue them legally and punish them in various ways.
But not so if some 25-30 countries, all their companies and banks simply ignored US policies and accelerated their civilian co-operation with Iran. It would, beyond the slightest doubt, be a win-win strategy on contrast to US policies which may look like win (US/West) and loose (Iran) but, sooner or later will – drag down these other countries in the decline and fall process of the US. That is – loose/loose
We can all do some little thing for fellow human beings. I voiced my criticism here with the Iranian PressTV:
And I made a small donation to the Iranian Red Crescent on this link, also to try my Swedish bank. It went through.
You can do it too.
Actions and words go best together.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
“The British public know there is something wrong here when the whistleblower is in jail while the perpetrators are on TV” says former MP George Galloway who talks to In Question’s Manila Chan as many in mainstream media stay mum on press freedom in Julian Assange case.
Watch the interview below.
.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The American and Pakistani leaders independently took two very important and uncoordinated moves at almost the exact same time that might coincidentally have the same effect of ruining Iranian-Indian relations.
Iranian-Indian relations might be about to enter their worst-ever period in modern history as a result of two very important and uncoordinated moves undertaken at almost the exact same time by the American and Pakistani leaders. PM Khan just paid his first visit to Iran where he and his hosts announced that they’ll enter into a new era of anti-terrorist cooperation that geopolitical analyst Adam Garrie comprehensively analyzed in his recent piece on this breaking news event. The ball was indeed in Iran’s court to stop India’s anti-Pakistani Baloch terrorism like I wrote the other day, and to Tehran’s credit, its leadership finally understood this and decided to expand its military partnership with the global pivot state of Pakistan. This will greatly complicate India’s HybridWar capabilities in clandestinely using Iranian territory to carry out terrorist attacks against Pakistan by proxy as it obsessively seeks to sabotage CPEC, meaning that PM Khan’s visit will have far-reaching and long-term geostrategic security consequences in the New Cold War.
In parallel with this, Trump decided that the US won’t renew its Iranian oil sanctions waivers and that Washington’s GCC partners of Saudi Arabia and the UAE will help the Islamic Republic’s energy customers replace their imports with Gulf resources instead. India was very vocal last year about its intent to defy the US’ unilateral sanctions against Iran, but as I wrote in my piece at the time about the “Indian Illusion“, all of this was just rhetoric to hide the fact that New Delhi was quietly implementing its new American patron’s will. Trump just put Modi on the spot, however, and it might augur negatively for the Indian leader during the ongoing month-long electoral process if he publicly capitulates to the US’ demands and replaces Iranian resources with Gulf ones like I suspected he’s been planning to do since late last year after his summit in Argentina with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. As such, this American move might also be yet another “bad cop” tactic against Modi to get more strategic concessions out of India.
It therefore wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Trump and PM Khan might have just ruined Iranian-Indian relations for good when considering the combined effect of their latest moves to that relationship. The Pakistani leader exposed India’s Hybrid War terrorist plot during his talks with the Iranian leadership which probably explains why the two neighboring nations decided to take their military cooperation with one another to the next level, while the American leader is forcing India to stop importing Iranian oil under the threat of potentially crippling “secondary sanctions” and to replace its resources with those from the Islamic Republic’s hated GCC foes. Although Iran and India still have shared strategic interests in the Chabahar Corridor and North-South Transport Corridor, the trust that formerly defined their relations is broken and their ties will never be the same. The end result is beneficial to the US and Pakistan for different reasons and might even interestingly be a tangential outcome of their recent diplomatic cooperation in Afghanistan.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
As someone deeply embedded in a life of anti-nuclear resistance, I know the only way to get rid of these weapons is to never stop thinking about them.
***
I want to offer you something different than the barrage of facts and figures around nuclear weapons. But let’s establish the basics. There are nine countries that possess them: France, China, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and — of course — Russia and the United States. Together these nine countries possess a total of 14,575 nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia accounting for 92 percent of them.
Then there’s the outlandish nuclear weapons budgets and U.S. plans to modernize and upgrade current nuclear weapons stockpiles at egregious expense. According to a new government estimate, plans for modernizing and maintaining the nuclear arsenal will cost $494 billion over the next decade — an average of just under $50 billion per year.
All of this is happening with Donald Trump in the White House. With his recklessness and overriding need to win — or appear to win — at all costs, he is more dangerous than his predecessors. And that’s despite the fact that every president of the nuclear age played a part in extending the nuclear nightmare and increasing the threat of global annihilation.
Again, these are just the basics — things you already knew or aren’t terribly surprised to learn. That’s why I want to tell you a different story about nuclear weapons: My own.
It comes through the lens of the nuclear fire and my relationships to the people who serve as a sort of bucket-brigade — offering sense, responsibility and sacrifice in an effort to douse the inferno.
April 1, 1974
I am born. It’s a home birth to a nun and a priest — in the basement of a tall three-story row house full of anti-nuclear activists. On the day of my birth, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock stands at 12 minutes to nuclear midnight, moved back from 10 minutes in 1972 after the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and Soviet Union developed a road map for reducing nuclear arsenals.
A few months after I am born, the scientists move the clock forward again — this time to 9 minutes to nuclear midnight, “In recognition that our hopes for an awakening of sanity were premature and that the danger of nuclear doomsday is measurably greater today than it was in 1972.”
Richard Nixon is president. He’s a nuclear hothead who perfects the “madman” strategy of nuclear diplomacy. He tells a meeting of congressmen, “I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead.”
I am blissfully unaware. A healthy baby — the first of three — born to parents, Elizabeth McAllister and Philip Berrigan, who had set themselves on a course that maybe should have precluded children: a course of robust, muscular, creative, risky anti-nuclear resistance.
Image below: Frida Berrigan next to a poem by her uncle, Danial Berrigan. (WNV / Berrigan family)
My uncle, Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and poet, writes a series of poems to welcome me into the world. One goes like this:
You came from Harrisburg pit You came from Custom’s House blood You came from Catonsville Fire You came from jail You came in spite of Judge Mace’s death’s head Shaking “no” in its socket. You came without regard to writs, torts, barbed wire You came up from the least known Phiz, China and beyond Down from Dante’s crystalline Paradise– a round eyed Round trip freeloader. You came from a nun You came from a priest You came from a vow Yes and No and the Great Tao That creeps. A vine Claiming like two arms The world’s rack for its own dismembering and flowering.
March 28, 1979
Three days before my fifth birthday, the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant suffers a partial meltdown. It is decades before I learn what that term really means, but the terror is real. Three Mile Island is less than 90 miles from our house and radiation is headed our way. My parents take my little brother and I to West Virginia — as far away as they could figure — for the better part of two weeks.
We return to a changed diet: miso in hot water for breakfast every morning. My mother read that healthcare workers in Hiroshima drank the fermented soybean paste in water after the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945. They strengthened their immune systems and cleansed radiation out of their bodies with this ancient traditional Japanese food.
Miso is brown, salty and is disgusting to the 5-year-old palate. But we drink it every morning for years.
My parents start to look more deeply at the connections between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. There are nearly 100 nuclear power reactors across the United States, and they provide roughly one-fifth of the electricity produced in the country. Nuclear power is one of the dirtiest, most dangerous and most expensive sources of energy. Nuclear reactors in the United States and around the globe are plagued by accidents, leaks, extended outages, delayed construction and skyrocketing costs. Nuclear reactors produce highly radioactive waste that continues to threaten the environment and public health for thousands of years and for which no safe disposal exists.
There is a large scale movement to end the production of nuclear weapons and our dependence on nuclear power as well. Our father shouts at us every time we leave a light on: “Okay, now we are supporting Calvert Cliffs — our local nuclear power plant.”
September 9, 1980
I am 6 years old and my brother is 5 when our father and seven others gain access to General Electric’s Nuclear Missile Reentry Division plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
The Plowshares Eight, from left to right: Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Phil Berrigan, Molly Rush, Dan Berrigan, Anne Montgomery, John Schuchardt, Dean Hammer. (WNV / Berrigan family)
A few months earlier the Doomsday Clock had been moved from 9 to 7 minutes to nuclear midnight because the United States and Soviet Union are behaving like “nucleoholics — drunks who continue to insist that the drink being consumed is positively ‘the last one,’ but who can always find a good excuse for ‘just one more round.’”
Our dad and his friends hammer on two nose cones, pour blood and read from this statement:
We commit civil disobedience at General Electric because this genocidal entity is the fifth leading producer of weaponry in the United States. To maintain this position, GE drains $3 million a day from the public treasury, an enormous larceny against the poor. We wish also to challenge the lethal lie spun by GE through its motto, ‘we bring good things to life.’ As manufacturers of the Mark 12A reentry vehicle, GE actually prepares to bring good things to death. Through the Mark 12A, the threat of first strike nuclear war grows more imminent. This GE advances the possible destruction of millions of innocent lives.
This is a new kind of action, in the tradition of the Catonsville Nine (which two of the eight participated in) and the Hebrew prophets who enjoined peacemakers to beat swords into plowshares.
Our dad writes:
We love our children and all children — that is why we are in resistance; that is why we are in jail. We cannot abandon the children; cannot render them to caesar for our immunity and comfort. And that love for them, and for the God who blessed us with them, will enrich their lives. So runs our hope.
Fall 1980 finds us in school for the first time, at sea in a swirl of six-year-old politics that we do not understand. We are objects of fascination and derision to our mostly African-American classmates and regarded with pity by most of our teachers. They have been told what our father has done and — even though they know the details of the action and that he is a good person — they have less context for what he has done than we do.
Our father spends that Christmas in jail. Just before the holiday, we go and visit him and my brother Jerry says: “We want to thank you, Dad. You’ve given us the greatest Christmas gift anyone could.”
“What’s that, Jer?” our Dad asks. There were no presents from the Montgomery County Jail in rural Pennsylvania.
“Your action. You were making peace, just as Jesus was in coming to us at Christmas.”
This becomes an oft-told story in our household, used at various times to celebrate my brother’s thoughtfulness and sincerity or, at other times, to highlight our long downward spiral since that glorious apex of insight and righteousness.
Our dad faces years in jail. In a February 1981 jury trial, he is convicted of burglary, conspiracy and criminal mischief and sentenced to 5-10 years in jail. It isn’t until April 1990 (when I am 16) that the Plowshares 8 wins some overturning of charges on a hard fought (and almost forgotten) appeal.
Somewhere between action, trial and conviction, my sister Kate is conceived. My mom comes home from the doctor’s appointment — after finding out she was pregnant — and slugs a shot of scotch.
Liz McAlister turns 42 just two weeks after my sister is born on Nov. 5, 1981. The Doomsday Clock is at 4 minutes to nuclear midnight, moved in January in response to “the flat unwillingness of either the United States or the Soviet Union to reject publicly, and in all circumstances, the threat of striking the other first. Both sides willfully delude themselves that a nuclear war can remain limited or even be won. In 1980 both sides officially declared nuclear war ‘thinkable.’”
November 20, 1983
Image below: Frida Berrigan with her brother Jerry Berrigan. (WNV / Berrigan family)
I am 9 and my brother is 8. Our sister has just turned 2. As a general rule, we are not permitted to watch television, except for the nightly news. But on this random Sunday before Thanksgiving, we Berrigan children get a special treat. We watch a television movie with our parents. It is called “The Day After.”
More than 35 years later, before consulting Google, the details of the film were vague, but the outline is clear. The film imagines a nuclear attack on the United States and the lives of the people who survive its aftermath.
After the film, we sat with our parents while our mom told us that she was going to do an action soon that would try and keep what the film depicted from happening.
She later wrote about that conversation:
Our children have grown up with these [nuclear] realities as part of the air they breathe. They have seen many people in the community in which we live, including their mom and dad, imprisoned for resistance to nuclear annihilation. But to have mom do something like this and to face her possible absence from their day to day lives for an indefinite amount of time — this was a large step.
They were willing to accept the personal sacrifice of my absence as their part in trying to stop nuclear war from happening, as their part in trying to avoid the suffering that the movie displayed… They committed themselves to assuming more responsibility around the house, especially to be helpful dealing with the questions and fears of their little sister, who was not able to understand it as they were.
It was a moment of extreme closeness for the four of us — a moment of accepting together whatever might come, and we concluded our conversation with prayer and big big hugs.
Thirty-five years later, reconsidering this story as a parent myself, it strikes me as a very calculated move: a mom power play. But there we were.
President Ronald Reagan watched the film a few weeks before it hit TV screens and wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed.” Nearly 100 million people watched “The Day After” on its first broadcast, a record audience for a made-for-TV movie. But very few followed it up with an action like our mom’s.
November 24, 1983
Mom is one of seven who enter the Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York in the early hours of the morning to hammer and pour blood on a B-52 Bomber.
We are in Syracuse with my dad’s brother and his family when it happens. It takes hours for the base security to learn of the breach and arrest them. They are initially charged with sabotage, conspiracy and destruction of government property — and face 25 years in jail. We are, as I said, 9, 8 and 2.
They are eventually tried in a federal court in Syracuse. Their trial is a strange mix of freedom and scrutiny for my brother, sister and me. Our mom and dad are caught up in the trial, and we are left to play and grapple largely unsupervised. But we are also in the media eye. Peoplemagazine calls us “troupers to the extreme” when it covered mom’s sentencing in July 1984.
Our dad tells the reporter, “They don’t cry. They’ve been raised in a resistance community, and they’ve seen their mother and father repeatedly brought to jail for nonviolent civil disobedience.”
Image below: Liz McAllister holding Kate Berrigan outside the Syracuse federal jail. (WNV / Berrigan family)
We did cry. Our mom serves 26 months in Alderson Federal prison in West Virginia. We fall into a rhythm of traveling there once a month for a long weekend. The powers that be conspire to make those weekends fall on every school field trip or fun excursion planned by our teachers. Our dad writes us long “please excuse my children from school” letters reminding our teachers every month that our mom is in jail for her anti-nuclear action. He sees it as an opportunity for education. We bypass this impulse and figure out a way to relate exclusively with the school secretary for early dismissals on these fraught Fridays. We are not the only kids with moms in jail, but we are the only ones whose dad writes polemics about it every month. We endure.
April 3, 1988
It’s Easter Sunday. I am 14, and it is two days after my birthday. My dad is one of four activists who board the battleship Iowa in Norfolk, Virginia as part of a public tour greeting the vessel on its return from service in the Persian Gulf. The four disarmed two armored box launchers for the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, hammering and pouring blood, and unfurled two banners: “Seek the Disarmed Christ” and “Tomahawks Into Plowshares.” It becomes known as the Nuclear Navy Plowshares action.
My dad is sentenced to six months in prison.
March 31, 1991
Another Easter Sunday. The day before I am to turn 17, and this time my father is in Bath, Maine, aboard the U.S.S. Gettysburg, taking part in the Aegis Plowshares action. The state declines to prosecute and charges are dismissed the day before the trial was scheduled to start.
December 7, 1993
While not close to any birthdays or special holidays, it is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. I am 19, in my second year at Hampshire College. The activists wade through marshes and over rough terrain to gain access to the tarmac at Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. There they hammer on an F-15 fighter plane before being surrounded by hundreds of armed soldiers who were engaged in war game exercises at the time. They call themselves the Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plowshares.
The trial the next February was notable to some people because the judge enforced a gag order and refused any mention of the political or moral justification for their actions. It was notable to me because my college boyfriend was able to attend. I was trying to integrate the various pieces of my life and not just slip the letter to the school secretary any more.
Visiting him at the county jail in the midst of the trial, my dad says, “Was that Him in the courtroom?” I nod, nervous and proud at the same time. “Seems a bit of a hippie, doesn’t he?” my dad observes. And that was that.
February 12, 1997
My dad is one of 6 who boards the U.S.S. Sullivans, a nuclear-capable Aegis destroyer at Bath Iron Works in Maine. They hammer and pour blood on different parts of the battleship. As they read their action statement and unfurl a banner, armed military security forcibly push them to the deck and place them under arrest.
Image below: Cover of the Boston Globe Magazine from 1997 featuring (back row, from left to right) Steve Kelly and Mark Colville and (front row, left to right) Steve Baggerly, Phil Berrigan and Susan Crane.
They call themselves the Prince of Peace Plowshares, and they are tried in May and sentenced in October. My dad is sentenced to two years in jail and told not to associate with any other felons except for his wife. He pays this no mind. He is 74 years old at the time.
I had finished college the month before and moved home. In that brief time before his action, we spent our time building a composting toilet to collect our “humanure.” I help him out on less controversial projects around the house, while looking for a job. He doesn’t understand why I want a job.
“I have student loans, Dad.”
He is flabbergasted. His daughter is in debt?
“Yep, I owe $14,000 bucks, Dad.”
I went to the most expensive college in the country (with a great financial aid package) and nobody had any money to put down at the beginning.
I managed to get into college with encouragement from people outside of my nuclear family. Mom and Dad were not much help. It was hard to explain — to a man who went to college on the G.I. Bill after World War II and then graduated school as a Josephite priest — the real cost of a college education.
Awaiting trial after the action, Dad is in a county jail in Maine. Every time I go visit him, I upset the routine of local activists who visit him every week, and I feel awkward as they give me “private” time with my dad, grizzled and rumpled in his orange suit.
I walk with my class at Hampshire College in May 1997 on a frigid day. We go straight from the graduation ceremony up to Maine to see Dad in jail. My brother graduates a few weeks later. Our sister graduates from high school the next year. He misses it all.
I recently poured through my high school and college journals — thick, precious times that show how much time I had to process my experiences before social media or small children. I looked for hard evidence of the bereavement I tend to lay atop my parents’ absences. But it wasn’t there, or it was so between-the-lines that my 44-year-old eyes couldn’t see it.
Nowhere did I write: “I am distraught because my father is missing my graduation.”
Looking back now, forced to confront the patina of angst I’ve spread over all these memories, it occurs to me that we were deeply embedded in this life. It was who we were and what we did. We did not question it. And while we missed our dad (mostly) and our mom (earlier), we included them in everything. We recounted it all in letters and visits. We saved the best parts for them. In some sense, our experiences weren’t entirely real until we shared them with our dad or mom (whoever wasn’t physically there).
December 19, 1999
The group cuts through a fence at the Air National Guard Base in Essex, Maryland and pours blood, hangs a rosary and a banner, and hammers on two A-10 Warthog bombers. All were charged with malicious destruction of property and conspiracy. They call the action “Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium.”
From left to right: Elizabeth Walz, Steve Kelly, Phil Berrigan and Susan Crane. (WNV / Berrigan family)
By this point, I am living in New York City. I have an apartment in Brooklyn and a boyfriend who is not a hippy. In fact, he has gained my dad’s grudging regard. I also have a job at the New School for Social Research, where I work for an arms analyst and public intellectual named William Hartung. At college, my friends and I had joked about becoming public intellectuals like Edward Said or Eqbal Ahmed, and now here I am earning money to pay attention to the military industrial complex. I feel incredibly lucky and very uncomfortable with my good fortune.
I know all about depleted uranium — the radioactive byproduct that is used as a covering on munitions to give them armor-busting capabilities. Some of my favorite times with my dad are trading bad news story for bad news story. He is reading (and enjoying) the many articles I am writing and publishing. He occasionally enjoins me to not have such a secular voice and to end my articles for In These Times or The Progressive with a Jesus quote. I demure.
I knew this action was coming, and I asked him to sit this one out. I did not offer to take his place.
He wrote in a statement before the action:
I am 76 years old, a married Catholic priest, with 35 years of resistance to the empire’s wars, nine years of imprisonment, numberless arrests, surveillance and ‘dirty tricks’ from the FBI… Enter my friends, sometimes brusquely: ‘Hey Dads!! Give it up to the young pups. It’s rocking chair time…’ But, but, but… I cannot forget the dying children of Iraq, and the two million Iraqis dead from our war, sanctions and depleted uranium… I cannot forget my country’s war psychosis — its obsession with better tools for killing, its mammoth war chest, its think tanks and war labs.
My dad is sentenced to 30 months in jail. “They were prepared for the worst,” my mom says outside the courthouse afterward, “and they got it.”
He serves some of his sentence in a youth facility in rural Maryland. My brother, sister and I visit him there often. (There is an outlet mall nearby). He is the only white person in the visiting room — save for some of the corrections officers. The visiting room was designed for discomfort. It has this chest-level barrier between the inmates and the visitors, and you can’t lean on it to be closer to your family member. It is brutally loud. The boys all call him Pops and show him concern and respect. At some point, he was moved to a jail in Ohio that is more age appropriate, where we visit as often as we can.
He is released right before Christmas 2001. Friends welcome him back to “minimum security.” He dies less than a year later, on Dec. 6, 2002.
The Bulletin of the Atomics Scientists’ Doomsday Clock stood at 7 minutes to nuclear midnight, the same time as when it was created in 1947. In the wake of September 11, 2001, the scientists wrote: “Moving the clock’s hands at this time reflects our growing concern that the international community has hit the ‘snooze’ button rather than respond to the alarm… More than 31,000 nuclear weapons are still maintained by the eight known nuclear powers, a decrease of only 3,000 since 1998. Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in the United States and Russia, and more than 16,000 are operationally deployed.”
Over most of the next decade and a half, our mom continues to live in the community she formed with my dad and others and continues to bear witness at the Pentagon, the White House and other sites of power. She keeps animals — goats, llamas, donkeys, even sheep for a while, and starts painting again. She is arrested repeatedly, but not for any big actions. I leave New York City for a small town in eastern Connecticut, get married and have three kids.
My brother and sister settle down too. My brother has three kids, lives in a Catholic Worker community in Michigan that he founded with his wife and another couple. My sister studies to be a physical therapist, becomes a doctor, falls in love with a doctor of English and lives in Grand Rapids. We are all arrested occasionally, but not for any big action. We march, we organize, we speak. We try.
As our mother approaches and passes 70, we — like many people our age — start encouraging her to take it easy, give up the rigors of community life and resistance, the constant hosting and demonstrating. We envision and invite her to live a life with her grandchildren, stories, bedtimes, sporting events and art projects. We have room, we all say.
She goes in the exact opposite direction. With others taking the reins at Jonah House, she feels free for the first time since our father’s death to be a Plowshares activist again, to conspire with her friends and to plan for a rigorous and daring action.
We don’t know the specifics, but as all her answers about the future muddle into a very specific kind of vagueness, we know exactly what is going on.
“Please don’t,” we say.
“You are too old,” we say.
“Think of your grandkids,” we say.
“I will. I’m not. I am. This is what I have to give.”
April 4, 2018
It was just three days after my 44th birthday, which was also Easter — again. We received word of a new plowshares action. Seven Catholic activists entered Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia. They went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who devoted his life to addressing what he called the “triple evils of militarism, racism and materialism.” Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction. They hoped to call attention to the ways in which nuclear weapons kill every day, just by their mere existence and maintenance. They are charged with three federal felonies and one misdemeanor for their actions. They could face 25 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
And there they still are. Three — my mom, Father Steve Kelly and Mark Colville — remain in county jail almost a year later. They still do not have a trial date. The other four are out on bond, wearing ankle monitors and are required to check in with their minders at regular intervals.
The Kings Bay Naval Station is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Each carries 20 Trident II D 5 MIRV thermonuclear weapons. Each of these individual Trident thermonuclear weapons contains four or more individual nuclear weapons ranging in destructive power from a 100 kilotons to 475 kilotons. To understand the massive destructive power of these weapons remember that the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a 15 kiloton bomb.
My mother feels very useful in jail — generous, empathetic and calm in a place that encourages none of those qualities.
The wheels of justice grind very slowly in Georgia particularly because the activists are mounting a creative legal defense. They seek to portray their actions as protected under the freedom of religion, using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allowed the homophobic cake makers to not make a cake for a gay couple. They are seeking to demonstrate their “deeply held religious beliefs” and how the practice of their religion has been burdened by the government’s response to their actions. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires the government to take claims of sincere religious exercise seriously.
Just a few months before they acted, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsmoved the clock again — this time to 2 minutes to nuclear midnight, saying, “This is a dangerous time, but the danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually eliminating them.”
The clock has never been closer to nuclear midnight in my lifetime. All the work, all this sacrifice, and the clock keeps moving closer to midnight.
My mom’s action and extended incarceration pre-trial come as nuclear conflagration seems more likely. Nuclear weapons do not even rate in the list of top 10 fears that Americans are questioned about every year.
Putin and Trump have shredded the imperfect and imbalanced but nevertheless important fabric of nuclear arms control treaties. Putin claims that Russia is developing a new class of “invincible” nuclear weapons, including a cruise missile that can reach anywhere in the world.
The Pentagon signaled recently that the United States would begin tests on a couple of types of missiles. And just to make things truly terrifying, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says that in response to U.S. and Russian actions, China is improving its own nuclear arsenal.
Searching for signs of hope to counter as a bulwark against these mounting fears, I hold close the work of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN. It developed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and is now building a global civil society coalition to promote adherence to and full implementation of the nuclear weapons ban. ICAN received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” I draw hope from that movement.
Nuclear weapons ruined my life.
I am never not thinking about them. Nuclear weapons are present in my most mundane tasks. Nuclear weapons are present in all my major relationships. Every goodbye and hello is freighted with uncertainty.
They have shaped how I think about time. Nuclear weapons have caused me to honor and treasure the present. They have made the future provisional, muted, not taken for granted. I try to be present to the present and hold the future loosely, but with hope.
Nuclear weapons ruined my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I hope they are ruining your life too. Because that is the only way we are going to get rid of them.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
One good comes from Assange’s arrest, as many have noted: Wikileaks revelations are in the news. We hear the sneering at “dead bastards”. We hear the disdain.
There are truths which, if understood intellectually, are not understood fully. Imperialism is one. We know it intellectually without knowing it. In the Wikileaks video (2010), we feel it.
Death is another such truth. Everyone knows everyone will die but no one believes they will. If they did, they’d live differently.
It happens to Pierre in War and Peace. He is lined up to be shot and is spared. The young man before him dies. Pierre wanted meaning but now “this sought-for purpose of life … did not and could not exist.” Its absence gave him “awareness of freedom which … constituted happiness”.
He’s Napoleon’s prisoner, a rich intellectual, walking with bloodied broken feet. The freedom Tolstoy refers to is known in many traditions. It’s about thinking. You don’t think clearly, about the world, driven by self-importance.
Or disdain. It’s why José Martí, in his famous “Our America” (1892), warned Latin Americans not to respond to US disdain with “futile hatreds”. He knew that disdain. So did others: independistas. They wrote about it. It wasn’t merely intellectual.
“The disdain of the formidable neighbour”, Martí wrote, is “our America’s greatest danger”.
But the response is for “our America to show herself as she is”. He urged Cubans toward “a discreet and unswerving pride, for its dignity as a republic”.
Dignity is valuing oneself as human. It is another idea – like death – that needs experiential, not just intellectual understanding. Some truths must be felt. The reason is: What is felt transforms, and when that happens, we see differently. Perspective changes. We see what we didn’t see before.
North American feminists know this. Audre Lorde describes “how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing”.[i] Through the body, we can go “beyond the encouraged mediocrity” limiting imagination.
It just won’t do, Lorde insists, for feminism to offer “a shift of characters in the same weary drama”.
Lorde convinced me, in the 80s, of feminism’s radicality. Poets Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde aimed for re-envisioning what it means to be human, not just what it means to be a woman.
That vision is elusive. A new book by radical feminist, Eve Ensler, shows “how to be free”.[ii] It is an account of abuse: shocking and moving. About healing, though, it is a “shift of characters in the same weary drama”.
It is a letter from Ensler’s father, dead 31 years. In imagination, Ensler gives him “the will and the words to cross the boundary … so that I can finally be free”. It is a “most thorough accounting” of abuse.
The abuser tells his victim her “trust, her force of light, her goodness, her beauty, were too much for me and so I violated, invaded, smashed and disfigured”. It is true that confessing, as Raskolnikov does in Crime and Punishment, is ultimately freeing. But Raskolnikov confesses hisown deeds.
Stories about abuse must be told. However, there is also a story about freedom that involves control. We control adversity like Ahab tried to control the whale: The individual stands tall, against the wind. Brecht found that image everywhere in European theatre. It’s seductive. But it’s not the only way.
Martí knew this story of individual freedom. He warned Latin Americans not to be “slaves of Liberty!”. He didn’t reject it for moral reasons. He rejected it because it’s not a way to know the world. He likened it to an oyster in its shell, mistaking the shell for the world. You build a story about yourself for an entire lifetime and when the story coheres, and fits your expectations, it’s called healing.
It doesn’t work for “dead bastards” sneered at from sophisticated helicopters. The abusers’ “most thorough accounting” can’t be imagined by the disdained because the abusers have no words for the disdained. They’re non-persons.
But that’s not the point. It is, instead, that such a view of individual freedom promotes ignorance. Ironically, from the realm of death, Ensler’s father has “nothing but the reflection of what lives inside me. What is hell? Hell is oneself”. So said countless philosophers, who cared about freedom, including Sartre, whose existentialism convinced many they only need to choose – whatever – to be free.
It doesn’t work, not even for the powerful.
“Everything is outside, everything, including ourselves: outside, in the world, together with others. It is not in I don’t know what kind of retreat that we discover ourselves”.[iii]
And it is not by looking inside finding words we want to hear, giving them to others.
It feels good. Philosopher, Charles Taylor, describes human flourishing as fullness: Life feels “fuller, richer, deeper … more what it should be’’. But Victor Hugo described the same feeling as “darkly radiant”. Hugo cared about freedom. He knew we feel “fuller, richer” etc. by ignoring truths: about ourselves and the society that makes us.
“Whoever doesn’t weep doesn’t see”, wrote Hugo. He and Martí shared a commitment: truth. So, when the father apologizes: “Let me risk fragility. Let me be rendered vulnerable. Let me be lost. Let me be still”, he might speak for all. Martí urged Latin Americans in such a direction: Truth about the human condition and what that means for how we know others.
It is not by imagining words we want them to say. We want truth, not dreams, said Martí. For freedom: of Tolstoy’s sort. And Adrienne Rich urged activists to “imagine and claim wider horizons . . . rather than rehearse the land-locked details of personal quandaries or the price for which the house next door just sold”.
Maybe North American feminism can get back to that. Maybe Assange will help.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014). She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[i] “Uses of the erotic”, Sister Outsider (Crossing Press, 1984).
[ii] The Apology (Bloomsbury, 2019). Review (May 9) https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/
[iii] Cited in Mészáros, István, The work of Sartre(Monthly Review Press, 2012) 98
Sunday exit polls showed political outsider/entertainer-comedian Vladimir Zelensky scored an overwhelming triumph over US-installed billionaire puppet Petro Poroshenko by a 73 – 24% margin. More on this below.
According to a March Gallup poll, only 9% of Ukrainians trust their ruling authorities, Poroshenko with single-digit support.
He’s widely reviled for heading an illegitimate/US-installed putschist regime, exploiting and persecuting ordinary Ukrainians, not serving them.
He sold out to the West, governed by brute force, wrecked Ukraine’s economy, waged war on Donbass citizens, committed horrendous civil and human rights abuses, causing millions to flee cross-border to Russia and elsewhere, and is accused of rampant corruption.
Ordinary Ukrainians suffer hugely from high unemployment, elimination of social programs, inadequate healthcare services, hardline fascist rule, and depravation harming countless millions.
Skilled workers and others fled to Russia and elsewhere abroad to escape intolerable conditions, including political repression, neoliberal harshness, a falling currency, high unemployment and inflation.
Ukraine under Poroshenko and majority parliamentarians supporting his regime is an economic, social, and political basket case – exacerbated by severe repression.
Human and civil rights abuses include arbitrary arrests, disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, violence against journalists, human rights activists, Russian nationals and ethnic minorities, as well as intolerance of Ukrainians against despotic rule.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry earlier accused Kiev of “political chaos, corruption, lawlessness (and) aggressive nationalism, (along with state-sponsored) violence and crimes committed for political and ideological motives,” adding:
Ruling authorities “declared an open season on everyone whose views deviate from the official ones.”
Under Ukrainian law, the nation’s Central Election Commission must publish official Sunday results within 10 days – by May 1 or earlier – Zelensky to be sworn into office by May 31.
He played a fictional Ukrainian president in a Servant of the People television sitcom, fighting corruption as a teacher-turned head of state. Now he’s the real thing once sworn into office.
“I’m not yet officially the president, but as a citizen of Ukraine, I can say to all countries in the post-Soviet Union – look at us. Anything is possible,” he declared.
His campaign eschewed public rallies, relying heavily on social media to reach millions of followers with his message.
When earlier asked how he differed from other candidates, he said:
“This,” pointing to his face. “This is a new face. I have never been in politics.”
“I have not deceived people. They identify with me because I am open. I get hurt. I get angry. I get upset.”
“I do not hide my emotions on camera. I do not try to look different. If I’m inexperienced in something, I’m inexperienced. If I don’t know something, I honestly admit it.”
How he’ll govern remains to be seen, given parliament controlled by pro-Western hardliners, new elections not until October 27, and certain heavy US pressure for pro-West/anti-Russia continuity.
On Sunday, he promised to “launch a very powerful information war to end the war in Donbass,” saying he’ll “act within the Normandy format” to resolve things diplomatically, involving Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine.
“(W)e will continue the Minsk process (for peace in Donbass). We will restart it,” he added.
“We have very serious acting generals who have authority in the army. You will definitely see them. I have no right to give the names of these people now as there is an agreement with the generals.”
It’s unclear what he meant. His agenda largely unknown, he promised to name members of his government “in the near future.”
Poroshenko conceded defeat, saying
“(n)ext month, I will leave the office…This is the decision of the majority of Ukrainian people.”
“…I want to highlight that I am not leaving politics. My team and I are ready to support the president in everything that gets us close to the European Union and NATO.”
Zelensky will surely be pressured to continue dirty business as usual, including governance serving Ukrainian oligarchs and Western interests, continuing war in Donbass, and hostility toward Russia.
How he’ll respond remains unknown. As long as hardliners control parliament, pressure for continuity will prevent positive change.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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.”
Multiple suicide bombers reportedly were behind deadly attacks on four hotels, three Christian churches packed Easter Sunday worshipers, and an apartment complex.
Targeted sites were in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, Negombo on the west coast, and Batticaloa in the country’s east, a major commercial city.
According to authorities, the death toll is at least 293, including 35 foreign nationals and three police officers, over 500 others injured.
Sunday incidents were the deadliest in Sri Lanka since the 2009 Mulivaikal massacre, killing 40,000 Tamils during the final days of civil war begun in 1983, and devastating December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsumani.
It was one of the most disastrous in recorded history, affecting 14 East Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, killing an estimated 228,000, causing vast destruction.
It left around 2.5 million regional residents homeless, including coastal Sri Lankans, villages washed away to “build back better” with upscale development for privileged interests and tourism.
With everything gone, Sri Lanka had a blank slate to develop pristine coastal areas, scrubbed clean from ordinary people, shoved into grim inland camps, prevented from returning home.
Sri Lanka’s coast was transformed into an upscale tourist destination with luxury resort hotels and chalets at the expense of their former residents.
What ruling authorities hesitated doing earlier, mother nature did for them, followed by privatization of water, along with other public utilities and enterprises.
Around 70% of Sri Lankans are Buddhists, 12% Hindus, 10% Muslims, and 7% Christians, mostly Roman Catholics.
No claim of responsibility for the Sunday attacks was made so far. Until 2009, decades of war was waged between ruling authorities and Tamil Tigers, a period during which bomb blasts and other violence happened often.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe held an emergency Sunday meeting with top Sri Lankan military and National Security Council officials.
A separate emergency session with parliament leaders convened on Monday. Around two dozen arrests were made, “local(s),” according to Wickremesinghe, investigators looking into whether detained individuals have “overseas links,” he said.
Defense minister Ruwan Wijewardene claimed all perpetrators were identified. They’ll be caught and prosecuted, he added.
A curfew was imposed until further notice. Social media and messaging apps were blocked on the pretext of preventing misinformation.
Secretary to the president Udaya R Seneviratne called it “a temporary measure” – a repressive action at a time Sri Lankans need freedom to communicate with relatives, friends, and others.
Security in Colombo and other cities was tightened, various holiday related events cancelled.
Local Christian groups complained of intimidation. Last year, clashes occurred between majority Sinhalese Buddhists and minority Muslims.
Sri Lankan Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, archbishop of Colombo, asked ruling authorities “to hold a very impartial strong inquiry and find out who is responsible behind this act and also to punish them mercilessly, because only animals can behave like that.”
According to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka, there were scores of discriminatory, threatening, and violent incidents against minority Christians last year.
Easter Sunday attacks were clearly well planned and coordinated. Sri Lankan police and intelligence officials reportedly alerted ruling authorities about possible suicide incidents 10 days before the attacks.
The little known Islamist National Thowheed Jamath group was blamed for Sunday’s violence, no evidence cited proving it.
A Sri Lankan official reportedly said “the group…had not carried out any serious attacks before,” according to the NYT – raising an obvious red flag.
Was the group behind the Easter Sunday attacks, or are its members innocent patsies, falsely blamed for something they had nothing to do with?
This is a developing story, more on it when more information is known.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is “to conceal the criminal conduct of US government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign,” by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
The third is to obstruct Trump’s campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the election.
Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of its purposes.
Trump has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a blatant criminal attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan government.
Hillary’s criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic) Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI obtaining spy warrents for partisan political purposes on false pretexts from the FISA court, were swept out of sight by the Russiagate hoax.
The Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any evidence supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump of obstruction and passed the buck to the Attorney General. In other words, Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept the controversy going by setting up Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.
It is evidence of Mueller’s corruption that he does not explain just how it is possible for Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Muller states in his report that the crime he was empowered to investigate could not be found. How does one obstruct the investigation of a crime that did not occur?
As Kunstler puts it,
“The Special Prosecutor’s main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor’s failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller’s duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report — and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct” on Mueller’s part.
But this is not the only dishonesty in Muller’s report. Although Mueller’s report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller’s report takes for granted that Russia interferred in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference.
Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Morever, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes.
One reason for ignoring this undisputed fact is that they all want to get Julian Assange, and the public case concocted against Assange is that Assange is in cahoots with the Russians who allegedly gave him the hacked emails. As there is no evidence that Russia hacked the emails and as Assange has said Russia is not the source, what is Mueller’s evidence? Apparently, Mueller’s evidence is his own political indictment of Russian individuals who Mueller alleged hacked the DNC computers. This false indictment for which there is no evidence was designed by Mueller to poison the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin and announced on the eve of the meeting.
Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real.
The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump’s supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump.
The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump’s supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia.
Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers.
The Democratic Party and the presstitutes cannot be bothered by facts. They are committed to getting Trump regardless of the facts. And so is Mueller, and Brennan, and Comey, and a slew of other corrupt public officials.
A good example of journalistic misconduct is James Risen writing in Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept of all places, “WILLIAM BARR MISLED EVERYONE ABOUT THE MUELLER REPORT. NOW DEMOCRATS ARE CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION.” Quoting the same posse of “hang Trump high” Democrats, Risen, without questioning their disproven lies, lets the Democrats build a case that Mueller’s report proves Trump’s guilt. Then Risen himself misrepresents the report in support of the Democrats. He says there is a huge difference between Barr’s memo on the report and the report itself as if Barr would misrepresent a report that he is about to release.
Length is the only difference between the memo and the report. This doesn’t stop Risen from writing:
“In fact, the Mueller report makes it clear that a key reason Mueller did not seek to prosecute Trump for obstruction was a longstanding Justice Department legal opinion saying that the Justice Department can’t indict a sitting president.”
This is something Mueller threw in after saying he didn’t have the evidence to indict Trump. It is yet another reason for not indicting, not the reason. Risen then backs up his misreport with that of a partisan Democrat, Renato Mariotti who claims that Mueller could have indicted Trump except it is against US Justice Department policy. Again, there is no explanation from Risen, Mariotti, or anyone else how Mueller could have indicted Trump for obstructing what Mueller concludes was a crime that did not happen.
Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition.
That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else.
Risen also alleges that the unproven Russian hacks were passed over by Barr in his memo on the report. Not only is this incorrect, but also Risen apparently has forgot that the investigation was about Trump’s collusion with Russia to do something illegal and the investigation found that no such thing occurred. Risen, like the rest of the presstitutes and even Greenwald himself, takes for granted that the unproven Russian hacks happened. Again we see that the longer a lie is repeated the more it becomes true. Not even Greenwald can detect that he has been bambozzled.
At one time James Risen was an honest reporter. He won a Pulitzer prize, and he was threatened with prison by the Department of Justice when he refused to reveal his source for his reporting on illegal actions of the CIA. But Risen discovered that in the new world of journalism, telling the truth is punished while lying is rewarded. Risen, like all the others, decided that his income was more important than the truth.
Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington’s attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
At precisely 1:00 Eastern time on the afternoon of April 11th, 31,000 workers at 253 Stop and Shop grocery stores throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts walked off their jobs. The strike came after several months of failed negotiations in which Stop and Shop refused to retract an onerous set of demands for the elimination of premium pay for Sunday work, major cuts to pensions and dramatic increases in the amount workers would have to pay for healthcare.
The strikers are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Truck drivers, both union and non-union, have honored the picket lines by refusing to make their deliveries, according to strikers at four picket lines in Bridgeport and Fairfield, Connecticut. The workers at those stores also report that no union members have crossed the picket line. Most stores are open as supervisors and a small number of replacement workers have been stocking shelves and working cash registers but business has taken a big hit.
Solid Public Support
Public support has been high and sympathetic supervisors have told strikers that the take for one 16-hour day at a store in Fairfield was a meager $2,000, a fraction of a normal day’s business. Some stores have cut their hours because business has been so bad. Officials and members of other unions have joined with strikers for rallies at stores in a number of locations, including Bridgeport and Fairfield. Virtually every elected official in the Bridgeport area as well as both U.S. Senators are Democrats and many have visited a picket line and/or expressed their support for the strike, as have several Republicans from other parts of the state. An announcement was made at a picket line yesterday that community sympathizers and merchants have established a food bank where strikers can get free food.
From conversations with dozens of strikers, morale of union members is high eight days in. Worker after worker expressed special gratitude for the overwhelming public support they’ve received. Shoppers who know many of the strikers by name from years of shopping have joined the picket lines and many have brought coffee, doughnuts, pizzas and other food and beverages to the strikers. Media coverage on local television stations and in the Hearst dailies that dominate the newspaper market in Connecticut has been mostly positive.
$2-Billion Profits in 2018
Amidst the strikers’ enthusiasm, however, is an undercurrent of fear and resentment. There has been no strike at Stop and Shop for 30 years, and that one was of very short duration, so the vast majority of the chain’s workers are confronting the unbridled greed of their employers in such an open way for the first time. The Stop and Shop stores are among many owned by the Dutch conglomerate Ahold which reported $2-billion in profits in 2018.
Despite such profits and despite the fact that Stop and Shop is far and away the dominant grocery store chain in New England (and which also owns stores in New York and New Jersey that are covered by a different contract and thus not on strike), Ahold is demanding significant givebacks. The cuts in pensions and health coverage particularly rankle the strikers; the company’s current demands, for example, include a fourfold increase in the amount workers will have to pay in co-payments for doctor’s visits.
Minimum Wage Pay for New Workers
Picketers expressed a mix of astonishment and anger that a massive company that is doing so well would utterly refuse to share any portion of that wealth and instead demand significant givebacks. New hires, all of whom are part-time, start at $10.10 an hour. Stop and Shop has consciously cut the number of full-time positions, and stipulations that the company forced through in previous contracts make accepting a full-time promotion far less attractive than it could be.
“It takes years before you can even think about getting a full-time position,” said Rafael Quiles at the picket line outside one of the stores in Fairfield. “And if you do go full-time, the company has the right to transfer you to any store in the state that it wants to.” He and others said the company does precisely that in order to discourage others from seeking full-time.
“Many people who take full-time jobs go back to part-time a short while later because they don’t want to be moved to a store far away,” added Gin Palladino, a ten-year veteran who lives just a few blocks from the store where she works. “I’d rather work part-time here and get another part-time job close to home than have to travel a long distance to work full-time.”
Kizzy Lewis is a full-timer who has worked in 12 stores in her 25 years at Stop and Shop. “They had me working as far away as Stamford and at other stores all over Fairfield County,” she said. “After all these years, I hope this is my last one.” Lewis also ridiculed the gas allotment the company pays for those it transfers, pointing out that the worker is responsible for the first 15 miles both to and from work.
Workers Struggling Amidst Fabulous Wealth
For many workers, hourly wages that are equal to or just a little above the federal minimum do not go far. Consider that Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest and most expensive areas in the country where the contrast between the Super Rich who live in places like New Canaan and Greenwich and workers at Stop and Shop couldn’t be starker. A number of strikers live in Bridgeport, the least expensive housing market in the area, but even rents in Bridgeport can be as high as $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. For people making $10.10 per hour, that is out of reach. People spoke of co-workers well into their 20s who live with their parents or other family members because they cannot afford to live on their own.
As with so many workers in the United States today, some of the strikers have more than one job. One man on the picket line said he averages 65 hours a week between his two jobs and is still barely making ends meet. A woman striker said she’s negotiating with her boss at her other job about getting more hours if the strike lasts.
It’s important that the Stop and Shop strikers win, just as it was important that the tens of thousands of teachers around the country won their strikes in the last year. It’s also important, though, that workers, their supporters and allies and union staffers who are so inclined take a long, harsh look at the state of things. The Stop and Shop workers’ strike is essentially defensive; they are resisting the company’s attempts at more takebacks and the union, according to workers, is putting forward few demands of their own. So no noteworthy wage increases or other improvements await them even if they score a complete victory. In the short term at minimum, their lives will continue to get harder.
Winning and Seeds of Greater Possibilities
There are, however, seeds of greater possibilities and future victories in the strength and togetherness the workers are experiencing in their strike. By virtually every account including those by sources generally hostile to unions, workers and strikes, the Stop and Shop strike has been an overwhelming success. The company is losing money in a big way, for one, and the hard line it has drawn has raised the awareness of many strikers: about their relationship to their employers, about the power of collective action, about the power of an entire workforce withdrawing its labour, about how perilous life in the 21st century United States has become for the working class.
Speaking about the experience of the strike thus far, one worker said the following:
“Most of us like our jobs because we have so many regular customers who make it feel like a community and they far outnumber the customers who make our lives difficult. What really makes it hard to like your job is not the customers who give you a bad time but knowing that you’re getting a bad deal from the company. The pay is too low, the benefits aren’t enough, working on weekends is mandatory, all that stuff. And then to see that they want to cut our pensions even further, make us pay more if we go to the doctor, cut Sunday premium pay and give us nothing in return for all that … it’s too much. All these people you see on this picket line and all the other picket lines at all the other Stop and Shop stores, none of them is ever going to forget this.”
Asked if he meant the togetherness of the strikers or the conduct of the company, he said simply, “Both.”
Perhaps one big lesson that can reverberate far and wide beyond Stop and Shop is the power of the strike. After years and years where the number of strikes dwindled to a pitifully small number, accompanied by a barrage of negativity from media and political elites, workers are beginning to see that it is one of the most effective ways to fight back. That’s true of teachers, nurses and other healthcare workers, electrical workers at Wabtec in Erie, grocery store workers throughout southern New England. Equally large challenges will be to bring that fighting spirit and solidarity into the workplace and the union hall as well as for workers from a variety of workplaces both union and non-union to build organizations of mutual support where they can also strategize about how to build a different kind of society.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion.
I have yet to see the MAGA cult turn on its hallowed leader, the leader of the “free world” (sic) who recently vetoed and left tire marks on a measure that would have put an end to US involvement in Saudi Arabia’s organized mass murder campaign on the impoverished nation of Yemen.
Trump explained his veto in a letter sent to the Senate.
“This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,” the Donald (or one of his handlers) wrote.
Of course, the starving people of Yemen don’t pose a threat to America and wouldn’t threaten “brave service members” had Bush (actually his neocons) not descended on Iraq and Afghanistan like a host of rapacious scabies.
Obama continued the agenda—destroy Arab and Muslim nations for the sake of tiny Israel and neoliberal vandals—with his arming of Syrian “rebels” and the attack that turned one of Africa’s most advanced nations into a failed state (the CIA asset Khalifa Haftar is taking care to crush the warring tribes of Libya and set the stage for a handover of its bounty of oil to transnational corporations).
As it turns out, Mr. Hifter is a CIA operative, which likely explains his lengthy stay in Virginia. In 1996, the Washington Post reported that a Col. Haftar (a variation on Hifter) had arrived in the United States and he was “reported to be the leader of a contra-style group based in the U.S. called the Libyan National Army,” the Wisdom Fund noted at the time. “This group is supported by the U.S., and has been given training facilities in the U.S. It’s a good presumption that Col. Haftar’s group operates in Libya with the blessings of our government.”
In short, the blessings of the national security state, of which the CIA is a vital component, and its current frontman, President Donald Trump.
Trump praised the al-Qaeda associated Haftar. He talked with the long-time CIA asset by phone and lauded his effort to usher Libya back into the the neoliberal-corporatist fold.
“In their phone call, Trump ‘recognized Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources, and the two discussed a shared vision for Libya’s transition to a stable, democratic political system,’” Al Jazeera reports.
Trump is little different than his predecessors, never mind rhetoric from a zombified MAGA cult that he is taking on the “deep state” (Democrats) and “draining the swamp,” although we don’t hear much about that these days. MAGA supporters are obsessed with a porous border and the plan to flood America with third world immigrants, no shortage fleeing the violent result of neoliberal machinations in Latin America and the gross poverty it harnesses as part of the effort to turn the world into a giant corporate plantation.
The editors of Breitbart (essentially established in Israel) took a break from bashing their liberal counterparts to provide an excuse for Trump’s decision to veto the measure and end US participation in the wanton murder of civilians in Yemen.
The excuse for starving babies to death and bombing wedding parties? It’s all part of the US-Israeli effort to control access to oil and confront Iran.
Yemen sits on the eastern side of the Bab el-Mandeb strait a key shipping lane for traffic through the Suez Canal. The U.S. Navy has a major base across the strait, in Djibouti—as do many other countries, including China. Allowing an Iranian proxy to command the eastern side of the strait, across from a crucial U.S. Navy asset that helps control piracy and terror, and where China is challenging U.S. dominance, would be foolish to the point of lunacy.
The late Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled it out:
To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.
Breitbart, Infowars, Drudge, and thousands of Trump partisans on social media—those not banned or suspended—are not concerned about neocons and CFR neoliberals pulling Trump’s strings like Edgar Bergen. Most are focused on the border and the endless running street battles of diversionary politics. They are not outraged by the accessory role the US plays in the Saudi religious war on a Shi’a faction in Yemen. MAGA cultists apparently have no problem with Trump flip-flopping on his promised troop withdrawal or his murder of untold thousands in Syria and Iraq during his phony war on the Islamic State, a Pentagon psyop hatched during the US occupation of Iraq.
It’s safe to say the MAGA crowd is right up there with the neocons. They are enthusiastic about murder, theft, starvation, disease, and the destruction of societies.
Boss Trump promised to “bomb the shit” out of civilians and steal oil from Iraq and Syria to pay for the wars of his predecessors. He acted as salesman of the month for the military-industrial-security complex.
The takeaway from the Trump administration is clear—it hardly matters who is in the White House, the agenda remains the same: forever war, rendition and torture (the awaited fate of Julian Assange), neoliberal debt schemes and strip mining of natural resources, and the ability to convince a dumbed-down and politically illiterate public through interminable propaganda that mass murder and “creative destruction” are in their best interest and represent the hallmark of “democracy.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
In 1830, British colonial administrator Lord Metcalfesaid India’s villages were little republics that had nearly everything they could want for within themselves. India’s ability to endure derived from these communities:
“Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down but the village community remains the same. It is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.”
Metcalfe was acutely aware that to subjugate India, this capacity to ‘endure’ had to be broken. Since gaining independence from the British, India’s rulers have only further served to undermine village India’s vibrancy. But now a potential death knell for rural India and its villages is underway.
There is a plan for the future of India and most of its current farmers don’t have a role in it. Successive administrations have been making farming financially unviable with the aim of moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like the number of jobs required.
The aim is to displace the existing labour-intensive system of food and agriculture with one dominated by a few transnational corporate agribusiness concerns which will then control the sector. Agriculture is to be wholly commercialised with large-scale, mechanised (monocrop) enterprises replacing family-run farms that help sustain hundreds of millions of rural livelihoods, while feeding the urban masses.
So why would anyone set out to deliberately run down what is effectively a productive system of agriculture that feeds people, sustains livelihoods and produces sufficient buffer stocks?
Part of the answer comes down to India being the largest recipient of World Bank loans in the history of that institution and acting on its ‘advice’. Part of it results from the neoliberal-driven US-Indo Knowledge Agreement on Agriculture. Either way, it means India’s rulers are facilitating the needs of (Western) capitalism and all it entails: a system based on endless profit growth, crises of overproduction and market saturation and a need to constantly seek out and expand into new, untapped (foreign) markets to maintain profitability.
And as a market for proprietary seeds, chemical inputs and agricultural technology and machinery, India is vast. The potential market for herbicide growth alone for instance is huge: sales could reach USD 800 million this year with scope for even greater expansion. And with restrictions on GMOs in place in Europe and elsewhere, India is again regarded as a massive potential market.
A few years ago, influential ‘global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy’ company APCO Worldwide stated that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn and financial crisis has made governments, policy-makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that the country can play a significant role in the recovery of the global economy in the years ahead.
Decoded, this means corporations moving into regions and nations and displacing indigenous systems of production and consumption. And where agriculture is concerned, this predatory capitalism hides behind emotive, seemingly altruistic rhetoric about ‘helping farmers’ and the need to ‘feed a burgeoning population’ (regardless of the fact this is exactly what India’s farmers have been doing).
None of this is a recipe for national sovereignty, let alone food security. Renowned agronomist MS Swaminathanrecently stated:
“Independent foreign policy is only possible with food security. Therefore, food has more than just eating implications. It protects national sovereignty, national rights and national prestige.”
Despite such warnings, India’s agrarian base is being uprooted. In a recent interview, Director of Food First Eric Holt-Giménez notes that when Cargill, Bayer or Syngenta say they need to expand the use of GMOs or the other latest technologies so they can feed the world, they’re really talking about capturing the market that’s still controlled by peasant agriculture. To get those markets they first must knock out the peasantry.
Looking at the Industrial Revolution in England, historian Michael Perelmanhas detailed the processes that whipped the English peasantry into a workforce ‘willing’ to accept factory wage labour. Peasants were forced to leave their land and go to work for below-subsistence wages in dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of industrial capitalists. Perelman describes the policies through which peasants were forced out of agriculture, not least by the barring of access to common land. A largely self-reliant population was starved of its productive means.
Today, we hear seemingly benign terms like ‘foreign direct investment’, ‘ease of doing business’, making India ‘business friendly’ or ‘enabling the business of agriculture’. But behind the World Bank/corporate-inspired rhetoric lies the hard-nosed approach of modern-day capitalism that is no less brutal for Indian farmers than early industrial capitalism was for English peasants.
GDP growth has been fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers: the gap between farmers’ income and the rest of the population has widened enormously. While underperforming corporations receive massive handouts and have loanswritten off, the lack of a secure income, exposure to international market prices and cheap imports contribute to farmers’ misery.
Farmers must also contend with profiteering seed and chemical companies, corrupt middlemen, high interest loans and debt and the overall impacts of the corporate-inspired US-Indo Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture that flung open the sector to US agribusiness. Up to 400,000 farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and millions more are experiencing economic distress.
As independent cultivators are bankrupted, the aim is that land will eventually be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation. Those who remain in farming will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.
Even the scaling up of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) across Andhra Pradesh is a cause for concern. For instance, the involvement of BNP Paribas Bank (which has funded numerous questionable projects, including in India), the Gates Foundation (with its staunch commitment to GMOs and gene editing technology and its cosy relationship with global agribusiness) and the potential illegal accessing of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge by foreign entities does not bode well.
There are also serious concerns about farmer’ interests being ignored. In effect, ZBNF seems to be focused more on global export chains, the further commodification of agriculture, facilitating consumerism and the involvement of unethical international finance. Even here it seems Western interests are being handed the reins.
If British rule, the impacts of the Green Revolution and neglect and mismanagement of the countryside since independence all served to undermine rural India and its inhabitants, Western agricapital now seems intent on delivering a knock-out blow. The timely reminder as voting in the 2019 Indian General Election gets underway is that certain leading politicians have been all too willing to facilitate the process.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
Although this article was published in the original Spanish version last March, now that Julian Assange is in prison the analysis in this piece on “freedom of expression” is even more valid.
There is a wide-open debate/polemic in Cuba regarding Decree 349 on culture and the drafting of the rules for its future application. The controversy is also stirring on the international scene, especially in North America, Europe and Latin America. There are those who are in favour of the new code. Others are critical, and indeed some of these are very critical, but they are participating in the Ministry of Culture-led consultation to draft the enabling regulations. There are others who are completely against the new legislation and its regulations, even while the consultations with people in the cultural field are still under way.
However, they are trying to influence the situation in Cuba and, as discussed below, this orientation is widely inspired by the U.S. The method employed is the usual disinformation campaign. It hopes to capitalize on preconceived notions such as the catch-all American “freedom of expression” mantra as applied to political systems in countries other than the U.S. This is nothing new, but there is a novel twist. It is now applied to artistic endeavours. The campaign targets the sector of the Cuban society dedicated to culture, hoping to win over who those who critically support the new statute in order to create division among individuals involved in culture. Be that as it may, this article deals only with the extremist opponents to the legislation and regulations, both in Cuba and internationally, especially in the United States.
Careful reading of a wide, representative spectrum of opposition articles, social media posts and comments reveals a common point of reference. The U.S. Embassy in Havana tweeted in favour of “artistic freedom” with a very undiplomatic slogan: “No to Decree 349.” The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs recently stated that the “Gov[ernmen]t of Cuba should celebrate, not restrain, the artistic expression of Cuban people.” Among the shades of “left,” “centrist” and openly right-wing hard-core opposition, including some academics, a common thread stands out.
The U.S. Takes the Moral High Road of Freedom of Artistic Expression – for Cuba
Whether in Cuba or the U.S., the fundamentalist opposition takes the moral high road of “freedom of artistic expression” for Cuba. However, they are viewing Cuba with U.S. blinders. They take it as a given that in the U.S., there is freedom of artistic expression (along with other types of expression) in the cultural realm. The logic goes that there are no cultural restrictions in the U.S. like the ones being brought in in Cuba.
Furthermore, according to these talking points, there is no Ministry of Culture in the U.S. that would control and guide cultural expressions in that country. The U.S.-centric outlook insinuates, either openly or covertly, that everyone in the U.S. is free to express their artistic talents. The United States is presented as the cultural model for the world, in the same way that it boasts about other features of its society, such as its economy and political process. Many people around the world, and in the U.S. itself, are all too familiar with the U.S. superiority complex. This built-in psyche finds its origins in the “chosen people” notion emerging from the very birth of the U.S. at the time of the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century.
For someone who comes from the Global North and has direct experience of American mainstream artistic expression, such as music, it is obvious that what sells is what is promoted. If the elites can successfully market banality, sex, and violence, then so be it. Profit is the only criterion. Those very few artists who are willing and able (because of their physical appearance above all) to compete in this market are highly rewarded. They then pay back their sponsors by standing out explicitly or implicitly as the expressions of the American Dream come true. Furthermore, U.S.-style extreme individualism is paraded as a value to be worshipped, to which social and international concerns must be completely sacrificed. In sum, the fairy tale narrative pretends that anyone from the slums of America can make it.
However, this process is presented as being spontaneous, without the state’s involvement. It is supposedly the law of supply and demand as applied to the arts. The rationale of the “invisible hand” of capitalism determines what is appropriate in the artistic realm.
Can culture be considered just another commodity?
In the course of social media interaction during the December 8, 2018 Cuban TV Mesa Redonda program, Fernando Rojas, one of Cuba’s vice-ministers of culture, retweeted and commented on one of my tweets. He mentioned UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressionsand the U.S. position counterposing this agreement to the free market.
(Translation: UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: U.S. equated freedom of expression with the dictates of a “free market in art…”)
(Arnold August @Arnold_August: In capitalist countries such as the U.S. and Canada….)
An investigation ensued, as I was not sufficiently familiar with this controversy. In 2000 in Paris, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It stipulates that culture is not just another a commodity and recognizes the sovereign right of states to promote and protect their tangible and intangible cultural production, using the measures they deem appropriate. The convention allows states to protect their cultural creation. The U.S. opposed it, claiming to promote true cultural diversity by working for individual liberties, so that everyone has “cultural freedom” and can enjoy his own cultural expressions, not those imposed by governments. But the convention was adopted by a vote of 148 to 2. Guess which countries opposed it? The U.S. and Israel.
Should each country have the right to defend its own culture?
Looking at this superficially, it may seem that that the U.S. government does not impose any norms on culture. Indeed, as “freedom of artistic expression” is assured only in the U.S. (and in Israel), according to this tale, once again the U.S. has the “burden” of exercising its role as the chosen people responsible for teaching everyone on the planet about culture, as it does for democracy and human rights. In fact, taking a page out of that literary classic the Bible (let’s give credit where credit is due), the U.S. has evolved as a “city set upon the hill” to which everyone in the world must look for guidance. Thus, goes the logic, it is all the other countries of the world, except for the U.S. and Israel, who are the violators of artistic freedom.
However, in opposing the Convention’s attempt to save artists’ creative activity from market values by emphasizing the government’s role as a protector of culture, the question arises as to the role played by the U.S. government in this sphere. By default, and by its own admission (as indicated above), in pleading for the supremacy of the market under the guise of “individual freedom” in Paris, one can conclude that the U.S. model imposes the capitalist market as the overriding norm for artists.
Thus, the U.S. government not only protects the market economy within its own country, but by opposing the sovereign right of other countries to form shields to defend a traditional, healthy culture, Washington’s position also constitutes a road map for the U.S. to extend its cultural tentacles into other countries. This is something that we in Canada are very aware of. UNESCO’s defense of sovereign the right to protect and promote cultural production was probably something that irked Washington in Paris in 2005.
Some history
To better grasp the issue, a look at the underlying historical context is warranted. Culture, on a par with economic expansion and military and ideological warfare, is part of the U.S. imperialist goal of world domination, irrespective of who occupies the White House. Let us recall Frances Stoner Saunders’s groundbreaking book Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, first published in English in 1999, then in Spanish in 2001 under the title La CIA y la Guerra Fría Cultural. The book presents a detailed report on the methods whereby the CIA influenced a wide range of intellectuals and cultural organizations during the Cold War.
Since then, and in the wake of similar revelations occurring both before and after Saunders’s book, the U.S. has had to adopt a more subtle way to influence events. It has since funnelled support through front groups not openly tied to the CIA. For example, American journalist and U.S. democracy promotion expert Tracey Eaton, in his December 2018 report, wrote that “over the past three decades, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion for broadcasting to Cuba and for democracy programs on the island.”
Democracy promotion, free expression and individual rights are so all-inclusive that that they encompass the cultural issue, which is even listed as one of the goals of this funding. Furthermore, if one clicks on the links to the activities of the front groups, such as the one with the innocent-sounding title “Observa Cuba,” one finds this: “Artists stage four-day sit-down at Culture against 349.”
Now, this is not to say that all or most of the hard-line opponents to 349 are financially linked to the United States. That would be an unfair assertion. However, living just about in the belly of the beast, we know that one cannot have illusions about U.S. foreign policy. The situation is admittedly very complex. For example, one of the most prominent critics of 349, Silvio Rodríguez, drew a clean line of demarcation between critics such as himself, who are participating in drafting the regulations to the law, and the position of the U.S. Embassy and its acolytes.
(Translation: “I do not believe that they care about Cuban artists. However, they do care about basing themselves on our possible errors in order to confuse. The ideological war is looking to be less and less in black and white.”)
This situation calls for serious reflection and research before writing, while at the same time seeing the urgency and duty to deal with the disinformation campaign led by the West.
Thus, it was of great help to get the December 16, 2018 “Postcard from Cuba,” circulated by American journalist Karen Wald, who has five decades of experience with Cuba. She writes from Havana with regard to her initial investigation on the controversy over 349: “My guess is that some of what’s behind this [opposition to 349] may be the fact that lots of pseudo ‘artists’ of all kinds make up a strong component of what the U.S. extols as ‘dissidence’ here… Most of those ‘dissident artists’ reported in U.S. press aren’t even known here…”
It seems to me that Cuba not only has every right to defend its culture and the process that is involved in working out its policy, but also that if it does not, it will sink. According to Fidel Castro, culture is the nation’s shield, and is therefore the first thing that must be saved in order to guarantee the progress of the revolutionary process.
The manner in which the U.S. and the hard-line opponents in Cuba, the United States, Europe, and Latin America are zeroing in on 349 and the government officials involved is an indication that culture is indeed a shield to defend the Cuban Revolution. It is a sine qua non if the Revolution is to continue along the path it has followed for 60 years. The U.S. and its allies know full well that the preferred weapon for subverting the Revolution is the cultural war in the wide sense of the term, including ideological, political, and artistic aspects.
Thus, we can see the hollowness of the “invisible hand of the market.” Let us give the last word to Samir Amin, the outstanding Egyptian-French scholar, who recently passed away. He produced a long-standing analysis of how the state in capitalist countries, such as the U.S. far from letting the free market take its course, has a direct hand in its operation. We saw this with the U.S. position on the Convention on Cultural Diversity and we are seeing it again as the empire strives to punch holes in Cuba’s cultural shield. Amin wrote that, when necessary, the “visible fist” helps the “invisible hand” of the free market.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
By the end of the Obama regime, the US had gone through seven wars and was in the process of losing five of them. Washington was facing global challenges to its dominant economic and political role from Russia and China. The US adopted a dual response: to pursue a policy of reconciliation with regional adversaries – (Iran and Cuba) – and to promote a policy of confrontation toward China and Russia.
President Obama and Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton sought to encircle China in Asia and ‘rollback’ Russia’s influence and ties with neighboring countries (like the Ukraine) and Middle Eastern allies (Syria).
The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, competed with the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton for global supremacy but through subterfuge, cloaking their drive for world power with a ‘nationalist agenda’ (‘make America strong’) . . . Donald Trump and Clinton shared the strategic goal focused on weakening and destroying rivals and competitors in China, Russia and EU.
The problem is that the US public, having suffered through three decades of losing and costly wars, was in no mood to opt for more of the same.
Candidate and subsequent President Donald Trump pursued a double discourse; talking of peace negotiations while pursuing aggressive wars, following essentially the Obama-Clinton line.
Since both parties followed similar unpopular policies which threatened to deepen inequalities and multiply wars, they both adopted a policy of strategic deception by focusing on clearly peripheral issuesthat served to intensify electoral conflictand deflected public attentionfrom their essential convergence on imperial goals.
The Democrats could not defeat or discredit President Trump by acknowledging the continuities in policy. Hence the Democrat embraced a bizarre conspiracy that the Republicans and Trump were colluding with the Russians to steal the elections and betray democracy and the American people. The Republicans responded by pursuing and deepening the Obama-Clinton program by adopting and radicalizing their anti-Russian, China, Iranian, Venezuela, Cuban policies. President Trump embraced the Democratic globalist agenda but cloaked it with a bellicose pseudo ‘nationalist’ ideology.
In a word, the Democratic Party and President Trump engaged in prolonged shadow boxingover whom and how they would direct the US global power grab.
The key to the party-partisan shadow boxing was the Mueller Report; specifically, the Democratic Party’s attempt to oust Trump without exposing their imperial convergence.
The Mueller Report (MR)
After a two-year investigation no Russian conspiracy was discoveredand no one cared– the public have other concerns.
According to a compilation by foreign policy analyst Steve Lendman, Mueller’s “Report” employed ‘40 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants and other professional staff for over 2 years and spent $25 million dollars’. According to Lendman they issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, interviewed over 500 individuals and made 34 indictments in search for evidence .
None of which pertained to the Russian-Trump plot..
Was the Money and Resources Wasted by the Mueller Report?
According to most critics of the Mueller Report (MR) it was a ‘big waste of money’. That would be true if the purpose of the MR was designed to discover a politically partisan case to impeach Trump.
However, if the deeper meaning of the MR was to distractpublic attention from large-scale, long-term issues of climate change, living standards, trade wars, economic sanctions, wars and the declining economy, then the money allocated to the MR was well taken.
Twenty-five million dollars spent to distract citizens from a war budget of nearly a trillion dollars was a bargain – very cheap entry fee for witnessing an inconclusive bi-partisan shadow boxing match.
In particular the Democratic Party could burnish their ‘fighting powers’ without risking their alliance and ties with donors on Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma etc.
President Trump could engage the MR by fighting and winning and not have to face his bigger problems with disenchanted supporters over the massive tax handouts to the corporate elite, his opposition to peaceful relations with Cuban, Iran, Venezuela and Syria and the popular wrath induced by Trump’s craven submission to Israel’s land grabs in Palestine and Syria.
The public still awaits the so-called bi-partisan trillion-dollar spending legislation for infrastructure reconstruction. Instead the Democrats move from Trump-Russia conspiracies to investigating Trump’s ‘obstruction of justice’.
Two Centuries of US ‘Meddling’ in Latin American Elections
Since the early 19th century when the US self-appointed their right to intervene in Latin America (the Monroe Doctrine), the US has invaded, overthrown, occupied and dictated Latin American economic, political and military policies. Since WWII the US overthrew democratic governments in Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. More recently the US plotted the overthrowing of governments in Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
Neither the Republican or Democratic parties have spoken up to condemn USmeddling in the politics of other free and independent countries.. Instead both parties selectively invented fake plots of Russia controlling US voters in place of recognizing that voters were fed up by the Obama-Clinton trillion-dollar bank handouts, Middle East wars and… voted for Trump.
Needless to say, the voters are not impressed by Trump’s ‘victory’ in defeating the Democrats Russian plot.
Fewer and fewer voters are being attracted by the bipartisan shadow boxing – they are no longer distracted and deceived by palace conspiracies. They want trade agreements with China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia that create jobs. They want trillion-dollar infrastructure investments not handouts to war contractors and Israeli lobbies.
The MR is not read by the public; it is ignored and disposed as toilet paper. They wantreal political and class warfare (not shadow boxing) on health care, student debts, joint ventures with China and Russia and North Korea that increase jobs and avoid wars.
If we go to elections on the basis of four years of public chatter by Wall Street look a-likes, the majority of the American people will not collude in perpetuating their decline and death through wars, drugs and air and water pollution.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Amid the threats of war with Iran, the U.S. Air Force has forward deployed Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets to the Middle East, reported Air Force Times.
Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) announced last week that F-35s from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have arrived at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates to continue air superiority missions across the region.
It’s the first time Air Force F-35s have been sent to the Middle East.
“We are adding a cutting-edge weapons system to our arsenal that significantly enhances the capability of the coalition,” Lt. Gen. Joseph T. Guastella, commander of AFCENT, said in the release. “The sensor fusion and survivability this aircraft provides to the joint force will enhance security and stability across the theater and deter aggressors.”
“The F-35A provides our nation air dominance in any threat,” added Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. “When it comes to having a ‘quarterback’ for the coalition joint force, the interoperable F-35A is clearly the aircraft for the leadership role.”
The F-35’s deployment comes one month after Rockwell B-1 Lancer bombers completed their deployment at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which left an operational gap of planes in the Middle East. The F-35s will support regional allies in airstrikes against the Taliban and Islamic State in Afghanistan.
The F-35 is expected to replace aging airframes such as the F-15, F-16, and A-10. The stealth jet’s advanced sensor package is designed to integrate and share data with other assets on the modern battlefield.
“The F-35A provides our nation air dominance in any threat,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said in the release. “When it comes to having a quarterback for the coalition joint force, the inter-operable F-35A is clearly the aircraft for the leadership role.”
AFCENT spokeswoman Maj. Holly Brauer told the Air Force Times that upcoming missions would be on behalf of Operation Inherent Resolve.
“During their deployment, the Airmen will fly operational and other missions as assigned,” she said. “Consistent with operations security, we will not discuss employment details in advance. The F-35A and their crews will bring the advanced capabilities to the CENTCOM commander’s wide range of options.”
The deployment comes as the Trump administration formally designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Thus setting the stage for potential escalation with Iran.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The drama that has played out in the mainstream media over the release of the Mueller report had us at the Black Alliance for Peace asking the question we always come back to: What are the ruling-class minions in media and government not discussing?
We’ll tell you: Congress is about to hand the president a $750 billion budget increase for “national security.” Trump also vetoed the congressional bill that attempts to stop U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
Folks, don’t let the Democrats play you.
These people—especially our mis-leaders in the Congressional Black Caucus—had the power to stop the war in Yemen when Obama was in office. (Indeed, this was Obama’s war, as was the attack on Libya and the destabilization that destroyed parts of Syria.)
That’s why it is so important we as African/Black internationalists attempt to re-develop our people’s historic anti-war and anti-imperialist positions. Because when our folks are clear, we don’t stand for these media charades.
BAP members have been in the streets and in alternative media broadcasts doing propaganda work to bring the message to our people.
For example, watch BAP member Jacqueline Luqman interview BAP Coordinating Committee members Vanessa Beck and Netfa Freeman on the connection between the U.S. militarization of Africa and the militarized occupation of African/Black communities in the United States. Watch part 1 and part 2.
BAP member Bilal Mafundi Ali joined more than 300 activists on a bus to Sacramento to lobby the California state legislature to pass the California Act to Save Lives (AB 392). The bill proposes easing the process of filing criminal charges against police officers when they use force in cases where de-escalation techniques could have been used. The bill passed the state Assembly’s Committee on Public Safety and has moved to the Appropriations Committee. The Bay Area chapter of BAP spoke with activists about the connection BAP makes between U.S. wars abroad and the war on our people in the United States. People took to our message, as you can see from the collage below.
The U.S.-instigated crisis in Venezuela continues to morph. That is why BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka gave interviews to TeleSUR’s “From Washington” and “From Caracas”, as well as to Mayadeen Programs.
We’re proud BAP member organization Pan-African Community Actionparticipated last week in securing the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C. Brothers Netfa and Garrett and Sister Queshia gave a presentation on how the U.S. militarization of Africa is the flip side of the repression of U.S. African/Black communities.
We ask those of you in Washington, D.C., and those who can travel to the city, to help occupy the Venezuelan embassy. The opposition has announced they plan to seize the embassy this week, as they have done with other Venezuelan buildings in the United States.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
We are writing to you from inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC where we are taking action against a US coup of the independent and sovereign Bolivarian Republican of Venezuela. The Embassy Protection Collective (Colectivos Por La Paz) is here with the permission of the Venezuelan government to show our solidarity with the Venezuelan people. The upcoming week will be a critical one, as we explain below.
The opposition, with its illegal, pretend government, say they will attempt to take over the embassy this week after the diplomats leave on Wednesday, as ordered by the US State Department. If they do, it will be a theft from the Venezuelan people who own the building. As we describe in some detail below, the opposition is acting in violation of the Venezuelan Constitution and the US is acting in violation of international law.
US and Canadian Peace Delegation organized by US Peace Council in Venezuela, 2019.
Guaido’s Power Shrinks, The Roots of Opposition are Based in Violence and US Coup Attempts
The opposition leader, Juan Guaido’s power is shrinking in Venezuela and he is often ignored. He has no transitional government, even Elliot Abramsadmits he is not in power, and Guaido has been barred from running for office for financial improprieties after being investigated for illegally taking money from a foreign government. Guaido’s immunity from prosecution has been removed and he has been forbidden from leaving the country. He has announced major protests multiple times to support his takeover of the Venezuelan government on behalf of the US government, but the protests are often canceled or have small turnouts.
Mision Verdad, in “Guaido, A Laboratory Product That No Longer Works,” describes how the coup was designed in meetings in the Organization of American States (OAS) in December and January that included the convicted criminal, Leopoldo Lopez, and his protegé Juan Guaido by video link.
Chavez pardoned Lopez for his role in the coup in 2007, but Lopez was barred from holding political office from 2008 to 2014 for his misuse of public funds while mayor. Guarimba victims have pursued new charges against Leopoldo Lopez. Just two weeks ago, Lopez was implicated in a terrorist plot, funded by the United States and organized by Guaido’s chief of staff, where mercenaries from Central America, trained in Colombia, planned to attack infrastructure, government buildings, and assassinate political leaders, including President Maduro.
People gather at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC to prevent takeover by the opposition..
What You Can Do to Show Solidarity With the Venezuelan People and Protect Venezuelan Solidarity
In mid-March, the opposition took over the Venezuelan consulate in New York and the Military Attaché office in Washington, DC. People feared the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC would be next and so they mobilized to hold space at the embassy in support.
Since then, people have been staying at the embassy 24/7. During the day, we work, and in the evenings, we hold public events. Yesterday, the ANSWER coalition held a national webinar and then we had an art build for people of all ages and light projection provided by the Backbone Campaign. See the list of events here. We are calling ourselves the Embassy Protection Collective and people in Venezuela are referring to us as Colectivos Por La Paz (Peace Collective).
We view the struggle to prevent the takeover of the embassy as fundamental to stopping this new phase of US imperialism in which the US attempts a coup and fails, but goes ahead and acts like it succeeded. President Maduro remains in power and is actively serving as the president. Juan Guaido has no power, yet the US is giving Venezuelan assets to him. It is truly Orweillian. If the US succeeds in this farce, then no country is safe. Where will the US turn next to appoint a president and give them power and assets? Nicaragua? Cuba? Iran?
You can be an Embassy Protector by doing any or all of the following:
1. Sign onin support of the Declaration of the Embassy Protection Collective. Hundreds of people and organizations have already signed. Show your solidarity with Venezuela. The Declaration is reprinted below.
2. Spread the word through your communities by forwarding this on email, sharing content from our Facebook page and using the hashtag #ColectivosPorLaPaz.
3. Contact your member of Congress (202-224-3121) and demand they intervene to stop the State Department from giving the embassy to Guaido’s hateful, violent forces and to investigate the US-led coup and ongoing war on Venezuela. Let them know that US citizens are staying in the embassy to defend the rule of law.
4. Join us in person during the day, evening and night. We are particularly looking for people who can join us on Wednesday night April 24 and Thursday morning April 25 because that is the earliest that the opposition will try to seize the building. There are different roles to play and different levels of risk. We need people who can video, photograph, share on social media, call media, rally on the sidewalk (all very safe), sit in on the steps (you can leave before they announce they will arrest if you need to), block the front door (you can still likely leave without arrest) or join us inside the building where we will peacefully resist their trespass (highest risk of arrest). A number of us are committed to staying in the building to defend it.
We are building for the day we anticipate the Guaido forces will try to take over the embassy. If you are interested in being an Embassy Protector, please complete this form and we’ll be in touch. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP. The upcoming week of April 21, 2019 is a critical week. Come and join us.
Please let us know if you can join us on by writing [email protected].
The Embassy Protection Collective after a forum on Africom, April 15, 2019. From the Embassy Protection Collective.
Declaration Of The Embassy Protection Collective (Colectivos Por La Paz)
We have joined together as the Embassy Protection Collective to show solidarity with the people of Venezuela and their right to determine their elected government. We are staying in the Venezuelan embassy with the permission of the legitimate Venezuelan government under President Nicolas Maduro. We seek to provide a nonviolent barrier to the threatened opposition takeover of their embassy in Washington, DC by being a presence at the embassy every day of the week for 24 hours a day.
The Collective is working from the embassy, located in the heart of Georgetown in Washington, DC during the day and holding seminars and cultural events in the evenings, as well as sleeping in the embassy. Events include forums on Venezuela, its government, economy and the ongoing attempted coup. We are also holding seminars on US foreign policy toward Africa, Honduras and Iran, the prosecution of Julian Assange and other issues.
There is great cause for us to be concerned about a hostile takeover of the DC Embassy. On March 18, 2019, the Venezuelan opposition took over the military attaché building on 2409 California St in Washington DC, with the help of the DC Police and Secret Service. On that same day, the opposition also took over the Venezuelan Consulate in New York City. They have publicly threatened to take over the embassy itself.
International Law Protects Foreign Embassies Located In The United States
According to Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations, foreign embassies should be protected by the United States government and their space should not be violated by the US government. Specifically, international law requires:
The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.
The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
The Trump Administration is violating the Vienna Convention by not only allowing the illegal seizure of diplomatic premises but by facilitating it. The Election Protection Collective is supporting the people of Venezuela by taking responsibility to ensure that Article 22 of the Vienna Convention is followed.
The Elected Government of President Maduro Remains In Power
The government of President Nicolás Maduro was re-elected on May 20, 2018 in response to the opposition demanding an early election. The election was held consistent with the Venezuelan Constitution, in consultation with opposition parties and as determined by the National Electoral Council, an independent branch of the Venezuelan government.
Sixteen parties participated in the election with six candidates competing for the presidency. President Maduro won by a wide margin, obtaining 6,248,864 votes, 67.84%; followed by Henri Falcón with 1,927,958, 20.93%; Javier Bertucci with 1,015,895, 10.82%; and Reinaldo Quijada, who obtained 36,246 votes, 0.39% of the total. A total of 9,389,056 people voted, 46% of eligible voters.
In a letter to the European Union correcting some of the false statements made about the election, election observers wrote: “We were unanimous in concluding that the elections were conducted fairly, that the election conditions were not biased, that genuine irregularities were exceptionally few and of a very minor nature.”
The Invalid Self-Appointment of Juan Guaidó Violated Venezuelan Law
Juan Guaidó’s self-appointment as interim president violated the Constitution of Venezuela. The language of the Venezuelan Constitution is clear regarding when the president of the National Assembly can become president and none of the conditions in the Constitution have been met.
The opposition relies on Article 233 of the Constitution, which allows the National Assembly president to serve as interim president only if the president-elect has not yet been inaugurated. Guaidó’s self-appointment occurred after President Maduro had been inaugurated.
Article 233 allows the president of the National Assembly to become president only if the president-elect:
“become[s] permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice [equivalent of impeachment]; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.”
None of these conditions were met.
If Guaidó had met the above conditions, Article 233 allows him to serve for only 30 consecutive days pending election and inauguration of the new President. Guaidó’s self-appointment and fraudulent inauguration occurred more than 30 days ago and no election has been scheduled.
In a press briefing, Elliot Abrams, the US Special Representative for Venezuela, could not explain these violations of law by Guaidó and admitted that Guaidó is not “able to exercise the powers of the office because Maduro still is there.” Even Abrams admits that Guaidó is not the president. Therefore, he has no authority over the Venezuelan embassy.
The Role of the Embassy Protection Collective
The Embassy Protection Collective is in the embassy with the permission of the Venezuelan government. We are upholding international law and the Venezuelan Constitution and opposing a coup attempt against the legitimate government of Venezuela on behalf of the people of Venezuela who elected their government.
The Embassy Protection Collective is made up of civilians, United States citizens, who are peacefully defending the embassy. If the opposition enters, they will be trespassing. We call on the DC police, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security and any other law enforcement agency to uphold the law and prevent the opposition from trespassing.
The Collective feels a responsibility to hold our government to a standard of respecting the rule of law as well as a responsibility to stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela.
Signed
The Embassy Civilian Protection Collective
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.
All images in this article are from Popular Resistance; Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019. (Source: Popular Resistance)
With the landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelensky, who won 73 percent of the vote, the comedian will become the president of Ukraine. Understanding how this occurred becomes easy when people review US government documents published by Wikileaks about the outgoing president.
“Poroshenko was tainted by credible corruption allegations, but wielded significant influence within OU; Poroshenko’s price had to be paid.”
The US government knew he was corrupt, but allowing his corruption was a price the US was willing to pay to have Our Ukraine serving as president.
The document also describes the “bad blood” between Poroshenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko. This bad blood continues to this day as Tymoshenko came in third in the first round of the elections, and it seemed to continue through the General Election, as those who voted for her, voted for Zelensky — or against Poroshenko. The memo describes the Tymoshenko-Poroshenko relationship writing, “there is a thin line between love and hate,” and describing how “Tymoshenko and Poroshenko might appear in public, shake hands, agree to ‘do business’ together” but a coalition between them was unlikely to last.
Joe Biden, who is expected to announce a run for president, is emblematic of the corruption of the US in Ukraine. Wikileaks reports, Biden pledged US financial and technical assistance to Ukraine for “unconventional” gas resources (i.e. fracking). And, not only was his son Hunter put on the board of the largest private gas company in Ukraine (along with a long-time Kerry family friend and financier) but when that gas company was threatened with investigation, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 saying that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion. Biden claimed he gave the country six hours to fire the prosecutor before he left Ukraine or he would bankrupt the country. OU fired him.
Now the two pro-US politicians, Tymoshenko and Poroshenko, have been replaced by a political unknown in Zelensky, or “Ze,” as he’s more popularly known. The incoming president has been vague on what policies he will pursue but says he wants to negotiate peace with Russia over eastern Ukraine, saying he was prepared to negotiate directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine is sick of corruption. Adding to Poroshenko’s corruption, the US brought more corruption. Not surprisingly, corruption under Poroshenko worsened. The country is tired of the conflict between Kiev and East Ukraine and Zelensky said he would try to end the war. And, the country has become the poorest in Europe as the promise of close ties with the US have not resulted in the benefits promised.
More than 200 killed and at least 500 injured as eight explosions rocked Catholic churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka while Christians began Easter Sunday celebrations.
Media report said:
The blasts started at around 8:45am local time at St. Anthony’s Church in Colombo and St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, a Catholic-majority town outside of the capital. The Zion Church in Batticaloa on the eastern coast was also targeted. At around the same time, the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury five-star hotels were also hit.
Two more explosions happened later in the day, targeting two more locations in Colombo. All attacks appear to have been coordinated.
At least 207 people were killed, Reuters reported, citing police.
An earlier report cited the number of wounded as more than 450.
The five-star Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in the heart of Colombo were also targeted.
Congregations were taking part in Easter Sunday services at the churches when the blasts hit.
The death toll could rise significantly as hospitals report casualty figures.
At least nine foreign nationals are known to have died.
A curfew has been imposed from 18:00 to 06:00 local time (12:30-00:30 GMT).
Seven arrests have been made.
The government also said there would a temporary block on the use of major social media networks.
No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but the defense minister said they were probably carried out by one group.
St Sebastian’s church in Negombo was severely damaged. Images on social media showed its inside, with a shattered ceiling and blood on the pews. Dozens of people are reported to have died there.
There were heavy casualties too at the site of the first blast in St Anthony’s, a hugely popular shrine in Kochchikade, a district of Colombo.
Hospital sources in Batticaloa said at least 27 people had died there.
A hotel official at the Cinnamon Grand, near the prime minister’s official residence, told AFP the explosion there had ripped through a restaurant, killing at least one person.
A seventh explosion was later reported at a hotel near the zoo in Dehiwala, southern Colombo, with police sources reporting two deaths. The zoo has been closed.
An eighth explosion was reported near the Colombo district of Dematagoda. Media said it was suicide bomber and that three people, believed to be security personnel, were killed during a police raid.
Citizens formed long queues as they joined in front of blood donation centers or hospitals to donate blood.
Police advised people to stay inside their houses and remain calm.
There is a heavy military presence in front of all major state buildings. No-one was expecting this, it was a peaceful Sunday morning – everyone was going to Easter services.
Priests were shocked as they have not imagined such attack.
Announcing the curfew, Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardane said:
“We will take all necessary action against any extremist group that is operating in our country.”
He also said that “all the culprits” had been identified and would be “taken into custody as soon as possible”.
Another minister, Harsha de Silva, described “horrible scenes” at St Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade, saying he had seen “many body parts strewn all over”.
Pope Francis, in his traditional Urbi et Orbi speech at the Vatican, condemned the attacks as “such cruel violence” which had targeted Christians celebrating Easter.
Cardinal Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, told the BBC:
“It’s a very difficult and a very sad situation for all of us because we never expected such a thing to happen and especially on Easter Sunday.”
BBC Sinhala reporter Azzam Ameen informed that two suspects have been detained in the Dematagoda area of Colombo and seven suspects arrested in total.
He quoted Sri Lanka’s defense minister as saying most of the blasts were suicide attacks carried out by one group. No group has not claimed responsibility of the attacks.
A report said:
“A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo.”
The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that came into the spotlight after it was linked to vandalism of Buddhist monuments in the country, where Buddhism is the predominant religion.
The million dollar question is why did the agencies allowed this atrocity to happen even though there was clear intelligence warnings of terrorist attacks.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The Trump administration is cracking down on trade partners that are still purchasing oil from Iran in an attempt to force regime change inside the Persian Gulf nation.
***
The U.S. government is ending the program that has provided exemptions to five large countries purchasing oil from Iran, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
According to the New York Times report, the U.S. is canceling the exemptions to China, Japan, India, Turkey, and South Korea as they attempt to strengthen their blockade on Iranian goods.
The ultimate goal of this U.S. move is to force regime change in Iran by choking off all of their exports and sinking their revenue stream.
Oil prices rallied by about 3 percent on Monday to their highest since late 2018 as the United States was set to announce that all imports of Iranian oil must end or be subject to sanctions.
Brent crude futures rose as much as 3.3 percent to $74.31 a barrel, the highest since Nov. 1, before easing back to $73.82 by 0452 GMT, up 2.6 percent from their last close.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed by as much as 2.9 percent to $65.87 per barrel, the most since Oct. 31, and were at $65.38 at 0452 GMT, up 2.6 percent from their last close.
Last November, the Trump administration announced major sanctions against the Persian Gulf nation, but they would later grant their trade partners waivers so that they could continue their purchases.
Since the granting of these waivers by the Trump administration, the two biggest purchasers of Iranian oil, China and India, have continued to conduct business with the country. Three of the U.S.’ allies, including NATO partner Turkey, have also benefitted greatly from the exemptions.
However, the Trump administration is likely to get heavy pushback from Turkey, who is not only a major trade partner of Iran, but also a close ally in the region.
“We know that the sanctions regime will not really produce the results that they’re expected to produce in terms of changing Iranian behavior,” Ibrahim Kalin, the Chief Counselor to the President of the Turkish Republic, told the New York Times.
This campaign to push for regime change in Iran could turn disastrous, however, as some experts believe the complete blockade of Iranian oil could skyrocket the price of oil this summer.
Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said summer drivers could well see higher gasoline prices than last year.
“Last summer didn’t go above $3 a gallon as a national average, but this summer, if we don’t have Iranian oil we probably do go over $3,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, told NYT.
Analysts criticized the end to the exemptions, which would hit Asian buyers the hardest.
“This is not a good policy for Trump,” said Takayuki Nogami, chief economist at Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), adding that “concerns over tightening global oil supply and lower excess production capacity are expected to bolster oil prices higher.”
He added that Brent prices are likely to rise toward $86.29 a barrel, the highest price it reached in 2018, while WTI may climb to $76.41
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to make an announcement cancelling all waivers on Monday despite the possible economic ramifications that could arise as a result of this move.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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.
I’m glad Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection. Since I realize that saying this won’t sit well with many folks, let me explain:
As the election developed, it became clear that Benny Gantz, the leader of the opposition “Blue and White” coalition, for a number of reasons, had come to be seen as the darling of the liberal set – especially here in the United States.
Some, for example, were justifiably upset by Netanyahu’s gross corruption or unnerved by his authoritarian actions designed to intimidate the press, silence non-governmental organizations, and strip the courts of their power. Others were optimistic that should Gantz win, Israel’s image would improve in the United States and there would be the possibility of a “reset” in the U.S.-Israel relationship. One publication described a Gantz victory as creating “a fresh slate and an opportunity to re-energize support for Israel.”
Driving this support for Gantz was the concern of liberal Democrats who have been troubled by recent polls showing a significant erosion of support for Israel among core Democratic constituents – especially millennial and minority voters – including American Jewish millennials. This growing alienation from Israel has in part been due to both Netanyahu’s repressive policies and his close relationship with Donald Trump. There could be no doubt that Trump had been excessive in his support for his Israeli partner: canceling the Iran Deal; moving the US embassy to Jerusalem; the “gift” of the Golan Heights; cutting all U.S. aid to the Palestinians; and remaining silent in the face of settlement expansion and Netanyahu’s declared intent to apply Israeli sovereignty to West Bank settlements. This virtual Trump/Netanyahu marriage most certainly had a role to play in the embrace of Gantz by many liberals.
Because American liberals have embraced the mantra of a “two-state solution” and see Netanyahu’s aggressive settlement construction and his pledge to “annex” the settlements as obstacles to that goal, they also fretted that a Netanyahu victory might spell the end of their idea of two states – one “Jewish and democratic” and one for the Palestinians. At the same time, American Jews had an additional frustration with Netanyahu as a result of his accommodation of the illiberal policies of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious community on issues of marriage, conversion, and women’s rights.
It was in this context, that Gantz became the “great hope.” I, however, never believed that he was.
In the first place, on the issue that mattered most to the future of peace – the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories – there was little that separated Netanyahu from Gantz. In fact, Gantz’s opening campaign advertisement featured Gaza in rubble (Gantz had been in charge of the most brutal and devastating of the Gaza wars), boasting the he had reduced parts of Gaza “back to the Stone Age.” And right before the election, an American Jewish publication reported on a Gantz speech laying out his “seven pillars” for peace with the Palestinians: “he said his priority was to ensure a Zionist ‘end state’ – Jewish and Democratic – and not a binational state, while keeping the Jordan Valley, a united Jerusalem, and modifying the 1967 lines…I don’t want to rule the Palestinians.” In addition to these goals, he added keeping the settlements and maintaining security control west of the Jordan River.
In other words, Gantz might have been a “fresh face,” but, on the central issue of dealing with Palestinians and the occupied territories, he was no different than the prime minister he was seeking to replace.
In addition to the positions he espoused, I felt that it was important to look at the composition of the governing coalition Gantz would have assembled had he emerged victorious. Although the press routinely referred to Gantz as the “center-left” candidate, in reality, only a small fraction of his potential partners could be seen as “left.” In fact, most of his eventual partners were quite comfortable with Gantz’s “seven pillars.” And because Israeli politics have moved so far to the right, even if he had won the opportunity to form a government, Gantz never could have assembled a coalition of 61 Knesset Members without adding the parties representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel – something that, early on, Gantz had said he would never do.
This avoidance of Arabs was in response to the negative anti-Arab campaign waged by Netanyahu. Recognizing that Gantz couldn’t have formed a government without Arab support or acquiescence, Netanyahu advanced the slogan that the voters’ choice was “Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname) or Tibi” (referring to Ahmed Tibi, the leader of one of the Arab parties). Instead of pushing back against this patently racist Arab-baiting, Gantz made a pledge not to consult with the Arab parties in the Knesset or include them in his government.
With Netanyahu back for his fifth term as prime minister, liberals must now face reality. They can no longer see Israel as a romanticized “idea” of a progressive state governed by liberal values. Rather it has demonstrated that it is an illiberal ethno-nationalist society that has applied an apartheid-like repressive system to enable their continued rule over a captive Palestinian people.
Liberals may continue to say that they oppose settlements and seek a two-state solution. But here too they will now have to confront reality. The settlement expansion that occurred on their watch, and which they took no concrete steps to curtail, has made a two-state solution impossible to implement. And, they must now admit that Netanyahu, who for years they tolerated and even feted, has in reality “played them like a fiddle.” This won’t come easily.
It was interesting to watch how a few leading liberal pundits and Democratic elected officials reacted during and after this election. When it appeared that Gantz might win, they felt that it was safe to denounce Netanyahu and even call him a racist, now with Netanyahu emerging as the victor, they have flipped on a dime, congratulating him on his victory and pledging to work with him to implement the two-state solution – some illusions do die hard.
But with Netanyahu expected to continue his extremist anti-Palestinian, anti-peace, anti-rule of law, and pro-Trump agendas, the debate about Israel here in the United States will intensify. Because the base of the Democratic Party has awakened to the realities of the occupation and is deeply offended by everything both Netanyahu and Trump stand for, several developments can be expected.
The rift between the base of the Democratic Party and its elected officials will continue to grow. This will take the form of candidates for higher office increasingly being called to account for their failure to challenge Israeli behaviors. The debate within the American Jewish community will also intensify, with liberal Jews forced to reexamine their views of Israel and their support for the policies of that state. As a result of these developments, the Democratic Party is moving toward becoming the anti-Netanyahu, anti-settlements, anti-annexation party – with an increasing number of Democrats even voicing support for cutting aid to Israel and advocating for the rights of citizens to support the BDS movement.
We are on the threshold of a major change in how Israel will play out in American politics. I’m afraid that it has come too late to save the two-states that were envisioned by the long dead Oslo Accords. But it is a good thing that we will now finally be able to have an honest debate about the dreadful situation created by American complicity in enabling Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians. This debate might have been aborted for a time had Gantz won. The occupation and settlements would have continued – but liberals would have been less inclined to challenge him. With Netanyahu back, the debate will be energized. It might be late in the game, but better late than never.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
James Zogby co-founded the Arab American Institute in 1985 and continues to serve as its president. He is Director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East. For the past 3 decades, he has served in leadership roles in the Democratic National Committee and served 2 terms as a President Obama appointee to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He writes a weekly column published in 12 countries. He is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. In 2010, Zogby published the highly-acclaimed book, Arab Voices.
A stalemate of sorts has developed in Venezuela. The pretender, Juan Guaidó, as head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, continues as faux interim president, noisier than ever, but no more effectual than the time he declared his intentions to overthrow the incumbent. President Nicolás Maduro, despite winning in 2018, is still cited as the illegitimate one, holding the reins of a ruined country. Guaidó, despite being in permanent campaign mode, has yet to convince the military to take his side. The Constituent Assembly, directed by the Supreme Court, have also stripped the pretender of parliamentary immunity, leaving the way open for arrest.
To date, the political support Guaidó can count on, leaving aside his well wishers in the country, has been externally sourced; Washington and a range of European capitals have decided to turn their noses up at the UN Charter, though all are offering differing measures of encouragement.
The strategy on the part of the opposition has been one of triggering a broader popular insurrection. While the protestors number many, to date, they have not been sufficient to oust Maduro. This has led to calls for rallies and marches of such scale that they cannot be ignored.
“We,” Guaidó hopes, “call on all the people to join in the largest march in the history of Venezuela to demand the end to the usurpation so this tragedy can end.”
Maduro, for his part, is making a fist of it, attempting to stem the bite of US sanctions, notably those targeting the state oil company PDVSA. This is being done by getting cash via Venezuelan oil sales through Russian state energy giant Rosneft, which is one of PDVSA’s largest creditors. Once obtained at a discount rate, Rosneft on-sells the oil at full price.
Interest has now shifted to a provision in the country’s constitution that offers the opposition a snifter of hope. It is a fitting, discomforting echo to past instances where cabals and groups of officials would beg a foreign power to do the job of retrieving their positions or undermining those of others. To that end, interest in Article 187(11), governing the powers of the National Assembly to authorise foreign interventions in the country, has spiked.
To hook to hang the argument upon has been that world weary Trojan Horse to state independence, humanitarian intervention. How far does such generosity for a downtrodden populace extend? Maduro’s opposition felt they could make much of the February 23 announcement to bring such aid into the state with the assistance of sympathetic foreign powers. If they could do it, then surely, their virtue demanded reward? Predictably, Maduro loyalists blocked the effort, leading to a parliamentary faction by the name of Bloque 16 de Julio urging the deployment of the article.
Vente Venezuela chief Maria Corina Machado is a key proponent, seeking to use the article to open the door for the international community to meddle and salvage. The bricks and mortar behind the intervention would be that most troubling of doctrines, the Responsibility to Protect, a point expressly endorsed by former Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma.
“Maduro,” he exclaimed, “dances over the ashes of a destroyed country.”
For his part, Guaidó is more cautious, demonstrating the imaginary limits about how such a doctrine can be deployed. First, authorising such an intervention was not a decision to be “taken lightly” (read, potentially catastrophic); second, operational logistics, boundaries and protocols of engagement had to be specified. As the blood spattered record of R2P shows, these limits are often the stuff of boardroom nonsense rather than military reality. Once the bombs fall, the law falls silent.
The dress of humanitarian intervention is already looking very worn, and its tattered coverings will come off in any traditional invasion or toppling common in the Americas. But things are bound to get more interesting with Russian counters, suggesting that President Vladimir Putin is ready for his next gambit. Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta has already made the point that Moscow is considering the deployment of strategic bombers on an ongoing basis in Venezuela to add to recent deployments of personnel in Caracas on March 23. It is also said that an agreement has been reached between Moscow and Caracas to permit the deployment of Russian aircraft at La Orchila, where Russian advisors already find themselves.
An Ilyushin Il-62 plane carrying some hundred personnel and an accompaniment of 35 tons of material aboard an Antonov An-124 military cargo plane were already troubling additions to the picture for Washington. It seemed to have, in its template, a Syrian-style propping up, and is nothing less than an act of niggling molestation for the US security establishment. The official line, predictably enough, is that the deployments are there to shield non-military Russian personnel and provide assistance in maintenance of Venezuela’s Russian designed air-system.
On Moscow’s part, Washington’s intentions are clear enough.
“Now when the Americans keep saying that all options remain on the table,” suggested Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Glavnoye with Olga Belova, “I have no doubt that they are calculating the consequences of a military adventure.”
The spoiling measure on President Putin’s part, with all the grit that comes with such calculation, is a simple admission that any overthrow of Maduro will be, at best, a messy affair and distinctly non-humanitarian in nature. Washington, for its part, will simply do what it does worst: attempt, if it can, to deploy force clothed in translucent principles under the guise of realpolitik.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr. 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]
Remember the famous taxicab scene from the great film On the Waterfront? Ex boxer Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) telling his older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger), who is second in command to a crooked union boss, that he didn’t look out for him enough. Borrowing from that scene, and from that film, this writer has taken ‘poetic license’ a bit:
“You are my government Uncle Sam, you shoulda looked out for me a bit… You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am… Let’s face it. It was YOU Uncle Sam!”
Only a certifiable fool would miss the fact that the majority of we Americans are either knee deep in ****, financially, health wise and even spiritually, or very close to it.
The smell of war, phony war, and the smell of greed has fogged up the thinking of most of us. Where do I begin? Come on, how many times that Uncle Sam ‘Bangs the drums for war’ before the truth will sink in? One needs not go back further than the dawn of this new century to see and smell the ****. September 11th, 2001 was the shock the puppet masters wanted, and so far it still works. With all the diligent and comprehensive research done by so many scientists and investigators (some mainstream and some not) the stain of that lie will always paint over the truth. Connecting 9/11 to what followed is easy: The excuse to not only destroy and occupy oil rich Iraq, and mineral rich, key pipeline area Afghanistan, was part of the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) plan. The real ‘Deep State’ has continually hoped to dominate the Middle East before the Chinese and Russians get too deeply involved there. As the late General Smedley Butler put it in his 1935 essay War is a Racket, the money people (banks) and contractors make a fortune on ANY war we get into… anywhere and at anytime! Just ‘Follow da money!’
On the subject of money, we probably always were, as a nation, obsessed with those of great personal wealth. Working stiffs should have been angered by such a notion; instead too many of us became enthralled by it. The ‘Roaring 20s’ were replete with media celebration of the super rich. Perhaps because of the Great Depression many who at one time accepted the power of those having excess wealth now began to get pissed off. As things loosened up economically so did mindsets. Onetime labor strikers and ‘Eat the rich’ working stiffs began to settle in as good Democrats under the tent of a strong labor movement. Then, during the 70s and into the 80s the ‘owners of capital’ slowly regained control of our culture with the emphasis on consumerism and Greed is Good. Look where we are now: The workforce has union representation in the TEENS! Labor unions themselves are run in many instances by leaders who ‘suck up’ to management with too many concessions.
All facets of society are filled with mega millionaire professional sports owners, players and of course their media partners. The movies and television shows we watch (even the news shows) are filled with mega millionaires on airwaves that ‘We the people’ rightly own. Yet, through our ‘bought and paid for’ elected officials we allow the billionaires to control what comes out of the boob tube. Did you ever notice how all our television programming has more and longer commercials? Watching a New York Giants football game on a Sunday afternoon in 1960, a ‘time out’ was literally one minute and then right back to the field. Now you can literally make a sandwich and begin eating it during one commercial break! How about our infamous Wall Street?
The investment class is now and always has been filled with the super rich. Remember, when Henry Paulson became Treasury Sec. under Junior Bush? Before being appointed Paulson retired from the predatory ‘Palace on Wall Street’ Goldman Sachs… at a single year compensation package worth.. ready for this… $ 500 million! And he stood there in front of the cameras and looked like Sad Sack as he told all the suckers out there that we had to ‘Bail Out’ the banks. True conservatives and true progressives were shouting ‘NO, place those toxic firms in Receivership, buying their lousy assets at 10 or 20 cents on the dollar’! Yet still, with all the unnecessary suffering by so many of us, after the ‘smoke cleared’ many of my fellow citizens still admire those super rich ‘makers and shakers’ of fortune.
Folks, as long as the suckers out there pay homage to the war makers, the super rich celebrity class and of course the phony ‘Free market’ Wall Street con job…. and Uncle Sam represents THEM and not us…. we will continue to be a nation of Terry Malloys.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Philip A Farruggio is the contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
During the last decade of 20th century, leading “analysts” of the New World Order were presenting the Kosovo’s issue as a democratic matter rather than a historical and geopolitical dispute. It was perceived as a political case in which one ethnic minority (Albanians) was oppressed by a “non-democratic regime” of Slobodan Milošević. The refusal of the Rambouillet Accords by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, served as a justification for the unilateral action against Yugoslavia in March, 1999. The Rambouillet Accords called for:
1) NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia;
2) A force of 28,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo;
3) Referendum on independence in Kosovo to be held after 3 years;
4) Free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access for NATO troops throughout Yugoslav territory including associated airspace and territorial waters;
5) Immunity for NATO personnel to Yugoslav law.
In other words this was a classical ultimatum designed intentionally by the USA in order to force the Yugoslav leadership to refuse the Accords, thus NATO would have a justification to wage a “humanitarian” war on the FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared that:
“The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that an angelic Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form”.
During the negotiation talks in Paris, Americans removed Kosovar Albanian leader Mr. Rugova from the talks (he was supporting the independence of Kosovo but with peaceful non violent means) and imposed a new leader Hashim Thaci-commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an organization officially listed and recognized as a terrorist organization by the US Department of State until 1998, when the USA suddenly declared them as a “freedom fighters” and used them as NATO ground troops against the Yugoslav Army, Police and Serbian civilians. This action conducted by USA was not surprising at all knowing that even today USA and its allies are creating various terrorist movements across the world to start civil wars in order to achieve regime change in certain countries. Just in the last 30 years, USA and its allies followed this pattern in the case of Yugoslavia, Somalia, Russia (Chechnya), Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen…
Repeatedly violating jus ad bellum and jus in bello, including UN Chapter, its purposes and principles (e.g. article 2, 3, 4), and avoiding UN Security Council mechanism (articles 52, 53), under the auspices of NATO, the US led an international coalition, made a devastating precedent in international relations, by committing the largest NATO aggression in its history, in violation of NATO’s Charter.
After 78 days of criminal bombing against the FR Yugoslavia, involving 19 NATO member countries aided by at least 7 non-member countries, combined with air attacks and land invasion from Republic of Albania and FYR Macedonia, the Yugoslav leadership was forced to sign Peace Accords (Agreement from Kumanovo, 1999), which resulted in the absolute withdrawal from Kosovo of the Yugoslav administration (civilian and military) and the establishment of the UN international interim administration over the province of Kosovo (civil and military missions are officially led by UN, but in practice both missions are under the patronage of the USA and NATO).
Damaged houses in the village of Pavlovac, Vranje, Serbia, with the body of Mijalko Trajkovic who was killed by a NATO cluster bomb on 14 April 1999
On the 27th of April 1999 in the city of Surdulica, Serbia, NATO targeted civilian houses killing 10 civilians including all members of the family Milić
April 27, 1999, Surdulica, Serbia, in the series of NATO’s civilian bombing, the house of Milić was hit by projectile and the whole family was killed: Milorad (15 years), Stamenka (65), Aleksandar (35), Miljana (14), Vladimir (11), Vesna (35) and three more neighbours who sheltered in the house were killed as well
Despite the Yugoslav withdrawal from the province, UN Resolution 1244 (1999) combined with the Rambouillet Accords, established an international protectorate in the southern Serbian province, guaranteeing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the FR Yugoslavia in Kosovo, but at the same time, directed international presence towards the creation of the independence of Kosovo, which was formally declared in 2008.[1]
Today, the international community remains divided in regards to Kosovo’s status. The US, UK, Germany, France and EU (without Slovakia, Greece, Romania, Cyprus and Spain) are using diplomatic pressure on countries across the globe to recognize the independence of Kosovo. So far, the Republic of Kosovo has been recognized by around 102 countries. The US and EU are putting a tremendous political pressure on Serbia to recognize its own occupied province as an independent state using EU membership accession as a “stick and carrot”, combined with various subversive covert activities.
After 19 years of absence of the Serbian authorities in Kosovo, despite the overwhelming international presence with its ambiguous efforts towards democratization of the society and creation of the independence of Kosovo, it has been proved that Kosovo’s issue was not a democratic matter as it was presented to the public, it is a typical historical and geopolitical dispute.
Let us remind ourselves of the little know secret ultimatum from 1991. made by USA, given to President Milošević and to Minister V. Jovanović (Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs) by former US Ambassador Warren Zimmermann: if there would be a conflict in Kosovo (1991), The US would consider Serbia to be responsible for such a conflict, and we will start bombing Belgrade.
This fact proves that America was determined to bombard Serbia in 1991, well before 1998/1999 when the open armed conflict in Kosovo began. John Norris, chief of staff for the International Crisis Group and the director of communications for U.S. Deputy Secretary of Stateduring the Kosovo’s crisis, wrote in his book why was FR Yugoslavia attacked in 1999:
“it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of the political and economic reform-not the plight of Kosovar Albanians-that best explains NATO’s war. Milosevic had been a bur in a side of transatlantic community for so long that the United States felt that he would only respond to military pressure“.
The Kosovo issue is only one part of the old historical confrontation between Serbs and Albanians, therefore it cannot be understood without tracing a pattern of historical developments and it must be observed through broader regional and global geopolitical perspective.
Both Soviet and American secret plans for the forcible dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia targeted the province of Kosovo as the most vulnerable place to start the breakup of the country due to Albanian numerousness and their historical enmity towards Slavs and particularly towards Serbs.
Although Yugoslavia would be torn apart even without foreign interference, due to its inherited ethnic tensions and separatist aspirations, the separatist republics would have lacked military power to achieve independence forcefully.
Considering that only the Yugoslav Army possessed such a power, it could have guaranteed a peaceful and gradual separation as in the case of Czechoslovakia. Both Czechs and Slovaks had similar historical animosities like South Slavs, but in their case the West did not plan a violent destruction like in Yugoslavia, because both countries are projected to be integrated into NATO and the EU very soon upon the separation and both political leaderships agreed to direct their future towards Euro-Atlantic integration.
In the case of Yugoslavia, from Western perspective, Serbs bear a historical countermark as a disobedient, freedom loving, militant “small Russians” of the Balkans, through which Russia will always project its influence in the South East Europe. This historical stance of the Serbs as a “small Russians” has a permanent character among Western strategic thinkers. Consequently, every great or regional power, even former Soviet Union, tends to suppress Serbian factor in the Balkans.
Taking into account that the Western foreign policy agenda, via American influence, is dominated by paranoid obsession with Russia as a global competitor and opponent to Western interests (mainly American national interests), it was deemed necessary to incapacitate and control all countries which might not serve the interests of the West and which might even be used by Russia to project Russian national interests (e.g. South Stream Project).
During the existence of Yugoslavia, particularly during the Cold War, this country represented an important international actor where both super powers have had limited influence over SFR Yugoslavia. Serbs as creators and defenders of Yugoslavia and defenders of diminishing Old World Order, were targeted as the main regional obstacle in implementation of the New World Order doctrine in Southeast Europe. As American and NATO politicians often repeat: we have an unfinished business in the Balkans, meaning that USA led coalition, hasn’t established a full spectrum control of the Balkans due to incapability to forcefully integrate Serbs into Euro-Atlantic community.
Western strategic thinkers and ideologues of the Euro-Atlantic neo-liberal/neo-colonial doctrines, are still trying to integrate Serbs into their “league of extraordinary gentlemen” by using completely wrong means.
Suppressing and destroying Serbia’s national interest will not result in Serbia surrendering to their so-called Western “partners”. A new approach is needed ?
Let’s start fulfilling, instead of suppressing, legitimate and legal Serbian national interests in accordance with international and domestic law, this might be the key for integrating Serbs into the “league of extraordinary gentlemen”?
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Note
[1] UN resolution 1244 reaffirmed sovereignty and territorial integrity of the FR Yugoslavia, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act, and established substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo under supervision by international civilian and security presence. All Yugoslav administrative, military and police personnel were withdrawn from the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (with Trump in 2017) has vowed to push for a wholesale revision of the Japanese constitution, to further boost its military and allow it to play a greater role in global affairs, to be enacted before the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
Can you 
