Global Research

“You road I travel and look around!  I believe you are not all that is here!  I believe that something unseen is also here.”– Walt Whitman, Poem of the Road

Tragic

Jimmy C., age 9, died on the evening of Dec 28, 19** from a gunshot bullet to the heart.  He was shot by his seven-year-old brother Dennis, while, as The New York Times reported, “the two were playing with a rifle in a neighbor’s apartment in the northeast Bronx.”  The boys were visiting with their mother and found the rifle under a bed.  It was loaded and accidently fired, hitting Jimmy in the chest.

Another boy, age ten, was sitting on a closed toilet seat two miles away.  The bathroom was warm and steamy and the boy was talking to his father, for whom he was named. His father was shaving.  An only son with seven sisters, the boy adored his father, and, enclosed in this intimate setting, he felt embraced by his father’s love and protection.  For a young boy to watch his father shave and to converse with him alone about sports was pure heaven.

His father switched on a small transistor radio so they could hear basketball scores.  A report came over the radio that a young boy had been accidently shot and killed by his brother in the Bronx.  Then the names came. They were his brother’s sons. Heaven turned to hell.  His father, half-shaved, toweled his face and ran from the room.  The boy sat there stunned.  When he emerged from the bathroom, his father had already left to comfort and assist his brother, the father of the dead boy.

The ten year old could remember nothing of what followed. It all went blank and was never discussed, as if it never happened.  He was haunted by this void.

Bizarre

A professor was sitting with his secret lover in a college cafeteria.  It was winter and their table was deep into the room by tall windows.  There was snow on the ground.  They were talking about a mutual friend named John because he had been looking at them oddly in recent days and they suspected he might have realized that they were lovers.  Suddenly, John entered the dining hall at the far door.  He saw them and started walking toward their table.  As he approached, the professor said, “Well, look who’s here, if it isn’t the devil himself.  We were just talking about you, John.”

The bespectacled John laughed, said hello to the woman, and sat down next to the professor.  He was so close that when the professor turned to talk to him, he was looking into his right eye, as can happen at a close distance.

Suddenly, what sounded like a gunshot rang out and everyone all around turned toward the tall windows.  The professor quickly turned back to John and said, “I’m sorry, John, I didn’t mean to break your glasses.” The right lens in John’s glasses was shattered.  There was no gunshot, only the power of a look.  The three were stunned.  In the days that followed, John went about seeking answers from physicists and opticians. None could explain it.

Years later, the woman remembered the incident differently, perhaps because she was the odd one out, but the two men were certain that the professor had shattered John’s glasses. Both are still astounded.

John said he was at least glad that the look didn’t kill him.

Spectral

A few years later, a man was wandering around the diamond district in New York City.  It was a Sunday morning and the streets were deserted.  He had come to buy some books at the Gotham Book Mart on West 47^th St., whose slogan was “Wise Men Fish Here.”  Many a famous author had frequented the shop over the years – Eugene O’Neill, J. D Salinger, Dylan Thomas, et al.  It was a cultural treasure whose contents are now archived at the University of Pennsylvania.

The man had arrived too early and the store hadn’t opened, so he aimlessly wandered up and down the empty street, finally stopping to gaze into the window of a large, glass-enclosed jewelry store on the corner.  He walked into the entranceway and looked through the window when he spied a ghost-like figure staring at him through the glass windows from the street.  He tried to avoid looking at this spectral figure, but when he looked up the face was stock-still and staring at him through pale spectacles.  His hair was white and his face its equal.  It gave him a creepy feeling and so he walked out toward the street to confront this pale phantom.  When he got to the street, the strange man met him and, raising a tiny camera, shot him.

The victim of this photographic assault said, “Did I give you permission to take my picture?”

The ghost replied, “Well, you have an interesting face, and I shoot a lot of people.”

“Well, you also have an interesting face, but I didn’t give you permission.  What do you do, go around hunting for interesting people to shoot?”

Andy Warhol shrugged, turned, and faded wraithlike down the vacant street.

The man never saw the photo.  Perhaps it remained a negative.

So much of the past recedes as afterimages, while the road into the future opens out before us shrouded in mystery.

The old question stills applies. Quo vadis?

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Natural England and Natural Resources Wales have mysteriously given the go-ahead for protected species such as robins, starlings, blackbirds and bullfinches to be shot: Licences granted to kill multiple Red-listed species

I say mysteriously, because the reasons given are very strange.

When asked why these licences have been granted, Natural England simply claim the birds are a “threat to public health and air safety” and the slaughter is to “prevent serious damage to livestock”.

It’s somewhat hard to imagine how starlings and robins could ever be a danger to the public or herds of cows.

Of course, the fact that these protected nesting birds are one of the biggest problems facing property developers (*see information below) when they attempt to develop brownfield sites for residential housing is nothing at all to do with the decision.

As, I’m sure, is the fact that the Chair of Natural England, Andrew Sells, also happens to be one of the founders of Linden Homes, a property development business specialising in the development of brownfield sites for residential housing.

Tory government ministers chose Andrew Sells –  a venture capitalist with no experience of ecological or environmental matters – as the Chair of Natural England a few years ago.

A surprise decision which I’m sure was not at all influenced by the fact that Andrew Sells is a major Tory party donor and the fact that property developers in general are some of the Tories’ biggest donors.

No conflicts of interest at all then.

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Note

*All wild birds, their nests and young are protected throughout England and Wales by the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (as amended). It is illegal to kill, injure or take any wild bird, or damage or destroy the nest or eggs of breeding birds.

If nests, whether completed or in the process of being built, are found on site, any works with the potential to damage or destroy the nest, eggs or young birds, must stop until the birds have completed breeding.

Birds may nest on machinery or scaffolding and other temporary site structures. If this happens the equipment cannot be used until the birds have finished nesting and such areas may need to be sealed off to prevent disturbance.

Breaking the law can lead to fines of up to £5000 per offence and potential prison sentences of up to six months. Vehicles implicated in an offence can be compounded and both the company, and/or the individual(s) concerned, can be held liable.

Featured image is from Pride’s Purge

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.”  So explained Chelsea Manning in justifying her refusal to answer questions and comply with a grand jury subpoena compelling her to testify on her knowledge of WikiLeaks. 

“Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical obligations to the grand jury system.” 

Manning, whose 35-year sentence was commuted by the Obama administration in an act of seeming leniency, is indivisibly linked to the WikiLeaks legacy of disclosure.  She was the source, and the bridge, indispensable for giving Julian Assange and his publishing outfit the gold dust that made names and despoiled others. 

The sense of dredging and re-dredging in efforts to ensnare Manning is palpable.  She insists that she had shared all that she knew at her court-martial, a point made clear by the extensive if convoluted nature of the prosecution’s effort to build a case. 

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I tesified [sic] for almost a full day about these events.  I stand by my previous testimony.” 

Before Friday’s hearing, she also reiterated that she had invoked the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment protections.

Grand juries have gone musty.  Conceived in 12^th century England as a feudalistic guardian against unfair prosecution, they became bodies of self-regulating and policing freemen (often barons with a gripe) charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing.  Doing so provided a preliminary step in recommending whether the accused needed to go court. The US Constitution retains this element with the Fifth Amendment: that no “person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.”  

The independence of that body of peers has been clipped, modified and fundamentally influenced by the prosecutor’s guiding hand.  The federal grand jury has essentially become a body easily wooed by the prosecutor in closed settings where grooming and convincing are easy matters. The prosecutor can also be comforted by that level of procedural secrecy that keeps the process beyond prying eyes; Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) makes the point that the jurors and government attorneys “must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury.”  Sealed and confined, the participants accordingly forge a narrative that tends to encourage, rather than dissuade a finding, of guilt. 

That influence is hard to deny, leading to reluctance on the part of any empaneled grand jury to reject the plausibility of a prosecutor’s claims.  The US Bureau of Statistics, looking at 2010 figures on the prosecution of 162,000 federal cases, found that grand juries only failed to return an indictment in 11 cases.  As Gordon Griller of the National Centre for State Courts reasoned,

“The problem with the grand jury system is the jury.  The prosecutor has complete control over what is presented to the grand jury and expects the grand jurors to just rubber stamp every case brought before it.”

Manning’s other relevant point is that the grand jury process has, invariably, been given the weaponry to target dissenters and corner contrarians. 

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

Manning explained to US District Judge Claude Hilton that she would (think Socrates, hemlock, the like) “accept whatever you bring upon me”.  When her defence team insisted that she be confined to home, given specific needs of gender-affirming healthcare, the judge was unconvinced.  US marshals were more than up to the task (how is never stated), though certain “details about Ms Manning’s confinement,” claim Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, “will not be made public due to security and privacy concerns.”   

She will be confined till the conclusion of the investigation, or till she feels ready to comply with the subpoena.  Manning’s defence counsel Moira Meltzer-Cohen is convinced that the very act of jailing Manning is one of state-sanctioned cruelty.

There is a distinct note of the sinister in this resumption of hounding a whistleblower; yet again, Manning must show that the virtues of a cause and the merits of an open system demand a level of cruel sacrifice.  “This ain’t my first rodeo,” she told her lawyer with some reflection. 

This rodeo is one dogged by problems.  Manning’s original conviction was a shot across the bow, the prelude to something fundamental.  Journalists long protected for using leaked material under the First Amendment were going to become future targets of prosecution.  Such instincts have seeped into the US governing class like stubborn damp rot; consider, for instance, the remarks of Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2012 on the issue of leaks discussed in The New York Times.  Having published details of the Obama administration’s “Kill List” and US-orchestrated cyber-attacks against Iran, the paper had “caused serious harm to US national security and… should be prosecuted accordingly.”  While The Grey Lady might prefer to distance itself from WikiLeaks in journalistic company, prosecuting authorities see little difference.

This latest rotten business also demonstrates the unequivocal determination of US authorities to fetter, if not totally neutralise, the reach of WikiLeaks in the modern information wars.  Having been either tongue-tired or reticent, US officials, notably those in the Alexandria office, have revealed what WikiLeaks regarded as obvious some years ago: that a grand jury is keen to soften the road to prosecution.    

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

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

The United Nations postponed last week for the third time the publication of a blacklist of Israeli and international firms that profit directly from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

The international body had come under enormous pressure to keep the database under wraps after lobbying behind the scenes from Israel, the United States and many of the 200-plus companies that were about to be named.

UN officials have suggested they may go public with the list in a few months.

But with no progress since the UN’s Human Rights Council requested the database back in early 2016, Palestinian leaders are increasingly fearful that it has been permanently shelved.

That was exactly what Israel hoped for. When efforts were first made to publish the list in 2017, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, warned:

“We will do everything we can to ensure that this list does not see the light of day.”

He added that penalising the settlements was “an expression of modern antisemitism”.

Both Israel and the US pulled out of the Human Rights Council last year, claiming that Israel was being singled out.

Israel has good reason to fear greater transparency. Bad publicity would most likely drive many of these firms, a few of them household names, out of the settlements under threat of a consumer backlash and a withdrawal of investments by religious organisations and pension funds.

The UN has reportedly already warned Coca-Cola, Teva Pharmaceuticals, the defence electronics company Elbit Systems and Africa Israel Investments of their likely inclusion. Israeli telecoms and utility companies are particularly exposed because grids serving the settlements are integrated with those in Israel.

There is an added danger that the firms might be vulnerable to prosecutions, should the International Crimimal Court at The Hague eventually open an investigation into whether the settlements constitute a war crime, as the Palestinian leadership has demanded.

The exodus of these firms from the West Bank would, in turn, make it much harder for Israel to sustain its colonies on stolen Palestinian land. As a result, efforts to advance a Palestinian state would be strengthened.

Many of the settlements – contrary to widely held impressions of them – have grown into large towns. Their inhabitants expect all the comforts of modern life, from local bank branches to fast-food restaurants and high-street clothing chains.

Nowadays, a significant proportion of Israel’s 750,000 settlers barely understand that their communities violate international law.

The settlements are also gradually being integrated into the global economy, as was highlighted by a row late last year when Airbnb, an accommodation-bookings website, announced a plan to de-list properties in West Bank settlements.

The company was possibly seeking to avoid inclusion on the database, but instead it faced a severe backlash from Israel’s supporters.

This month the US state of Texas approved a ban on all contracts with Airbnb, arguing that the online company’s action was “antisemitic”.

As both sides understand, a lot hangs on the blacklist being made public.

If Israel and the US succeed, and western corporations are left free to ignore the Palestinians’ dispossession and suffering, the settlements will sink their roots even deeper into the West Bank. Israel’s occupation will become ever more irreversible, and the prospect of a Palestinian state ever more distant.

A 2013 report on the ties between big business and the settlements noted the impact on the rights of Palestinians was “pervasive and devastating”.

Sadly, the UN leadership’s cowardice on what should be a straightforward matter – the settlements violate international law, and firms should not assist in such criminal enterprises – is part of a pattern.

Repeatedly, Israel has exerted great pressure on the UN to keep its army off a “shame list” of serious violators of children’s rights. Israel even avoided a listing in 2015 following its 50-day attack on Gaza the previous year, which left more than 500 Palestinian children dead. Dozens of armies and militias are named each year.

The Hague court has also been dragging its feet for years over whether to open a proper war crimes investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza, as well as the settlements.

The battle to hold Israel to account is likely to rage again this year, after the publication last month of a damning report by UN legal experts into the killing of Palestinian protesters at Gaza’s perimeter fence by Israeli snipers.

Conditions for Gaza’s two million Palestinians have grown dire since Israel imposed a blockade, preventing movement of goods and people, more than a decade ago.

The UN report found that nearly all of those killed by the snipers – 154 out of 183 – were unarmed. Some 35 Palestinian children were among the dead, and of the 6,000 wounded more than 900 were minors. Other casualties included journalists, medical personnel and people with disabilities.

The legal experts concluded that there was evidence of war crimes. Any identifiable commanders and snipers, it added, should face arrest if they visited UN member states.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, dismissed the report as “lies” born out of “an obsessive hatred of Israel”.

Certainly, it has caused few ripples in western capitals. Britain’s opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was a lone voice in calling for an arms embargo on Israel in response.

It is this Israeli exceptionalism that is so striking. The more violent Israel becomes towards the Palestinians and the more intransigent in rejecting peace, the less pressure is exerted upon it.

Not only does Israel continue to enjoy generous financial, military and diplomatic support from the US and Europe, both are working ever harder to silence criticisms of its actions by their own citizens.

As the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement grows larger, western capitals have casually thrown aside commitments to free speech in a bid to crush it.

France has already criminalised support for a boycott of Israel, and its president Emmanuel Macron recently proposed making it illegal to criticise Zionism, the ideology that underpins Israel’s rule over Palestinians.

More than two dozen US states have passed anti-BDS legislation, denying companies and individual contractors dealing with the government of that particular state the right to boycott Israel. In every case, Israel is the only country protected by these laws. Last month, the US Senate passed a bill that adds federal weight to this state-level campaign of intimidation.

The hypocrisy of these states – urging peace in the region while doing their best to subvert it – is clear. Now the danger is that UN leaders will join them.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A recent article by Andrew Sullivan in the New York magazine considers how one might discuss the issue of Israel and its powerful domestic lobby without being accused of anti-Semitism. Sullivan is a keen observer of the dynamics of American political power and the article pretty clearly lays out why the relationship with Israel is poison for the United States, but he cautions that words matter and one has to be careful about the packaging surrounding any critique of the Israel Lobby and its American Jewish supporters.

Sullivan begins with:

“Let’s get this out of the way first: Using the phrases ‘all about the Benjamins’ and ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ when referring to the Israel lobby in D.C., as freshman Democratic representative Ilhan Omar recently did, is anti-Semitic. It should be possible to criticize Washington’s relationship with Israel without deploying crude and freighted language like this.”

And that is precisely where some critics of the Israel-America relationship might have a problem with observers like Sullivan as what for him passes as “crude and freighted” is for others frankness. Okay, “all about the Benjamins” is slang and the implication is that Jewish money is what has corrupted American politics and the media to stifle any honest discussion on Israel-Palestine and to skew U.S. government activity in the Middle East so that it favors what Israel perceives to be its own interests. This process operates right out in the open with Israel-firster Jewish billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban respectively serving as principal donors for the Republican and Democratic parties.

From left to right: Haim Saban, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. Credit: Milsteinff.org

This flood of  pro-Israeli money into foreign policy generation has done incalculable damage to the actual interests of the United States as Sullivan, to his credit, makes clear in his article. The point is that politics in America is all about money and Ilhan Omar was quite right to make that connection. Most congress-critters do not love Israel because they honestly like the hordes of lobbyists that it is able to send their way. In fact, many of them privately complain about the pressure, but they do love the campaign donations and the lucrative sinecure jobs in the financial services industry that come with their retirements. And they also know that if they cross Israeli interests while in office they will soon be unemployed.

And as for the “allegiance to a foreign country,” how else does one describe doing everything possible to favor a foreign state at the expense of the nation where one lives? Sullivan himself provides ample evidence in his article that the one-way relationship with Israel inflicts major damage on the United States and that the enabling of that process comes from a disciplined and well-funded lobbying effort that operates at all levels of government and also through the media. Is that not allegiance to a foreign country?

After expressing the “thou shalt nots” regarding Israel, Andrew Sullivan pulls no punches in his article, which should be read in extenso. He writes “The basic facts are not really in dispute. A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S.” and then goes on to detail exactly how Israel is a major liability to America. He discusses the $3.8 billion it receives annually in spite of the fact that is a wealthy country, its failure to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, its unwillingness to curtail a brutal occupation of the West Bank, its humiliation of President Obama because he entered into an agreement with Iran, and its nearly complete subjugation of Congress, congressional leaders and the White House.

Sullivan fails to mention how Israel also spies on the United States, steals U.S. developed technology and benefits hugely from beneficial trade agreements that kill American jobs. And there are also the “suspected but not proven” issues like Israel’s role in 9/11, its apparent manipulation of Jewish American officials in the Pentagon to start the disastrous 2003 war with Iraq, and its current clandestine agitation for Washington to attack Iran. Jewish billionaires also are the prime sources of “charitable” contributions that feed the illegal settlement outposts on the West Bank populated largely by fundamentalist Jews whose prime mission is to make the lives of their Palestinian neighbors so miserable that they will emigrate. That is sometimes referred to as ethnic cleansing. Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the key components of the Trump Administration Middle East “peace” team, are all passionate about Israel and have all supported the illegal settlements. Friedman, in particular, has sought to eliminate the word “occupation” from official U.S. government descriptions of the Israeli activity in Palestinian areas.

Image on the right: Andrew Sullivan. Image credit: Geoff Livingston/ flickr

And then there is the Israeli predilection to use unarmed Palestinian demonstrators for target practice and to bomb schools and vital infrastructure in Gaza, which once upon a time most Americans would have considered war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Sullivan does mention how Congress is willing to pass legislation to restrict freedom of speech if such speech involves criticism of Israel, noting that the very first bill to come up in the Senate after the recent shutdown was supporting the punishment of those who advocate nonviolent boycotting of Israel. He might have added how Israel’s friends at state and local levels are pushing to rewrite world history texts to eliminate any references to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. And holocaust study is becoming mandatory in many U.S. school systems without any suggestion that the standard narrative might be in large part bogus. And then there are the holocaust museums springing up like mushrooms at the taxpayers’ expense. Is it all driven by money and enabled by the power that money buys to propagandize for Israel? And is it maybe just a bit of allegiance to a foreign country? Yes indeed, thank you, Ilhan Omar, for saying so.

All of this warm and fuzzy feeling about Israel did not happen by magic. By one estimate there are 600 Christian and Jewish organizations in the United States that have at least part of their agendas the promotion of the relationship with Israel. Christian Zionists are formidable in numbers but the money, as well as the political and media access that drive the so-called Israel Lobby process, is Jewish. The directors and presidents of those organizations meet regularly and discuss what they can do to help Israel. How does one describe such collusion? Some might prefer to call it a conspiracy.

So how should one view the dystopic nature of the relationship with Israel? No one has ever described it better than America’s first president George Washington. In his Farewell Address he wrote:

“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest…So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”

Andrew Sullivan concludes with some optimism and also a warning, which should be heeded: “Can our current controversy lead to a less inhibited debate? I sure hope so. Will that actually happen? All I can say is that AIPAC will wield all the power it can muster to prevent it.” It is, to be sure, AIPAC versus all decent Americans and one has to hope that this time the voice of the people will be heard in defense of the actual interests of the United States of America rather than those of Israel.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

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

Featured image is from Carlos Latuff/ Twitter/ Mintpressnews.com

It’s the second, but no less ludicrous, attempt in one week to sway the opinion of the public and President Donald Trump against the concept of denuclearization and peaceful dialogue with North Korea.

A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity.

I. Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch

Images provided to NPR by private contractor DigitalGlobe consist of two low resolution images, one of a building in the Sanumdong complex and the other of a train sitting along a rail line. In neither photo is there any discernible amount of unusual activity.

Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Alyson Hurt/NPR

The first image of a “production hall” bears a striking resemblance to a similar photo run by the Washington Post in July 2018 where unnamed intelligence officials claimed that North Korea was building one or possibly two liquid fueled ICBMs which appear to have never materialized or been used in any launch. The claims came one month after President Trump met with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit between the United States and the DPRK.

NPR’s claims that the imagery shows “vehicle activity” occurring around the facility. Yet close inspection shows that the “activity” consists of a few inert vehicles, which appear to be a white pickup and white dump truck or flatbed parked in a permanent position next to piles of metal. The scene does not appear to be different from any number of sleepy yards of businesses that can be examined by members of the public on Google Maps.

Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Koko Nakajima/NPR

The second image, according to NPR, shows rail cars sitting “in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.” The photo simply shows a train car sitting inert with empty flatbed cars and hopper cars that are either filled with coal or empty. A second rail line similarly holds a number of hoppers and flatbed cars. Hopper cars in particular are totally unsuitable for the transportation of military technology such as missiles.

The tracks in the lower left corner are covered in snow, meaning that the train sat for many months through the winter or was backed into its position. Considering that US and international sanctions have caused an extreme scarcity of fuel in the DPRK it is likely that the trains have not moved for quite some time, unless their diesel engines were converted to burn coal or wood.

In short, there is absolutely no indication that several low resolution photos of a facility in North Korea have any activity in them outside of a few rusting vehicles that have sat without moving for some time.

II. NPR’s Sources Of Satellite Imagery Are Contractors For The CIA And Pentagon

The report by NPR lists two sources of satellite imagery – DigitalGlobe, Inc. and Planet Labs, Inc. As Disobedient Media has previously reported, DigitalGlobe is an American vendor of satellite imagery founded by a scientist who worked on the US military’s Star Wars ICBM defense program under President Ronald Reagan. DigitalGlobe began its existence in Oakland, CA and was seeded with money from Silicon Valley sources and corporations in North America, Europe and Japan. Headquartered in Westminster CO, DigitalGlobe works extensively with defense and intelligence programs. In 2016, it was revealed that DigitalGlobe was working with CIA chipmaker NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services to create an AI-run satellite surveillance network known as Spacenet.

Planet Labs is a private satellite imaging corporation based in San Francisco, Ca. that allows customers with the money to pay an opportunity to gain access to next generation surveillance capabilities. In February 2016, Federal technology news source Nextgov noted a statement from former CIA Information Operations Center director and senior cyber adviser Sue Gordon that Planet Labs, DigitalGlobe and Google subsidiary Skybox Imaging were all working with the Pentagon’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide location intelligence. Planet Labs’ own website also lists press releases detailing past contracts for subscription access to high resolution imagery with the NGA.

The pervasive involvement of intelligence agencies and defense contractors in attempts to undermine negotiations with North Korea does not create confidence in the already shaky claims made by NPR regarding alleged preparations by the DPRK to participate in a missile launch. These contentions are not supported in substance by any tangible facts. As claims and pressure continue to build on President Donald Trump to abandon the peace process, there are multiple factions of the United States government who are running a real risk of behaving in manners which could be interpreted as open sedition or refusal to carry out the stated goals and policies of the President.

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Featured image is from Disobedient Media

Though way too early to judge her after barely over two months in Congress, her forthright outspokenness is encouraging. She supported what demanded rejection – HR 676, the NATO Support Act, banning use of federal funds for withdrawal, requiring the US to remain a member in good standing, prohibiting withdrawal from the alliance, a killing machine used by Washington to rape and destroy nations.

She backed HJ Res. 30, opposing executive actions with regard to (illegal) sanctions on Russia. The Security Council alone may legally impose them on nations, not individual states against others.

Along with other House members, she condemned Trump regime efforts to undermine Puerto Rico’s recovery from devastation caused by Hurricane Maria, striking the island in September 2017.

She supported HR 790 – the  Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019, calling for a 2.6% increase for federal employees.

She co-sponsored HJ Res. 37, calling for removal of US (special) forces from Yemen within 30 days of enactment of the legislation.

She co-sponsored HJ Res. 46 – opposing Trump’s Feb.15, 2019-declared national emergency along the US/Mexico border when none exists. The measure calls for terminating it.

In a letter to Mike Pompeo, she and other signatories “express(ed) deep concern about credible reports that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have transferred US-origin military equipment and weapons to al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in Yemen in direct violation of existing arms agreements with the US” – backed by Trump regime hardliners.

She supported HR 183, condemning anti-Semitism, bigotry, and anti-Muslim discrimination – a watered-down measure accomplishing nothing.

Her website bio explained she’s a Somalia national. Her family fled the country (targeted by the US for decades) when she was age-eight.

They lived in a Kenya refugee camp for four years before emigrating to the US, settling in a Minneapolis suburb.

Omar’s interest in politics began at age-14. In high school, she was an “organizer” and “coalition builder,” at the University of Minnesota, a “community educator” involved in “progressive activis(m).”

She supports issues relating to “support for working families, educational access, environmental protection, and racial equity.”

She’s one of two Muslim women in the House (along with Rashida Tlaib), the first two ever, the first Somali/American congresswoman.

In 2016, Omar was the first female Muslim legislator in the US, serving as a Minnesota state representative.

Her website bio calls her “an accomplished legislator, policy analyst, community organizer, non-profit leader, public speaker, board member, youth mentor, and an award-winning human rights advocate.”

As a Minnesota state legislator, she served on committees relating to civil law, higher education, as well as state policy and finance.

She chaired the state’s Young Women’s Initiative, along with serving as Policy, Women Organizing Women director, Child  Nutrition Outreach Coordinator, and Community Nutrition Educator at the University of Minnesota.

She’s a former Minnesota Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) advisory board member, a former Minnesota NAACP vice president, a Human Rights & Women’s Advocate member, a Legal Rights Center board member, along with other community activities.

She opposes Trump’s ban on Muslims from the wrong countries. A recipient of numerous awards for public service, she supports world peace, equity and justice.

What’s more important than that. Her website endorses “peace & prosperity,” saying:

“We must end the state of continuous war, as these wars have made us less safe…(W)e are currently in the midst of an extreme global migration crisis.”

“Meanwhile at home, there have been increasingly cuts to spending on healthcare, infrastructure, education, and housing.”

“We must scale back US military activities, and reinvest our expansive military budget back into our communities…(in) healthcare, education, housing, jobs, clean energy, and infrastructure.”

“We are currently engaged in a number of wars that have no end in sight—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.”

She omitted US involvement in Israeli wars on Palestinians and neighboring countries, along with intermittent Ukraine war on Donbass.

US “wars have destabilized regions, created massive humanitarian crises, and continue to hurt our image across the world. We must end these wars.”

She called for “repeal(ing) harmful sanctions…oppos(ing) all US intervention(s) into” other countries. She tweeted the following on Venezuela:

“A US backed coup in (the country) is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support (efforts) to facilitate a peaceful dialogue.”

She opposes jobs-destroying, anti-consumer, anti-environmental trade deals, supporting programs for workers displaced by NAFTA and similar deals.

She outspokenly backs Palestinian rights, criticizing Israeli apartheid viciousness, falsely called anti-Semitic for being on the right side of this issue.

“I will use my voice in Congress and work with communities on the ground to center the ultimate goal of (Palestinian) self-determination and peace,” she said.

She supports Palestinians “demanding an end to the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and end the siege of Gaza…oppos(ing) the killing of civilians in Gaza and the expansion of settlements into the West Bank” and East Jerusalem.

Omar and scant few others are voices in the wilderness among House and Senate members.

The vast majority support dirty business as usual, opposing what she backs and promotes.

The power of AIPAC and other big money already targeted her for elimination, sure to challenge her in 2020 and future elections if she retains her seat next November. That’s how the dirty system works.

Note: Omar was quoted accusing Obama of “murder,” adding he hid behind a “pretty face and the smile.” He stood for the status quo, not real “hope and change.”

“We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

She then backtracked, claiming her remarks were distorted, saying “I’m an Obama fan.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from MPR News

This article first appeared in Izvestia in March of 2015.

On March 11, 2006, President Slobodan Milosevic died in a NATO prison. No one has been held accountable for his death. In the 10 years since the end of his lonely struggle to defend himself and his country against the false charges invented by the NATO powers, the only country to demand a public inquiry into the circumstances of his death came from Russia when Foreign Minister, Serge Lavrov, stated that Russia did not accept the Hague tribunal’s denial of responsibility and demanded that an impartial and international investigation be conducted. Instead, The NATO tribunal made its own investigation, known as the Parker Report, and as expected, exonerated itself from all blame.

But his death cannot lie unexamined, the many questions unanswered, those responsible unpunished. The world cannot continue to accept the substitution of war and brutality for peace and diplomacy. It cannot continue to tolerate governments that have contempt for peace, for humanity, the sovereignty of nations, the self-determination of peoples, and the rule of law.

The death of Slobodan Milosevic was clearly the only way out of the dilemma the NATO powers had put themselves in by charging him before the Hague tribunal. The propaganda against him was of an unprecedented scale. The trial was played in the press as one of the world’s great dramas, as world theatre in which an evil man would be made to answer for his crimes. But of course, there had been no crimes, except those of the NATO alliance, and the attempt to fabricate a case against him collapsed into farce.

The trial was necessary from NATO’s point of view in order to justify the aggression against Yugoslavia and the putsch by the DOS forces in Belgrade supported by NATO, by which democracy in Yugoslavia was finally destroyed and Serbia reduced to a NATO protectorate under a Quisling regime. His illegal arrest, by NATO forces in Belgrade, his illegal detention in Belgrade Central Prison, his illegal rendition to the former Gestapo prison at Scheveningen, near The Hague, and the show trial that followed, were all part of the drama played out for the world public, and it could only have one of two endings, the conviction, or the death, of President Milosevic.

Since the conviction of President Milosevic was clearly not possible after all the evidence was heard, his death became the only way out for the NATO powers. His acquittal would have brought down the entire structure of the propaganda framework of the NATO war machine and the western interests that use it as their armed fist.

NATO clearly did not expect President Milosevic to defend himself, nor with such courage and determination. The media coverage of the beginning of the trial was constant and front page. It was promised that it would be the trial of the century. Yet soon after it began the media coverage stopped and the trial was buried in the back pages. Things had gone terribly wrong for Nato right at the start. The key to the problem is the following statement of President Milosevic made to the judges of the Tribunal during the trial:

“This is a political trial. What is at issue here is not at all whether I committed a crime. What is at issue is that certain intentions are ascribed to me from which consequences are later derived that are beyond the expertise of any conceivable lawyer. The point here is that the truth about the events in the former Yugoslavia has to be told here. It is that which is at issue, not the procedural questions, because I’m not sitting here because I was accused of a specific crime. I’m sitting here because I am accused of conducting a policy against the interests of this or another party.”

The prosecution, that is the United States and its allies, had not expected a real defence of any kind. This is clear from the inept indictments, confused charges, and the complete failure to bring any evidence that could withstand even basic scrutiny. The prosecution case fell apart as soon as it began. But once started, it had to continue. Nato was locked into a box of its own making. If they dropped the charges, or if he was acquitted, the political and geostrategic ramifications were enormous. Nato would have to explain the real reasons for the aggression against Yugoslavia. Its leaders themselves would face war crimes charges. The loss of prestige cannot be calculated. President Milosevic would once again be a popular political figure in the Balkans. The only way out for NATO was to end the trial but without releasing Milosevic or admitting the truth about the war. This logic required his death in prison and the abandonment of the trial.

The Parker Report contains facts indicating that, at a minimum, the Nato Tribunal engaged in conduct that was criminal regarding his treatment and that conduct resulted in his death. The Tribunal was told time and again that he was gravely ill with heart problems that needed proper investigation, treatment and complete rest before engaging in a trial. However, the Tribunal continually ignored the advice of the doctors and pushed him to keep going with the trial, knowing full well that the stress of the trial would certainly kill him.

The Tribunal refused prescribed medical treatment in Russia seemingly for political reasons and once again put the Tribunal’s interests, whatever they are, ahead of Milosevic’s health. In other words they deliberately withheld necessary medical treatment that could have lead to his death. This is a form of homicide and is manslaughter in the common law jurisdictions.

However, there are several unexplained facts contained in the Parker Report that need further investigation before ruling out poison or drugs designed to harm his health: the presence of the drugs rifampicin and droperidol in his system being the two key ones. No proper investigation was conducted as to how these drugs could have been introduced into his body. No consideration was given to their effect. Their presence combined with the unexplained long delay in getting his body to a medical facility for tests raises serious questions that need to be answered but which until today remain unanswered.

The Parker Report, despite its illogical conclusions, exonerating the Nato tribunal from blame, provides the basis for a call for a public inquiry into the death of President Milosevic. This is reinforced by the fact that the Commandant of the UN prison where President Milosevic was held, a Mr. McFadden, was, according to documents exposed by Wikileaks, supplying information to the US authorities about Milosevic throughout his detention and trial, and is further reinforced by the fact that Milosevic wrote a letter to the Russian Embassy a few days before his death stating that he believed he was being poisoned. Unfortunately he died before the letter could be delivered in time for a response.

All these facts taken together demand that a public international inquiry be held into the entirety of the circumstances of the death of President Milosevic, not only for his sake and the sake of his widow Mira Markovic and his son, but for the sake of all of us who face the constant aggressive actions and propaganda of the NATO powers. Justice requires it. International peace and security demand it.

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Featured image is from One Voyce of the World

“Tell me who you cannot criticize and I will tell you who is your master”. Attributed to Voltaire.

Saying anything negative about Israel has long been the third rail of US politics and media.  Israel is our nation’s most sacred cow.  Any questioning of its behavior brings furious charges of anti-Semitism and professional oblivion.

I keep in my bookcase a cautionary book, ‘They Dared Speak Out’ written by US senators and congressmen who all lost their positions after rebuking Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians or daring to suggest that Israel had far too much influence in the US.

Journalists learn this first commandment very early.  Criticize, or even question, Israel at your own peril.   Until recently, we journalists were not even allowed to write there was an ‘Israel lobby.’  It was widely considered Washington’s most powerful lobby group but, until lately, mentioning its name was seriously verboten.

Now, young Democratic stars Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a feisty congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, have suddenly broken the taboo and said what dared not be said: there is too much rightwing Israeli influence and there must be justice for Palestine.

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have come to the defense of Ilhan Omar against the usual charges that she is anti-Semitic.  So have black groups and smaller liberal Jewish groups.  The Democratic Party, that once received half its financial support from Jewish sources, is badly split over the Palestine crisis.  Its old guard is retreating and does not know what to do beyond issuing fiery denunciations of the heretical Miss Omar.  The Democrat Party split comes just at a time when it is trying to bring down President Donald Trump.

Many people seem unaware that Islam is now America’s third largest religion and may soon surpass the number of Jews.  In Canada, Muslims are already the second religion.

Ilhan is not anti-Semitic.  I grew up in New York and New England where vicious anti-Semitism abounded.  I know real anti-Semitism when I see it.  But she is quite right in charging that vast amounts of pro-Israel money have bought Congress and the media.

Sheldon Adelson, the pro-Israel casino tycoon, has given well over $100 million to the Republican Party and its leaders.  This money comes from legal gambling, a sickness that preys on addicts and the unfortunate.

In the 1700’s, Dr. Samuel Johnson well defined lotteries and gambling as ‘a tax on fools.’  Such is the source of Adelson’s billions and his influence over the US political process.  He is also the primary financier of Israel’s prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, who now faces serious charges of corruption.

Interestingly, Britain faces a similar political storm.  Its left-leaning Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, has called for justice for the Palestinians and a viable state for them.  Britain’s pro-Israel groups and media have launched furious counterattacks on Corbyn and his allies, barraging them with false accusations of being anti-Semitic.  This is utter nonsense.  To find real anti-Semitism in Britain you need look into the recesses of the Conservative Party.  I’ve seen its ugly face.

Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinians has sparked bitter anti-Israel sentiments across Europe.  Not so much in America, where media leans far over to Israel’s side and evangelical Christians have been bamboozled into believing that a Greater Israel is somehow necessary for the Second Coming.

But young Americans, and even more so Europeans, are increasingly hearing the call of justice for Palestine.  They want no truck with Israel’s right-wingers, whom many leftist Israelis, including the late great writer, Uri Avnery, brand ‘fascists.’

The prescient and courageous Pat Buchanan said it years ago: the US Congress was ‘Israeli occupied territory.’  His political career was ruined.

So was my mother’s career. She was one of the first American female journalists to cover the Mideast in the early 1950’s.  After extensively reporting the unknown fact that there were nearly one million Palestinian refugees driven from the new state of Israel, she was silenced by advertisers pulling ads from the papers she wrote for and, finally, threats to throw acid in my face.  Her career was ruined.

So I say to Ms. Omar and the other brave ladies, full speed ahead.  Damn the torpedoes.  Do what is good for the world and your country.  Break the hold of big money over our republic.

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Eric S. Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results

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I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to begin dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.

The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”

The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline. Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.

Number 4: The Spanish-American War

This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.

And as The New York Times noted,

“[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”

I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”

Number 3: The Vietnam War

Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.

That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination.

The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.

The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.

Number 2: The Iraq War

Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”

Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.

But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.

“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”

And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”

That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.

(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)

Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about war with Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”

I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.

“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”

Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.

Number 1: The Bombing of Syria

President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.

So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.

Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.

His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”

The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.

For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.

On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.

The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”

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Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.

An exclusive video quoted by The New York Times contradicts the US statement that the Venezuelan government set fire to an aid convoy last month on the border with Colombia.

An article signed by journalists of the newspaper in Colombia and New York states that the video ‘casts doubt’ on the culpability imputed to Venezuelans.

Senior US officials said Nicolás Maduro‘s regime burned an aid convoy last month. Our exclusive video contradicts that claim and shows how this unverified information was spread through Twitter and television, the Times says.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote that ‘the tyrant in Caracas danced’ while his henchmen ‘burned food and medicine’, says the New York newspaper.

The State Department published a video that said Maduro ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition has halted images of burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of the alleged cruelty of the Venezuelan leader, the newspaper said.

‘But there is a problem’, he clarifies, ‘the opposition itself, not Maduro’s men, seems to have set the load on fire accidentally.’

The unpublished images obtained by The New York Times and the previously published films, including the images shown by the Colombian government, which blamed Maduro for the fire, allowed a reconstruction of the incident.

He suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an anti-government protester was the most likely trigger for the fire, he stresses.

Describes the publication that at a given moment, a homemade bomb made of a bottle was thrown at the police blocking a bridge that connects Colombia and Venezuela to prevent the aid trucks from arriving.

But, the rag used to light the Molotov cocktail is separated from the bottle by flying towards the help truck. Half a minute later, that truck is on fire, he details.

The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire, he adds.

The burning of the aid last month, reason for a broad condemnation to the Venezuelan government, arguments that today arouse doubts and that the video attributes to people linked to actions that the White House promoted to justify an aggression against Venezuela.

The Times article questions the validity of several of the arguments used to attack Maduro’s government, including actions to prevent the entry of drugs.

The Times notes that the United States Agency for International Development, the main provider of aid on the bridge, did not include medicines among its donations.

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Featured image is from Prensa Latina

I looked down at the food on my plate, and wished I hadn’t just heard PBS’s News anchor Judy Woodruff report that the war in Yemen had already caused 85,000 children to starve to death. She read the one liner with emphasis on the number, but almost without taking a breath, went on to a local news item, as if the 85,000 dead kids had nothing to do with her American audience. Problem for me is I had already known for years that a murderous, even genocidal bombing by a Saudi Arabian coalition is USA backed, that U.S. military jets refuel those coalition bombers and fighter jets, and US military personnel are involved in running the high tech targeting systems using US missiles and guided bombs sold to the Saudis, who have agreed to buy ever more billions of dollars worth.

I put my fork down, and stared at a framed photo of my four year old great granddaughter on the wall. I thought, most every one of those 85,000 were an adorable child, and had siblings, moms and dads and other family members and friends who loved them.

I remembered reading that cholera had come with the US backed Saudi bombing, and that cholera is a virulent infection which can kill within a few hours time. I recall reading that Saudi aerial bombardment of the national electrical grid had left the Sana’a wastewater plant without power causing untreated wastewater to leak out into irrigation canals and drinking water supplies. In 2017, I had read of a million cases of cholera reported.

But a month ago, that ghastly report of a year and half ago was updated to 85,000 precious Yemeni children dead of starvation or malnutrition. That’s when I first heard it, and when I finally picked up my fork and shoveled in a mouthful of some still warm mashed potatoes, I held it in my mouth before swallowing as I pictured a Yemeni child, the bones of its rib cage sticking out from a taut sunken in belly. I got up from the table. Took a break. Looked out the window at the moon between the clouds.

Then I went to the computer and brought up the article I had written six months earlier as below and read the introduction.

3rd World must demand justice for her kids! Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s, cry “God bless America? No, no, God damn America for her crimes against humanity!” And American film maker Michael Moore’s “sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.” OpEdNews, August 31, 2018 Minority Perspective, Birmingham, UK, Counter Currents, Kerala, India

It didn’t make me feel any better. I felt I had failed to make any difference.

I ate my now cold dinner while thinking of writing this tract that poses the title’s question: ‘How does one enjoy one’s dinner knowing that fellow Americans are still causing thousands more beautiful Yemeni children to die, blown apart or starved from lack of food and clean water because of the bombing?’

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Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

Featured image is from YemenPress

We can not have Peace and Democracy if we accept the Lies and Crimes which deny us Peace and Democracy.

Some of the Lies are foundational to the “War on Terror”, which itself is a lie. Al Qaeda, for example, is not responsible for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center buildings.  To believe so would be to believe in miracles, fairy tales. It is a fabricated “belief” instilled in us by those who are criminally misgoverning us, those who seek to create evidence-free “truths” to serve their nefarious, anti-democratic agendas.

Al Qaeda is a scapegoat being used to protect the real culprits who in fact use al Qaeda as “strategic tools/proxies” to destroy non-belligerent countries such as Syria, all in the name of going after ISIS, which are also “strategic tools/proxies”[1].

Enemies of the people need to divert attention away from themselves. All fascist and imperialist ideologies demand this. They also demand racism and they fabricate supremacist ideologies. “We” are better than the “other”, hence, we can destroy the other for our perceived needs, all in the name of additional fabricated lies: “humanitarianism”, “freedom” and “democracy”.[2]

The notion that Venezuela is in Canada’s “global backyard”[3]is a classic supremacist, imperialist, fascist idea, as expressed by the Canadian government, which seeks to fabricate “truths” about Venezuela so that we can continue to wage criminal economic warfare against Venezuela and its peoples and so that we can continue to destroy this country, led by democratically-elected president Maduro.

The real enemies facing Canadians are not the democratically-elected governments of President Assad and President Maduro. The real enemy is concealed from view because it is toxic. The enemy is the dictatorship of predatory bailed out monopoly capitalism that tells us that building war ships[4]is more important than building alternate energy infrastructure. The real enemies are the publicly bailed-out monopolies, Big Media, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. that are driving the fake toxic messaging, aided and abetted by the fake progressive politicians and fake universities that deny the truth and fire those who tell the truth.  We in the West are the enemy for not thinking critically, for not being intellectually curious, and for accepting the supremacist, fascist, misgovernance that is reducing us collectively to being cogs in a diabolical machine.

As Simon says in Lord of the Flies, “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.”[5]

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

Notes

[1] Garikai Chengu, “America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group.” Global Research, 08March, 2019

 19 September 2014. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[2] Mark Taliano, “Who are the ‘Brutal Dictators’?” Global Research, 28 February, 2019. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-are-the-brutal-dictators/5669959?fbclid=IwAR1DQjGioRbURC_QAOv5FYjRpN0sDRKXGubdU1byOg2uRQPLUCLoIOW0_Nc) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[3] Mike Blanchfield, “Canada to host Venezuela summit: Freeland.” Canadian Press. 28 January, 2019. (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/canada-to-host-venezuela-summit-freeland/ar-BBSROfT?fbclid=IwAR1lJPbdQi3kPqWiYVzVmYE0044_4Dhm04yEUzi3DlzWgKbuz9WZBREzBVU) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[4] Nino Pagliccia, “The Canadian Troika of Calamity.” 8 March, 2019. (https://www.facebook.com/notes/nino-pagliccia/the-canadian-troika-of-calamity/10156451661712832/) Accessed 10 March, 2019.

[5] William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Chapter Five.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The Hybrid War on Venezuela just took a dark turn – literally – after the US used cyber weapons and insider sabotage to attack the country’s power grid last week, cutting off most of its electricity and creating a chain reaction of negative consequences all throughout the Bolivarian Republic. According to unverified reports cited in one of RT’s recent articles on the topic, the Guri hydroelectric power plant – which provides 80% of the country’s power – failed (possibly due to a cyberattack), which was followed by an explosion at the Sidor Substation that was sustaining most of the country’s power in the aftermath of the aforementioned.

The nationwide blackout undoubtedly led to a worsening of living standards for Venezuela’s over 31 million people, affecting everything from the availability of food supplies to hospital services and creating an insecure environment that’s proved irresistible for looters, though it’s unclear at this moment whether the majority of its citizens believe the American narrative that their own government’s incompetence and corruption is to blame.

Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Senator from Florida, has quickly emerged as one of the most high-profile public faces of the US’ Hybrid War on Venezuela after he attributed the suffering of the South American nation’s people to Maduro in a provocative post that he made on Twitter, which follows other controversial ones in recent weeks such as implying that Chavez’s successor will meet a similar fate as former Libyan leader Gaddafi or former Panamanian one Noriega.

These messages are part of the US’ so-called “strategic communications” strategy for carrying out psychological and information warfare against the Bolivarian Republic, but they’re supposed to come off as “authentic” because Rubio is Hispanic, with the innuendo being that the” brains” behind this campaign think that the target audience will believe what’s being said just because it’s being conveyed by someone with a similar ethno-cultural identity as them. It’s not known whether this simplistic pandering will appeal to Venezuelans in the future, but it has thus far failed to be successful.

Despite the years of on-and-off Color Revolution unrest and the highly publicized “humanitarian aid” provocation that recently took place at the Venezuelan-Colombian border, the US hasn’t managed to unseat Maduro from office despite its non-stop attempts to do so. It was also recently revealed by none other than Trump’s Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams himself in a call with Russian pranksters that the US isn’t seriously considering an invasion of the South American state but is only trying to put maximum pressure on its military so that they either defect from their ranks or stage a coup at Washington’s behest. If he was being sincere, then this implies that the US wants to cut the costs of this rolling regime change operation by keeping its involvement to a minimum and only indirectly intervening at strategic moments in order to add momentum to the anti-government movement, which would explain the latest sanctions and the coordinated cyber-sabotage attack against the country’s power grid.

The weaponization of chaos theory is the central tenet of Hybrid Warfare, and it’s especially applicable for analyzing the reason why the US wanted to shut down Venezuela’s electricity at this specific point in time. Taking advantage of the fact that the country is overly dependent on a single power station (the Guri hydroelectric plant), it was comparatively easy for the US to pull off this covert operation aimed at triggering a domino effect of destabilization all throughout the Bolivarian Republic, one which is intended to heighten anti-government sentiment and increase the odds that a final wave of Color Revolution unrest can be unleashed for overthrowing Maduro.

To assist with this, it’s also possible that American special forces might exploit the electricity cutoff in order to more easily infiltrate across the border and transfer more arms to their anti-government allies on a scale that they wouldn’t be able to do if Venezuela’s border defenses were properly up and running.

Bearing the abovementioned insight in mind, it can be said that the cyberattack and sabotage against Venezuela’s power grid is a Hybrid War provocation with several interconnected objectives. The first is to reinforce the psychological preconditioning operation against the targeted Venezuelan audience by making them think that Maduro’s ouster is imminent, which could in turn inspire some civilians to take to the streets to launch a final Color Revolution push against him concurrent with members of the military defecting to join their side, both of whom might be more motivated by their deteriorating living conditions caused by the blackout than ideological factors.

It should also be assumed that the US is taking advantage of the situation to infiltrate large amounts of arms and other material to its anti-government allies in an attempt to actualize Rubio’s public plans for sparking “widespread unrest” in the country. None of this implies that the regime change operation will finally succeed, but just that the danger that this latest phase poses shouldn’t be underestimated.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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

Featured image is from InfoRos

President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe.

A substantial part of the EU is already linked de facto with BRI. That includes Greece, Portugal, 11 EU nations belonging to the 16+1 group of China plus Central and Eastern Europe and, for all practical purposes, Italy.

And yet it takes an undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, Michele Geraci, to tell the Financial Times that a memorandum of understanding supporting BRI will be signed during Xi’s visit, for all (White House) hell to break loose.

The FT is not shy of editorializing, calling BRI a “contentious infrastructure program.” BRI is a vast, far-reaching, long-term Eurasia integration project, and the only quasi-global development program in the market, any market. It’s especially “contentious” to Washington – because the US government, as I detailed elsewhere, decided to antagonize it instead of profiting from it.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson deriding BRI as a “made by China, for China” project does not make it so. Otherwise, no less than 152 – and counting – nations and international organizations would not have formally endorsed BRI.

China’s semi-official response to the White House, eschewing the usual diplomatic remarks by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came via a scathing, unsigned editorial in the Global Times which accuses Europe of being subjected to Washington’s foreign policy and a transatlantic alliance that is not coherent with its 21^st century needs.

Geraci states the obvious; the BRI link will allow more of Made in Italy to be exported to China. As someone who lives between Europe and Asia, and always discusses BRI while in Italy, I see that all the time. The appeal of Made in Italy for the Chinese consumer – food, fashion, art, interior design, not to mention all those Ferraris and Lamborghinis – is unrivaled, even by France. Chinese tourists just can’t get enough of Venice, Florence, Rome – and shopping in Milan.

Washington can build no case lecturing Italians that a BRI link undermines the US side in the trade war – considering that some sort of Xi-Trump deal may be imminent anyway. Brussels for its part is already deeply divided, especially because of France.

German business knows that China is the present and future market of choice; besides, one of the top terminals of the New Silk Road is Duisburg, in the Ruhr valley.

We’re talking about the 11,000 km-long Yuxinou container cargo train connection, active since 2014; Chongqing, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, all the way to Duisburg. Yuxinou (short for Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe), one of the key corridors of the New Silk Roads, is bound to be upgraded to high-speed rail status in the next decade.

Nearly a year ago I explained in some detail on Asia Times how Italy was already linked to BRI.

Essentially, it’s all about Italy – the number three European nation on naval trade – configured as the top southern European terminal for BRI; the entry door for connectivity routes from east and south while also serving, in a cost-effective manner, scores of destinations west and north.

Absolutely key in the project is the current revamping of the port of Venice – channeling supply lines from China via the Mediterranean towards Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary. Venice is being configured as an alternative superport to Rotterdam and Hamburg – which are also BRI-linked. I called it the Battle of the Superports.

Whatever Washington, the City of London and even Brussels may think about it, this is something that Rome – and Milan – identifies as a matter of Italian national interest. And considering the undying Chinese love affair with all manifestations of Made in Italy, win-win, once again, wins.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. He is frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Thursday March 7th 2018 Tel Aviv- Jews for Return, hung pictures of six of the children who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while participating in the return demonstrations that began on the 30th of March 2018 on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Israeli security forces killed 266 participants in the Great March of Return since Refugees for Gaza began protesting last march. This staggering number includes 42 children. Israeli forces killed seven children who participated in the protests since the beginning of 2018.

Santiago Canton, the Chairman of the international investigation that was launched by the United Nations determined last week that there are: “established facts that indicate that the Israeli security forces, committed serious violations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law.”

Sarah Hussein, a member of the special committee, declared that, “the shooting was deliberately aimed at children, people with disabilities, and journalists. Most of the demonstrators were not involved in any form of violence.”

An Israeli sniper killed 15 Year old Saif Adin Zaid from Gaza on Wednesday the 6th of March after the conclusions of the committee were made public.

Posters were hung of: Ahmad Abu ‘Abed, 4, from Gaza; Shot in his father’s arms. Abdel Raouf Salha, age 14, a refugee from Majdal; Hassan Shalabi, age 14, a refugee from Isdod Yosef Aldia, 14, a refugee from Yafa; Hassan Nofal 17 years old a refugee from Yafa; Hamza Ishtawi, 17, from a refugee from Aljia The six children were shot in the past three months without endangering anyone.

The Jewish Israeli, Anti Zionist, activists responded to a call from Gazan organisations who, hoped that the faces of the children killed would awaken the Israeli conscience. The reactions of the passersby were mixed, some expressed shock at the deaths of innocent children, and some slashed the children’s pictures erasing most of their faces and the text describing who they are.

“We are bringing the posters of the faces of the children killed by Israeli soldiers to the streets of Tel aviv to show Israelis the crimes committed in their name in Gaza. The fact that some of the pedestrians erased the children faces is a reflection of the ongoing attempt by Zionist society to erase the existence of Palestinians since 1948.” stated a spokesperson for Jews for Return.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were pasted below the home of Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers pasted around the Military base “Hakirya” and the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv

An hour after the posters of the Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were hung by activists under the home of Ehud Barak they were slashed by pedestrians who tried to erase the children’s faces and identities.

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Dr. Helen Caldicott’s March 18th, 2011 press conference in Montreal, sponsored by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Our thanks to Felton Davis for the transcription from the GRTV Video recording and for the annotations.

“One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld. One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer. Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it. You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with. (Helen Caldicott, March 18, 2011)

This press conference organized by Global Research was held in the context of Helen Caldicott’s public lecture to Montreal on March 18, 2011.

Transcript
First I want to present this report, produced by the New York Academy of Sciences, a report on Chernobyl.  It can be downloaded.(2)  They translated 5,000 articles from Russian for the first time into English.  It seems that nearly a million people have already died as a result of Chernobyl, despite what the WH0(3) says and the IAEA.(4)  This is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine.  Because everybody should know about this.

Then we extrapolate through to Japan.  Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl.  Never in my life did I think that six nuclear reactors would be at risk.(5)  I knew that three GE engineers who helped design these Mark I GE reactors, resigned because they knew they were dangerous.(6)

So Japan built them on an earthquake fault.  The reactors partially withstood the earthquake, but the external electricity supply was cut off, and the electricity supplies the cooling water, a million gallons a minute, to each of those six reactors.  Without the cooling water, the water [level] falls, and the rods are so hot they melt, like at Three Mile Island, and at Chernobyl.

So the emergency diesel generators, which are as large as a house, got destroyed by the tsunami, so there is no way to keep the water circulating in the reactors.(7)  Also, on the roofs of the reactors, not within the containment vessel, are cooling pools.  Every year they remove about thirty tons of the most radioactive rods that you can possibly imagine.(8)  Each one is twelve feet long and half an inch thick.  It gives out so much radiation, that if you stand next to it for a couple of minutes, you’ll die.  Not drop dead.  Remember Litvinenko, the Russian, who got poisoned by polonium?(9)  You’ll die like that, with your hair falling out, and bleeding with massive infection, like AIDS patients die.

And [the spent fuel rods] are thermally hot, so they have to be put in a big pool, and continually cooled.  The pool has really no roof.

There have been three hydrogen explosions, blowing off the roof of the building, not the containment vessel of the core, but the roof.  And exposing the cooling pool.(10)  Two of the cooling pools are dry.  They have no water in them.  Meaning that the nuclear fuel rods are covered with a material called zirconium.  When zirconium is exposed to air, it burns, it ignites.  Two of the cooling pools at this moment are burning.  In the cooling pools are many times, like 10 to 20 times more radiation than in each reactor core.  In each reactor core is as much long-lived radiation as would be produced by a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs.  We are dealing with diabolical energy.

E=MC2 is the energy that blows up nuclear bombs.  Einstein said nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.(11)  Because that is all nuclear power is used for, to boil water through the massive heat, turn it into steam, and turn a turbine which generates electricity.

Now when you fission uranium, 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original uranium.(12)  Although uranium is pretty poisonous.  America used it in Fallujah, and in Baghdad.  And in Fallujah, 80 per cent of the babies being born are grossly deformed.(13)  They’re being born without brains, single eyes, no arms…  The doctors have told the women to stop having babies.  The incidence of childhood cancer has gone up about twelve times.  This is genocide — it’s a nuclear war being conducted in Iraq.  The uranium that they’re using lasts more than 4.5 billion years.  So we’re contaminating the cradle of civilization.  “The coalition of the willing!”

In the nuclear power plants, however, there is a huge amount of radiation: two hundred elements.  Some last seconds, some last millions of years.  Radioactive iodine lasts six weeks, causes thyroid cancer.  That’s why people are saying, “Better take potassium iodide,” because that blocks the thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine, which later can cause thyroid cancer.

In Chernobyl, over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer.(14)  They have their thyroids out, and they will die unless they take thyroid replacement every day, like a diabetic has to take insulin.
Strontium-90 will get out, it lasts for 600 years.  It goes to the bone, where it causes bone cancer or leukemia.  Cesium lasts for 600 years — it’s all over Europe.  40 per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Turkish food is extremely radioactive.  Do not buy Turkish dried apricots, or Turkish hazelnuts.  The Turks were so cross with the Russians, they sent all their radioactive tea over to Russia after Chernobyl.(15)

Forty per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Farms in Britain, their lambs are so full of cesium they can’t sell them.  Don’t eat European food.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening now.  One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld.  One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer.  Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer.  Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it.  You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with.

So any country that has a reactor, works with your uranium.  You [Canada] are the biggest exporter of uranium in the world.(16)  Canada sells two things: it sells wheat for life, and uranium for death.  Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the northern hemisphere.  It’s already heading towards North America now.

Radioactive iodine, plus strontium, plus cesium, plus tritium, and I could go on and* on and on.  When it rains, downs come fallout, and it concentrates in food.  If it gets into the sea, the algae concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And the crustaceans concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And then the little fish, then the big fish, then us.(17)

Because we stand on the apex of the food chain.  You can’t taste these radioactive food elements, you can’t see them, you can’t smell them.  They’re silent.  When you get them inside your body, you don’t suddenly drop dead of cancer, it takes five to sixty years to get your cancer, and when you feel a lump in your breast, it doesn’t say, “I was made by some strontium-90 in a piece of fish you ate twenty years ago.”

All radiation is damaging.  It’s cumulative — each dose you get adds to your risk of getting cancer.  The americium is more dangerous than plutonium — I could go on and on.  Depends if it rains if you’re going to get it or not.  If it rains and the radiation comes down, don’t grow food, and don’t eat the food, and I mean don’t eat it for 600 years.

Radioactive waste from nuclear power is going to be buried, I hear, next to Lake Ontario.  It’s going to leak, last for millions of years, it’s going to get into the water, and into the food chains.  Radioactive waste will induce epidemics of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time.  This is the greatest public health hazard the world has ever witnessed, apart from the threat every day of nuclear war.

Einstein said “the splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking” — very profound — “and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  We are arrogant, we have a lot of hubris, and I think the reptilian mid-brain of some men’s brains is pathological.(18)

We are in a situation where we have harnessed the energy of the sun.  It is totally out of control.  And there’s simply nothing we can do about it.

NOTES

[These notes are not part of Dr. Caldicott’s presentation. They were added by Felton Davis]

1) Helen Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and is the author of “The New Nuclear Danger” (The New Press, 2002).

2) “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe For the People and the Environment,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

3) “Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident,” World Health Organization. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

4) “Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident,” International Atomic Energy Agency. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

5) For a general description of the complex, including cross-sections of the six reactors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
Excerpt: On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh “blew the whistle” on safety problems at nuclear power plants. The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric’s nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments.

7) “Japanese Scramble to Avert Meltdowns as Nuclear Crisis Deepens After Quake,” New York Times, March 12, 2011, By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD

8) The design manual for General Electric boiling water reactors was posted as a PDF document on the “What Really Happened” website, and can be downloaded at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/ge-manual-bwr6-reactor-design-and-operation

9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Excerpt: Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom. He wrote two books, “Blowing up Russia: Terror from within” and “Lubyanka Criminal Group”, where he accused the Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power.  On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. According to doctors, “Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism”. Litvinenko’s allegations about the misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Russian president Vladimir Putin were behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

10) “Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors,” Keith Bradsher & Hiroko Tabuchi, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html

“Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On,” David Sanger & William J. Broad, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18intel.html

“U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant,” James Glanz & William J. Broad, NY Times, April 6, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html

“Focus on preventing explosions at Japan nuke plant,” Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press, April 6, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_654

11) http://wisequotes.org/nuclear-power-is-one-hell-of-a-way-to-boil-water

12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_product

13) “US Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah,” Democracy Now, Monday, November 29th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/29/u_s_accused_of_using_poison

“Evidence of Extensive War Crimes, Unprecedented in the annals of legal history,” Niloufer Bhagwat, Global Research, December 11, 2004
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BHA412A.html

“Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke,” by Dave Lindorff, Global Research, October 20, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15744

“The consequences of a US war crime: Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima,” Tom Eley, World Socialist, July 23, 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml

“Research Links Rise in Fallujah Birth Defects and Cancers to US Assault,” Martin Chulov, The Guardian/UK, December 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/31

14) “Chernobyl’s Continuing Thyroid Impact,”By Mary Shomon, December 15, 2003
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/nuclearexposure/a/chernob.htm

15) “Authorities lied on impact of Chernobyl in Turkey,”Greenpeace Report
http://www.blackraiser.com/cherno.htm

16) WISE Report on the Worldwide Uranium Market http://www.wise-uranium.org/umkt.html

“Why is Uranium Important to Canada?” Canadian Nuclear Association,
http://www.cna.ca/english/pdf/nuclearfacts/04-NuclearFacts-uranium.pdf

17) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation

18) http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilianbrain.html

On March 8, 2019, during a Special Briefing in the State Department, Washington, DC, Elliott Abrams, U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela said in response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist:

QUESTION [Bloomberg journalist]: Mr. Abrams, in the weeks since Juan Guaidó was recognized as the interim president, the Secretary of State and you have sort of intimated that there would be – that the military would flip in – imminently, that something might happen next week or the next week. Have you been disappointed – I mean, you remarked a little bit about the timeline, but have you been disappointed that the military continues to seemingly side with Mr. Maduro?

MR ABRAMS: Wouldn’t say that – I wouldn’t use the word “disappointed.” I would say we continue to call on the Venezuelan military to follow their own constitution. We call on them to restore – it’s better in Spanish – institucionalidad. We don’t really have a word in English – institutionality – but to restore their own proper role in any country. One of the definitions of having a state is having monopoly on force and violence for the security forces of the state. That’s not happening in Venezuela, where the government is using, the regime is using armed gangs, colectivos. One would think that the police and military in any country would find that unacceptable.

So we continue to hope that people in the Venezuelan security forces understand that the future of their country is going to be in much better hands if the Maduro regime comes to an end and the transition to democracy begins. And again, I would say it do until the day that it begins to happen.

Is the US stymied by the union of millions of Venezuelans with the military, including its armed militia, as outlined in a previous Global Research article on this  civilian-military union?

The nemesis which the US is facing started – in the current period – on February 23^rd on the Venezuelan border with Colombia. The US attempt to promote a mutiny among the military and a revolt within the people against Maduro in favour of the US hand -picked and self-proclaimed “president” failed miserably.

The day after this debacle, Mike Pompeo US Secretary of State said on CNN State of the Union (SOTU) with Jack Tapper, February 24, 2019:

“TAPPER: But it seems as though Maduro is not going anywhere near this [US] plan, that he’s holding onto power, and the military seems to be staying with him, at least the military leaders.

POMPEO: It always seems that way, until the day it doesn’t.

I remember, when I was a young soldier patrolling the then East German border. No one predicted on that day in 1989 that that wall would come crumbling down. Predictions are difficult. Picking exact days are difficult. ”

While these words say a lot, one had to see the body language – the sheepish look – on the face of the Secretary of State representing the most powerful military force on earth. He did not seem convinced that the “Berlin Wall moment” would come to Venezuela. That was on February 24, yet as we see above on March 8, Abrams had the same problem.

Why is this? The U.S.-centric mindset has been steeped in the white supremacist notion of the “chosen people” from the time of the 17^th century Pilgrims. It consists, among other features, of the racist outlook that peoples in the “Third World,” such as Latin America, cannot take their destiny in their own hands.

However, the opposite has been – and is – presently taking place. As a result of U.S. policies, democracy in Venezuela has been crossing the Rubicon from participatory democracy to a protagonist one. While the two are similar, especially in comparison with the experience of the Diktat in the capitalist North, there is a qualitative difference. Is it possible that as a result of the US policy toward Venezuela  – which one should recall this March 9 as the anniversary of the Obama 2015 Decree declaring Venezuela to be a threat to the US security – the Bolivarian Revolution’s democracy is becoming “above all” – as Chávez predicted and desired – “protagonist and not only participatory”?

Not only has the Pilgrim “chosen people” guideline for US foreign policy blinded Washington as to its capacity to conquer a country such as Venezuela, the arrogance of the 17the century bible-thumping “City upon a Hill You are the Light of the World” has further inspired the majority of Venezuelans. They are increasingly resisting the US and their allies. The Chavista movement is increasingly becoming the author of its own Bolivarian Revolution, not only participating in it.

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

All images in this article are from the author

Fear them for their technology; fear them for their ideology and their authoritarianism. But embrace interference and involvement in the economy if it involves coal.  This is the fancy hypocrisy of Australian politics, one driven to lunacy and inconsistency by that dark and dirty love. 

The contrast between a fear of Huawei, on the one hand, and an eager opening for a Chinese state-owned enterprise barging its way into the Australian market suggests that those in Canberra have finally twisted themselves into knots.  The latter is particularly striking – the China Energy Engineering Corporation (CEEC), the designated monster behind what promises to be 2000 megawatt of coal generation in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney.  Two plants billed as users of efficient coal-fired technology will supposedly take root in the “failed industrial zone” and give it life.  The cost would be in the order of $8 billion and generate over $17 billion worth of carbon liabilities.

Australia’s dinosaur political class is delighted at the latest foray into environmental spoliation.

“This is exactly what the market needs,” chuffed Coalition backbencher Craig Kelly.

Furthermore, to show that the conservative wing of politics is happy to forfeit any laissez faire credentials regarding the economy when needed, Kelly is keen for generous taxpayers’ support. 

“If the Government needs to underwrite it, if it needs a little help, then that’s what we should be doing.” 

Gone from the conversational babble was China’s February announcement through the Dalian Port authorities restricting Australian coal imports. 

“The goals are to better safeguard the legal rights and interests of Chinese importers and to protect the environment,” explained Geng Shuang of the Chinese foreign ministry. 

The point is worth reiterating, since similar bans were not applied to the coal from other states.  The indefinite ban was the bitter icing on that particular issue, confirming prolonged clearing times for Australian coal since the start of February.

The announcement of the mining venture had its predictable reaction in the environmental movement in Australia.  The Greens federal member for Melbourne was aghast and, as is his wont, got into the realms of hyperbole.  Protests would ensue; mass disaffection would take to the streets.  These latest coal plans, according to Adam Bandt, “will make the Franklin Dam campaign look like a Sunday picnic.”  What of, he said, any acknowledgment of the recent climate shocks gripping the continent? 

“We just had our hottest summer on record. If Labor and Liberal [parties] give this project the tick of approval then you will see civil disobedience in Australia on a scale never seen before.”

Interference by China in Australian matters is enchanting printing presses and stalking the corridors of power in Canberra.  Like other obsessions, it is clear that this one is inconsistent and variable, manifesting in various forms like an inconsistent fever.  James Laurenceson’s Do the Claims Stack Up, Australia Talks China, concludes that

“in each case, the evidence base [on interference] is shown to be divorced from the claims found in headlines, news reports and opinion pieces, revealing just how widespread has become the discourse of the China Threat, China Angst and China Panic”. 

When it comes to coal, the threat transforms; China Blessing, or China Grovelling come to the fore.  (The Yellow Peril becomes the Yellow Salvation.)   

The divorce in terms of reality is also evident in the finance side of things; the mining projects being proposed have yet to find the necessary capital, a point that is proving increasingly difficult for any such concerns.  Kaisun Holdings, the other company involved in the enterprise and also noted for being a “Belt and Road” company, is still on the hunt for “potential investors”.  As with the Indian mining giant Adani, such companies will have to convince those who finance them that coal is good in an increasingly hostile environment.  No money, no project; the equation is uncomplicated.  On paper, Kaisun has a market capitalisation of $33 million.  The Australian joint-venture partner, has a mere $25,000 on paper. 

The Australian Financial Review has also pointed out that the scheme, inspired by Parramatta’s Frank Cavasinni, is being “driven by a small businessman from Western Sydney with no experience in the energy industry.” Ignorance can be golden, but not in certain areas of economic planning.  Such a plant has already received reproach from EnergyAustralia’s executive Mark Collette, who claims that the plant will not provide the flexible capacity in the grid required as users move to the use of low-cost wind and solar power. “Coal as an investment works best as baseload but the market signal is calling for something different, which is flexible capacity.”

Australian politicians, when it comes to mining, prove fickle.  Their views are changeable, climactically variable and their principles are always up for purchase.  They are in office to be bought by the commodities industry, but the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is firm: there are no plans in the pipeline to approve any coal-fired power stations.

“We are the most resilient state when it comes to our own energy needs.” 

But given that the Australian federal government lacks a coherent, sustainable energy policy, coal lovers feel they are still in with a chance.

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

Featured image is from Asianews

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) president has a budget plan. Cut domestic spending and shift more tax money over to the war pigs at the Pentagon. 

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Trump budget calls for massive cuts to social programs, billions of dollars for wall https://t.co/m8CHNrNnpR pic.twitter.com/nuAcs0hnkA

— The Hill (@thehill) February 13, 2018

According to The Washington Post:

President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans.

Reading this, you might think Democrats and a few “moderate” Republicans are responding to the demands of the people, nearly half of them on the dole in one form or another, not because they are shiftless deadbeats, but because the Federal Reserve and the bankster elite have destroyed the economy and corporations have shipped decent paying jobs overseas and robotized many at home. This has resulted in about a third of the US population falling or remaining in poverty while most of the rest live paycheck to paycheck. Only the “one precent” benefit from the windfall of a rigged economy. 

In 2015, candidate Trump promised to reinvigorate the economy and bring the troops home from long stays (occupations) in foreign lands and wind-down the outrageously expensive wars. Trump at the time was taking money and advice from Israel-firsters, most notoriously the Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and the professional Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. 

In addition, he was taking foreign policy advice from Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. Schmitz fled the Pentagon after he was accused of protecting top Bush officials accused of wrongdoing. 

Add the presence of Walid Phares, who is associated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon central organization that teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute to propagandize the American people  into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq and supporting a fallacious war on terror. Prior the 2016 election, I wrote about this process of neoconization in a small ebook, Donald Trump and the War on Islam. 

In other words, Trump was a neocon simpatico well before he was elected. However, it took seasoned establishment neocons such as John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, and Mike Pompeo to make the conversion complete. The Donald has his moments—publicly stating he will remove troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan—but on that point he is betrayed time after time by his handlers. 

MAGA is now shorthand for neocon. The MAGA theology is dedicated to war abroad—predicated on long-standing lies and falsifications—and austerity at home with an attendant police state apparatus to frighten and control the mob. Social programs are to be looted, the money handed over to the Pentagon so it might continue building a “new generation” of nuclear weapons, taunting nuke-armed Russia and China, engaging with myriad intelligence agencies (in collusion with the State Department and its subversive NGOs) to undermine elections and kickstart wars, and feeding an already obese Pentagon and its associated industries. 

The richest man in the world’s newspaper didn’t mention the real reason Democrats are upset with Trump. If social programs are slashed and billions of dollars diverted to the war pigs, bedrock Democrat voters will demand socialism, socialist candidates, and a centrally planned economy with plenty of debt dollars to feed and house the plebs. 

Democrats are also war pigs. They are just better at PR and presentation than chest-thumping neocons who cut to the chase. At the end of the day, the path both follow leads to the same destination: endless war in the name of an unsustainable and bankrupt empire.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Salon.com

The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31 [8 February 2019]

Pushback on human rights in France: “The Republic on the move”- but in the reverse gear(1)

1. For some months now, France has been the scene of turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed, for the most part, post-1789 on the basis of a revolution of universal scope that, along with the social advances won in 1936, 1945 and 1968, still exerts a strong hold on the collective memory and the country’s institutions, despite attempts to eradicate all traces of it.

Yet for nearly 40 years, France, like all the other countries of the North without exception, has found itself encased in the deadly straitjacket of devastating neoliberal policies, policies that can only be seen as an extraordinary act of social violence, an assault on labour. Their destructive effects – on individuals, society and even the environment – are propagated by a State that works hand-in-glove with whoever currently wields the most power. They are further aggravated by the constraints of the anti-social content of European Union treaties that the French rejected in the 2005 referendum but which were imposed on them in a denial of democratic process – an additional assault on an entire people. It is this particular perspective, as well as the general context of a systemic crisis of global capitalism, that explains the waves of popular uprisings of increasing intensity that have taken place in recent decades – strike in 1995, riots in the suburbs in 2005-2007, demonstrations in 2000 and 2010. There is now widespread discontent and a general feeling of malaise. The so-called “yellow vests” movement that began in October 2018 is one expression of this, but it is coming up against the worst resurgence of police violence since the Algerian war. In the face of the various protests, all demanding greater social justice, the authorities have chosen to respond with greater repression, to the extent that human rights are regressing at an alarming rate.

 State of emergency: origins of the crackdown

2. The starting point for the ramping up of repression can be clearly identified as the state of emergency proclaimed in metropolitan France on 14 November 2015 in the wake of the previous day’s terrorist attacks, and in the overseas departments on 18 November. Without in any way seeking to minimize the threats posed by the terrorist activities of extreme political Islam, from Al-Qaeda to Daesh, it nevertheless needs stating that the security policy in place since 2015 has also provided an opportunity to force the French people to accept a drastic curtailment of their civil and political rights, beyond what is required to deal with terrorist threats alone. It is true that, after five successive renewals, the state of emergency was lifted on 1 November 2017, but most of the special measures it had provided for had by then acquired the force of law: preventive search and arrest, security perimeters, individual house arrest, border controls, etc., are now authorized under the Act of 30 October 2017 on reinforcement of national security and combating terrorism. Since then there has been a perturbing abuse of this extensive legal arsenal of emergency measures that has had the effect of pushing back public freedoms, notably the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly or demonstration, as well as trade union rights and even the right to physical integrity, all of which are now in serious jeopardy.

3. Those who have recently taken part in demonstrations in France will certainly have witnessed what French and international human rights organizations have been decrying for the last few months: many of the actions of law enforcement agencies are deemed disproportionate and excessively violent; they even resort at times to weapons of war. There is now systematic use of tear gas and water cannons on peaceful protesters and very frequent use of baton rounds (from riot guns, fired at head height, and other so-called “less lethal” weapons), stun grenades and dispersal grenades, the practice of “kettling” to prevent groups from joining up with other demonstrators, random and arbitrary arrest, verbal intimidation, gratuitous provocation and even physical assault. The streets of Paris have seen the deployment of armoured vehicles, mounted police and dog units. On numerous occasions degrading treatment has been inflicted on protesters, including minors. In many cases, people who have committed no crime whatsoever have been clubbed or locked up. Medical supplies have been confiscated from “street doctors” – the volunteer medics who follow the marches and treat the injured. All of these events have shocked the French, which is precisely the effect desired, with a view to halting the uprising. Such police violence is absolutely unacceptable and violates international human rights standards.

Phase 1: suppression of social movements and unions

4. Since the election as President of Emmanuel Macron – formerly managing partner of the Rothschild investment bank, then Minister of Finance under President François Hollande and responsible for several laws aimed at making the labour market more flexible – the trade unions have re-mobilized. Demonstrations and strikes have spread, especially in sectors such as public transport (SNCF, Air France), energy (gas and electricity), automobiles (Peugeot, Renault), telecommunications (Orange), mass distribution (Carrefour), health services (public hospitals, retirement homes, social security), education (high schools, universities), culture (museums), justice (lawyers, judges), garbage collection, and even financial and company auditing. These diverse social movements, which attracted a large following, lasted throughout the spring of 2018. The response of the authorities was to step up the repression, with a particularly dramatic impact on students (evacuation of campuses), environmental activists occupying “defence zones” (ZAD) and, before that, those protesting against the labour-market flexibilization laws.

5. This was clearly part of the same spiral of repression already in use against the unions for several years, in violation of labour law. The obstacles in the way of trade union activities had multiplied: pay discrimination against trade unionists, unfair dismissal of strikers, pressure in the form of threats or disciplinary sanctions, curtailment of trade union rights and the right to strike, and even criminalization of trade union action (as at Goodyear, Continental and Air France). In addition, recent government reforms to the Labour Code have further penalized social movements: shorter time limits for appealing to industrial tribunals and caps on those tribunals’ compensation awards in cases of unfair dismissal; restrictions on the role of staff representative bodies and the legal remedies available to them; mechanisms for breaking collective agreements without regard for plans for saving jobs or favouring departures by older staff; reversal of the status of norms so that company agreements prevail over sectoral agreements and the law; establishment of national scope for dismissal for economic reasons, to facilitate the laying off of employees in French subsidiaries (while the parent company makes profits on a global scale).

6. President Macron has decided “not to change course”. With no regard for the sufferings and expectations of working men and women, his Government is tightening up its neoliberal policies and, to that end, going ever further down the route of social violence and police repression. The record is horrific, unworthy of a country that claims to be democratic and tolerant. Since the start of the yellow vest movement, there have been 11 accidental deaths. More than 2,000 people have been injured, at least a hundred of them very seriously, with doctors reporting injuries they describe as “war wounds” (hands torn off, eyes put out, disfigurement, multiple fractures and maiming), mainly resulting from baton rounds or shrapnel from grenades, in many cases fired at peaceful protesters. Several people are still in a coma. And what of the psychological shock to teenagers treated as terrorists by the police, forced onto their knees with their hands behind their head, or bundled into vans or cells?

7. Where is this power heading, trampling as it does on its own people and unleashing such violence? On 1 December, for example, 7,940 tear gas grenades were fired, along with 800 dispersal grenades, 339 GLI-F4-type grenades (explosive ordnance), 776 baton rounds and 140,000 litres of water. Between 17 November 2018 and 7 January 2019 alone – according to preliminary and probably not exhaustive figures – 6,475 arrests were made and 5,339 people taken into police custody. Nationwide more than 1,000 convictions have been handed down by the courts. Although most of the sentences are subject to adjustment (such as community service), many are prison terms: 153 committal orders (involving incarceration) have been issued, for example, while 519 summonses have been put out by the criminal investigation police and 372 by the criminal courts. In Paris, 249 persons have been sent for immediate trial, 58 have been given prison sentences and 63 suspended prison sentences. In the French department of La Réunion, the average prison term ordered for local yellow vests is 8 months. As of 10 January 2019 there were still some 200 people associated with these events in prison in France. 

Legitimacy of popular demands

8. In many respects the demands of the yellow vests intersect with those of labour. They demand immediate and tangible improvements to living standards, restoration of purchasing power (wages, pensions, social benefits), strengthening of public services and citizens’ participation in decisions concerning their collective future. In other words, the effective implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in particular, and peoples’ right to self-determination. Insofar as they call for greater social justice, increased respect for human rights and more economic and political democracy, these claims are thoroughly legitimate and attract broad support among the population.

9. The mother of all violence, the violence that has to be halted first of all and as a matter of urgency, the violence from which people are forced to defend themselves – as suggested by the Declaration of Human and Citizens’ Rights in the preamble to the French Constitution – is that generated by the imposition of unjust, merciless, antisocial and undemocratic neoliberal measures; the violence that, in the silence surrounding the price movements of capitalist markets, causes homeless people to die of cold, pushes indebted farmers to suicide and destroys individuals and families by depriving them of jobs, cutting off their electricity and evicting them from their homes; the violence that forces pensioners to turn off the heating because they can’t afford it, or children to skip a meal; the violence that breaks down all solidarity, closes schools, maternity wards and psychiatric hospitals, plunges small tradesmen and craftsmen into despair as they buckle under their overheads, wears out wage workers but does not let them make ends meet. The real violence is there, in this extraordinarily unjust and fundamentally untenable system. In that light, the smashing of bank or supermarket windows by a few isolated or confused individuals, while certainly reprehensible, is no justification for police violence

10. On that basis, CETIM urges the French Government to call an immediate halt to the crackdown on demonstrators and to honour its international obligations in terms of human rights and labour rights, notably by:

– Repealing legislation that nullifies freedoms and curbs labour rights, in accordance with the two international covenants on human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) and with ILO conventions, as ratified by France;

– Ceasing to criminalize social movements in general and the yellow vest movement in particular;

– Permitting an independent investigation into the abuses committed by lawenforcement agencies during the yellow vest demonstrations and prosecuting the perpetrators.

11. CETIM also requests the Human Rights Council to activate its mechanisms as appropriate, in order to conduct an enquiry in France into the violations of the rights of peaceful protesters.

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Our thanks to Defend Democracy Press. for having brought this article to our attention.

Note

*Statement was drafted with the collaboration of Dr. Rémy Herrera, researcher at CNRS, Paris.

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.

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A Peek into the Horrific Findings of the UN Report on Israel’s Massacre of Gaza Protesters

By Robert Inlakesh, March 10, 2019

The commission found serious human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity and called on Israel to “Lift the blockade on Gaza with immediate effect.

Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?

By Kathy Kelly, March 10, 2019

Consider this: The 2018 U.S. Census Report tallies U.S. exports of bullets to other countries. Topping the list is $123 million-worth of bullets to Afghanistan—an eight-fold rise over the number of bullets sold in 2017 and far more than the number of bullets sold to any other country.

Neoliberalism and “The Vietnam Model”. Who Won the Vietnam War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 09, 2019

Fifty four years ago, March 8, 1965 marks the commencement of the Vietnam war.

April 1975 marks the official end of the Vietnam War.

Yet today, almost 44 year later Vietnam is an impoverished country.  The Hanoi government is a US proxy regime. Vietnam has become a new cheap labor frontier of the global economy. Neoliberalism prevails.

The Pentagon’s Missing Trillions. What You Need to Know

By James Corbett and Mark Skidmore, March 09, 2019

Dr. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University joins us to discuss his research with Catherine Austin Fitts into the $21 trillion in unaccounted transactions on the books of the US Department of Defence and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Has Trump Gone Full Neocon??

By Mike Whitney, March 09, 2019

The details of what took place at the Hanoi Summit strongly suggests that President Donald Trump has joined the neocons in their quest to strangle the North Korean economy and bring about regime change.

The Psychosis of the Neocons: Senator Marco Rubio “Makes Fun” of the Suffering of the Venezuelan People

By Kurt Nimmo, March 09, 2019

Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again. 

Assad’s Tehran Visit Signals Iran’s Victory in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci, March 09, 2019

The significance of the trip cannot be understated – it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran – it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

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If you’re reading this blast, you’re aware of some of the ways the U.S. empire has manipulated in its latest attempt at a coup in Venezuela. In an act of brazen illegality, the Trump administration has barred the Bolivarian republic from being able to access its own money in foreign banks and has transported “humanitarian aid” that was embedded with materials that could have been used by the largely white supremacist opposition to ferment violence against the Venezuelan government.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has been at the forefront of efforts to uncover the truth and spread the word, whether marching in the streets; rallying a crowd as member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture has done; transporting member Efia Nwangaza to serve as a 2018 election observer in Venezuela; or speaking to a crowd about the connection between Venezuela and the U.S. military occupation of Africa, as you see National Organizer Ajamu Baraka and member Maurice Carney doing March 1 at Yale University in the photo below.

We have also released statements on Venezuela that we encourage you to read and share:

1. Why We Must Oppose U.S. Intervention in Venezuela
2. Black Working Class Will Never Abandon Venezuela!
3. Black Alliance for Peace Says Struggle in Haiti and Venezuela Connected (an in-depth version was published by Black Agenda Report)

To gather the full range of evidence on U.S. manipulations, interference and efforts to sabotage, a delegation of 13 leaders from peace, civil rights and women’s organizations are heading to Venezuela tomorrow for five days.

BAP will be represented on that delegation!

After the delegation returns to the United States, it will report its initial findings at a press conference held the morning of March 18 at the United Nations.

At 7 p.m. that day, the U.S. Peace Council will hold a public conference call, too.

BAP invites all defenders of peace, social justice, international law and national sovereignty to join us on this conference call.

Please register for the March 18 public call.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Finally, BAP is gearing up for actions on March 16 in opposition to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and from March 30 through April 4 in opposition to NATO, which will include a BAP-organized street action on April 4. Please consider supporting us with a generous donation. We need to raise $5,000 to cover travel, food and accommodations for our activists during that period.

No compromise.

No retreat.

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Featured image is from BAP

This was written in June 2018.

International observers to Venezuela’s elections have written to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, about the problems with the EU declaration on the elections.

You can read a short extract of the EU declaration statement and the letter in response below. You can read the full EU declaration here.

“Major obstacles to the participation of opposition political parties and their leaders, an unbalanced composition of the National Electoral Council, biased electoral conditions, numerous reported irregularities during the Election Day, including vote buying, stood in the way of fair and equitable elections.”

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Dear Ms Mogherini,

I was a member of a roughly hundred-strong core of observers of the May 20 Venezuelan election. We met senior representatives of all the candidates, and questioned them closely. We met with the president and two vice-presidents of the Supreme Judicial Tribunal. We examined the electoral system in detail and, on election day, observed voting procedures across the country.

We noted, in particular, not only the sophistication of the voting system which, in our collective view, is fraud-proof, but also that every stage, from the vote itself to the collation of returns, their verification and electronic submission, was conducted in the presence of representatives of the contending parties. As for “reporting irregularities”, we would be interested to hear of examples, since the reporting system is exceptionally rigorous and tamper-free. We doubt you have any evidence to back up the EU’s claim of “numerous reporting irregularities”.

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. There was no vote buying because there is no way that a vote CAN be bought. The procedure itself precludes any possibility of anyone knowing how a voter cast her or his vote; and it is impossible – as we verified – for an individual to vote more than once or for anyone to vote on behalf of someone else.

In short, the claims in your press release are fabrications of the most disgraceful kind, based on hearsay and not on evidence and unworthy of the EU. It has not escaped notice that the EU was invited to send observers to the election and declined to do so. NONE of the criticism in your EU press release is, therefore, based on direct EU observation in the field.

I would be happy to discuss this further with you and to put you or your colleagues in touch with other observers – among whom were senior politicians, academics, election officials, journalists and civil servants from many different nations including: Spain, UK, Northern Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Honduras, Italy, several Caribbean countries, South Africa, Tunisia, China, Russia,and the United States (sic).

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Fox, journalist / writer
Jospeh Farrell, Board of the Centre for Investigative Journalism
Calvin Tucker, journalist MS
Dr Francisco Dominguez, Latin American Studies, Middlesex University

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The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council have released a powerful report, on the Gaza ‘Great Return March’ demonstrations, stating that they have grounds to believe Israel committed International War Crimes against demonstrators during “large-scale civilian protests”.

The 22-page document has been condemned by the Israeli government, as there is talk of Israel being brought to the International Court of Justice and tried for war crimes and violations of International Law against demonstrations that “were civilian in nature”.

The commission conducted 325 interviews and meetings with victims, witnesses, government officials and members of civil society, from all sides, and gathered more than 8,000 documents, including affidavits, medical reports, open source reports, social media content, written submissions and expert legal opinions, video and drone footage, and photographs.”

Razan al-Najjar, the 21 year old Gaza medic killed by an Israeli sniper on June 1, treating an injured man, undated photo from Palestine Live on twitter.

Here are the most important points concluded in the report:

• The commission found in the killings of 189 demonstrators between 30 March and 31 December 2018, 183 were killed with live ammunition, including 35 children, 3 health workers and 2 members of the Press. Only 29 of those killed were members of Palestinian armed groups.
• Only 4 Israeli snipers were lightly injured, none were killed by demonstrators.
• 23,313 Palestinian demonstrators were injured during the 2018 demonstrations, 6106 with live ammunition, “contributing to the highest toll of injuries recorded in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2005.
• On the killing of child demonstrators, the commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot them intentionally, knowing that they were children”.
• On the killing of health workers, “the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers intentionally shot health workers, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”.
• On the killings of journalists, “the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”.
• The commission found that both male and female protestors were shot in the groin. The female victims told the commission they are now “unlikely to be able to have children”.
• The policy of the Israeli Minister of Defense, was to deny passage to any person injured during demonstrations, causing unnecessary deaths and life changing injuries.
• According to the commission, except in two possible cases, “the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces against demonstrators was unlawful”.
• Israel used a “disproportionate use of force”.
• The “demonstrators were shot in violation of their right to life or of the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law”.
• The commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that the excessive use of force by Israeli security forces violated the rights” of thousands of demonstrators who were peaceful.
• The commission found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel violated “The Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
• “Violations of international law, such as those committed by Israeli security forces and set out in this report, give rise to State responsibility…”.

The commission found serious human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity and called on Israel to “Lift the blockade on Gaza with immediate effect.

The often repeated Israeli claims of the protests being inspired and organized by “Hamas terrorists”, were also addressed in the report, which stated that the demonstrations were inspired by the internet posts of 34-year-old Palestinian poet and journalist, Ahmed Abu Artema, with the demonstrations being organized by “A higher national committee and 12 subcommittees.”

The report went on to say, that

“while the members of the committee held diverse political views, they stated that their unifying element was the principle that the march was to be “fully peaceful from beginning to end” and demonstrators would be unarmed”.

Activities such as the use of incendiary kites, cutting barbed wire or tire burning were organized by “self-declared” units. The report further states “the commission found no evidence to suggest that they were directed or coordinated by armed groups”.

The commission interviewed what it called an international journalist who said,

“I have covered wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya. I have never seen anything like this. The slow methodical shooting. It was just shocking…”

The commission also noted that Israel refused to assist with the UN investigation and did not “cooperate or provide information.”

The following is a sample of the cases investigated by the commission.

March 30 demonstrations

Injury of 17 Mohammed Ajouri (17 years old)

“Israeli forces shot Mohammad, a student-athlete, in the back of his right leg as he gave onions to demonstrators to relieve tear-gas symptoms, approximately 300 m from the fence. His leg had to be amputated.”

The murder of Abdel Fatah Nabi (18 years old)

“Israeli forces killed Abed, from Beit Lahia, when they shot him in the back of the head as he ran, carrying a tyre, away from and about 400 m from the separation fence.”

The murder of Bader Sabagh (19 years old)

“Bader, from Jabaliya, was killed by Israeli forces when they shot him in the head as he stood smoking a cigarette 300 m from the separation fence.”

Injury and murder of schoolgirl (13 years old) and Marwan Qudieh (45 years old)

“Israeli forces injured a schoolgirl with bullet fragmentation. As she lay on the ground, four men attempted to evacuate her. The forces shot three of them, killing Marwan Qudieh (45) from Khuzaa village and injuring a potato seller and another man in the legs. One of the rescuers had to have a leg amputated.”

Injury of Alaa Dali (21 years old)

“Alaa, a member of the Palestinian cycling team, was shot by Israeli forces in the leg as he stood holding his bicycle, wearing his cycling kit, watching the demonstrations, approximately 300 m from the separation fence. His right leg had to be amputated, ending his cycling career.”

May 14 demonstration, seven children killed

“On 14 May, Israeli security forces shot and killed seven children: a girl, Wisal Khalil (14), and six boys: Izzedine al-Samak (13); Said al-Kheir (15); Ahmad al-Sha’ar (15); Talal Matar (15); Saadi Abu Salah (16); and Ibrahim al-Zarqa (17).”

The murder of Mohammad Najar (33 years old)

“Israeli forces shot Mohammad, a naval police officer, in the chest, killing him, as he sat on a hill with a friend, around 500 m from the separation fence.”

The murder of Yasser Abu Naja (11 years old)

“On 29 June, Israeli forces killed Yasser from Khan Younis with a shot to the head as he was hiding with two friends behind a bin, approximately 200 m from the separation fence. The children had been chanting national slogans at Israeli forces.”

The murder of Nasser Mosabeh (11 years old)

“Nasser was from Khan Younis. On 28 September, Israeli forces shot him in the back of the head as he stood 250 m from the separation fence. He died the same day.”

The murder of Razan Al-Najar (20 years old)

“On 1 June, an Israeli sniper bullet hit Razan, of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and who at the time was wearing a white paramedic vest and standing with other volunteer paramedics approximately 110 m from the separation fence, in the chest at the Khuzaa site, east of Khan Younis. She died in hospital.”

The murder of Yasser Murtaja (30 years old)

“On 6 April, Yasser, a journalist from Gaza City, was shot in the lower abdomen by Israeli forces at the Khan Younis site while he was filming the demonstrations for a documentary. He was wearing a blue helmet and a dark blue bulletproof vest clearly marked “Press”. He died the following day.”

Amputation of Abed Nofal (11 years old)

“On 17 April, Abed, a schoolboy from the Bureij refugee camp, was shot by Israeli forces while he was playing football near the separation fence. His leg had to be amputated.”

The extended version of the report is set to be released on March 18, 2019. The commission recommended that UN members consider imposing individual sanctions, such as travel bans or an asset freezes on those responsible.

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Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, political analyst and human rights activist who specializes in delivering insight into the geopolitical scene of the Middle East, specializing in the political and humanitarian situation in Palestine.

Featured image is from Ma’an News agency

Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products.

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About three decades ago, I taught writing at one of Chicago’s alternative high schools. It’s easy to recall some of their stories—fast-paced, dramatic, sometimes tender. I would beg my students to three-hole-punch each essay or poem and leave it in a binder on our classroom shelf, anxious not to lose the documentation of their talents and ideas.

Some of the youngsters I taught told me they were members of gangs. Looking down from the window of my second-floor classroom, I sometimes wondered if I was watching them selling drugs in broad daylight as they embraced one another on the street below.

Tragically, in the two years that I taught at Prologue High School, three students were killed. Colleagues told me that they generally buried three students per year. They died, primarily, from gunshot wounds. I think they could have survived their teenage years if weapons and ammunition hadn’t been available.

Similarly, I believe impoverished populations of numerous countries at war today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products. It would also help if the people living in countries that export deadly weapons were well-informed about the consequences these businesses bring.

Consider this: The 2018 U.S. Census Report tallies U.S. exports of bullets to other countries. Topping the list is $123 million-worth of bullets to Afghanistan—an eight-fold rise over the number of bullets sold in 2017 and far more than the number of bullets sold to any other country.

During a recent visit to Afghanistan, I heard many people voice intense fear of what would happen if civil war breaks out. It seems to me that those who manufacture bullets are doing all they can to hasten the likelihood and deadly outcome of an armed struggle.

But rather than help people here in the United States understand conditions in countries where the U.S. conducts airstrikes, President Donald Trump is hiding the facts.

On March 6, 2019, Trump revoked portions of a 2016 executive order imposed by President Barack Obama requiring annual reports on the number of strikes taken and an assessment of combatant and civilian deaths. Trump has removed the section of the mandate specifically covering civilian casualties caused by CIA airstrikes, and whether they were caused by drones or “manned” warplanes.

A U.S. State Department email message said the reporting requirements are “superfluous” because the Department of Defense already must file a full report of all civilian casualties caused by military strikes. However, the report required from the Pentagon doesn’t cover airstrikes conducted by the CIA.

And last year, the White House simply ignored the reporting requirement.

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Democracy is based on information. You can’t have democracy if people have no information about crucial issues. Uninformed about military practices and foreign policy, U.S. citizens become disinterested.

I lived alongside civilians in Iraq during the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing of Baghdad. In the hospital emergency rooms I heard survivors asking, through screams and tears, why they were being attacked. Since that time, in multiple visits to Kabul, I have heard the same agonized question.

The majority of Afghanistan’s population consists of women and children. When civilians in that country die because of U.S. attacks—whether within or beyond “areas of active hostilities”; whether conducted by the CIA or the Department of Defense; whether using manned or unmanned warplanes—the attack is almost certain to cause overwhelming grief. Often the survivors feel rage and may want revenge. But many feel despair and find their only option is to flee.

Children at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Street Kids School in Kabul.

Imagine a home in your neighborhood suddenly demolished by a secret attack; you have no idea why this family was targeted, or why women and children in this family were killed. If another such attack happened, wouldn’t you consider moving?

Reporting for The New York Times, Mujib Mashal recently interviewed a farmer from Afghanistan’s Helmand province displaced by fighting and now unable to feed his family. “About 13.5 million people are surviving on one meal or less a day,” Mashal writes, “and 54 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a $1 a day.”

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Last week, an international crisis sharply escalated in a “dogfight” between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states. The crisis has been somewhat defused. Media reports quickly focused on the relative military strength of both countries—observing, for example, that the dilapidated state of India’s jet fighters could be a “win” for U.S. weapons manufacturers.

“It is hard to sell a front-line fighter to a country that isn’t threatened,” said an analyst with the Lexington Institute. “Boeing and Lockheed Martin both have a better chance of selling now because suddenly India feels threatened.”

A few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited heads of state in Pakistan and India. Photos showed warm embraces and respectful receptions.

The CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, also embraces the Saudi government. She serves on the boards of trustees of two Saudi technological universities, and presides over a company that has been awarded “a nine-figure down payment on a $15 billion missile-defense system for Saudi Arabia.” The Saudis will acquire new state-of-the-art weapons even as they continue bludgeoning civilians in Yemen during a war orchestrated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And the Saudis will build military alliances with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

With both India and Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons, every effort should be made to stop the flow of weapons into the region. But major weapon making companies bluntly assert that the bottom line in the decision is their profit.

Attending funerals for young people in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, at the time one of the poorest in Chicago, I felt deep dismay over the profits that motivated gun runners who sold weapons to students, some of whom would be soon fatally wounded. In the ensuing decades, larger, more ambitious weapon peddlers have engendered and prolonged fighting between warlords, within and beyond the United States.

How different our world could be if efforts were instead directed toward education, health care, and community welfare.

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Kathy Kelly is Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Featured image: Through the winter duvet project of the Afghan Peace Volunteers about 1600 duvets were distributed to Afghan families struggling to meet basic needs. Since 2001, and at a cost of 800 billion dollars, the U.S. military has inflicted aerial bombings, ground attacks, drone warfare, and extensive surveillance on Afghan citizens. (Source: Dr. Hakim via The Progressive)

To: Eurozone governments; President of the Eurogroup, Mário Centeno; President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi

Petition

We stand with Greece, demanding a path to an economic recovery that truly values people’s lives and dignity. Start by returning interest made on Greek government bonds.

Why is this important?

The Greek people have been crushed under the pressure of austerity terms. Hospitals can barely offer basic care, with 1 nurse for 40 patients.

[1] Wages keep falling. Pensions have been cut a dozen times since 2010.

[2] Unemployment has more than doubled. [3]

And the bailout money meant to “help” Greeks get out of this situation? Eurozone countries have made billions in interest from it. [4]

But Europe’s finance ministers have the power to change course. If we show them that Europeans don’t want to profit from Greece’s despair, they can no longer act unchecked and claim to act on our behalf.

The European Central Bank (ECB) started buying Greek government bonds in 2010, when Greece needed its first bailout. If the ECB didn’t purchase the bonds, Greece would have reduced their value. But the ECB prevented Greece from doing so as a condition for a bailout package. Each year the inflated bonds make a massive sum in interest, which used to be returned to Greece. [5]

That changed in 2015, when the Greek people voted against more government cuts that affect everyday life. As a punishment for refusing the cuts, the Eurozone countries decided to pocket the interest from the bonds, instead of returning them to Greece as previously agreed. [6]

After years of austerity, twelve rounds of tax increases and severe cuts to public services, the Greek people can’t afford to be taken advantage of any longer. The Greek people need us to support them in their struggle now more than ever before.

If we stand up, we can get the interest from these bonds returned to Greece, and demand that economic recovery must also value people’s lives and dignity. Together, we have the power to show the Greek people that we stand with them. And to show our governments that we expect solidarity, not exploitation.

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Notes

[1] “’Patients who should live are dying’: Greece’s public health meltdown,” The Guardian, 1 January 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/01/patients-dying-greece-public-health-meltdown

[2] “Greek pensioners protest benefit cuts, pin hopes on court,” Reuters, 10 October 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-greece-pensioners-protests/greek-pensioners-protest-benefit-cuts-pin-hopes-on-court-idUSL8N1MH1SN

[3] “Unemployment by sex and age – monthly average,” Eurostat. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-datasets/-/UNE_RT_M

[4] “ECB Profits from Greek Bond Holdings at €7.8 Billion,” Greek Reporter, 10 October 2017. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2017/10/10/ecb-profits-from-greek-bond-holdings-at-e7-8-billion/

[5] “ECB to swap Greek bonds to avoid forced losses -sources,” Reuters, 16 February 2012. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-greece/ecb-to-swap-greek-bonds-to-avoid-forced-losses-sources-idUSTRE81F1EK20120216

[6] “Eurozone unlocks €10.3bn bailout loan for Greece,” The Guardian, 25 May 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/24/eurozone-officials-hope-to-give-greece-next-tranche-of-bailout

Featured image is from WeMove.EU

India-Pakistan relations are in crisis. The Indian people have been impoverished by PM Modi’s neoliberal agenda.

Elections are forthcoming in India.

This carefully research article reveals the working of this corrupt monetary  policy agenda. 

Will Prime Minister Modi’s demonetization policy –which has contributed to impoverishing millions of people– be an issue in the election campaign? 

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In early November 2016, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.

India-Pakistan relations are in crisis. Elections are forthcoming in India. The incisive article by Colin Todhunter  addresses the issue of Prime Minister Modi’s  “business friendly” role in opening the door to the plunder of India’s agriculture. First published in June 2016

Describing itself as a major ‘global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy’ company, APCO Worldwide is a lobby/PR agency with firm links to the Wall Street/corporate America establishment (arguably, part of it) and functions to serve its global agenda. India PM Narendra Modi turned to APCO to help transform his image and turn him into electable pro-corporate PM material. It also helped Modi get the message out that what he achieved in Gujarat as Chief Minister was a miracle of economic neoliberalism, although the actual reality is quite different.

In APCO’s India brochure, there is the claim 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.

With Modi now at the political helm, the government is doing the bidding of global biotech companies and is currently trying to push through herbicide-tolerant GM mustard based on fraudulent tests and ‘regulatory delinquency‘, which will not only open the door to further GM crops but will boost the sales of Bayer’s glufinosate herbicide. In addition, plans have been announced to introduce 100% foreign direct investment in certain sectors of the economy, including food processing.

Neoliberal dogma

The opening up of India to GMOs and foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. Such rhetoric mirrors that of the pro-business, neoliberal dogma we see in APCO’s brochure for India. It is the type of jargon that is rolled out by powerful corporate players and their compliant politicians across the world who seek to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few – via deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards, etc – is for their own benefit because it is good for ‘growth’.

From Greece to Spain and from the US to the UK, we are able to see this rhetoric for what it really is: record profits and massive increases in wealth (ie ‘growth) and control for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, bankrupt governments and opaque, corrupt trade deals.

APCO describes India as a trillion-dollar market. Note that the emphasis is not on redistributing the country’s wealth among its citizens but on exploiting markets. Whiles hundreds of millions live in poverty and hundreds of millions of others hover close to poverty, the combined wealth of India’s richest 296 individuals is $478 billion, some 22% of India’s GDP. According to the ‘World Wealth Report 2015‘, there were 198,000 ‘high net worth’ individuals in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 156,000.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to global capital in the early nineties. High net worth individuals (the very rich) are the biggest culprits here. Not so much conforming to neoliberal ‘trickle down’ ideology but neoliberal ‘funnel out’, where tax havens across the globe exist for corporations and individual to stash their untaxed and unaccounted for wealth.

APCO likes to talk about positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets, sell products and secure profit. In other words, colonising key sectors, regions and nations to serve the needs of US-dominated international capital.

Paving the way for plunder

It is notable that Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ is lowering labour, environmental, health and consumer protection standards, while reducing taxes and tariffs and facilitating the acquisition of public assets via privatisation and instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign (US/Western) corporations.

When the World Bank rates countries on their level of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, it means nation states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on free market fundamentalism. The more ‘compliant’ national governments make their populations and regulations, the more attractive foreign capital is tempted to invest.

The World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ – supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID – entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds (listen to this, especially from 13 mins).

It might lead some wonder whose interests are really being served.

Anyone who is aware of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the links with the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty will know the answer to that as far as Indian is concerned. Those two projects form part of an overall plan to subjugate Indian agriculture to the needs of foreign corporations (see this article from 1999).

Politicians are clever at using poor management, bad administration and overblown or inept bureaucracies as an excuse for privatisation and dereugulation. Margaret Thatcher was an expert at this: if something does not work correctly because of bad management, privatise it; underinvest in something, make it seem like a basket case and privatise it; pump up a sector with public funds to turn it into a profitable, efficient enterprise then sell it off to the private sector. The tactics and ideology of and the justification for neoliberal economic policies take many forms.

And Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

Leaving climate considerations aside, Britain used to be nearly self-sufficient in energy, with coal being the lynch pin. Since the 1980s, pits have been closed and the mining industry barely exists. Pits were deemed ‘uneconomical’ or ‘inefficient’. Now Britain imports coal, engages in costly wars to grab energy resources and pays the unemployed to do nothing rather than dig coal.  There is enough coal in Britain to last for hundreds of years. It would have made better economic sense to have kept these pits open (see this, this and this).

Neoliberalism is merely ideology masquerading as ‘economics’. The mines were closed in order to destroy the miners’ union, the strongest and most militant of Britain’s unions at the time who would have stood in the way of the economic plunder by and financialisation of Britain’s economy that followed. Energy security and livelihoods and towns and villages were decimated. And now we have the media celebrating ‘job creation’ when a new supermarket opens a branch to create a handful of jobs in what was once an area of full employment (while ignoring local store owners whose livelihoods are put in jeopardy).

And Indian farmers are now confronted by the similar forces of neoliberal capitalism.

India has many examples of poor management or inept bureaucracies and there are certainly deficiencies in food logistics. But rather than reform or improve them, the mantra is to let the market take over: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about letting the market decide or giving control to the ‘free’ market.

The destruction of livelihoods under the guise of ‘job creation’

But doesn’t FDI and foreign firms entering India ‘create jobs’. Yes, at least according to the neoliberal ideologues appearing in the media who claim that foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. Just how many actually get created is another matter.

What is overlooked, however, are the jobs that were lost in the first place to ‘open up’ sectors to foreign capital. For example, Cargill may set up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?

But won’t farmers better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain to create ‘efficiency’? Again, we need only look at the plight of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance

India is looking to US corporations to ‘develop’ its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Envisioning what this could mean for India, Devinder Sharma describes how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers’ livelihoods. The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers. Sharma notes that agribusiness companies rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.

For farmers in India, the vast majority are not to be empowered but displaced from the land. Farming is being made financially non-viable for small farmers, seeds are to be privatised as intellectual property rights are redefined (facilitated by prominent Trojan horse figures), land is to be acquired and an industrialised, foreign corporate-controlled food production, processing and retail system is to be implemented.

The long-term plan is for an urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food contaminated with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security. This would be disastrous for farmers, public health and local livelihoods.

It begs the question: is the ‘Walmartisation’ of food and agriculture where India really wants to be heading?

While APCO wraps up the potential for economic plunder in corporate jargon, others cut through such technocratic rhetoric to expose the politics, motivations, players and corruption that are driving the restructuring of India and its agriculture:

“The WTO, with the TRIPS Agreement written by Monsanto and the Agreement on Agriculture written by Cargill, was the beginning of a new Corporate Imperialism. This imperialism is articulated by President Obama in suggesting that the resources, economies and markets of Asia – where half of humanity lives – are “up for grabs”. Trade Agreements like the TPP/TTIP/WTO, written in secret by Industry looking for raw materials, captive markets, lower labour costs and lower taxes, are what make it appear as though the land of South East Asia is “up for grabs” for palm oil plantations to the highest bribe… or that the farmers and food security of India are disposable as long as there is a giant market for chemicals and patented seed.” – Vandana Shiva, ‘Corporate imperialism – the only reason for GMO‘

From Africa to India, corporate America and global agribusiness are intent on colonising food and agriculture by recasting them in their own financially lucrative images, picking out only the most profitable sections of supply chains, while relying on public money to facilitate their profits.

The alternative would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and corrupt markets and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture based on actual science (and appropriate price and/or income support and infrastructure). Instead, we see the push for bogus ‘solutions’ like GMOs and the side-lining of rational analysis and science in favour of neoliberal ideology.

Low input, sustainable models of food production and notions of independence and local or regional self-reliance do not provide opportunities to global agribusiness or international funds to exploit markets, sell their products and cash in on APCO’s vision of a trillion-dollar corporate hijack; moreover, they have little in common with Bill Gates/USAID’s vision for an Africa dominated by global agribusiness.

Modi was elected on 31 percent of the vote in 2014. It was heralded as a landslide victory due to the number of seats secured in parliament. Are those voters now getting what they wanted – or will they eventually get more than they bargained for?

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This  article was first published by Sustainable Pulse in 2016

The Munich Environmental Institute (Umweltinstitut München) has released shocking results (February) of laboratory testing it has completed on 14 of the most sold beers in Germany. The probable carcinogen and World’s most used herbicide – glyphosate – was found in all of the 14 beers tested.

German Beer – Glyphosate Testing Results:

Hasseröder Pils – 29,74 μg/l (ppb)
Jever Pils – 23,04 μg/l
Warsteiner Pils – 20,73 μg/l
Radeberger Pilsner – 12,01 μg/l
Veltins Pilsener – 5,78 μg/l
Oettinger Pils – 3,86 μg/l
König Pilsener – 3,35 μg/l
Krombacher Pils – 2,99 μg/l
Erdinger Weißbier – 2,92 μg/l
Paulaner Weißbier – 0,66 μg/l
Bitburger Pils – 0,55 μg/l
Beck’s Pils – 0,50 μg/l
Franziskaner Weißbier – 0,49 μg/l
Augustiner Helles – 0,46 μg/l

In 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC declared that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.

The German Brewers’ Association, reacted by calling the study by the Munich Environmental Institute “not credible”, but admitted that low residues of the probable human carcinogen glyphosate could not be prevented, because “the herbicide is now found virtually everywhere after decades of use in agriculture”.

Sustainable Pulse Director Henry Rowlands stated Thursday:

“Stone-Age industry funded science suggested that the higher the dose of a chemical the more dangerous it was, however modern independent science has discovered that many toxic chemicals have as much or more of an influence on our health at low doses– these chemicals are known as hormone hackers (endocrine disruptors).

“A study from March 2015 stated that the health costs to the European Union of hormone hacking chemicals is over $ 150 Billion per year! The study stated that lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% or more of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors.

“Glyphosate is likely to be one of these hormone hacking chemicals according to independent science. Find more information on this here.”

First published on February 14, 2019

Pakistan’s promising economic potential, international connectivity capabilities, and unparalleled geostrategic location combine with its world-class military and proven diplomatic finesse over the decades to turn the South Asian country into the global pivot state of the 21^st century.

As astounding as it may sound to most observers, the global pivot state of the 21^st century isn’t China, the US, nor Russia, but Pakistan. The South Asian state regrettably has a terrible international reputation as a result of the joint Indo-American infowar that’s been waged against it over the past few decades, but an objective look at the country’s geostrategic and domestic capabilities reveals that it’s in a prime position to influentially shape the contours of the coming century. It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that China had the foresight to partner with it decades before anyone else did, but other Great Powers like Russia are finally awakening to its importance, and this is in turn making Pakistan the most strategically sought-after country in the world.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is Beijing’s flagship project of its world-changing Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) because it crucially enables the People’s Republic to avoid the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca hotspots and obtain reliable access to the Mideast and Africa, which provide China with energy resources for its economy and growing consumer markets for its products, respectively. BRI is redirecting global trade routes from West to East and literally building the basis for the emerging Multipolar World Order, so considering Pakistan’s irreplaceably important role in this process by virtue of CPEC, China’s South Asian partner can be reconceptualized as the cornerstone of Beijing’s future world vision. This in and of itself makes Pakistan pivotal, but there’s actually much more to it than just that.

CPEC isn’t just a “highway” from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea but a series of megaprojects through which Pakistan can transform itself from being a passive object of International Relations to a leading subject of the rapidly changing global order if it creatively expands this central corridor throughout the rest of the supercontinent in order to become the Zipper of Eurasia.

The country’s domestic economic potential is extremely promising when remembering that it’s a nation of over 200 million people uniquely positioned at the crossroads of China’s future trade route with the rest of the “Global South”. With this in mind, Prime Minister Khan recently told the world at the UAE’s World Government Summit not to “miss the boat” and lose out on their chance to capitalize off of his country’s expected growth.

It’s little wonder then that major investment players such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are jumping at the opportunity to take part in this before any of their competitors can, wanting to get ahead of the race by establishing a premier presence in Pakistan as it becomes the shortest trade route between their economies and China’s. That’s not all there is to it, however, since Pakistan is capable of expanding CPEC in the Northern, Western, and Southern directions via the CPEC+ branch corridors to connect itself with Central Asia and Russia, the rest of West Asia (Iran, Turkey), and Africa, which could altogether make it the Convergence of Civilizations and the antidote to Huntington’s poisonous attempt to divide and rule the Eastern Hemisphere through his “Clash of Civilizations” thesis.

Building off of its CPEC+ civilizational-geostrategic connectivity prospects, Pakistan can institutionalize its role as the Zipper of Eurasia by bringing together the two incipient multilateral strategic partnerships that it’s a part of – the Multipolar CENTO with Iran and Turkey, and the Multipolar Trilateral with China and Russia – to form the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers smack dab in the center of Eurasia, greatly aided as it would be by the instrumental role that Islamabad will naturally play in the post-American multipolar blueprint for Afghanistan. Pakistan can pull this off because it has a proven track record of diplomatic success in balancing between various powers, be it the US and China or Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its world-class nuclear-armed military is an impressive partner for all.

Simply put, Pakistan is the pivot state upon which all of China’s future plans depend, therefore recasting it as the kingmaker of the New Cold War and the world-changing multipolar processes of the 21^st century. That said, Pakistan is also a pivot state in its own right, one that’s capable of zipping together the various forces of Eurasia and becoming the convergence point of the Eastern Hemisphere’s many diverse civilizations, which can be institutionalized through the Golden Ring framework that it’s the key component of. Prophetically, Pakistani founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah predicted all of this when he famously proclaimed in 1948 that “Pakistan is the pivot of the world, placed on the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves”, and each passing day proves that he was right.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Dr. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University joins us to discuss his research with Catherine Austin Fitts into the $21 trillion in unaccounted transactions on the books of the US Department of Defence and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We discuss what we know and don’t know about the subject, the Pentagon’s nonsensical and inadequate excuses for the debacle, the new accounting guideline that legally allows every department of the federal government to create fake and altered books for public consumption, the recent failed Pentagon audit, the government’s refusal to provide any information about the problem, the failure of congress to pursue the issue, and the failure of the press to report on it.

Remanding Chelsea Manning into federal custody for contempt on Friday, jailing her for invoking her constitutional rights, refusing to answer prosecutorial and grand juror questions, is one of countless examples of grand jury abuses of power – symptomatic of police state rule, how things work in the US.

Manning was constitutionally justified saying:

“I will not comply with this, or any grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system,” adding:

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.”

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally (and legally) object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

“…I resent being forced to endanger myself by participating in this predatory practice.” In response to each question asked, she said:

“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.”

Her response was and remains constitutionally protected. That’s not good enough in America, the rule of law long ago abandoned. Congressionally and judicially supported executive diktat power replaced it.

Forever wars of aggression against nations threatening no one is Exhibit A. So are numerous police state laws of the land, largely enacted post-9/11 – the USA Patriot Act most abusive.

It’s unconstitutional for violating the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Americans can be prosecuted for claimed association with “undesirable group(s).”

They’re subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures by unchecked surveillance powers of the state, their privacy compromised.

Due process, habeas rights, and equal justice under law greatly eroded. All of the above are hallmarks of police state rule.

Manning’s First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights were violated. She was wrongfully imprisoned for invoking her free expression rights, justifiably revealing US high crimes of war and against humanity in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Subjecting her to unreasonable searches and seizures violated her Fourth Amendment rights. Her Fifth Amendment rights of due process, protection from self-incrimination, and possible double jeopardy were violated.

So was her Sixth Amendment right of a public trial represented by counsel, an impartial jury, and nature of possible charges against her.

Subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishments, including the threat to her freedom and well-being, by demanding she testify before a grand jury in secret without counsel violated her Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights.

As originally conceived, the grand jury system was established as a “sword” against individuals accused of crimes, as well as a “shield” against oppressive, arbitrary authority.

A former New York Court of Appeals chief judge once said under the US grand jury system, prosecutors control what jurors hear. Their manipulative practices can “indict a ham sandwich” – an overstatement to highlight an unjust system.

The Supreme Court earlier ruled that federal grand jury prosecutors need not adhere to customary trial rules and procedures. Nor must they reveal evidence exculpating defendants.

Instead of protecting the public from oppressive government, they function largely as a “sword” against fundamental constitutional rights because of their manipulative practices, doing whatever it takes to get indictments they seek.

Grand juries are convened to determine if there’s probable cause to indict, most often a super-majority of jurors required, at times a simple majority.

Instead of being a protective “community voice,” most often they’re a prosecutorial tool to indict – an unconstitutional system that should have been restructured or abolished long ago.

Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) founder and executive director Lauren Regan explained grand jury abuses, saying:

“…I have represented dozens and dozens of clients who were subpoenaed to testify as witnesses at State and Federal Grand Juries regarding government investigations.”

“A grand jury is a secret tribunal where a citizen is forced to answer questions by a prosecutor, often against their will.”

“They are not allowed to have an attorney in the grand jury room to advise them while the questioning takes place. There is no Judge in the grand jury room to oversee the fairness or legitimacy of the proceedings.”

“The prosecutor alone determines what evidence will be provided to the grand jurors, and that alone forms the basis of their deliberations and their determination regarding whether a felony indictment will issue.”

“The prosecutor becomes the grand jurors’ friend: he (or she) controls their bathroom breaks, meals, and whether they can return to their work, families, and lives.”

“The prosecutor, a politically elected position, works very closely with police every day and generally exhibits bias toward police as a result of this familiar relationship. The prosecutor holds enormous power over the outcome of a grand jury proceeding.”

Witnesses risk unwitting self-incrimination, even when guilty of no crimes, denied their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in cases where prosecutors impose immunity – yet able to game the system to their advantage if wanting a witness indicted.

That’s why Manning refused to cooperate, invoking her constitutional rights to remain silent, free from possible self-incrimination, along with potentially helping the prosecutor build a case against another targeted individual – namely Julian Assange, why the grand jury she was called before to testify was convened in the first place.

Eastern District of Virginia court Judge Claude Hilton ordered her detained unless she agrees to testify, or until the grand jury she was subpoenaed to appear before concludes its work.

She could be detained as a political prisoner indefinitely. At the completion of the current grand jury’s work, she can be subpoenaed to testify before a newly convened grand jury – a way to keep her imprisoned.

That’s what oppressive rule is all about, the rights of many thousands of Americans violated – countless numbers for political reasons like Manning.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza?  

Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Maurice de Zayas,  sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report?

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measly $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

As the United States is completely devoid of any print or TV media, it falls upon internet media such as this website to perform the missing function of honest journalism.  

As for the alleged starvation and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, Zayas has this to say:

The December 2017 and March 2018 reports of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) list food crises in 37 countries. “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is not among them.”

“In 2017, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela requested medical aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the plea was rejected, because Venezuela ‘is still a high-income country … and as such is not eligible’.”

The “crisis” in Venezuela “cannot be compared with the humanitarian crises in Gaza, Yemen, Libya, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Haiti, Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, or Myanmar, among others.”

In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being “weaponized” against rivals.

In paragraph 37 of his report, de Zayas says:

  “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. A difference, perhaps, is that twenty-first century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through ‘fake news’, aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric so as to give the impression that a human rights ‘end’ justifies the criminal means. There is not only a horizontal juridical world order governed by the Charter of the United Nations and principles of sovereign equality, but also a vertical world order reflecting the hierarchy of a geopolitical system that links dominant States with the rest of the world according to military and economic power. It is the latter, geopolitical system that generates geopolitical crimes, hitherto in total impunity.”

He expresses concern about the level of polarization and disinformation that surrounds every narrative about Venezuela. 

“A disquieting media campaign seeks to force observers into a preconceived view that there is a ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. An independent expert must be wary of hyperbole, bearing in mind that ‘humanitarian crisis’ is a term of art (terminus technicus) that can be misused as a pretext for military intervention.”

In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being ‘weaponized’ against rivals.

A political solution is blocked because “certain countries [the US] do not want to see a peaceful solution to the Venezuelan conflict and prefer to prolong the suffering of the people of that country, with the expectation that the situation will reach the threshold of a humanitarian crisis and provoke a military intervention to impose a regime change.”

Washington’s attack on Venezuela is in violation of established international law.

“The principles of non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States belong to customary international law and have been reaffirmed in General Assembly resolutions, notably 2625 (XXV) and 3314 (XXIX), and in the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Article 32 of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, adopted by the General Assembly in 1974, stipulates that no State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights.”  Chapter 4, article 19, of the Charter of the OAS stipulates that “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.”

Zayas reports that an atmosphere of intimidation accompanied the mission, attempting to pressure him into a predetermined matrix. He received letters from American-financed NGOs asking him not to proceed on his own, dictating to him the report he should write. Prior to his arrival in Venezuela, a propaganda campaign was launched against him on Facebook and Twitter questioning his integrity and accusing  him of bias. (See this) 

As Washington’s sanctions and currency manipulations constitute geopolitical crimes, Zayas asks what reparations are due to the victims of sanctions.  He recommends that the International Criminal Court investigate Washington’s coercive measures that can cause death from malnutrition and lack of medicines and medical equipment. 

“Despite being the first UN official to visit and report from Venezuela in 21 years, Mr de Zayas said his research into the causes of the country’s economic crisis has so far largely been ignored by the UN and the media, and caused little debate within the Human Rights Council.

“He believes his report has been ignored because it goes against the popular narrative that Venezuela needs regime change.” (See this)

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and an abundance of other natural resources including gold, bauxite and coltan. But under the Maduro government they’re not accessible to US and transnational corporations.

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

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

This article was originally published in August 2014.

There is a scene from Danny Devito’s fine film Hoffa when Jimmy Hoffa is organizing a teamsters’ strike in the midst of WW2. As he walks through the trucking company yard the strikers there keep asking him what and when. One of his subordinates runs up to him and tells him “Tobin called and said to call it off Jimmy!” Hoffa ponders for but a moment and says very loudly “Everyone says I’m wrong so I must be right!” And he signals the men to move forward towards the corporate entrance.

For that minority of us who reject both this Military Industrial Empire and its Two Party ‘One Party’ system, we are marginalized and ostracized. For that smaller segment of our grouping that holds to most of the conspiracy theories of empire… Wow!! We are just simply crazy! Factor out the way out theories of aliens, the shape shifting reptilians,  etc. That is not what this writer is speaking about. No, I and others who study history and truth (which our controlled mainstream media is directed not to cover) are labeled crazy for believing:

• FDR and his inner circle, with help from Churchill and the Brits, knew of the soon to be attack on Pearl Harbor. They chose to keep the Air Craft carriers out at sea while allowing the Japanese to proceed with their plans, so as to get us into the war.
• FDR and Churchill kept putting off the plans for a second front (Operation Overlord) for as long as possible. This agenda was to allow the Germans and Russians to continue killing each other off. If Stalin did not threaten them with making a separate peace deal with Hitler after the German defeat at Stalingrad, the invasion of Normandy might have been pushed back even further.
• Truman gave the OK to drop A-bombs on Japan for two major reasons: A) to let the Russians know that we had the bomb and could make more than one at a time and B) to keep Russia from getting into Japan before the war ended. As far as the excuse given of ‘saving American lives‘ that would have been naturally very true if in fact we had to invade Japan. The real fact is that the Russians had already brokered a deal allowing the Japanese high command to surrender and keep the emperor… that was all that was needed in the spring of ‘45.
• The U-2 flights of the 50s and early 60s proved that the Soviet Union was much weaker than us militarily, especially in the area of volume of missiles and other weaponry. This fact was withheld not only from the American public, but from most of the Congress as well. When Eisenhower, too late in the game (as he knew the truth for most of his presidency) warned us in his farewell address of the Military Industrial Complex, the die had been cast, and jingoism was in full gear, so much so that…
• When JFK had his epiphany, beginning after the Bay of Pigs and finalized during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he went from a cold warrior to a born again patriot. Sadly, the mechanism for the Coup d’Etat was churning rapidly. Oswald was nothing more than a Naval Intelligence undercover operative who was used as a patsy for the killing of our president. Anyone who studies the many facts and chain of events in this story knows that as David Ferrie told Jim Garrison “It’s an enigma inside of an enigma“. It wasn’t the mob that killed JFK (maybe the shooters came from the mob) rather it was elements within our own government that ordered the hit and masterminded the cover-up.

• Robert Kennedy knew too much concerning the Coup d’Etat…and when he was on the verge of becoming President in ‘68 (“And now it’s on to Chicago and the nomination”) … boom! Another patsy, Sirhan, was mind controlled to take the fall. As for Martin Luther King, in ’67 he stopped focusing on Civil Rights and lashed out at the Vietnam War (“… the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today- my own government“) and then in spring of ‘68 first ventured  involvement into labor unrest (Memphis sanitation workers strike) and … boom!
• Anyone with half a mind knows that Reagan and his crew orchestrated the deal with the Iranians in the fall of ’80 to hold off releasing the hostages until after the election. Come on, I mean minutes after assuming office on Jan 20^th 1981 Iran releases the hostages! Imagine how such an underhanded act should have been covered by our news media? It wasn’t and still isn’t even discussed much.
• Bush Sr. on July 25^th 1990 sent his Ambassador April Glaspie to meet with Saddam Hussein. During their conversation she stated “We have no opinion in your Arab/Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait… Secretary of State Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” Then, Iraq went into Kuwait and the trap was set. You know the rest. (see image below, retreating Iraqi forces)

• The election of 2000 was one of the most heinous acts of fraud and trickery in the history of American politics. Many books have been written on it, so this writer will not waste his time on the details. Even Vincent Bugliosi, who I hardly ever agree with on things, wrote eloquently (The Betrayal of America) on this disgraceful episode. This all connects, according to most conspiracy researchers to….
• September 11^th 2001. I mean, how dumb the American public was (and is) to disregard the myriad of facts of what transpired that day. The coincidence (?) that on that very day NORAD was conducting Operation Vigilant Guardian involving the fake hijacking of airliners…while the real thing was going on! How many demolition experts have to be assembled to contradict the government version of the two towers going down like pancakes from burning jet fuel? The truth of the matter, according to these experts, is that there had to have been explosives planted in those buildings to coincide with the planes crashing into them. The You Tube of the three NYC veteran firemen watching it happen in real time on a television screen is interesting. One remarks “Did you see that? Boom boom boom! “And another one answers “Controlled demolition.”  Forget all the countless facts concerning this case, and just digest the two given above. Could Bin Laden and his gang get the access and lengthy time it would take to place highly intricate and carefully hidden explosives into both buildings? Come on!
• After he sat like a dodo in that Sarasota classroom for seven minutes after the 2^nd plane hit the tower, Bush Junior is taken on a cross country tour on Air Force One. He then returns home to direct the American public to “Go out and shop“, while he sits with his handlers to plot the upcoming invasion of Iraq… oh sorry, I mean Afghanistan. No! Richard Clarke was told to find the evidence to connect Hussein and Iraq with 9/11. A little more than a year later, and countless cherry pickings of what the Bush gang called intelligence, they get Colin Powell to ‘sell his soul‘ and deliver to the UN (see image right) the best fiction your tax money could buy… and soon after we invade and occupy and you know the rest. The Congress, like the lap dogs they were (and are) goes along to get along with the Bush/Cheney gang’s agenda. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are thrown down the rabbit hole of military spending… until it reaches around 50% of our federal tax dollars. Imagine how many roads, schools, libraries, clinics, hospitals, police and fire personnel … that a portion of that increased spending could have been used to save our economy? Finally, to add insult to injury we have …
• Mr. Hope and Change 2008. Mr. Obama speaks like a preacher and acts like a stooge for the empire. He promised to close Gitmo (never happened). He promised to deal with torture and then allowed extraordinary rendition (grabbing someone here in the USA and rushing them, hooded and manacled, to some foreign nation that does in fact conduct torture). Under his stewardship (or lack of) A) Military spending reached an all time high (56% in 2011 fiscal year) and we keep our military footprint in the Middle East, B) As a candidate in 2008, he took in almost three times the amount of donations from the private health care industry than McCain- thus ObamaCare was a gift to the private health insurers. His handlers, and those of the ‘Two Party/ One Party System, would not allow Medicare for All, C) He continued the phony and disgraceful bailout of the Wall Street banksters. Obama could have spent a fraction of that TARP money by putting the ailing bankster banks and investment houses into receivership, and keeping the employees at their jobs. By having Uncle Sam purchase all the bad mortgage related paper for 10 and 20 cents on the dollar, many foreclosed homes would be off the market. Foreclosed homeowners would keep their homes through lengthier mortgages, thus lower monthly payments. This would not only raise the value of all homes, but stimulate the economy. Builders, cabinetmakers, hardware wholesale and retail businesses… every aspect of the housing industry would see great progress. Not to be. Instead, Obama allowed the corporate beast to create an ever increasing rental housing machine that makes serfs out of more and more of us.

“It’s all right Ma, I’m only bleeding!“

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

The details of what took place at the Hanoi Summit strongly suggests that President Donald Trump has joined the neocons in their quest to strangle the North Korean economy and bring about regime change. As it happens, the Trump delegation did not negotiate in good faith or make an honest attempt to resolve the nuclear issue but, instead, piled on a list of unrelated demands that they knew would blow up the summit. Multiple reports point to John Bolton as the author of the plan to sabotage the meetings which seems to be the case. Check out this excerpt from the Pearls and Irritations website:

“In his article on the Hanoi talks … Richard Broinowski reported that a senior Asian diplomat, in Canberra, had told him that an important reason for the break-up of the talks was that Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, had persuaded Trump to add, at the end, the demand that DPRK also disclose it’s holdings of chemical and biological weapons.This report has now been confirmed by a report published in the March 4th edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which cites a statement by the DPRK Foreign Minister, Ri Yong-Ho, in Hanoi, that “John Bolton disrupted the talks by demanding that North Korea disclose it’s chemical and biological arsenal as well as it’s nuclear arsenals”. This would seem to answer the question I posed in my article on whether or not a spanner had been thrown into the works and if so, by whom? Not unusually, there seems to have been no report of this highly salient fact by western mainstream media.” (John Menadue–Pearls and Irritations)

The new list of demands was confirmed in an article at The Guardian on Thursday which said:

“The US is demanding North Korea destroy all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before receiving any sanctions relief…Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said the US president was open to another summit with Kim, but that the US wanted to discuss a “big deal” involving complete disarmament in return for comprehensive sanctions relief….

“Nobody in the administration advocates a step-by-step approach. In all cases the expectation is the complete denuclearisation of North Korea as a condition for all the other steps being taken,” the official said, confirming that Trump had also called on Kim to get rid of all North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons at the same time.” (“North Korea must give up all nuclear weapons before any sanctions relief, says US “, The Guardian)

The Trump administration’s objective in changing the focus from nuclear weapons to a more comprehensive disarmament was not intended to simply “move the goalposts” but to undermine mutual trust to the extent that future negotiations would be impossible. Trump’s performance in Hanoi suggests that he is now willing to participate in a confrontational and potentially-explosive strategy in exchange for the tacit support of the neocons and foreign policy establishment elites who have opposed any cooperation with the DPRK from the very beginning. Trump supporters– who felt that the president was sincere in promising a non-interventionist “America First” foreign policy– should pay close attention to these recent developments as they portend a dramatic reversal in Trump’s stated position. The President appears to be abandoning his campaign promises to garner greater political support from his former adversaries.

There’s always been ferocious opposition to negotiations with the DPRK, particularly from foreign policy elites see great benefit in preserving the status quo. It is in their interests to continue the 65 year-long occupation of a divided peninsula in a strategically located region. Washington’s military presence allows it counter emerging rivals and assert its dominance a full 10,000 miles from its own shores. That is why any movement towards constructive dialogue, peace or reunification is avoided like the plague. It’s because elites figure that peace will inevitably undermine public support for a permanent US military presence in the South.

Maintaining a 30,000-man garrison in South Korea also allows Washington to preserve its role as regional policeman, further encircle China and Russia, dictate how the South Korean Army may or may not be used under the terms of the Combined Forces Command, strengthen America’s influence in the critical Asia-Pacific theater, and provide the essential military component needed to implement America’s “pivot to Asia.” For these reasons, foreign policy elites oppose any change in the present arrangement, which is why they have used their agents in the intelligence community, the administration, the military and the media to torpedo any move towards resolution or reconciliation.

Some readers might remember how the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, tried to sabotage the upcoming summit just a month before Trump was scheduled to meet Kim Jong un in Hanoi. Coats appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 29, 2019– accompanied by the Directors of the CIA and FBI– and told the Committee that, in the his estimation, Kim would never give up his nukes:

“We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”

Coats testimony was clearly crafted for political purposes. He was not trying to inform the senate about a sensitive matter of national security. He was using his high office to apply political pressure on the president. He chose to use the prestigious setting of the Senate chamber to throw cold water on Trump’s policy of engagement and dialogue. His objective was to reinforce feelings of distrust towards Kim Jong un and to strengthen public opposition to the summit. Coat’s performance provides another glaring illustration of how politicized the intelligence community has become.

Coat’s appearance on Capitol Hill was the first shot fired at the Trump-Kim bandwagon. The next, and perhaps most effective was Bolton’s bombshell delivered during the talks themselves. Bolton’s additional demands gave Kim no choice but to end the meetings and delay any further concessions on denuclearization. Clearly, this was Bolton’s objective from the get go.

The summit was followed by an intensive propaganda campaign aimed at shifting the blame for the meetings’ failure from the Trump camp to North Korea. Hundreds of cookie-cutter articles– many featuring scratchy satellite photos of partially abandoned bunkers– popped up in headlines across the country overnight. The obvious aim of this saturation campaign was to convince the American people that Kim was reopening his ballistic missile sites in clear violation of the agreement he made with President Trump in Singapore. The media was trying to drive home the same point as DNI chief Dan Coats, that is, that North Korea cannot be trusted and that Kim is “a cheater”. Of course, a closer analysis of these articles, suggests that it is not Kim that can’t be trusted but the unscrupulous western media that consistently shapes its narrative to suit the interests of foreign policy elites.

Let’s test this theory on the piece that was published on March 5, by the New York Times titled “North Korea Has Started Rebuilding Key Missile-Test Facilities, Analysts Say”. Here’s an excerpt:

“Speaking to lawmakers behind closed doors at South Korea’s National Assembly on Tuesday, officials from its National Intelligence Service indicated that North Korea had been rebuilding the Tongchang-ri facilities even before the Hanoi summit meeting, South Korean news media reported on Wednesday.

North Korea may have wanted to rebuild them in order to make their dismantling more dramatic if the Hanoi summit produced a deal with the Americans, the intelligence officials were quoted as saying. Or it may have wanted the option to resume rocket tests if the Hanoi talks broke down, they said.”(New York Times)

“Resume rocket tests”? What rocket tests? By the Times own admission, the facilities were used “to launch satellites into orbit and test engines”. The site is a satellite launching pad not a ballistic missile launching pad. There’s a big difference, and I would argue, the Times knows what that difference is, they merely fudge the details in order to hoodwink their readers. And the reason they want to hoodwink their readers is so their readers believe that North Korea cannot be trusted. That’s how war propaganda works, by helping to strengthen public opposition to peaceful negotiations and a final resolution of the nuclear crisis.

And let’s be clear, Kim has kept his word, he has not resumed the nuclear weapons tests or the ballistic missile tests. Also, the United States can call “the satellite program a front for developing intercontinental ballistic missiles”, but that doesn’t change the fact that a satellite launch site is a satellite launch site. It is not a ballistic missile site. Check out this short clip from Tim Shorrock at http://peaceinkoreanews.timshorrock.com

“As I pointed out yesterday on Twitter, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, in a report earlier this year, classified Sohae as a satellite launch site that “supported satellite launch cycles in 2012 and 2016,” NOT as a missile site.” …

[Sohae] is a space launch center that was completed in 2011. There was a lot of work and a lot of money sunk into it. North Korea, despite what a lot of people think, has a serious space program. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Secondly, it has been used trying to put satellites in space and launching space vehicles. It has not been used for missile tests. …

OK, got it? It’s a satellite launch facility where engines for ICBMs have been tested. But it’s not a missile site…

….the stories from CSIS and NBC are clearly designed to drum up support for a return to the more confrontational, no-compromise “maximum pressure” campaign that brought US-DPRK tensions to a boiling point in the first place. That’s propaganda, not news.”(“CSIS and NBC provide a case study in war propaganda”, Tim Shorrock)

Bottom line: Kim hasn’t done anything wrong and he hasn’t violated the terms of the deal he made with Trump. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Trump who promised to discontinue the provocative
joint-military exercises the US conducts twice a year with South Korea, but went back on his word. Here’s the story:

On Thursday, the United States and South Korea began weeklong joint military drills on the Korean peninsula in clear violation of the agreement that was signed by President Donald Trump and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong un in Singapore in June, 2018. The military exercises, which are called “Dong Maeng” or “Alliance”, are a rehearsal for an invasion and “decapitation” of the government in Pyongyang. And while the maneuvers have largely been ignored in the western media, they were sharply criticized by North Korea’s state-run KCNA which issued the following statement:

“The threatening moves of the South Korean military and the US are a clear violation of the DPRK-US joint statement (in Singapore) in which both parties agreed to reduce hostilities and tension. These drills undermine the desire of the Korean people and the international community for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

It’s not clear whether President Trump or South Korean President Moon Jae-in approved the drills or not. It could be that both country’s military leaders simply made the decision by themselves. But doesn’t that suggest that their agendas are more closely aligned with the foreign policy bigshots then they are with people who want to resolve the nuclear issue, ease sanctions, normalize relations and end the 65 year-long war with North Korea?

The fact that powerful people are trying to derail the peace process doesn’t make peace any less desirable. It just means that the peacemakers are going to have to show as much resolve as the warmongers. Kim Jong un appears to be determined to meet the challenge head-on and try to put this 7 decade-long nightmare behind him. That’s the kind of doggedness it’s going to take to succeed. We wish him luck.

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Syria and its allies are preparing their missiles for a forthcoming battle with Israel if Tel Aviv decides to open fire against significant military positions under the control of the Syrian army.

Well informed sources say that “it all depends on the direction the Israeli elections will take. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimates his chances are high enough to win a second term, then he will not venture any time soon into a new confrontation with Syria and its allies. The date of the next battle will be postponed. But, if he believes he will lose the election, then the possibility of his initiating a battle becomes very high. A serious battle between Israel on one hand and Syria and Iran on the other would be sufficient enough to postpone the elections. Netanyahu doesn’t have many choices: either he wins the election and postpones the corruption court case against him, or he goes to jail”.

US European Command (EUCOM) recently send military airplanes, along with 200 US servicemen, carrying THAAD anti-ballistic missile defence systems to be deployed in southern Israel. The official reason for deployment of this very modern and sophisticated system is said to be preparation for a joint drill between Israel and the US. THAAD will enhance the already existing Israeli anti-missile interception defence systems. These are “Iron Dome” for short-range, “David Sling” for tactical missiles and “The Arrow” for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“The US doesn’t trust the Israeli system, and thus the THAAD system was deployed to hunt down any missiles launched by the Syrian or Iranian forces deployed in Syria as these promised in case of a battle triggered and provoked by Netanyahu. Both Syria and Iran promised immediate retaliation if Israel bombs any significant military positions in those countries. This is why the US has decided to take part in this confrontation, convinced that any future battle will be devastating for all parties”.

President Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tehran made it clear to all involved in the Syrian war, especially the EU and the US, that Damascus will never ask Iran to withdraw from Syria to please third parties or in exchange for reconstruction or a normalisation of the relationship between the Arabs and Syria or between the West and Syria.

“The visit of the Syrian President to Iran helped President Putin clarify to his visitor Netanyahu that Moscow cannot help Israel with its request to get Iran out of Syria. The relationship between Syria and Iran is robust – Putin explained to his guest, as Damascus has learned –and Russia is in no position to ask for a change in the strategic relationship between the two countries”, said the source.

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Featured image is from EJM

To all those who share our sense of urgency about the worsening international situation, and the grave danger that war poses for the world today, we issue this Appeal for a united and powerful response.

At this critical moment, ending militarism, aggression and war, averting climate catastrophe, and tackling poverty, social disparity and related global problems should be humanity’s top priorities. Instead, political elites, especially in the countries of the NATO alliance including Canada, are pushing the world in the opposite direction.

We are witnessing the emergence of a ‘new cold war’ and the deliberate cultivation of Russophobia and Sino-phobia, along with other forms of fear-mongering and demonization. In North America, rearmament, bullying tactics and glorification of militarism seem the order of the day. While US President Donald Trump has been particularly shrill in his attacks against peace, his Democratic Party rivals frequently attempt to out-flank him with their hawkish rhetoric. The principles of international law – respect for the full equality and sovereignty of all countries, non-interference, and the resolution of disputes through peaceful negotiation, not threats and aggression – are being increasingly violated. Important agreements such as the Iran Nuclear deal (JCPOA) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces/INF treaty are being unilaterally cancelled.

The arms race is accelerating, and weapons systems relentlessly “modernized”. Globally, military spending is now over a trillion dollars a year, with the expanding US military budget leading the way. Foreign military bases are spreading like a metastasizing cancer, and the world’s armed forces are now the largest single global source of carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption.

As regional and international flashpoints sharpen, the danger of global war – involving the main nuclear powers – looms ever larger. The NATO encirclement of the Russian Federation is tightening, and economic and military pressures, as well as propaganda attacks against the People’s Republic of China are growing. Backed by Washington, Israel’s rulers are escalating their repressive, apartheid policies against the Palestinian people in besieged Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Imperialist “regime change” campaigns are targeting Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries around the world. The US occupation of Afghanistan is now entering its 18th year, with no end in sight. Canada’s arms sales are helping the Saudi regime conduct a vicious war against the people of Yemen. Even the hopeful signs of progress on the Korean peninsula towards a peaceful resolution of that longstanding conflict are being undermined by hawkish forces inside the US Administration and the military-industrial complex.

The widespread advance of racist, national chauvinist, and neo-fascist movements is adding to global instability. The deepening economic crisis of capitalism is fuelling increased rivalries, trade and tariff wars, even predictions of another global economic meltdown. The crisis of climate change is already bringing destructive weather systems, droughts, rising ocean levels, and other dire consequences.

Canada’s Role

In the face of this rapidly deteriorating situation, Canada should and must be a voice of reason and restraint, and a principled advocate for peace and disarmament. Instead, however, Ottawa has become one of the most bellicose voices marching to the ‘drums of war’. The current Liberal government of Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland has tilted Canadian foreign and defence policies in a far-right, militarist and interventionist direction, and its bloated war budget squanders valuable resources which would be better spent on socially useful purposes. Any hope that this government would slash carbon emissions, or prioritize the needs of workers, Indigenous peoples, the poor and marginalized, seniors and youth, has vanished. Instead, Canadian military spending is skyrocketing, from the current levels of $20 billion, to a projected $36 billion by the middle of the next decade.

Across Canada, a number of useful and important peace & solidarity initiatives are taking place. But we must face the reality that overall, the peace movement in Canada and internationally today is not sufficient to address these many dangerous and interrelated threats. Unlike earlier periods – the 1980s with its huge mobilizations against the danger of nuclear war, or the early 2000s when millions protested the invasion of Iraq – the anti-war movement today is far smaller. The doctrine of “responsibility to protect”, which the imperialist powers use as a pretext for their geopolitical agenda, has disoriented and neutralized popular resistance.

Today it is more urgent than ever to foster greater cooperation, and unity of action among all of the forces for peace, solidarity and social justice. In the view of the Canadian Peace Congress, the absolutely imperative task of our times is to build powerful mass mobilizations for a decisive shift in Canadian and global politics, away from confrontation and militarism, and towards peace and disarmament. Only such a change can give the human race a realistic chance to save the planet from war and environmental disaster, and to improve the lives of billions of people.

But success requires far more than well-meaning phrases. Common action to transform Canadian foreign and defence polices toward peace and disarmament is needed now! We call upon all the diverse forces in our movement to set aside differences, unite around our shared concerns, and build campaigns to push back the threat of war and militarism, before it is too late!

The Canadian Peace Congress stands committed to this urgent and decisive goal and welcomes dialogue and joint action with any and all peace and solidarity groups and other concerned organizations and movements to help work for its realization.

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Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again. 

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A few weeks ago the #MaduroRegime blamed iguanas for causing a large electric grid blackout.

We have now received the first video of what caused tonight’s unprecedented nationwide blackout in #Venezuela: #SinLuz pic.twitter.com/TnYevG2GA0

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 8, 2019

Rubio’s little joke is comparable to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s national television chortle over the rape and murder of Gaddafi in Libya. 

However, the top award for sociopathic viciousness remains on Madeleine Albright’s mantle of accomplishments. Albright was a protege of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski. She also went on national television and declared the engineered murder of half a million Iraqi children during the medieval siege of Iraq to be “worth it.” For her service to the Empire, she received the Senator H. John Heinz III Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award handed out annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation.

With no food, electricity, or medicine, hospitals in #Venezuela are closer to the 1800s than 2019. This is what a socialist society looks like… pic.twitter.com/a1jcGHIOzS

— Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) March 8, 2019

Mr. Hanke, an economics professor at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, ignores the intensified economic warfare waged by the United States against the people of Venezuela. Indeed, socialism is a failed system. However, in the case of Maduro and Venezuela, its inherent failures were helped along by a strong dose of covert subversion by the US. 

“That sabotage by the private sector has taken the form of hoarding of selected items, price speculation, keeping supermarket shelves empty, sending food shipments to neighboring countries, even setting food warehouse stockpiles on fire. This purposely-generated scarcity creates chaos and discontent, further undermining the government,” writes Joyce Nelson. 

The use of “financial weapons” is detailed in the Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare booklet, made public by WikiLeaks. The document has been described as an instruction manual for subversion of nations unwilling to submit to neoliberal bankster loan shark schemes. 

What's happening with Venezuela? @WikiLeaks' publication of US coup manual FM3-05.130, Unconventional Warfare [UW], provides insight

DOS=Department of State
IC=Intelligence Community
UWOA=UW operations area
ARSOF=US Army Special Operations Forceshttps://t.co/8q4oQfsMzY pic.twitter.com/ez0tGqheSw

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 28, 2019

“WikiLeaks drew particular attention to a segment of the publication entitled ‘Financial Instrument of U.S. National Power and Unconventional Warfare.’ This section outlines how the US government, in its own words, uses ‘financial weapons’ to wage ‘economic warfare’ against foreign governments that try to pursue an independent path,” writes Ben Norton. 

The Pentagon document explains how the US “can use financial power as a weapon in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war” and adds that, “manipulation of U.S. financial strength can leverage the policies and cooperation of state governments.”

Rubio has continued to tweet out jokes as babies are manually ventilated in dark hospitals and ICU life-support systems fail. 

Tonight the “Baghdad Bob” of #Caracas @jorgerpsuv revealed I caused the nationwide & ongoing electric power outage in #Venezuela.

My apologies to people of Venezuela. I must have pressed the wrong thing on the “electronic attack” app I downloaded from Apple. My bad. https://t.co/5oZURMSnrB

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 8, 2019

According to Telesur, a satellite television network funded by the Venezuelan government, the widespread power outage is part of an “electric war” waged by the US. 

“We want to send a message to the international community: just three minutes after the attack, Marco Rubio, once again, as a crime reporter, reported on the event that was happening in our country. Mr. Rubio, I want to inform you that, in a few hours, the Venezuelan people and the international community will know the truth. We’ll know that your rotten hands—supported by your lackeys who permanently attack the Venezuelan people—are involved in this event,” Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez announced on Thursday. 

A premature baby in cardiac arrest in a hospital with no electric power, #Venezuela has over 15h with no power #MaduroRegime blames an “Electric War” led by the US https://t.co/wBLqe2HTf9

— Juan Giarrizzo 🇻🇪 (@Juanmicroguy) March 8, 2019

Venezuela said its Guri dam, one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world, was sabotaged by a US subversion operation.

“The government is saying that the opposition and its leader Juan Guaido are behind this attack, as well as the US,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reported from Caracas. 

Marco Rubio’s callous attempts to make fun of the suffering of the Venezuelan people reveals the psychosis of the neocons and their fellow travelers. 

They are responsible for mass murder and genocide, most recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and much of Africa, particularly Somalia. Iran is also suffering from punitive sanctions. More alarming, the neocons and their “humanitarian interventionist” bedfellows are behind efforts to aggressively confront Russia and China, two countries bristling with nuclear warheads. 

The latest attempt to take down Venezuela and punish its people for electing a government outside the stranglehold of the globalists has failed. 

In the weeks ahead, we can expect more serious and deadly subversion operations conducted by the US. This will inspire Marco Rubio to send out more tweets mocking the suffering of millions of Venezuelans. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

If you repeat your own lies enough—so goes the apocryphal Goebbels quote—you start to believe them yourself. For two decades, the Venezuelan opposition and its supporters in Washington have smeared Hugo Chávez and now his successor, Nicolás Maduro, as despotic strongmen kept in power solely through military force and paltry payouts to the poor. So it’s no surprise that they are once again underestimating both Chavismo and the resilience of its supporters today.

Underestimating the People

We’ve seen this all before: On April 11 of 2002, the Venezuelan opposition—according to the most credible accounts—unleashed snipers on its own supporters and used the ensuing deaths to justify a coup against Hugo Chávez. But the opposition dramatically overplayed its hand and underestimated the Chavista grassroots, who it routinely smeared as the blind followers of a populist strongman. When coup leaders abolished all branches of government and scrapped the constitution, hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans poured into the streets demanding, and eventually forcing, Chávez’s return to power.

Much has changed since 2002. A perfect storm of Chávez’s death, collapsing global oil prices, a mismanaged system of currency controls, ferocious aggression from the opposition and—more recently—U.S. sanctions, has thrown the Venezuelan economy into a tailspin. Many of the impressive accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution—in health care, education and poverty reduction—have quickly evaporated, producing frustration, confusion and desperation among even Chavismo’s most hardline supporters.

So when opposition backbencher Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president of Venezuela on January 23, he and his co-conspirators thought the military would quickly fragment before eventually falling in line behind the self-proclaimed president. Things didn’t work that way: Aside from a handful of soldiers and the U.S. military attaché, the Venezuelan armed forces remained solidly behind Nicolás Maduro. And despite large demonstrations both for and against the government, there have been no signs of sustained, mass resistance in the streets in favor of the coup either.

Why? In part because the frustration many poor Venezuelans feel today is just that: frustration. They are fed up with the economic crisis, and many place at least a share of the blame on Maduro. But as in the past, most don’t see frustration as justifying undemocratic regime change, much less foreign intervention—which the majority of Venezuelans oppose. What’s more, wanting the economy to improve has not led many to identify with opposition parties that still represent the most elite sectors of Venezuelan society and have offered no credible solutions to the economic crisis.

The Trojan Horse of Humanitarian Aid

But if much has changed, much has also stayed the same: Unable to believe that the poor might hold such a nuanced position, the opposition has again overplayed its hand and bet it all on yet another failed coup. February 23 marked one month since Guaidó’s self-coronation, and also the expiration of the 30-day period during which any interim president must hold new elections. According to even the opposition’s contrived reading of the Venezuelan Constitution, since Guaidó never called those elections, he has no remaining claim to the presidency. And so it was that on February 23, Guaidó resorted to increasingly desperate measures, attempting to provoke a crisis by forcing deliveries of US-provided “humanitarian aid” across the border.

It’s not difficult to debunk this false humanitarianism. The United Nations refused to participate in what it deemed “politicized” aid shipments, and the Red Cross denounced the border charade as “not humanitarian aid”—and rebuked the unauthorized use of Red Cross insignia by opposition forces. Given that Contra war criminal Elliott Abrams is now in charge of U.S. policy in Venezuela, it’s worth recalling that U.S.-backed Contras used the Red Cross insignia toward similar ends in Nicaragua.

And then there’s also basic math: While the opposition mounted a spectacle to deliver a few million dollars in aid, U.S. sanctions have already cost Venezuela billions, and will cost billions more. Economist Mark Weisbrot estimates the death toll of the sanctions to be “in the thousands or tens of thousands so far,” with more deaths from Trump’s draconian tightening of the sanctions almost guaranteed.

In contrast, the Trump government essentially handed over the keys of Citgo’s bank accounts and assets—worth around $7 billion—to Guaidó, who has also demanded control of more than a billion dollars’ worth of Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England. And if we harbored any illusions about the humanitarian credentials of the Venezuelan opposition, it’s worth noting that it routinely attacks a social welfare infrastructure it associates with Chavismo—most recently burning a warehouse where subsidized food bundles known as CLAPs were packaged and distributed.

Provocation on the Border

On February 23, as in 2002, the opposition sought to sow blood and chaos to justify its coup, but this time it was unsuccessful. Any objective analysis of video footage from the Colombian border makes this clear: On the Venezuelan side, Venezuelan troops were standing in a single line behind riot shields. On the Colombian side, masked opposition protesters hurled molotov cocktails toward them. When two “aid” trucks suddenly burst into flames, Guaidó and most of the media immediately blamed the fire on Maduro. So overwhelming was this media narrative that few observers seemed to notice that the trucks never reached the Venezuelan side, and were almost certainly ignited by those same molotovs.

Desperate for any pretext to justify foreign intervention, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) even blamed Maduro when an opposition lawmaker and his aide were “poisoned” on the Colombian side of the border. Despite an utter lack of any evidence, the international press ran with the story. But it turned out the assemblyman was apparently drugged and robbed by sex workers he had brought back to his room after a night of partying. And when long-simmering tensions between the Venezuelan military and indigenous Pemones on the southern border with Brazil led to violent clashes and several deaths, their longstanding concerns were opportunistically folded into the opposition narrative about aid deliveries. Opposition parties had been stoking dissent among indigenous groups for years, and many of those involved in clashes were less concerned with aid shipments than with what they perceived as years of corrupt military activity in the region.

The opposition has been oddly silent about its own violence, however. When three defecting Venezuelan soldiers hijacked armored personnel carriers, driving them at full speed into the border barriers in order to defect to the Colombian side, they struck a crowd of civilians that included Nicole Kramm, a Chilean photojournalist. Kramm, who was nearly killed in the attack—and whose camera was running the entire time—later described the scene: “This was an attack on civilians. I can’t believe they are being treated as heroes. If I didn’t run, and was 15 centimeters closer, I would not be here to tell you this.”

The Danger Isn’t Over

“Plan A” failed on January 23rd and “Plan B” similarly failed a month later, leaving Guaidó in dire straits and without a clear path forward. When he attempted to reach out to disaffected Chavistas by tweeting that Hugo Chávez would not approve of Maduro’s actions, Guaidó was attacked by his own supporters on Twitter, revealing old tensions simmering within the opposition coalition. And with all other options exhausted, Guaidó and U.S. vice president Mike Pence failed to convince the Lima Group—a regional coalition of mostly right-wing governments and Canada—to support military intervention. With the threat of U.S. intervention stirring dissension even within the cabinet of far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Guaidó’s coup appears to be on its last legs.

This doesn’t mean that the danger is over, however. On Monday, Guaidó made a less-than-triumphant return to Venezuela and, despite his violation of a travel ban, the government has opted not to arrest him for now. If anything, Maduro will protect him at all costs: Amid threats on Guaidó’s life, the Lima Group has warned of dire consequences should anything happen to him. If Guaidó were to be killed, however, it would almost certainly be at the hands of a Venezuelan right-wing eager to provoke military intervention (the government has dismantled similar plots in the past).

In the coming months, U.S. sanctions will continue to tighten the economic screws, heaping suffering on those who always suffer most—the poorest Venezuelans—while waiting out defections from the military and the population as a whole. In 1990, Nicaraguans voted the Sandinistas out of power, knowing full well that if they didn’t, both U.S. sanctions and the Contra War would continue. With many of the same people once again in charge of U.S. policy today, the strategy remains the same: to “make the economy scream,” in Nixon’s words. This coup may be failing, but Washington will fail and try again. Venezuela can’t afford to fail even once.

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For the first time since war broke out in Syria in 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has travelled to Iran to meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

President Assad had only travelled outside of Syria on two other occasions during the war – both times to Russia.

The significance of the trip cannot be understated – it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran – it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

The symbol of solidarity between Syria and Iran comes at a time when Washington finds itself vacillating between a full withdrawal from Syria, a redeployment to Iraq, or an attempt to drag out the conclusion of the Syrian conflict for as long as possible by keeping US forces there indefinitely.

The Washington Post in its article, “Syria’s Assad visits Iran in rare trip abroad,” would admit:

U.S. officials said Trump’s decision authorizing a small number of U.S. troops to stay is a key step in creating a larger multinational observer force that would monitor a so-called safe zone along Syria’s border with Turkey. The buffer zone is meant to prevent clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. It is also aimed at preventing Assad’s forces and Iran-backed fighters from seizing more territory.

The US will also seek to preserve militants – many of which are openly aligned with designated terrorist organizations – still occupying the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib.

While the US has certainly failed in its goal of regime change in Syria and even as it appears weak and confused regarding its policy in Syria and the Middle East in general – its potential to prolong the Syrian conflict and leave the nation more or less permanently divided persists.

Iran is in Syria for Good 

President Assad’s visit to Iran was not only a symbolic gesture of gratitude for Iran’s role in helping Syria prevail over US aggression – it is also a clear sign that Iranian influence has only grown in Syria. Iranian-backed militias have spread across both Syria and Iraq to confront US and Persian Gulf-backed terrorists including various factions of Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) itself.

Washington’s gamble banked on what it had hoped would be a relatively quick regime change operation following along the same lines as the US-backed proxy war in Libya. The Syrian government was meant to fold quickly – the US appears not to have anticipated its resilience nor the eventual Russian military intervention in 2015. Washington may also not have anticipated the scale and efficacy of the commitment made by Tehran.

Instead of liquidating one of Iran’s allies thus further isolating Tehran ahead of US-backed regime change efforts aimed directly at Iran – the terrorist proxies the US and its regional partners sponsored in Syria served as impetus for Tehran to broaden and deepen the presence of its forces – including militias sponsored by Iran – across the region, and specifically in Syria and Iraq.

US policy papers predating the 2011 proxy war against Syria – including the RAND Corporation’s 2009 publication titled, “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent : Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East,” noted that much of Iran’s domestic and regional policies revolved around self-defense.

The RAND paper itself would note:

Iran’s strategy is largely defensive, but with some offensive elements. Iran’s strategy of protecting the regime against internal threats, deterring aggression, safeguarding the homeland if aggression occurs, and extending influence is in large part a defensive one that also serves some aggressive tendencies when coupled with expressions of Iranian regional aspirations. It is in part a response to U.S. policy pronouncements and posture in the region, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iranian leadership takes very seriously the threat of invasion given the open discussion in the United States of regime change, speeches defining Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and efforts by U.S. forces to secure base access in states surrounding Iran.

Iran’s significant and long-term investments in sponsoring resistance forces including Hezbollah and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) across the Middle East coupled with Russia’s significant conventional military capabilities left little chance for success for US-sponsored militants – with Russia’s role in Syria preventing a more muscular conventional military response from the US when its proxy forces began to crumble.

The US and its regional partners – particularly Israel – have expressed a determination to dislodge the growing Iranian presence their own proxy war on Syria necessitated. However, despite repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory – it is clear that such airstrikes alone will accomplish very little and in the long-term even signals weakness that will only further rally Iran’s allies, justify their continued expansion across the region, and further broaden and deepen their positions well beyond Iran’s own borders – making a US-led regime change war against Iran itself a more remote possibility than ever.

America’s Flagging Unipolar Order 

The US faces an ignominious retreat from the Middle East – as well as from other areas around the globe. Its refusal to shift from its 20th century unipolar hegemonic ambitions to a constructive 21st century multipolar player may be closing permanently windows of opportunity that will cost it significantly as others displace its influence and reach in regions like the Middle East.Russia and Iran are clearly benefactors of Washington’s stubbornness. But as Russia and Iran have both repeatedly expressed a desire for more constructive relations with the United States – perhaps policymakers in Washington believe they can risk pursuing destructive hegemonic ambitions to carve out or coerce from the region the best position possible in the Middle East before coming to the table to negotiate.

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

Featured image is from NEO

Elated, with the single-mindedness of the “We” of the many, suddenly aware of its power, the crowd pours out of the narrow street in which it was crammed, to the spacious Place de la Republique while singing the Marseillaise. It is by far the most popular song among Yellow Vests.

The second most popular is the WWII partisans’ song (Chant des Partisans), though with slightly changed lyrics. Now the song calls for the “toothless”, the “illiterate”, the “slackers”, the “stubborn Gaullois”– as Macron and his servants called the people who refuse to embrace his “reforms” – to rise against the Financial Elite, sparing not tears and blood, just as the French patriots did when they fought against the Germans. Occasionally you can also hear them singing the Internationale, which, anyway, was an adaptation of the Marseillaise.

Originally the song of the French Revolution, La Marseillaise is now the official national anthem of France. It calls “les enfants (the children) de la patrie”, the “citizens” to “take up arms” and raise the “bloody banners” against “tyranny” as the “day of glory” has arrived.

The ghost of the revolution

There is a one dominant analogy which is drawn, indirectly but explicitly by all –  whether by discussing with representatives of the French establishment or by watching the Yellow Vests’ demonstrations or by listening to the slogans and songs of the protesters here in France, the analogy is strongly felt throughout the last three months during which this original movement, despite the unavoidable fatigue, continues its mobilizations, taking by storm the French rural and peri-urban areas, several provincial cities, while now it also attempts to penetrate the “Suburbs”, the forts of the French working class.

The inescapable comparison which appears in a variety of forms, be they planned or spontaneous, is the Great French Revolution of 1789.

Its ghosts seem to haunt the French and their country. Whether it is because they want to dispel its notion or draw inspiration from it, I am not sure, but in the end, this is the analogy which, one way or another, is drawn by everyone; both the demonstrators and those siding with the government.

Anyone who wants to make a political argument sound convincing in today’s France, is rushing to “borrow” a character or a symbol of 1789. “You’re like Mirabeau” a “leftist” critic said lashing out at Mélenchon the other day, accusing him of being overly compromising.

Either through symbols and historical analogies or collective memory, the memory has been passed down through ten generations of the French people. The mother of Europe and modern Democracy faces now up to its past, in search of its future.

France, all of its classes – save perhaps for the English-speaking managers of French multinational corporations and some extreme neo-liberals and neoconservatives who are ashamed of their country’s history – remains inherently proud of its Revolution, even if it shudders at its memory.

The hour of tear gas

Although the Marseillaise announces the coming of the day of glory, for the time being, it is only the “hour of tear gas,” as canisters hellishly rain down upon the demonstration as it leaves the Place de la Republique. “Damn you” I say, talking to myself, having spotted Eric Drouet, the lorry driver who became a “star” of the Vests’ movement, but unable to catch up to get an interview with him. I was caught in the rampage which scattered the crowd, some of us fleeing to refuge and others pushing on.

Drouet has a few hundred thousand followers on his Facebook page and is now becoming as difficult to talk to as it is to talk to the Prime Minister.

But the tear gas these days in France is no joke. There are many who started their day that morning with both their eyes and arms ending in the evening in a hospital one of these appendages missing.  The police’s crackdown is of course a double-edged sword, having already been condemned by Amnesty International, law experts and government MPs.

On the one hand, it discourages some people from joining the demonstrations but on the other it inspires anger. At the same time, police officers seem to have reached their limit, having spent days and nights in the streets over the last three months, counting injuries without getting paid overtime in order to suppress the demonstrators, among whom they might find their own wives!

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In Memory of Dave Vasey who knew first-hand about official callousness toward life in the small town of Walkerton where people died needlessly of water contamination. Dave dedicated his too short life to fighting against climate injustice, militarization, and the austerity state.

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I read the Canadian news today: “Pipeline expansion should be approved: regulator.”

Regulators ignorantly, negligently, criminally, and in contempt of life, yet again gave the go-ahead to money over incontestable science. Liberal democratic Canada is in league with Brazil’s military dictatorship and the Lima Group in overthrowing the Maduro government in Venezuela, and in deforesting the “lungs of the earth.” Theirs is a triple crime, of thrice proliferating greenhouse gas emissions at this time of the Earth’s sixth great extinction event. Venezuela is all about oil. The pipelines transport high emitting diluted bitumen from the tar sands, and Jair Bolsonaro aims to expand biofuel production (and criminalize the Landless Peasant Movement). These mega-projects involve deforestation of the boreal forest and the tropical Amazon rainforest, destroying the Earth’s major terrestrial carbon sink and amplifying the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Informed Consent

Are these arbiters of life on Earth, Justin Trudeau, Jair Bolsonaro et al, subject to the Nuremberg laws on individual responsibility, with the implication that decision-makers need to be fully informed and not just claim to follow orders? The legal underpinnings of the doctrine of informed consent upholds a standard of knowledge. It came out of the Tuskegee experiments in which Black men were not informed that they were subjects of a medical experiment.

The legal norm of knowledge was based on breast cancer cases in which it was found that women at all levels of education could be fully informed about the state of knowledge about breast cancer and its treatments. Unfortunately, in the sociopathic mill of American legality, “informed consent” in medical practice and in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People turned into its exact opposite – a perfunctory formality, a checklist document that protects power from countersuits. Yet the critical importance of knowing is central. The “ostrich defense,” burying one’s head in the sand, and evasion through plausible deniability, are fundamentally dishonest.

The decisions around pipelines, the tar sands, and deforestation of the boreal and tropical forests, reflect extreme disregard of facts about the state of the climate. Alarmingly, not-knowing, for multiple reasons, characterizes all levels of governmental and nongovernmental bodies. Willful disregard for the full facts also applies to the new standard set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Congress of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 12-year time line aiming to cap temperature rise at 1.5°C ignores the very dynamics of the climate system and the hegemonic principles espoused in the political/economic system. Their climate predictions leave out the dynamics of amplifying feedbacks and are also skewed by leaving out the extent of ice melt in the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica. The predictions do not include the evidence from the paleoclimate record, which indicates that current greenhouse gas concentrations correlate with alarmingly higher temperatures and sea-level rise, and that in the past, climate change occurred in rapid shifts.

There is a grandiose sense of omnipotence at work, as if this is still the best of all possible worlds, while all evidence points to the inevitable, irreversible melting of all Earth’s ice, and the inevitable mass migrations that will be necessary.

A Barrel of Oil Trumps a Human Life

At the base is the belief that all can be commodified and monetized. The same unit of measurement is used to price a barrel of oil and human life. It is the exchange value of a person’s life, and the barrel of oil has more value in this society. Jonathan Schell, writing about nuclear weapons,¹ describes the exterminism of liberal civilization. Nuclearism did not arise “to face extraordinary danger whether from Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union, but for more deep-seated, unarticulated reasons growing out of its own, freely chosen conceptions of national security… an intrinsic element of the dominant liberal civilization itself – an evil that first grew and still grows from within that civilization rather than being imposed from without.” Schell writes of the “pointless slaughter and destructive fury from the midst of that same liberal civilization.”

In liberalism as infamously enunciated by Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society. More problematic than people’s relationship to the environment is people’s relationship with each other and what to do about power. In much of English literature, even family ties are torn asunder. The main child characters are orphaned or sacrificed for power. 16th century Shakespeare wrote of Romeo and Juliet’s cruel parents, Cordelia’s death due to her narcissistic father King Lear, child-killers Macbeth and entitled Richard III. In Anglophone countries, there is a long history of separating children from their families. 18th century Jonathan Swift wrote of the anti-human, monetized underside of Enlightenment thinking: “A Modest Proposal” recommended that parents could relieve themselves of the responsibility of caring for their children by selling them for food to rich people. What a contrast to writers of former British colonies like Rohinton Mistry who sensitively portrays ordinary decency and caring in the novel Family Matters. Climate historians Bonneuil and Fressoz identify the very specific causes of the climate catastrophe as coming from the British political economic order under liberalism, and that “Anglocene” more helpfully clarifies this era than Anthropocene.

Who do I mean by “et al”? They are people in positions of influence and power who have not taken it upon themselves to be fully informed about the state of the climate or of society: the National Energy Board, corporate shareholders, pension boards, international financial institutions, private banks, and the military/industrial/security complex. How many people in the government have read James Hansen’s 2009 book Storms of My Grandchildren, explaining the climate system? Can they explain climate sensitivity, amplifying feedbacks, carbon sinks, or paleoclimate findings? Do they know what is exempt under the Kyoto Protocol? My experience is that they cannot answer these questions. Do they even know about the Nuclear Ban Treaty and that their ignorance and inaction cause premature death?

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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at [email protected].

First published on October 30, 2014

For many years after the Vietnam War, we enjoyed the “Vietnam syndrome,” in which US presidents hesitated to launch substantial military attacks on other countries. They feared intense opposition akin to the powerful movement that helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. But in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!”

With George W. Bush’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama’s drone wars in seven Muslim-majority countries and his escalating wars in Iraq and Syria, we have apparently moved beyond the Vietnam syndrome. By planting disinformation in the public realm, the government has built support for its recent wars, as it did with Vietnam.

Now the Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history. Replete with a fancy interactive website, the effort is aimed at teaching schoolchildren a revisionist history of the war. The program is focused on honoring our service members who fought in Vietnam. But conspicuously absent from the website is a description of the antiwar movement, at the heart of which was the GI movement.

Thousands of GIs participated in the antiwar movement. Many felt betrayed by their government. They established coffee houses and underground newspapers where they shared information about resistance. During the course of the war, more than 500,000 soldiers deserted. The strength of the rebellion of ground troops caused the military to shift to an air war. Ultimately, the war claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans. Untold numbers were wounded and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. In an astounding statistic, more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in the war.

Millions of Americans, many of us students on college campuses, marched, demonstrated, spoke out, sang and protested against the war. Thousands were arrested and some, at Kent State and Jackson State, were killed. The military draft and images of dead Vietnamese galvanized the movement. On November 15, 1969, in what was the largest protest demonstration in Washington, DC, at that time, 250,000 people marched on the nation’s capital, demanding an end to the war. Yet the Pentagon’s website merely refers to it as a “massive protest.”

But Americans weren’t the only ones dying. Between 2 and 3 million Indochinese – in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – were killed. War crimes – such as the My Lai massacre – were common. In 1968, US soldiers slaughtered 500 unarmed old men, women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. Yet the Pentagon website refers only to the “My Lai Incident,” despite the fact that it is customarily referred to as a massacre.

One of the most shameful legacies of the Vietnam War is the US military’s use of the deadly defoliant Agent Orange, dioxin. The military sprayed it unsparingly over much of Vietnam’s land. An estimated 3 million Vietnamese still suffer the effects of those deadly chemical defoliants. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were also affected. It has caused birth defects in hundreds of thousands of children, both in Vietnam and the United States. It is currently affecting the second and third generations of people directly exposed to Agent Orange decades ago. Certain cancers, diabetes, and spina bifida and other serious birth defects can be traced to Agent Orange exposure. In addition, the chemicals destroyed much of the natural environment of Vietnam; the soil in many “hot spots” near former US army bases remains contaminated.

In the Paris Peace Accords signed in 1973, the Nixon administration pledged to contribute $3 billion toward healing the wounds of war and the post-war reconstruction of Vietnam. That promise remains unfulfilled.

Despite the continuing damage and injury wrought by Agent Orange, the Pentagon website makes scant mention of “Operation Ranch Hand.” It says that from 1961 to 1971, the US sprayed 18 million gallons of chemicals over 20 percent of South Vietnam’s jungles and 36 percent of its mangrove forests. But the website does not cite the devastating effects of that spraying.

The incomplete history contained on the Pentagon website stirred more than 500 veterans of the US peace movement during the Vietnam era to sign a petition to Lt. Gen. Claude M. “Mick” Kicklighter. It asks that the official program “include viewpoints, speakers and educational materials that represent a full and fair reflection of the issues which divided our country during the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.” The petition cites the “many thousands of veterans” who opposed the war, the “draft refusals of many thousands of young Americans,” the “millions who exercised their rights as American citizens by marching, praying, organizing moratoriums, writing letters to Congress,” and “those who were tried by our government for civil disobedience or who died in protests.” And, the petition says, “very importantly, we cannot forget the millions of victims of the war, both military and civilian, who died in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, nor those who perished or were hurt in its aftermath by land mines, unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange and refugee flight.”

Antiwar activists who signed the petition include Tom Hayden and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. “All of us remember that the Pentagon got us into this war in Vietnam with its version of the truth,” Hayden said in an interview with The New York Times. “If you conduct a war, you shouldn’t be in charge of narrating it,” he added.

Veterans for Peace (VFP) is organizing an alternative commemoration of the Vietnam War. “One of the biggest concerns for us,” VFP executive director Michael McPhearson told the Times, “is that if a full narrative is not remembered, the government will use the narrative it creates to continue to conduct wars around the world – as a propaganda tool.”

Indeed, just as Lyndon B. Johnson used the manufactured Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, George W. Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction to justify his war on Iraq, and the “war on terror” to justify his invasion of Afghanistan. And Obama justifies his drone wars by citing national security considerations, even though he creates more enemies of the United States as he kills thousands of civilians. ISIS and Khorasan (which no one in Syria heard of until about three weeks ago) are the new enemies Obama is using to justify his wars in Iraq and Syria, although he admits they pose no imminent threat to the United States. The Vietnam syndrome has been replaced by the “Permanent War.”

It is no cliché that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. Unless we are provided an honest accounting of the disgraceful history of the US war on Vietnam, we will be ill equipped to protest the current and future wars conducted in our name.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham will continue its attacks on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian forces around Idlib province, a spokesman for the terrorist group said in an official video message released on March 6. Abu Khalid al-Shami threatened that the SAA and Russian forces with “long dark nights” and “black days stained with blood.”

This statement came in response to a recent resumption of SAA strikes on terror infrastructure of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies in the province.

An acute humanitarian crisis is developing in the Rukban refugee camp, which is located near the US military garrison in al-Tanf. On March 5, the Russian Defense Ministry released satellite images showing the real living conditions in the camp.

• A waste deposit is located in close proximity to the living accommodations.
• A notable part of the camp is tents and sheds, which means that no conditions allowing a permanent residence of thousands of people have been created.
• No subsistence warehouses or meal stations are being observed.
• Food and other goods can be get only in pop-up markets controlled by militants.

The Russian military said that US-backed forces are preventing civilians from leaving the site. It stressed that the Rukban area is no more a refugee camp. It is a reservation area with hostages.

The Russian side pointed out that the US military is opposing to the evacuation of civilians and spreading rumors that they will be persecuted by the Damascus government. US-backed militants demand notable sums in USD from people who want to leave the camp.

The statement added that about 35,000 people have declared their readiness to return to the government-controlled part of the country.

Earlier in March, Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department said that Washington is against the Syrian-Russian plan to evacuate people from the area because it does not meet “protection standards”. Nonetheless, he did not point out what standards are being met by the living conditions created for refugees by US-backed forces in Rukban.

On March 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to deploy Israeli warships to help tackle suspected Iranian efforts to continue export oil via maritime routes to skirt US sanctions. Netanyahu stressed that Israeli sailors are well-trained and adept at carrying out sea missions against adversaries. However, he failed to explain how a relatively small Israeli naval force is going to block maritime routes used by Iran. Most likely, the Israeli Prime Minister expects that in the event of a naval confrontation with Iran, the Israeli force will be directly supported by the US Navy. This would explain where Israel is going to find resources to achieve a victory in a supposed standoff.

While this kind of statements are a common practice for Israeli politicians exploiting tensions with Iran to score some political points, they also show that Israel may have been planning to expand its military actions against Iranian and Iranian backed forces outside the Syrian battleground.

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A popular Indian online media outlet published a piece purporting that part of one of the Pakistani Prime Minister’s latest speeches was intended to “exploit India’s fault lines under Modi’s rule”, which implies that the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” is taking a page from its American ally’s infowar playbook by concocting a Russiagate-like hysteria ahead of general elections this May designed to deflect attention away from India’s many domestic troubles by making it taboo to talk them lest one inadvertently ‘plays into Pakistan’s hands’.

The Quint, a popular Indian online information outlet, published a piece titled “How Imran Khan Is Exploiting India’s Fault Lines Under Modi’s Rule” which puppets that the Pakistani Prime Minister tailored part of one of his recent speeches in such a way as to meddle in India’s domestic affairs ahead of its upcoming elections this May. The article admittedly makes some interesting points by analyzing the historic and political contexts of PM Khan’s words that he specifically addressed to the Indian audience, but it would be amiss to suggest that this amounts to “exploiting India’s fault lines” in the way that’s implied within the text.

It’s veritably true that India is an ultra-diverse country and that the many preexisting identity fault lines that it inherited since independence are widening at a worrying pace under the majoritarian rule of the Hindutva ideologues led by Prime Minister Modi, but it doesn’t amount to “exploitation” for anyone — whether a citizen or non-citizen alike — to hint at that fact or directly talk about it. Actually, it’s contradictory to the democratic principles upon which the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” claims to espouse to believe that the expression of one’s freedom of speech in that manner is anything nefarious.

There’s no doubt that state and non-state actors sometimes do abuse those freedoms in order to destabilize targeted states per the modus operandi of Hybrid Wars, but PM Khan’s commentary on the situation in his country’s neighbor and especially the occupied region of Kashmir doesn’t fit the criteria of weaponized rhetoric. To claim otherwise, like is being implied in The Quint’s piece, is to take a page from the infowar playbook of India’s American ally to concoct a Russiagate-like hysteria that could troublingly make it taboo to talk about India’s manifold domestic problems lest one inadvertently “plays into Pakistan’s hands”.

Trump’s public and “deep state” foes have been alleging for over two and a half years already that RT’s hosting of dissident American voices and its critical coverage of the US’ many domestic problems was tantamount to “meddling” in the country’s affairs so as to “hack” the 2016 election in Trump’s favor, similar to what The Quint implied that PM Khan was doing with one of his latest speeches by directly addressing the Indian people ahead of their national elections in May in order supposedly to tip the scales against Modi. This is a very dangerous narrative to introduce into Indian society because it runs the risk of pressuring people to self-censor their constructive criticism of the contemporary state of affairs in their country, which some believe have become much more divisive because of the BJP’s demagogic divide-and-rule re-election strategy and not due to anything having to do with Pakistan or PM Khan.

India is already plagued by WhatsApp-driven mob lynchings, so it’s not far-fetched to imagine that dissidents who publicly express the aforementioned observation about the root cause of India’s hyper-partisan political environment and worsening identity differences could become the next targets of ultra-jingoist mob violence on the basis that they’re “Pakistani agents” or at the very least “useful idiots”. The BJP community leaders who manage massive WhatsApp groups might also deliberately spread fake news in this respect about their political opponents in order to incite their indoctrinated minions into attacking those people or their followers, following the cow lynching model that they’re suspected of successfully employing against Muslims.

Not only is this terrifying from humanitarian and democratic perspectives, but it’s also counterproductive from a pragmatic one because it will only lead to the worsening of those said fault lines instead of making any progress on fixing them, which could ultimately culminate in the creation of many “mini-Kashmirs” all across the country in the worst-case scenario. Therefore, instead of pointing to PM Khan and painting him as a Hybrid War boogeyman per the US’ infowar playbook of copying and pasting the Russiagate fake news narrative into an Indian context, the country would do best to look inward when searching for the source of its many worsening fault lines and prioritizing addressing them before it’s too late.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from Business Today

Recent Buzzfeed reports about WWF hiring ‘paramilitary forces’ to fight poaching and the associated human rights abuses of local peoples show the urgent need for a shift in current conservation models.

Forest Peoples Programme Director, James Whitehead today said:

“To protect the world’s forests and wildlife while respecting the rights of those who have lived for generations in these areas we need a fundamental change in the approach taken to conservation globally.”

“The National Park model of excluding indigenous peoples and local communities is fundamentally flawed – we have witnessed countless examples of human rights abuses in conservation projects, stretching back to our formation in the 1990s.”

Yet conservation and human rights are not intrinsically opposed. There is mounting evidence that conservation based on respect for the rights of traditional owners of the lands is more effective than exclusionary protected areas. For example, in the Amazon deforestation is between 2 and 6 times lower in areas where indigenous people have land rights.

Despite the long-standing formal commitments of WWF and many other conservation agencies to respect human rights, the reality experienced by many communities on the ground is very different and the abuses very real.

“With so much information now in the public domain, governments, conservationists and donors cannot ignore these abuses,” said Whitehead.

”At this time of threats from climate change and environmental destruction, the need to place conservation in the hands of those well placed to ensure the worlds biodiversity is secured is critical,” he added.

“Now is the time for a real shift to a conservation model that works to uphold and extend the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.”

FPP calls on the donor community to step up and ensure that none of their funding results in rights abuses and that it in fact invests in the types of conservation that strengthens the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and ultimately provides the most effective protection for our natural environments.

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The identities of civil servants who investigated British involvement in India’s Golden Temple massacre will remain secret, despite concerns that they could have potentially tampered with key evidence.

An anonymity order from the Information Commissioner means the government will not have to admit whether top officials active during the massacre were later allowed to control what files investigators saw.

The commissioner made the ruling after Whitehall claimed its staff could be targeted on social media which “may cause them distress.”

Indian troops shelled the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984, in a military operation against Sikh dissidents who were occupying their faith’s holiest site.

Hundreds if not thousands of Sikh pilgrims perished in the cross-fire.

In 2014, newly declassified British government files revealed that Margaret Thatcher had sent an SAS officer to advise Indian commanders how to raid the temple just months before the operation unfolded.

The revelation caused outrage among British Sikhs and then-prime minister David Cameron immediately launched a review — although he stopped short of ordering a full public inquiry.

Mr Cameron’s in-house review was conducted at breakneck speed by a Cabinet Office team and absolved the British military of any wrongdoing.

His probe claimed that the SAS role was “limited” and the officer’s advice was not heeded.

Sikh groups branded the review a “whitewash” and it later emerged that the Cabinet Office had not been given access to a crucial special forces file.

Concerns escalated further when Whitehall admitted in 2017 that it had allowed retired diplomats to select what files the Cabinet Office team saw.

The government then refused to rule out whether these ex-diplomats included a man called Bruce Cleghorn.

Just before the massacre Mr Cleghorn wrote a secret Foreign Office memo in 1984 about “the threat of Sikh terrorism,” warning:

“It would be dangerous if HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] were to become identified, in the minds of Sikhs in the UK, with some more determined action by the Indian government, in particular any attempt to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar.”

Mr Cleghorn later went on to become a British ambassador before taking on a more low profile role at the Foreign Office as a “sensitivity reviewer,” vetting the department’s old files before they are released to the National Archives.

He was working in this sensitivity reviewer role in 2014 when the prime minister ordered the probe.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that its sensitivity reviewers were tasked with selecting files for the PM’s probe.

However, the department has refused to answer a freedom of information request by the Morning Star which asked if Mr Cleghorn himself was allowed to select files.

The Foreign Office told the Information Commissioner that the probe was “a significant and emotive issue for the Sikh community and if the identity of the sensitivity reviewers involved in the review were released then this could lead to significant activity on social media that could lead to them receiving attention that may cause them distress.”

In making her decision, Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said “even the perception of a possible conflict of interest adds weight to the argument” that the Foreign Office should reveal who took part in the review.

However, the Commissioner ultimately concluded that Mr Cleghorn’s right to privacy outweighed the public interest in knowing whether the probe’s integrity was tainted.

The decision has outraged Slough Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi.

He told the Morning Star:

“There seems to be a serious conflict of interest at the heart of the review into the British government’s involvement with the 1984 massacre at Sri Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) Amritsar.

“Given the enormous loss of life, there is overwhelming public interest in ensuring the government conducts the most transparent investigation.

“To ensure justice, I reiterate the demand for an independent inquiry, which I’m proud to say the Labour Party manifesto called for in 2017.”

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I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply incredible.

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account:

1) PURE

This was the point that led me to return to the subject of the Skripals, even though it has brought me more abuse than I had received in my 15 year career as a whistleblower.

A few months ago, I was in truth demoralised by the amount of abuse I was receiving about the collapse of the Russian identity story of Boshirov and Petrov. I had never claimed the poisoning, if any, was not carried out by Russians, only that there were many other possibilities. I understood the case against the Russian state is still far from established, whoever Boshirov and Petrov really are, and I did not (and do not) accept Bellingcat’s conjectures and dodgy evidence as conclusive identification. But I did not enjoy at all the constant online taunts, and therefore was not inclined to take the subject further.

It is in this mood that I received more information from my original FCO source, who had told me, correctly, that Porton Down could not and would not attest that the “novichok” sample was made in Russia, and explained that the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was an agreed Whitehall line to cover this up.

She wanted to explain to me that the British government was pulling a similar trick over the use of the word “pure”. The OPCW report had concluded that the sample provided to them by the British government was “of high purity” with an “almost complete absence of impurities”. This had been spun by the British government as evidence that the novichok was “military grade” and could only be produced by a state.

But actually that is not what the OPCW technical experts were attempting to signal. The sample provided to the OPCW had allegedly been swabbed from the Skripals’ door handle. It had been on that door handle for several days before it was allegedly discovered there. In that time it had been contacted allegedly by the hands of the Skripals and of DC Bailey, and the gloves of numerous investigators. It had of course been exposed to whatever film of dirt or dust was on the door handle. It had been exposed to whatever pollution was in the rain and whatever dust and pollen was blowing around. In these circumstances, it is incredible that the sample provided “had an almost complete absence of impurities”.

A sample cannot have a complete absence of impurities after being on a used doorknob, outdoors, for several days. The sample provided was, on the contrary, straight out of a laboratory.

The government’s contention that “almost complete absence of impurities” meant “military grade” was complete nonsense. There is no such thing as “military grade” novichok. It has never been issued to any military, anywhere. The novichok programme was designed to produce an organo-phosphate poison which could quickly be knocked up from readily available commercial ingredients. It was not part of an actual defence industry manufacturing programme.

There is a final problem with the “of high purity” angle. First we had the Theresa May story that the “novichok” was extremely deadly, many times more deadly than VX, in minute traces. Then, when the Skripals did not die, it was explained to us that this was because it had degraded in the rain. This was famously put forward by Dan Kaszeta, formerly of US Intelligence and the White House and self-proclaimed chemical weapons expert – which expertise has been strenuously denied by real experts.

What we did not know then, but we do know now, is that Kaszeta was secretly being paid to produce this propaganda by the British government via the Integrity Initiative.

So the first thing I cannot believe is that the British government produced a sample with an “almost complete absence of impurities” from several days on the Skripals’ doorknob. Nor can I believe that if “extremely pure” the substance therefore was not fatal to the Skripals.

2) Raising the Roof

Three days ago Sky News had an outside broadcast from the front of the Skripals’ house in Salisbury, where they explained that the roof had been removed and replaced due to contamination with “novichok”.

I cannot believe that a gel, allegedly smeared or painted onto the doorknob, migrated upwards to get into the roof of a two storey house, in such a manner that the roof had to be destroyed, but the house inbetween did not. As the MSM never questions the official narrative, there has never been an official answer as to how the gel got from the doorknob to the roof. Remember that traces of the “novichok” were allegedly found in a hotel room in Poplar, which is still in use as a hotel room and did not have to be destroyed, and an entire bottle of it was allegedly found in Charlie Rowley’s house, which has not had to be destroyed. Novichok was found in Zizzi’s restaurant, which did not have to be destroyed.

So we are talking about novichok in threatening quantities – more than the traces allegedly found in the hotel in Poplar – being in the Skripals’ roof. How could this happen?

As I said in the onset, I do not know what happened, I only know what I do not believe. There are theories that Skripal and his daughter might themselves have been involved with novichok in some way. On the face of it, its presence in their roof might support that theory.

The second thing I do not believe is that the Skripals’ roof became contaminated by gel on their doorknob so that the roof had to be destroyed, whereas no other affected properties, nor the rest of the Skripals’ house, had to be destroyed.

3) Nursing Care

The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!

The government is always trying to get good publicity for its armed forces, and you would think that the heroic role of its off-duty personnel in saving random poisoned Russian double agents they just happened to chance across, would have been proclaimed as a triumph for the British military. Yet it was kept secret for ten months. We were not told about the involvement of Colonel Alison McCourt (image on the right) until January of this year, when it came out by accident. Swollen with maternal pride, Col. McCourt nominated her daughter for an award from the local radio station for her role in helping give first aid to the Skripals, and young Abigail revealed her mother’s identity on local radio – and the fact her mother was there “with her” administering first aid.

Even then, the compliant MSM played along, with the Guardian and Sky News both among those running stories emphasising entirely the Enid Blyton narrative of “plucky teenager saves the Skripals”, and scarcely mentioning the Army’s Chief Nurse who was looking after the Skripals “with little Abigail”.

I want to emphasise again that Col. Alison McCourt is not the chief nurse of a particular unit or hospital, she is the Chief Nurse of the entire British Army. Her presence was kept entirely quiet by the media for ten months, when all sorts of stories were run in the MSM about who the first responders were – various doctors and police officers being mentioned.

If you believe that it is coincidence that the Chief Nurse of the British Army was the first person to discover the Skripals ill, you are a credulous fool. And why was it kept quiet?

4) Remarkable Metabolisms

This has been noted many times, but no satisfactory answer has ever been given. The official story is that the Skripals were poisoned by their door handle, but then well enough to go out to a pub, feed some ducks, and have a big lunch in Zizzi’s, before being instantly stricken and disabled, both at precisely the same time.

The Skripals were of very different ages, genders and weights. That an agent which took hours to act but then kicks in with immediate disabling effect, so they could not call for help, would affect two such entirely different metabolisms at precisely the same time, has never been satisfactorily explained. Dosage would have an effect and of course the doorknob method would give an uncontrolled dosage.

But that the two different random dosages were such that they affected each of these two very different people at just the same moment, so that neither could call for help, is an extreme coincidence. It is almost as unlikely as the person who walks by next being the Chief Nurse of the British Army.

5) 11 Days

After the poisoning of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, the Police cordoned off Charlie Rowley’s home and began a search for “Novichok”, in an attitude of extreme urgency because it was believed this poison was out amidst the public. They were specifically searching for a small phial of liquid. Yet it took 11 days of the search before they allegedly discovered the “novichok” in a perfume bottle sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter – and only after they had discovered the clue of the perfume bottle package in the bin the day before, after ten days of search.

The bottle was out of its packaging and “novichok”, of which the tiniest amount is deadly, had been squirted out of its nozzle at least twice, by both Rowley and Sturgess, and possibly more often. The exterior of the bottle/nozzle was therefore contaminated. Yet the house, unlike the Skripals’ roof space, has not had to be destroyed.

I do not believe it took the Police eleven days to find the very thing they were looking for, in plain sight as exactly the small bottle of liquid sought, on a kitchen bench. What else was happening?

6) Mark Urban/Pablo Miller

The BBC’s “Diplomatic Editor” is a regular conduit for the security services. He fronted much of the BBC’s original coverage of the Skripal story. Yet he concealed from the viewers the fact that he had been in regular contact with Sergei Skripal for months before the alleged poisoning, and had held several meetings with Skripal.

This is extraordinary behaviour. It was the biggest news story in the world, and news organisations, including the BBC, were scrambling to fill in the Skripals’ back story. Yet the journalist who had the inside info on the world’s biggest news story, and was actually reporting on it, kept that knowledge to himself. Why? Urban was not only passing up a career defining opportunity, it was unethical of him to continually report on the story without revealing to the viewers his extensive contacts with Skripal.

The British government had two immediate reactions to the Skripal incident. Within the first 48 hours, it blamed Russia, and it slapped a D(SMA) notice banning all media mention of Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller. By yet another one of those extraordinary coincidences, Miller and Urban know each other well, having both been officers together in the Royal Tank Regiment, of the same rank and joining the Regiment the same year.

I have sent the following questions to Mark Urban, repeatedly. There has been no response:

To: [email protected]

Dear Mark,

As you may know, I am a journalist working in alternative media, a member of the NUJ, as well as a former British Ambassador. I am researching the Skripal case.

I wish to ask you the following questions.

1) When the Skripals were first poisoned, it was the largest news story in the entire World and you were uniquely positioned having held several meetings with Sergei Skripal the previous year. Yet faced with what should have been a massive career break, you withheld that unique information on a major story from the public for four months. Why?

2) You were an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment together with Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, who also lived in Salisbury. Have you maintained friendship with Miller over the years and how often do you communicate?

3) When you met Skripal in Salisbury, was Miller present all or part of the time, or did you meet Miller separately?

4) Was the BBC aware of your meetings with Miller and/or Skripal at the time?

5) When, four months later, you told the world about your meetings with Skripal after the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you said you had met him to research a book. Yet the only forthcoming book by you advertised is on the Skripal attack. What was the subject of your discussions with Skripal?

6) Pablo Miller worked for Orbis Intelligence. Do you know if Miller contributed to the Christopher Steele dossier on Trump/Russia?

7) Did you discuss the Trump dossier with Skripal and/or Miller?

8) Do you know whether Skripal contributed to the Trump dossier?

9) In your Newsnight piece following the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you stated that security service sources had told you that Yulia Skripal’s telephone may have been bugged. Since January 2017, how many security service briefings or discussions have you had on any of the matter above.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Craig Murray

The lack of openness of Urban in refusing to answer these questions, and the role played by the BBC and the MSM in general in marching in unquestioning lockstep with the British government narrative, plus the “coincidence” of Urban’s relationship with Pablo Miller, give further reason for scepticism of the official narrative.

7) Four Months

The official narrative insists that Boshirov and Petrov brought “novichok” into the country; that minute quantities could kill; that they disposed of the novichok that did kill Dawn Sturgess. It must therefore have been of the highest priority to inform the public of the movements of the suspects and the possible locations where deadly traces of “novichok” must be lurking.

Yet there was at least a four month gap between the police searching the Poplar hotel where Boshirov and Petrov were staying, allegedly discovering traces of novichok in the hotel room, and the police informing the hotel management, let alone the public, of the discovery. That is four months in which a cleaner might have fatally stumbled across more novichok in the hotel. Four months in which another guest in the same hotel might have had something lurking in their bag which they had picked up. Four months in which there might have been a container of novichok sitting in a hedge near the hotel. Yet for four months the police did not think any of this was urgent enough to tell anybody.

The astonishing thing is that it was a full three months after the death of Dawn Sturgess before the hotel were informed, the public were informed, or the pictures of “Boshirov” and “Petrov” in Salisbury released. There could be no clearer indication that the authorities did not actually believe that any threat from residual novichok was connected to the movements of Boshirov and Petrov.

Similarly the metadata on the famous CCTV images of Boshirov and Petrov in Salisbury, published in September by the Met Police, showed that all the stills were prepared by the Met on the morning of 9 May – a full four months before they were released to the public. But this makes no sense at all. Why wait a full four months for people’s memories to fade before issuing an appeal to the public for information? This makes no sense at all from an investigation viewpoint. It makes even less sense from a public health viewpoint.

If the authorities were genuinely worried about the possible presence of deadly novichok, and wished to track it down, why one earth would you wait for four months before you published the images showing the faces and clothing and the whereabouts of the people you believe were distributing it?

The only possible conclusion from the amazing four month delays both in informing the hotel, and in revealing the Boshirov and Petrov CCTV footage to the public, is that the Metropolitan Police did not actually believe there was a public health danger that the two had left a trail of novichok. Were the official story true, this extraordinary failure to take timely action in a public health emergency may have contributed to the death of Dawn Sturgess.

The metadat shows Police processed all the Salisbury CCTV images of Boshirov and Petrov a month before Charlie Rowley picked up the perfume. The authorities claim the CCTV images show they could have been to the charity bin to dump the novichok. Which begs the question, if the Police really believed they had CCTV of the movements of the men with the novichok, why did they not subsequently exhaustively search everywhere the CCTV shows they could have been, including that charity bin?

The far more probable conclusion appears to be that the lack of urgency is explained by the fact that the link between Boshirov and Petrov and “novichok” is a narrative those involved in the investigation do not take seriously.

8) The Bungling Spies

There are elements of the accepted narrative of Boshirov and Petrov’s movements that do not make sense. As the excellent local Salisbury blog the Blogmire points out, the CCTV footage shows Boshirov and Petrov, after they had allegedly coated the door handle with novichok, returning towards the railway station but walking straight past it, into the centre of Salisbury (and missing their first getaway train in the process). They then wander around Salisbury apparently aimlessly, famously window shopping which is caught on CCTV, and according to the official narrative disposing of the used but inexplicably still cellophane-sealed perfume/novichok in a charity donation bin, having walked past numerous potential disposal sites en route including the railway embankment and the bins at the Shell garage.

But the really interesting thing, highlighted by the blogmire, is that the closest CCTV ever caught them to the Skripals’ house is fully 500 metres, at the Shell garage, walking along the opposite side of the road from the turning to the Skripals. There is a second CCTV camera at the garage which would have caught them crossing the road and turning down towards the Skripals’ house, but no such video or still image – potentially the most important of all the CCTV footage – has ever been released.

However the 500 metres is not the closest the CCTV places the agents to the Skripals. From 13.45 to 13.48, on their saunter into town, Boshirov and Petrov were caught on CCTV at Dawaulders coinshop a maximum of 200 metres away from the Skripals, who at the same time were at Avon Playground. The bin at Avon playground became, over two days in the immediate aftermath of the Skripal “attack”, the scene of extremely intensive investigation. Yet the Boshirov and Petrov excursion – during their getaway from attempted murder – into Salisbury town centre has been treated as entirely pointless and unimportant by the official story.

Finally, the behaviour of Boshirov and Petrov in the early hours before the attack makes no sense whatsoever. On the one hand we are told these are highly trained, experienced and senior GRU agents; on the other hand, we are told they were partying in their room all night, drawing attention to themselves with loud noise, smoking weed and entertaining a prostitute in the room in which they were storing, and perhaps creating, the “novichok”.

The idea that, before an extremely delicate murder operation involving handling a poison, a tiny accident with which would kill them, professionals would stay up all night and drink heavily and take drugs is a nonsense. Apart from the obvious effect on their own metabolisms, they were risking authorities being called because of the noise and a search being instituted because of the drugs.

That they did this while in possession of the novichok and hours before they made the attack, is something I simply do not believe.

9) The Skripals’ Movements

Until the narrative changed to Boshirov and Petrov arriving in Salisbury just before lunchtime and painting the doorknob, the official story had been that the Skripals left home around 9am and had not returned. They had both switched off their mobile phones, an interesting and still unexplained point. As you would expect in a city as covered in CCTV as Salisbury, their early morning journey was easily traced and the position of their car at various times was given by the police.

Yet no evidence of their return journey has ever been offered. There is now a tiny window between Boshirov and Petrov arriving, painting the doorknob apparently with the Skripals now inexplicably back inside their home, and the Skripals leaving again by car, so quickly after the doorknob painting that they catch up with Boshirov and Petrov – or certainly being no more than 200 metres from them in Salisbury City Centre. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of CCTV video of the Skripals’ movements which has never been released. For example, the parents of one of the boys who Sergei was chatting with while feeding the ducks, was shown “clear” footage by the Police of the Skripals at the pond, yet this has never been released. This however is the moment at which the evidence puts Boshirov and Petrov at the closest to them. What does the concealed CCTV of the Skripals with the ducks show?

Why has so little detail of the Skripals’ movements that day been released? What do all the withheld CCTV images of the Skripals in Salisbury show?

10) The Sealed Bottle

Only in the last couple of days have the police finally admitted there is a real problem with the fact that Charlie Rowley insists that the perfume bottle was fully sealed, and the cellophane difficult to remove, when he discovered it. Why the charity collection bin had not been emptied for three months has never been explained either. Rowley’s recollection is supported by the fact that the entire packaging was discovered by the police in his bin – why would Boshirov and Petrov have been carrying the cellophane around with them if they had opened the package? Why – and how – would they reseal it outdoors in Salisbury before dumping it?

Furthermore, there was a gap of three months between the police finding the perfume bottle, and the police releasing details of the brand and photos of it, despite the fact the police believed there could be more out there. Again the news management agenda totally belies the official narrative of the need to protect the public in a public health emergency.

This part of the narrative is plainly nonsense.

Bonus Point – The Integrity Initiative

The Integrity Initiative specifically paid Dan Kaszeta to publish articles on the Skripal case. In the weekly collections of social media postings the Integrity Initiative sent to the FCO to show its activity, over 80% were about the Skripals.

Governments do not institute secret campaigns to put out covert propaganda in order to tell the truth. The Integrity Initiative, with secret FCO and MOD sourced subsidies to MSM figures to put out the government narrative, is very plainly a disinformation exercise. More bluntly, if the Integrity Initiative is promoting it, you know it is not true.

Most sinister of all is the Skripal Group convened by the Integrity Initiative. This group includes Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 handler, and senior representatives of Porton Down, the BBC, the CIA, the FCO and the MOD. Even if all the other ludicrously weak points in the government narrative did not exist, the Integrity Initiative activity in itself would lead me to understand the British government is concealing something important.

Conclusion

I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences.

What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Boshirov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.

I do not believe the British Government. I have given you the key points where the official narrative completely fails to stand up. These are by no means exhaustive, and I much look forward to reading your own views.

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In a devastating admission of system failure, the Metropolitan Police have said that criminal charges in the matter of the Grenfell Tower block conflagration in West London that killed 72 people on June 14th 2017, are now unlikely to brought until 2021 –  if at all.

Of course, those individuals responsible have presumably already now liquidated their assets and relocated abroad and those companies implicated have, no doubt, likewise re-arranged their assets, executives and professional advisors, accordingly.  Now, in the light of this unprecedented decision of system failure, they have another two years to complete their arrangements.

The facts of the matter are crystal clear.  Polymer foams have been known for over 40 years to be fire-accelerants and to emit deadly hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) gas when ignited.   This information has been in public domain for decades and all architects, surveyors, building inspectors, manufacturers and suppliers would have been well aware of the dangers of using such highly combustible and toxic material inside or outside any residential building in the UK, or anywhere else.

The documented dangers were deliberately ignored.  Seventy-two died as a result of gross negligence and no criminal charges have been brought to date.

It is a double catastrophe, for the bereaved, for Britain’s judicial system and for those tens of thousands who still live in buildings containing fire-accelerant polymer foam.

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

For most of the last five decades, it has been assumed that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a deception by Lyndon Johnson to justify war in Vietnam. But the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam on Aug. 4, 1964, in retaliation for an alleged naval attack that never happened — and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that followed was not a move by LBJ to get the American people to support a U.S. war in Vietnam.

The real deception on that day was that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s misled LBJ by withholding from him the information that the U.S. commander in the Gulf — who had initially reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships — had later expressed serious doubts about the initial report and was calling for a full investigation by daylight. That withholding of information from LBJ represented a brazen move to usurp the President’s constitutional power of decision on the use of military force.

Image: Dean Rusk, Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara in Cabinet Room meeting February 1968. (Photo credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto, White House Press Office)

McNamara’s deception is documented in the declassified files on the Tonkin Gulf episode in the Lyndon Johnson library, which this writer used to piece together the untold story of the Tonkin Gulf episode in a 2005 book on the U.S. entry into war in Vietnam. It is a key element of a wider story of how the national security state, including both military and civilian officials, tried repeatedly to pressure LBJ to commit the United States to a wider  war in Vietnam.

Johnson had refused to retaliate two days earlier for a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. naval vessels carrying out electronic surveillance operations. But he accepted McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory strikes on Aug. 4 based on reports of a second attack. But after that decision, the U.S. task force commander in the Gulf, Capt. John Herrick, began to send messages expressing doubt about the initial reports and suggested a “complete evaluation” before any action was taken in response.

McNamara had read Herrick’s message by mid-afternoon, and when he called the Pacific Commander, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp Jr., he learned that Herrick had expressed further doubt about the incident based on conversations with the crew of the Maddox. Sharp specifically recommended that McNamara “hold this execute” of the U.S. airstrikes planned for the evening while he sought to confirm that the attack had taken place.

But McNamara told Sharp he preferred to “continue the execute order in effect” while he waited for “a definite fix” from Sharp about what had actually happened.

McNamara then proceeded to issue the strike execute order without consulting with LBJ about what he had learned from Sharp, thus depriving him of the choice of cancelling the retaliatory strike before an investigation could reveal the truth.

At the White House meeting that night, McNamara again asserted flatly that U.S. ships had been attacked in the Gulf.  When questioned about the evidence, McNamara said, “Only highly classified information nails down the incident.” But the NSA intercept of a North Vietnamese message that McNamara cited as confirmation could not possibly have been related to the Aug. 4 incident, as intelligence analysts quickly determined based from the time-date group of the message.

LBJ began to suspect that McNamara had kept vital information from him, and immediately ordered national security adviser McGeorge Bundy to find out whether the alleged attack had actually taken place and required McNamara’s office to submit a complete chronology of McNamara’s contacts with the military on Aug. 4 for the White House indicating what had transpired in each of them.

But that chronology shows that McNamara continued to hide the substance of the conversation with Admiral Sharp from LBJ. It omitted Sharp’s revelation that Capt. Herrick considered the “whole situation” to be “in doubt” and was calling for a “daylight recce [reconnaissance]” before any decision to retaliate, as well as Sharp’s agreement with Herrick’s recommendation. It also falsely portrayed McNamara as having agreed with Sharp that the execute order should be delayed until confirming evidence was found.

Contrary to the assumption that LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf incident to move U.S. policy firmly onto a track for military intervention, it actually widened the differences between Johnson and his national security advisers over Vietnam policy. Within days after the episode Johnson had learned enough to be convinced that the alleged attack had not occurred and he responded by halting both the CIA-managed commando raids on the North Vietnamese coast U.S. and the U.S. naval patrols near the coast.

In fact, McNamara’s deception on Aug. 4 was just one of 12 distinct episodes in which top U.S. national security officials attempted to press a reluctant LBJ to begin a bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

In September 1964, McNamara and other top officials tried to get LBJ to approve a deliberately provocative policy of naval patrols running much closer to the North Vietnamese coast and at the same time as the commando raids. They hoped for another incident that would justify a bombing program. But Johnson insisted that the naval patrols stay at least 20 miles away from the coast and stopped the commando operations.

Six weeks after the Tonkin Gulf bombing, on Sept. 18, 1964, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk claimed yet another North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in Gulf and tried to get LBJ to approve another retaliatory strike. But a skeptical LBJ told McNamara, “You just came in a few weeks ago and said they’re launching an attack on us – they’re firing at us, and we got through with the firing and concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.”

After LBJ was elected in November 1964, he continued to resist a unanimous formal policy recommendation of his advisers that he should begin the systematic bombing of North Vietnam. He stubbornly argued for three more months that there was no point in bombing the North as long as the South was divided and unstable.

Johnson also refused to oppose the demoralized South Vietnamese government negotiating a neutralist agreement with the Communists, much to his advisers’ chagrin. McGeorge Bundy later recalled in an oral history interview that he concluded that Johnson was “coming to a decision … to lose” in South Vietnam.

LBJ only capitulated to the pressure from his advisers after McNamara and Bundy wrote a joint letter to him in late January 1965 making it clear that responsibility for U.S. “humiliation” in South Vietnam would rest squarely on his shoulders if he continued his policy of “passivity.” Fearing, with good reason, that his own top national security advisers would turn on him and blame him for the loss of South Vietnam, LBJ eventually began the bombing of North Vietnam.

He was then sucked into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, which he defended publicly and privately, leading to the logical but mistaken conclusion that he had been the main force behind the push for war all along.

The deeper lesson of the Tonkin Gulf episode is how a group of senior national security officials can seek determinedly through hardball – and even illicit – tactics to advance a war agenda, even knowing that the President of the United States is resisting it.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published Feb. 14.

The Pentagon rerouted millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and vehicles from Iraq to Syria in the second half of 2018, Al-Monitor has learned, as US-backed forces cornered the last remnants of the Islamic State (IS).

In a series of notifications to Congress reviewed by Al-Monitor, the Defense Department said it had determined that a bevy of supplies purchased by the Pentagon for the Iraqi military would instead go to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Pentagon sent lawmakers its last reprogramming notification for 2018 on Dec. 31, 12 days after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.

The stock of equipment includes nearly 50 Humvees, 20 mine-resistant vehicles, 40 enhanced armament carriers and nearly 700 light anti-tank weapons. The Pentagon also approved the transfer of more than 2,400 mortar rounds, 25 mine rollers and dozens of charges used to destroy mines and other explosives, the letters indicate.

Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, would not confirm whether the supplies had been moved, citing government policy. When Al-Monitor reported the transfer of route clearance equipment to Syria in June, he said it would “assist the SDF in successfully retaking the last remaining [IS-held] territory in Syria.”

“Ensuring that the SDF are sufficiently equipped has been critical to the SDF’s hard-fought campaign to liberate the Middle Euphrates River Valley from [IS] control,” he said last month. “The [Defense] department will always exercise effective and efficient use of the train-and-equip funding appropriated by Congress.”

Experts said the equipment may help the SDF further diminish IS, which beefed up its urban defenses with car bombs, booby traps and other battlefield hazards. Al-Monitor first reported that the Pentagon was transferring equipment from Iraq to Syria in June.

The equipment would be helpful, “particularly to be able to overcome entrenched [IS] defenses” and vehicle-born improvised explosive devices, which the militant group used extensively to slow US-backed forces in Syria’s Middle Euphrates River Valley, said Nick Heras, a Middle East fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Mazlum Kobane, the SDF’s top commander, said last week IS is just days away from losing control of all its territory in Syria. But the shift in resources may come at a cost for Iraq, which is struggling to regain its military footing even after declaring IS defeated in 2017.

The Pentagon budgeted $800 million to rebuild the country’s armed forces last spring. But experts worry that without US boots on the ground in next-door Syria, Iraq could be forced to pick up the slack, taking on an expeditionary role fighting IS across the border.

“When you don’t have intelligence on the ground and you lose some of the things that are leaving, it will become much more pinpricks from the outside,” said Linda Robinson, a senior defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. “It will become a much more difficult fight to prosecute. It’s first a question of the wolf at the door and then the wolf across the border.”

As Iraq looks to beef up its counterinsurgency operations against IS, and US forces take on more of a training mission, Ambassador Fareed Yasseen said the US troop and equipment presence in Iraq remains to be seen.

“It will certainly mean more American troops if we get American equipment,” Yasseen said. “It will probably mean less if we buy European or Russian equipment. The American equipment is pretty expensive, and we’re cash-strapped.”

The envoy’s assessment aligns with incoming US Central Command chief, Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who told Congress in December that Iraq will not be able to pay to maintain US equipment.

Yasseen said Iraq will likely see an “internationalization of the Western military presence that’s there in support of Iraqi military capabilities.” That includes a new NATO training operation led by Canadian Gen. Dany Fortin. The US-led coalition fighting in Iraq told the Pentagon’s inspector general last month that training of Iraqi forces “is of a basic nature” and does not fit US definitions of counterinsurgency instruction.

Though the president visited US troops at al-Asad air base in December, he did not meet with Iraqi officials.

“Every minute we try to spend putting the Humpty Dumpty back together again we are reducing our opportunity to solidify Iraq,” Robinson said. “We have to look at all of the pieces on the chessboard and make the right decision.”

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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Click here to order.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced plans to strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protection across the lower 48 states.

If finalized the proposal will allow trophy hunting and trapping of wolves in the Great Lakes states. It will slow or completely halt recovery of wolves in more of their former range.

“This disgusting proposal would be a death sentence for gray wolves across the country,” said Collette Adkins, a senior attorney at the Center. “The Trump administration is dead set on appeasing special interests that want to kill wolves. We’re working hard to stop them.”

The proposal would remove federal protections for all gray wolves, with the exception of Mexican gray wolves, which are listed separately under the Endangered Species Act.

Congress stripped wolves in Idaho and Montana of protections in 2011, and the Fish and Wildlife Service stripped protection from Wyoming wolves in 2017. This led to the killing of thousands of wolves and cessation of further recovery in these states.

The Fish and Wildlife Service also stripped protection from gray wolves in the Great Lakes region in 2011, allowing trophy hunting and trapping seasons in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, but the courts restored protection in 2014.

“The courts have repeatedly slammed the Fish and Wildlife Service for prematurely removing wolf protections, but the agency has now come back with its most egregious scheme yet,” said Adkins. “Once again, we’ll take it to the courts and do everything we can to stop this illegal effort to kill wolf protections.”

Gray wolf numbers in these states have only recently recovered to pre-hunt numbers. These hunts will start anew if the Trump administration’s proposal is finalized.

The proposal will also all but ensure that wolves are not allowed to recover in the Adirondacks, southern Rockies and elsewhere that scientists have identified suitable habitat.

“The livestock industry and trophy hunters want wolves dead, but we’ll make sure the feds fulfill their obligation to restore wolves across the country,” Adkins added.

Background

Volunteer wolf advocates around the nation are gathering this week to oppose the Trump administration’s plans. The “Wild for Wolves” events are part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Call of the Wild campaign.

On December 17, 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Humane Society of the United States petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to maintain protection for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

On Nov. 14, 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for violating the Endangered Species Act by never providing a comprehensive recovery plan for gray wolves nationwide. If successful, that lawsuit would mean that wolves must remain federally protected until the Service implements a national recovery plan.

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Predictably during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Republican chairman Marco Rubio condemned Venezuela’s Maduro as a “clear danger” and a “threat to the national security of the US.” To be expected the hearing was filled with plenty of threats and talk of flipping “military elites” and enforcing tougher sanctions. 

But perhaps unexpected was just how out in the open and brazen Rubio’s own admissions of how far he’s willing to go in promoting regime change in Caracas. In public testimony he called on the US to promote “widespread unrest” in order to eventually bring down the Maduro government.

It appears Rubio is now urging the White House to initiate a full-on “Syria option” for Venezuela, which implies covert arming, funding, and militarization of the opposition to reach peak escalation and confrontation with the government, perhaps inviting broader external military intervention, similar to efforts to topple Syria’s Assad over the past years.

We’ve commented before about how popular anti-Maduro protests seemed to have lost significant momentum of late, pretty much fading out altogether over the past couple weeks, after tensions came to a head on Feb. 23 when US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido led a failed attempt to get an unauthorized humanitarian aid convoy across the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

This as it appeared the opposition was itching for a provocation that might draw the US and regional allies into some of kind of more direct intervention, and as a significant uptick in US military flights went to and from Colombia near the border with Venezuela.

At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote “widespread unrest” (violent guarimba riots) as a means of encouraging regime change. His proposal was met with approval. https://t.co/PDBCNoi4Q5 pic.twitter.com/OIEk0K0O7G

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 7, 2019

During Thursday’s Senate hearing, there appeared a willingness to admit the fact that it appears Maduro is not going anywhere anytime soon, for example, when the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, said,

“Confronting tyranny requires sustained commitment. But Maduro is not invincible. He’s far from it.”

Though issuing plenty of threats of tighter sanctions and strangling Venezuelan oil exports, the Democrats on the committee stopped short of endorsing military action:

“The support that we have lent unequivocally on Venezuela does not include the use of force,” Menendez said further.

However, Rubio’s extreme “regime change by any means possible” hawkishness was on full display. Journalist Max Blumenthal reports:

At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote “widespread unrest” as a means of encouraging regime change. His proposal was met with approval.

Blumenthal noted this was a reference to instigating further “violent guarimba riots” — referencing the local Spanish word — that have been a feature of Venezuelan city streets since Maduro was sworn in for a second six year term in January, and which has further represented the more violent side of Venezuelan politics for years.

Journalist Clifton Ross, who has long reported from on the ground in Venezuela, explained the term as follows:

Your Spanish lesson for the day is guarimba, (feminine, as in ‘me voy a la guarimba’ I’m going to the guarimba) the blocking of roads, lighting of tires, and sometimes involving defensive acts of rock-throwing, a practice adopted by the Venezuelan opposition in response to elections they feel are unfair. Those who participate in the guarimbasare known as guarimberos. It is presently the season of guarimbas, and one can only hope, for the sake of the nation, that they will soon come to an end.

Though Maduro has survived the latest round of international pressure to succumb to internal coup efforts led by a US-supported opposition, the fires of unrest Venezuela don’t look to be extinguishable anytime soon.

As Ben Norton also pointed out on Thursday while speaking of using “humanitarian aid” as a pretext for regime change: “They’re not even hiding it at this point.”

They're not even hiding it at this point: Venezuela's US-backed neoliberal opposition leader Antonio Ledezma is openly admitting the strategy is to falsely claim Venezuela needs "humanitarian intervention" on "R2P" grounds, just like Yugoslavia and Libyahttps://t.co/lh8wuMwnIg

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 7, 2019

Indeed, Rubio personally promised just this during hearing:

“To those in Venezuela: Your fight for freedom and restoration of democracy is our fight, and the free world has not and will not forget you,” he said, and added, “We [the United States] will be [focused] on this as long as it takes.”

Earlier in the day Rubio told Fox News that:

“Trump won’t give up until Maduro is gone in Venezuela.”

More ominously, Rubio predicted during the hearing, “Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history,” in reference to the Venezuelan military blocking US aid shipments and tightening sanctions.

Of course Rubio laid all blame for the dire future plight of common Venezuelans on the Maduro regime alone, and not on his own admitted desire to stir yet more unrest in the country.

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Featured image is from Gage Skidmore/Flickr