Global Research

The Gates Foundation is funding a campaign to “end world hunger” by promoting GMO technology. The organization has hired 400 “science ambassadors” to influence agricultural policy in 35 countries.

In the last four years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated a total of $15 million to two global campaigns aimed at “ending world hunger” by expanding the use of GMO technology.

The first, called the “Alliance for Science,” was created in 2014 with the intention of “depolarizing” the GMO debate.

The second, called “Ceres2030,” was created in 2018 to help the United Nations achieve its goal of “zero hunger by 2030.”

Both campaigns are headquartered at Cornell University.

The Alliance for Science has received $12 million from the Gates Foundation so far, while Ceres2030 was founded with a $3 million grant last October.

The funds for the Alliance for Science will be used “to ensure broad access to agricultural innovation, especially among small farmers in developing nations,” says a Cornell University press release.

The Alliance for Science has hired nearly 400 “science advocates” to “champion evidence-based agricultural policies” (aka share the gospel of GMOs) in 35 countries.

“The situation is increasingly urgent, with many countries at critical junctures in determining whether plant science can help deliver food security and reduce the environmental damage caused by agriculture,” said Alliance for Science director Sarah Evanega.

“We must be sure that science-based solutions don’t bypass the poor.”

The Alliance has built a network of more than 9,000 “science allies” representing more than half the world’s countries and every U.S. state, the release says.

Last fall, the Gates Foundation helped start another campaign at Cornell called Ceres2030, named after the Roman goddess of agriculture.

The “non-profit” campaign will advise the United Nations on which policies and investments to make in order to achieve its goal of “zero hunger by 2030.”

Several of Ceres2030’s board members have clear links to Big Ag, points out Jonathan Latham, cofounder of the Bioscience Resource Project. Chief among them:

1. Ronnie Coffman, secretary of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an agribusiness lobby group for GMOs based at Cornell.

2. Prabhu Pingali, a cornell professor who conspired with Monsanto executive Eric Sachs and PR executive Beth Anne Mumford to place into scientific literature “subjects chosen for their influence on public policy.”

“Based on internal emails obtained from Cornell via the Freedom Of Information Act, the nonprofit US Right To Know concluded that “The Cornell Alliance for Science is a PR Campaign for the Agrichemical Industry” which uses Cornell’s name as cover,” Latham writes.

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Warsaw, Poland is not a fun place to visit in darkest February, but that is where the US just staged an anti-Iranian jamboree of 60 client states that brought derision and scorn from Europeans and much of the Mideast.

The point of this cynical exercise was to lay the diplomatic groundwork for an anti-Iranian coalition to act as a fig-leaf for an upcoming attack on Iran planned by President Donald Trump and his close ally, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

The real question is who is calling the shots in bleak Warsaw, Trump or Bibi Netanyahu? It seems to many that the Israeli tail is again wagging the American dog.

This is thanks to the power of America’s born-again evangelicals, hoodwinked into believing that a Greater Israel is somehow a key part of the Second Coming of Christ.

A Fox News poll this week finds that a quarter of these credulous folks believe that God actually summoned Donald Trump to become president. This may even be more than the number of Americans who believe that Elvis is still alive. More proof that the Republicans have pretty much become a theological party.

The three horseman of the hard right Republican Apocalypse, Vice president Mike Pence, Insecurity advisor John Bolton, and State Secretary Mike Pompeo (who reportedly keeps an open bible on his desk) joined their voices to the Warsaw jamboree to excoriate Iran for being a ‘sponsor of terrorism,’ and a danger to world peace and stability.

The never understated Bibi Netanyahu, whose nation has at least 100 nuclear weapons, claimed Iran, which has no nukes and feeble armed forces, was planning a ‘second Holocaust’ for Israel.

An over-excited Netanyahu even tweeted that the Warsaw meeting was preparing for `war with Iran.’ He was forced to retract his tweet. But he did get to sit next to the delegate from war-torn Yemen, a stooge put into place by the Saudis and Emiratis whose aggression against Yemen has so far cost hundreds of thousands of lives, mass starvation and epidemics.

This week a newly energized US House of Representatives voted for an end to their nation’s support for the Saudi-led war in the Mideast’s poorest nation. The Senate, still controlled by Republican Crusaders, will be likely to vote down the sensible House proposal.

Another participant at Warsaw was the largest Arab nation, Egypt. This nation just extended the rule of its military dictator, Field Marshall al-Sisi, to 2034. It was Sisi, backed by Saudi money, who overthrew Egypt’s first democratic government in history, killing and jailing thousands.

In a slap in the face to Washington, Europe’s leaders, France, Germany and the European Union government, either refused to attend the Warsaw hate-fest against Iran or sent low-level paper-passers.

Ironically, while Trump’s people were fulminating against Iranian ‘terrorism,’ it was Iran that was the victim of terrorist attacks. An attack from a Pakistan-based Sunni Jaish al-Adl extremist group linked to the CIA killed 27 soldiers and wounded a similar number. Iran has been the target of constant attacks since its 1979 revolution by groups linked to the US, and from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other US regional vassals.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is even a long-term lobbyist for the hyper-violent Marxist Iranian extremist group, the MEK which was even branded a ‘terrorist group’ by the US government.

The Warsaw jamboree was also supposed to set the stage for Trump’s much ballyhooed Mideast ‘peace’ plan. Run by son-in-law Jared Kushner, the full plan is expected to be released in April, right after Israeli elections. It will likely consist of trying to buy off Palestinian land claims with US taxpayer money and some cash from the Saudis. America’s Arab client states in the region will all provide polite applause.

The Warsaw jamboree produced no evident results and left the US even more isolated than before. Europe is moving ahead with a financial mechanism to permit trade with Iran that circumvents US sanctions. US intelligence itself reports that Iran is not working in nuclear weapons. Europe wants to trade with Iran.

America’s anti-Iran campaign has just suffered another blow. This after Washington badly damaged relations with China and Canada over the arrest of the daughter in Vancouver of the founder of Huawei over charges it traded with Iran. Most non-Americans view this as an outrage. But the later-day Crusaders around Trump don’t seem to care that they are damaging America’s reputation and making a mess of its foreign policy.

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While the evolution of Google’s YouTube from a free expression platform into something entirely different has been underway for a while, it just took another step in a very short-sighted and restrictive direction. NBC News reports:

YouTube has announced that it will no longer recommend videos that “come close to” violating its community guidelines, such as conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos…Chaslot said that YouTube’s fix to its recommendations AI will have to include getting people to videos with truthful information and overhauling the current system it uses to recommend videos.

There’s a lot to unpack here so let’s get started. First, it appears YouTube has announced the creation of a new bucket when it comes to content uploaded to the site. It’s no longer just videos consistent with company guidelines and those that aren’t, but there’s now a category for “conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos.” This is a massive responsibility, which neither YouTube or anyone else seems fit to be judge and jury. In other words, YouTube is saying it’s comfortable deciding what is “conspiracy” and what isn’t. Which brings up a really important question.

So no videos of government officials lying the public into wars, or is that the Silicon Valley approved type conspiracy? https://t.co/mUEQGMlLyr

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) February 11, 2019

“Conspiracy” and covering up conspiracies is a fundamental part of the human experience, and always has been. It demonstrates extreme hubris for a tech giant to claim it can differentiate between a legitimate conspiracy to explore, versus an illegitimate one. One person’s righteous investigation is another’s conspiracy theory, with Russiagate serving as an obvious contemporary example.

Going back to the early 21st century, we witnessed a major conspiracy to start a war in Iraq based on lies; lies which were endlessly repeated uncritically throughout the mass media. Even worse, General Wesley Clark described an even larger conspiracy which consisted of starting multiple additional wars in the aftermath of 9/11. This conspiracy is ongoing and has continued to move forward in the years since, through both Republican and Democratic administrations.

It’s pretty clear what will end up happening as a result of this tweaking to YouTube’s recommended videos AI. The “conspiracies” of your average person will be pushed aside and demoted, while government and mass media lies will remain unaffected. Google will assume mass media and government are honest, so government and billionaire approved propaganda will be increasingly promoted, while the perspectives of regular citizens will be pushed further to the margins. YouTube is simply not a platform anymore, but rather a self-proclaimed arbiter of what is ridiculous conspiracy and what is truth.

The most dangerous and consequential liars on planet earth are those in government, yet I guarantee YouTube will gladly recommend such liars and their lies.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) February 11, 2019

While YouTube says videos it deems conspiracy will still be available via search, it’s not a stretch to imagine this is just the first step and before you know it certain categories will be banned from the site entirely. Either way, I think there’s a silver lining to all of this.

As I outlined in a recent post, U.S. tech giants, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, aren’t simply private companies. They appear more akin to quasi-government entities that increasingly view themselves as instrumental gatekeepers for a discredited status quo. Moreover, their primary business models consist of mass surveillance and violating our privacy.

Ultimately, I think the increasingly nefarious and desperate behavior of these tech giants will lead to their demise. More and more of us have looked under the hood and seen the seedy and privacy-destroying nature of these entities. We’ve also seen what it’s like to have genuine free expression on the internet and we don’t want to turn the web into another cable news where Facebook, Google and Amazon become the new CBS, NBC and ABC. If we do, then the entire promise of the internet will have turned out to be a giant waste.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think most of us have had a taste of what’s possible, and agree that free speech and expression on the internet, the good, the bad and the ugly, is better than an internet censored by tech companies and their billionaire executives, who will always be biased toward the status quo point of view. It’s still not clear which platforms will emerge to replace the tech giants, but it seems fairly clear to me the best days are over for these companies, and it cannot come a moment too soon.

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The victory Los Angeles teachers and their union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), won in their contract fight with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has the potential to change the world, as the Chicago Teachers Union did in its landmark 2012 strike. Their path-breaking struggles are reverberating in the latest wave of walkouts and strike votes spreading across the nation’s school systems — and the school year is barely half-over.

Los Angeles teachers rode the tide created by the teacher walkouts in “red states,” which taught labor the power of direct action to win demands from the GOP’s elected handmaidens to wealthy elites. By consciously using community organizing and reinvigorating the union’s internal structures to mobilize members, UTLA created a social movement so powerful it forced LAUSD and the corporate titans who control the city’s school board to make concessions.

The strike demonstrated to teachers unions throughout the world that they can win against the global education reform movement. UTLA has created hope and breathing space for struggles for public education in the global North as well as the South, with governments in thrall to transnational corporations and international finance organizations controlled by the United States. This strike was a defeat not only for Superintendent Beutner, given his job by Los Angeles “vulture philanthropists” like Eli Broad,” but also for their global project.

While the goal of creating “choice” has been exposed as a cover to “marketize” education for profits, another less-discussed aim is to control what students are taught so as to mold the new workforce. Both relate to corporate elites’ plan to eliminate jobs on a scale never seen before.

The project’s elements have been set out clearly: downsizing public higher education; defunding K-12 schools; narrowing what is taught with testing; pushing out working-class students of color with punitive disciplinary policies. UTLA’s strike has shown we can successfully resist this project.

With this victory, UTLA raises the bar for resistance, making space for activists to grapple with well-known harmful reforms as well as little-understood but dangerous new policies — accepted in many cases by the national teachers unions — that intensify control over learning and education’s marketization. Silicon Valley has teamed up with investment banks to use students’ data as a new form of human capital. Community schools activists have pushed as an alternative to charters, to provide a full array of social services to students, are frequently implemented by school districts with outsourced services funded by social impact bonds, which pay companies to eliminate students from services for which they are legally eligible, and expanded collection of student data. Strikes like LA’s can push back against these policies.

Much won wasn’t in the contract. Teachers feel empowered, and the debate around charter schools and funding public education has shifted. Solidarity was built across schools, and teachers won dignity and respect for their work and profession.

Though gender remains an implicit rather than explicit part of the new militancy among teachers, there is no ignoring how teachers’ willingness to speak truth to power has been fueled by their explicit expression of love of working with and for kids. The strike is a feminist victory, highlighting the power of workers who do “women’s work” outside the home, the paid labor of reproduction. Their struggle supports developing vibrant, generative theories of social reproduction in capitalism — a task that should be high on socialists’ agenda.

Reveals an insidious mindset at the top levels of the FCC and industry.

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Michelle Bachelet

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

With great consideration we wish to express to you our grave concern about the catastrophic consequences of the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the Government of the United States of America, with the cooperation of the European Union, against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Independent experts have calculated that the sanctions imposed by Washington have created a loss of revenue in the public coffers in the order of 23 billion dollars when all the above mentioned sanctions are added to the assets of the Venezuelan government frozen abroad, both in the United States and in some European countries, and the losses in oil exports. The ultimate intention of this economic blockade, together with an intense campaign of diplomatic and media attacks, is to impede the economic recovery of the South American country and “accelerate the collapse”, according to the words of the former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, who last year said textually that: “If we are going to sanction PDVSA, it will have an impact on the entire people, on the ordinary citizen. The counter-argument is that the people suffer so much from the lack of food, security, medicines, public health, that at this moment perhaps the best resolution would be to accelerate the collapse, even if it produces a period of suffering of months or perhaps years”. (1)

These economic aggressions constitute an unacceptable violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. They also undoubtedly constitute an attack on the rules of international law and on the fundamental principles governing relations between nations.

The situation inevitably brings to mind the words of former US President Richard Nixon when he expressed his intention to destabilize the Government of Popular Unity of Chile by ordering his Secretary of State, Kissinger: “Let’s make the Chilean economy scream” (2). It is well known that the excuse and justification for the nefarious coup d’état that overthrew President Salvador Allende, a sad and tragic memory for you and all the Chilean people, without a doubt, was the economic crisis – at that time there was no talk of a “humanitarian crisis” – conceived, organized and financed from the White House, as the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate itself clearly demonstrated in a famous report. Today, in Venezuela, we are living a situation that, although difficult and complex, is very far from the so-called “humanitarian crisis,” as it has been called and which, as former Ambassador Brownfield confessed, has also been intentionally provoked from the United States, to create the conditions to facilitate foreign military intervention in that country.

There are grim antecedents that cannot be ignored and they pose worrying similarities of destabilizing phenomena that culminated in horrible tragedies. Let’s not forget the terrible genocide provoked in Iraq, after years of economic sanctions, endorsed even by the UN, which was directly responsible for the lives of more than 500,000 children who died of malnutrition and disease and created several million refugees. We cannot forget the criminal indifference in the words of former U.S. Ambassador to the UN and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when she commented, on the relation to the human cost of the applied sanctions, “I think it was a very difficult choice, but the price … we think the price was worth it. (3)

We also know that in Cuba the economic blockade prolonged for almost sixty years, the only case in modern history has had an exorbitant cost. Between April 2017 and March 2018 alone it reached 4 billion dollars (4) in damage. Considering the entire period, independent experts agree that the cost of the blockade amounts to the equivalent of two Marshall Plans, but against a single Caribbean country. Currently, a single day of economic blockade is equivalent to the value of one month’s insulin treatment for the entire Cuban population affected by Diabetes Mellitus that requires insulin.

The policy of implementing economic sanctions, financial and trade blockades only brings suffering and death to the most vulnerable population of the affected country. It is an illegal and criminal weapon, aimed to destabilize and destroy governments, whatever their political color, and prepares a climate of opinion, within the country and in the international framework, to justify coup d’états.

We would like to point out that, according to the opinion of several experts in international law, economic sanctions against Venezuela can be classified as crimes against humanity. In fact, the Rome Statutes states that,

“For the purposes of this Statute, ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and with knowledge of that attack.

Article 7 (k) of the Statutes also identifies crimes against humanity:

“Other inhumane acts of a similar nature which intentionally causes great suffering or seriously undermines physical integrity or mental or physical health”.

This section K) clearly indicates the words and deeds of former Ambassador Brownfield as a ‘crime against humanity’, when he says that sanctions against PDVSA will produce “a period of suffering of months or perhaps years” to the Venezuelan population.

For these reasons we have come to ask you, given your investiture and the responsibility of the office you are in charge of, to enforce respect for the Charter of the United Nations and the international legal system patiently built since the end of the Second World War. At the same time we ask you to prevent measures, such as economic sanctions, from being adopted in relations between governments, intentionally designed to cause cruel suffering to the population in order to foment rebellion against its authorities. As well as avoiding the looting of the Venezuelan people’s resources and the explicit intentions of a military intervention disguised as humanitarian aid that, as National Security Advisor John Bolton assured, aspires to hand over the exploitation of Venezuelan hydrocarbons to U.S. oil companies.

It is because of the foregoing considerations that at such serious times as these, when the peace and security of a nation is at stake, we come to you in the hope that you will interpose the high authority of your office and the recognized trajectory of your person to demand an end to the actions taken by the government of the United States against a member state of the United Nations, with the aim of being able to guarantee the peace, life and happiness of Venezuelans who are currently living in deep dismay at the alteration of their daily lives and the threats hanging over their very existence.

The Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity trusts that you will know how to efficiently direct our request.

Dr. Bachelet, we salute you with all consideration and respect.

Initial Signers:

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Premio Nobel de la Paz, presidente del Consejo Honorario del Servicio Paz y Justicia en América Latina, y de la Liga Internacional por los Derechos y la Liberación de los Pueblos, Argentina

Alicia Alonso, Prima Ballerina Assoluta y Directora del Ballet Nacional de Cuba

Roberto Fernández Retamar, poeta, ensayista y promotor cultural cubano. Presidente Casa de las Américas.  Premio Internacional José Martí, de la UNESCO, Cuba

Danny Glover,  actor y activista social por los derechos humanos, United States

Alice Walker, escritora afroamericana, Premio Pulitzer 1983, United States

Oscar López Rivera, líder independentista, Puerto Rico

Rafael Cancel Miranda, líder independentista, Puerto Rico

Medea Benjamín, Codirectora de la organización femenina antibélica CODEPINK, United States.

Ignacio Ramonet, Catedrático y periodista. Dirigió la revista Le Monde Diplomatique. Una de las figuras principales del movimiento antiglobalización, France

Fernando Rendón, Premio Nobel Alternativo de la Fundación Right Livelihood Award. Periodista y poeta, fundador y director del Festival de poesía de Medellín, Colombia

Martín Almada, Premio Nobel Alternativo de la Fundación Right Livelihood Award. Doctor en Ciencias de la Educación, jurista y activista social por los derechos humanos. Descubridor del “Archivo del Terror de la Operación Cóndor”, Paraguay

Ricardo Patiño, economista, presidente del Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana, Ecuador

René González Sehwerert, Héroe de la República de Cuba

Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Héroe de la República de Cuba

Ramón Labañino Salazar, Héroe de la República de Cuba

Fernando González Llort, Héroe de la República de Cuba

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, Héroe de la República de Cuba

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Abogado. Nombrado por el Consejo de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas, como experto independiente  para la promoción de un orden internacional democrático  e igualitario. United States

Fernando Gomes de Moráis, periodista, político y escritor. Premio Brasilia de Literatura,  Brazil

Taty Almeyda, Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Línea Fundadora), Argentina

Alejando Navarro, Senador de la República de Chile

Stella Calloni, Periodista y escritora. Premio Latinoamericano de Periodismo José Martí, Argentina

Lita Boitano, Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas, Argentina

Héctor Díaz Polanco, Antropólogo e investigador del CIESAS, Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico e integrante del capítulo mexicano de la REDH, Republica Dominicana/México

Graciela Rosemblum, Presidenta Liga Argentina por los Derechos Humanos, Argentina

Manuel Cabieses, Periodista, director de revista Punto Final, Chile

Leonardo Boff, Teólogo, filósofo, escritor y ecologista e integrante del capítulo brasileño de la REDH, Brazil

Juan Ramón Quintana Taborga, Ministro de la Presidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, Ministro de Economía y Finanzas Públicas del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

César Navarro Miranda, Ministro de Minería y Metalurgia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

Adriana Salvatierra Arriaza, Senadora por el Movimiento Al Socialismo – Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (MAS-IPSP), Presidenta de la Cámara de Senadores del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

David Choquehuanca Céspedes, Secretario General de la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América – ALBA, ex Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

Gerardo García, Vicepresidente del Movimiento Al Socialismo – Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (MAS-IPSP), Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

Juan Carlos Huarachi, Secretario Ejecutivo de la Central Obrera Boliviana – COB, Bolivia

Jacinto Herrera, Secretario Ejecutivo de la Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia – CSUTCB, Bolivia

Segundina Flores, Secretaria Ejecutiva de la Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas y Originarias de Bolivia “Bartolina Sisa”, Bolivia

José Domingo Vásquez, Secretario Ejecutivo de la Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores Petroleros de Bolivia – FSTPB, Bolivia

Jorge Taiana, Diputado del Parlasur. Ex Canciller de la Nación. Peronista. Sociólogo, Director del CIEP (UNSAM), Argentina

Beinusz Szmukler, Presidente del consejo consultivo de la Asociación Americana de Juristas, Argentina

Pablo Gentili, Profesor de la Universidad del Estado de Río de Janeiro, UERJ. Ex secretario ejecutivo de CLACSO, Argentina

Guillermo Teillier. Presidente del Partido Comunista de Chile

Executive Secretariat of the Network in Defense of Humanity:  

Pedro Calzadilla, Coordinador General de la Red en Defensa de la Humanidad, República Bolivariana de Venezuela

Atilio Boron, Doctor en Ciencia Política, Premio Internacional José Martí, de la UNESCO y Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico,  Argentina

Carmen Bohórquez, Historiadora y doctora en estudios ibéricos y latinoamericanos, República Bolivariana de Venezuela

Omar González, Poeta, escritor, Premio Casa de las Américas, y Coordinador del capítulo cubano de la REDH, Cuba

Hildebrando Pérez Grande, Premio de Poesía Casa de las Américas. Profesor Emérito de la UNMSM. Director Académico de la revista de Artes & Letras “Martín”. Coordinador del Capítulo Peruano de la REDH

Hugo Moldiz Mercado, Abogado, periodista y Director del semanario La Época. Miembro del Centro de Estudios Estratégicos Nuestra América. Coordinador del capítulo boliviano de la REDH, Bolivia

Tim Anderson, Escritor, Académico y activista social. Coordinador del capítulo australiano e islas del pacífico de la REDH, Australia

María Nela Prada, Internacionalista, militante del MAS-IPSP, miembro del Colectivo de Mujeres “Adela Zamudio”, e integrante del capítulo boliviano de la REDH, Bolivia

Marilia  Guimaraes, Licenciada en lenguas Neo Latinas, traductora, escritora y Coordinadora del capítulo brasileño de la REDH, Brazil

Carlos Alberto Almeida, Periodista, analista internacional y fundador de Tele Sur, integrante del capítulo brasileño de la REDH, Brazil

Ángel Guerra Cabrera, periodista y articulista sobre temas internacionales del diario La Jornada, integrante del capítulo mexicano de la REDH, Cuba/México

Alicia Jrapko, activista social, coordinadora de la Red Nacional Norteamericana de Solidaridad con Cuba y editora de Resumen Latinoamericano, United States

Nayar López, Doctor en Ciencia Política y Coordinador del capítulo mexicano de la REDH, México

Fernando Buen Abad, Doctor en Filosofía, cineasta e investigador e integrante del capítulo mexicano de la REDH, México/Argentina

Paula Klachko, Socióloga, doctora en Historia y Coordinadora del capítulo argentino de la REDH

Katu Arkonada, Politólogo, escritor y activista social, Basque Country

Irene León, Socióloga y comunicadora. Directora de FEDAEPS, Ecuador

Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, Médico, activista social y Coordinador del capítulo venezolano de la REDH

Javier Couso Permuy, Comunicador audiovisual y Eurodiputado por Izquierda Plural en el Parlamento Europeo, Spain

Arantxa Tirado, politóloga especializada en relaciones internacionales y doctora en estudios latinoamericanos, Spain

Fernando León Jacomino, Poeta, crítico y director de La Jiribilla, Cuba

Ariana López, Licenciada en filosofía e integrante del capítulo cubano de la REDH, Cuba

Roger Landa, Licenciado en filosofía e integrante del capítulo venezolano de la REDH, República Bolivariana de Venezuela

Other signers, organizations and associations:

Telma Luzzani, Periodista, escritora. Mención de Honor en el VIII Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico, Argentina

Asociación Americana de Juristas (AAJ), United States

Servicio Internacional de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de América Latina Oscar Arnulfo Romero (SICSAL)

Carlos López López, Director Observatorio Parlamentario y Electoral para la Integración Regional OPEIR

Jorge Sanjinés A., Cineasta boliviano, premio “Concha de Oro” del Festival de Cine de San Sebastián 1989, Premio Nacional de Cultura de Bolivia

Tristán Bauer, Director de cine. Realizador de documentales y largometrajes de ficción, ganador  de un Goya a la Película Extranjera de Habla Hispana en 2006, Argentina

Héctor Béjar Rivera, Escritor y Premio de Ensayo Casa de las Américas, Perú

Vicente Otta, Sociólogo y ex -vice ministro de Cultura, Perú

Winston Orrillo, Poeta y Premio nacional de Periodismo, Perú

Jorge Elbaum, Presidente Llamamiento Argentino Judío, Argentina

Estela Díaz, Dirigente de la CTA. Argentina

Oscar Laborde, Presidente del Bloque de Diputados del FPV-P del Parlasur, Argentina

Araceli Ferreyra, Diputada Nacional, FPV Secretaria Comisión Relaciones Exteriores de la Cámara de Diputados de la Nación. Argentina

Teresa Parodi, Cantautora popular y Exministra de Cultura, Argentina

Alicia Castro, Ex embajadora de Argentina en Venezuela, Argentina

Claudia Rocca, Presidenta de la Asociación Argentina de Juristas. Argentina

Leonel Falcón Guerra, Periodista, abogado e internacionalista, Perú

Rubén Suarez, CONAICOP Frente Amplio, Uruguay

Esteban Silva, Presidente Movimiento del Socialismo Allendista. Integrante de la dirección del MDP en el Frente Amplio, Chile

Claudia Iriarte, Doctora en Derecho, Fundación Constituyente XXI, Chile.

Patricio Guzmán, economista, integrante de No más AFP. Chile.

Aida García Naranjo Morales, Ex Ministra de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social del Perú

Rodrigo Loyola, Vice Presidente Agrupación Nacional de Ex Presos políticos, Chile

Francisca Cabieses, subdirectora de la revista Punto Final, Chile.

Pavel Eguez, Pintor  y muralista, Ecuador

Galo Mora, Artista y diplomático, Ecuador

Pilar Bustos, Pintora, Ecuador

Oscar Bonilla, Político, Exministro del Interior, Ecuador

Consuelo Sánchez, Antropóloga y profesora de la ENAH, México

Delfina Paredes, Actriz de teatro, cine y tv, Perú

Juan Cristóbal, Premio Nacional de Poesía, Perú

José Luis Ayala. Poeta, periodista, Perú

Bruno Portuguez Nolasco, Pintor, Perú

Fanny Palacios Izquierdo, Pintora, Perú

Delfina Paredes, Actriz de teatro, cine y tv, Perú

Manuel Robles. Periodista, Perú

Gustavo Espinoza Montesinos. Periodista, Perú

Ramiro Saravia Coca, Coordinador Movimiento Red Tinku, Bolivia

José Pertierra, Abogado cubano, experto en inmigración, que representó al gobierno de Venezuela para la extradición del terrorista Luis Posada e integrante de la mesa consultiva de la REDH en Estados Unidos,  Cuba/United States

Darío Salinas Figueredo, Profesor emérito de la Universidad Iberoamericana, México

Carlos Fazio, Profesor de la UNAM y la UACM, México

Adalberto Santana, Profesor de la UNAM, México

Walter Martínez Alves, Brigadier general(r) y miembro del Frente Amplio de Uruguay, México

Enrique Ubieta, Investigador, ensayista y periodista. Director de la Revista Cuba Socialista, e integrante del capítulo cubano de la REDH, Cuba

Rubén Suarez, CONAICOP Frente Amplio, Uruguay

Jorge Galvez, Director AND Noticias, Chile

Celso Calfullan, Director Werken Rojo, Chile

Bloque Frente para la Victoria, Argentina

Cámara de Diputados de la Nación Argentina

Carlos Pisoni, H.I.J.O.S- Capital, Argentina

Horacio Pietragala,  Diputado Nacional y del Parlasur,  Argentina

Diego Mansilla, Diputado e Integrante del bloque del FPV en el PARLASUR., Argentina

Julia Perie, Parlamentaria del Parlasur por el Frente para la Victoria, Argentina

Carlos Margotta, Abogado Derechos Humanos, Chile

Ignacio Agüero, Cineasta, Chile

Javiera Olivares, Ex presidenta Colegio de Periodistas de Chile

María Eugenia Domínguez, Académica de la Universidad de Chile

Estela Díaz dirigente de la CTA. Argentina

Silvia Horne, Diputada Nacional por Río Negro. Bloque Movimiento Evita. Secretaria de la Comisión de Libertad de Expresión de la Cámara de Diputados de la Nación, Argentina.

Haydee Castelú de García Buela, Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Línea Fundadora), Argentina

Sandra Moresco, Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas, Argentina

Miguel Meira,  Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos – La Matanza, Argentina

Beatriz Capdevila, Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos – La Matanza, Argentina

Pastor Fernando Suarez, Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos, Argentina

Mabel Careaga, Familiares y Compañeros de los 12 de la Iglesia de la Santa Cruz, Argentina

Marcos Weinstein, Fundación Memoria Histórica y Social, Argentina

Adriana Taboada, Comisión Memoria, Verdad y Justicia – Zona Norte, Argentina

María Elena Naddeo, Vicepresidenta Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos., Argentina

Giselle Cardozo, Vicepresidenta Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos., Argentina

Norma Ríos, Vicepresidenta Asamblea Permanente por los a Derechos Humanos, Argentina

Leonel Falcón Guerra, Periodista, abogado e internacionalista, Perú

Alejando Karlen, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Fernanda Gil Lozano, Diputada del Parlasur, Argentina

Cecilia Marchan, Diputada del Parlasur, Argentina

Jorge Cejas, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Familiares y Compañeros de los 12 de la Santa Cruz, Argentina

Movimiento de Solidaridad Nuestra América, México

Coordinadora Mexicana de Solidaridad con Venezuela, México

Movimiento Mexicano de Solidaridad con Cuba, México

Comité Mexicano de Solidaridad Con Bolivia, México

Asociación Salvador Allende, México

Grupo del Frente Para la Victoria de Argentina, México

Comité de Frente Amplio de Uruguay Por la Izquierda, México

Damián Brizuela, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Gabriel Marioto, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Mario Metazza, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Hernán Cornejo, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

Eduardo Valdés, Diputado del Parlasur, Argentina

To add your name to the letter write to [email protected]

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Notes

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJBoe3AvSvc 
2. https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Richard-Nixon-pidio-hacer-gritar-a-la-economia-de-Chile-20140525-0038.html
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE 
4. http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2018/08/24/bloqueo-de-eeuu-costo-a-cuba-mas-de-cuatro-mil-millones-de-dolares-entre-abril-de-2017-y-marzo-pasado/#.XF8LS7hYE1l

Despair breeds profits; disturbances supply opportunity.  The genius and venal nature of human nature will always see a possible buck from an impossibly cruel situation.  Globally, a study should be done about how many billions goes into the supply of contracts, tenders and sweetheart deals to companies with a hand in the business of stopping and keeping refugees. They are the modern pimps of a distinctly modern market, and it pays to have a series of companies doing the work for governments.

All too often, the traffickers are saddled with the lion’s share of the blame.  Ignored are the equally vicious exploiters who find form in privately contracted companies.  In some ways, they have even less of a case to make: the right to seek asylum is recognised by the UN Convention on Refugees; the means to facilitate how that is done is a matter that has been seized upon by practitioners in the market.

In Europe, companies such as European Homecare and ORS Service have shown themselves indifferent and, in some cases, openly hostile, to the welfare of inmates and guards. The words of Marie Sallnäs of Stockholm University remain relevant in describing the entire basis of private sector providers when it comes to dealing with refugee arrivals: “cowboys who are only there because they want to make heaps of money.”

Australia storms ahead in these stakes.  Its officials pay the very people smugglers they condemn to take their trafficked goods elsewhere; it has fed a security complex that would make its Anglo forefathers proud (think the reaction of the British Empire to the Boers in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century; think, dare it be said, concentration and concentrated camps).

The “can-do” country of innovative cruelty has been adding a host of ideas to the mix on how best to tackle those incorrigibles arriving by sea.  To that end, contracts have been awarded to various outfits with a good patina of near as to be criminality.  The contractor Paladin is the most recent upstart in this venture, having received, through a closed-tender process, a range of contracts worth $A423 million for 22 months of work.  It had been receiving $A17 million a month to provide security at three refugee centres located on Manus Island.

The company itself has a curious Australian address: 134 Nepean Esplanade, an inconspicuous beach shack on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.  It had only registered in Australia a month before winning a $A89 million contract to provide security services.  Importantly, Paladin is interested in the grand squeeze, ensuring that the cost for each detainee, minus the actual comfort they receive, exceeds a daily rate twice that for a five-star hotel suite with Sydney Harbour views. In that sense, the Australian tax payer and detainee are given a right royal rogering.

The company itself has done its best to step into the shade.  Founder Craig Thrupp has had a good time of it failing in delivering his contracts, accumulating a set of bad debts in Asia.  (Paladin had been previously known as High Risk Security Asia Pacific, a name oddly appropriate for anybody wishing to do deals with it.)  It has been reported to be running an office out of a beach shack on Kangaroo Island, a classic imposture demonstrating that illegitimate asylum seekers are less relevant than legitimate crooks who know how to cook the books for ruthlessly indifferent governments.

It is an appropriate reminder of another fiasco that took place in the United Kingdom at the end of last year: a ferry contract awarded to a company with no boats.  More digging suggested favours and turning, rather conspicuously, a blind eye.  Paladin’s questionable competence in providing security services does not match the guile evident in moving assets offshore: some 12,000 shares in Paladin Aus finding their way from the Hong Kong holding to its Singapore registered Paladin Holdings Pte Ltd.  The security side of the venture is evidently less relevant than the inventive tinkering of its accountants.

The Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, has retreated.

“I’ve seen this criticism before in relation to closed contracts,” he feebly explained to Sky News.  “There are very few people who can deliver services in the middle of nowhere on an island that is so remote.”

Stunning revelation.  But it was one designed to avoid cabinet responsibility, a concept long lost in Australia’s variant of the Westminster system.  According to Dutton, the ones to be taken to task here were the “secretary of the department ultimately” or some delegated figure “within the department.” Smell the confession.

Money is to be made, but Dutton is not claiming to be part of the scheme. His department, however, was not taking any chances.  Anyone curious enough to investigate the issue using Australia’s stunted Freedom of Information laws will find it interesting that the initial response from the Department of Home Affairs precluded FOI.  That decision was reversed, but Paladin did not need to comply with standard procurement rule set out by Commonwealth guidelines.  Backdoor easing comes to mind.

The Minister for Home Affairs begs to differ.  Nothing to see here, Dutton suggests; move on.  As Bernard Keane, writing for Crikey, explains, there is much to see and more besides, so much so that a Royal Commission into the affairs of the Home Department might be necessary.  And that would just be the start.

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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]

It’s late 2002, early 2003 again. This time, instead of the evil (former CIA asset) Saddam Hussein posing a dire threat to America, it’s Iran and Hezbollah stationed in Venezuela.

Throw in the perennial enemy of a post-colonial Caribbean, Castro’s Cuba, and we have the makings for yet another military intervention on our hands, according to Sec. State Pompeo. 

Let’s talk about the important remarks made recently by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying how (#Iran-backed) Hezbollah has an active role in #Venezuela, as part of a “cocaine corridor.” pic.twitter.com/b05l4GwDwb

— RezaGhebresi (@RGhebresi) February 8, 2019

There is little evidence of any hanky panky vis-à-vis Hezbollah in Venezuela. If there is indeed a Hezbollah presence in Caracas or anywhere else in South America, this would be quite natural given the practice of international diplomacy. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government and representative of Shia Muslims in Lebanon. Like hundreds of other political parties and governments, it has a military or paramilitary component. 

But that’s not what we see in the West. Instead, for us—thanks to decades of propaganda, both American and Israeli—Hezbollah is a ruthless terrorist group on par with ISIS and directed by venal mullahs in Iran. 

Fact is, if Israel had not invaded and occupied Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah probably wouldn’t exist. It came together as a resistance group against and illegal a brutal occupation. If not for Hezbollah, the IDF would have rolled right over the south of Lebanon in 2006. The all-powerful IDF lost that conflict, and it will lose the next one. 

Pompeo’s claim America is at risk due Hezbollah’s presence or lack thereof has a familiar ring. It’s the same load of neocon manure dumped on the American people back in 2003. Americans were still reeling from the 9/11 attacks and this gave the neocons the opportunity to flatten Iraq.

Few corporate mockingbirds will tell you Pompeo is a liar and there will not be Hezbollah pickup trucks crossing the Rio Grande (a sort of feed-loop on Reagan’s Sandinista caravan reaching America to kill Americans and impose a godless communism on the survivors). 

Pompeo and his clueless boss—captivated by his son-in-law and the Israelis—are pulling a redux, this time with Iran and the added misadventure of Venezuela thrown in for good (neoliberal) measure. 

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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.

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Malaysian Airlines MH17 Brought Down by Ukrainian Military Aircraft. The BBC Refutes its Own Lies?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 16, 2019

At Global Research, from the outset we have documented extensively the downing of MH17 by a military aircraft. It is important that the underlying record be fully assessed.

Frayed Colonial Media Propaganda Transmission Lines. Fake Atrocities Used to Justify “Humanitarian War Crimes”

By Mark Taliano, February 16, 2019

So, when BBC journalist Riam Dalati recently confirmed that the Douma hospital scene “was staged”[2], he was making an “admission against interest”, in the sense that his admission contradicts the colonial media storyline that “Assad was gassing his own people” again.

Hands Off Venezuela: Historic Stance at the United Nations against US Imperialism

By Carla Stea, February 16, 2019

As Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza read out their new statement, declaring the illegality of unilateral coercive economic sanctions, and territorial invasions, it became obvious that the power of this new solidarity, which includes China, Russia, Cuba, DPRK, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. constitutes a formidable force which Western capitalism will antagonize at its own peril.

Indigenous Communities Halting Humanity’s Race to Disaster

By Shane Quinn, February 16, 2019

Over thousands of years, native inhabitants have resided in the sprawling rainforests of South America, the bush and deserts of Australia, the open plains of Africa and North America. Indigenous communities, who comprise 5% of the earth’s human population, are inextricably tied to the lands embedded in their souls.

Is Democracy Consistent with Islam?

By Nauman Sadiq, February 16, 2019

Most people are under the impression that democracy and Islam are somehow incompatible. However, I don’t see any contradiction between democracy and Islam, as such. Although, I admit, there is some friction between Islam and liberalism.

Yemen: US “Accidentally” Arming Al Qaeda (Again)

By Tony Cartalucci, February 15, 2019

US weapons are once again falling into the hands of militants fighting in one of Washington’s many proxy wars – this time in Yemen – the militants being fighters of local Al Qaeda affiliates.

Resilience and Strength of Venezuela’s Armed Forces. While Maduro warns of Vietnam 2.0; a Syrian Analogy Beckons

By William Walter Kay, February 15, 2019

For 20 years Chavez’s Bolivarian movement has overseen Venezuelan armed forces recruitment and promotion. The old guard is history. Chavez and Maduro maintained high ratios of generals to troops; they dismissed the recalcitrant, and routinely shuffled seating arrangements.

The US’ Healthcare System Is a Predatory Catastrophe: It’s Time for Universal Medical Coverage

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, February 15, 2019

The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. Last year, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as “politically and morally wrong.”

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The Environmental Protection Agency reported this week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor — an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees — on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.

Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.”

Last year the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General released a report finding that the agency’s practice of routinely granting “emergency” approval for pesticides across millions of acres does not effectively measure risks to human health or the environment.

“Spraying 16 million acres of bee-attractive crops with a bee-killing pesticide in a time of global insect decline is beyond the pale, even for the Trump administration,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA is routinely misusing the ‘emergency’ process to get sulfoxaflor approved because it’s too toxic to make it through normal pesticide reviews.”

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.

That widespread abuse was chronicled in the Center’s recent report, Poisonous Process: How the EPA’s Chronic Misuse of ‘Emergency’ Pesticide Exemptions Increases Risks to Wildlife. The report concludes that emergency exemptions for sulfoxaflor are essentially a backdoor authorization allowing for its ongoing use on millions of acres of crops where exposure to pollinators through contaminated pollen is high. In fact, the so-called “emergencies” cited are routine and foreseeable occurrences.

Previously, in response to a lawsuit by beekeepers, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the EPA’s original registration of sulfoxaflor in 2015. The EPA’s new 2016 registration for sulfoxaflor — purportedly designed to ensure essentially no exposure to bees — excluded crops like cotton and sorghum that are attractive to bees.

A compilation of federal register notices indicates that sulfoxaflor was approved on 16.2 million acres of cotton and sorghum crops in 2018 on an emergency basis. Emergency approvals were granted in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

“The EPA is far too eager to find loopholes to approve harmful pesticides when it should be focusing on keeping people and wildlife safe from those pesticides,” said Donley. “The routine abuse of emergency exemptions has to stop.”

A recent study published in Nature found that sulfoxaflor exposure at low doses had severe consequences for bumblebee reproductive success. The authors cautioned against the EPA’s current trajectory of replacing older neonicotinoids with nearly identical insecticides like sulfoxaflor.

A major study published earlier this month found that more than 41 percent of the world’s insect species are on the fast track to extinction, and that a “serious reduction in pesticide usage” is key to preventing their extinction.

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As Iranians this week mark the 40th anniversary of their country’s 1979 revolution, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton declared in a message to Iranian leaders on Monday that he doesn’t think they will “have many more anniversaries to enjoy”—a comment that was immediately perceived as a direct threat of war.

In video posted to the White House’s official Twitter page on Monday, Bolton echoed false assertions and repeatedly debunked claims by the Trump that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and described the Iranian government as the “central banker of international terrorism.”

Responding to Bolton’s video, Sen. Chris Murphy warned in a tweet on Tuesday that Trump’s hawkish national security adviser is knowingly lying to build momentum for a U.S. military attack on Iran.

“Here Bolton says Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. This simply isn’t true. The intelligence says the opposite and he knows it,” Murphy wrote. “He is laying the groundwork for war and we all must be vigilant.”

Watch Bolton’s video message:

A message to the Ayatollah of Iran: "For all your boasts, for all your threats to the life of the American President, YOU are responsible for terrorizing your own people." #40YearsofFailure pic.twitter.com/gpCL1FeLis

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 11, 2019

Flipping the White House’s claim that the Iranian Revolution has resulted in “40 years of failure,” Javad Zarif—Iran’s foreign minister—declared in a tweet on Monday, “After 40 years of wrong choices, [it is] time for Donald Trump to rethink failed U.S. policy.”

#40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission. #40YearsofFailure to adjust US policy to reality. #40YearsofFailure to destabilize Iran through blood & treasure.

After 40 yrs of wrong choices, time for @realDonaldTrump to rethink failed US policy.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) February 11, 2019

Bolton’s assertion that Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons contradicts the findings of both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Trump administration’s top intelligence officials, who just last month concluded that

“Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.”

“John Bolton’s claim that ‘Iran continues to seek nuclear weapons’ is another bald-faced lie,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council. “He clearly wants a war before Trump leaves office and shouldn’t be underestimated.”

As Common Dreams reported last month, Bolton in 2018 called on the Pentagon to provide the Trump White House with “military options” to launch a strike on Iran. The Pentagon reportedly complied with Bolton’s request, but it is unclear whether the requested information ever reached Trump.

Bolton has also teamed up with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—who has called for regime change in Iran—in an effort to “foment unrest” inside Iran with “offensive of speeches and online communications.”

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, concluded on Tuesday that “we need to be speaking out early and often against the administration’s push for regime change in Iran.”

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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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In comments delivered to an Israeli TV news reporter at a Warsaw conference designed to unite world leaders against Iran, Bibi Netanyahu made his harshest statement yet, calling for war against the Islamic republic:

What is important about this [conference]…is that this is an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that are sitting down together in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.

What is most striking about this statement is that it’s the first time Israel or any world leader has called for a first-strike against Iran.  Note that there is no conditions laid.  He doesn’t say if Iran attacks, we will respond, the usual polite formulations of past U.S. and Israeli governments.  This is Bibi thundering on the world stage for these 60 nations to wage war against a common enemy and destroy him.

The conference has turned into a U.S.-led dog-and-pony show featuring the Trump administration and all its far-right European allies (Hungary, Poland, etc.) along with much of the Sunni world and Israel.  Along with the official delegates, the anti-Iran terror group, the MeK has established a major presence in the Polish capital.  The BBC reported today that 14,000 tweets promoting the conference have been published in the past few weeks.  The vast majority originate from eight accounts. The rhetoric of the tweets clearly indicate they are associated with the MeK. Yet another example of anti-Iran social media manipulation.

National security advisor, John Bolton, set the tone for the conference by releasing a video days before it began, threatening Iran with annihilation. He warned Ayatollah Khamenei, who’d just celebrated the 40^thanniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, he “would not have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”  In a separate development, U.S. media reported last month that Bolton had requested a Pentagon battle plan for an attack on Iran.

Bellicosity like this is music to Netanyahu’s ears.  After all, he stood on the verge of launching an Israeli attack on Iran two different times.  He was only restrained at the last moment by his military-intelligence chiefs who persuaded the security cabinet that it was a very bad idea.  Netanyahu also tried unsuccessfully to persuade two U.S. presidents to attack Iran (Bush and Obama). Finally, to have a figure like Donald Trump in the White House, advised by anti-Iran hawks like Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is a dream come true.

Nor is this the first time the Israeli leader threatened war, though it is the first time he’d done it so explicitly.  A few months ago, he told an audience at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor:

Our enemies know what we are capable of. They understand our policy. Whoever tries to harm us, we will harm him.

I’m not mouthing slogans. I’m describing a consistent, clear and determined policy. This is our policy. It is supported by full preparedness, deployment, infrastructure, readiness and, at the right moment, the proper orders.

…He who threatens us with extinction places himself in a similar danger and, at any event, will not achieve his aim.

Though this earlier formulation doesn’t threaten a first-strike, as Netanyahu did yesterday in Poland, he does infer, based on the fact that he delivered the speech in front of the very reactor which has produced the plutonium to arm all of Israel’s estimated 200 nuclear warheads, that any Israeli attack on Iran will include nuclear weapons.

The question is—how much of substance is happening in Warsaw?  Are war plans being laid?  Or is it all window-dressing, to persuade the world that the conference delegates are mouthing the right platitudes to show their fortitude against their Shia enemy?

Remember that Netanyahu faces an upcoming April election, in which his two decades of leadership have come under attack like never before. He faces four different criminal corruption counts which may lead to his indictment, before voters even get to the polls.  As a smart old pol, he knows that there is nothing better for a candidate than to be seen hobnobbing with world leaders as you promote your national interest on the international stage.  So this may be theatrics meant to convince voters that their prime minister still “has what it takes.”

In response to the Bolton video, Sen. Chris Murphy (D, CT) tweeted:

“He is laying the groundwork for war and we all must be vigilant.”

The same must be said of Netanyahu’s remarks.  They augur poorly for future stability of the region.

But despite Bolton itching for a fight with the Ayatollah, we must consider Trump’s aversion of U.S. military entanglements.  Only a month ago, he precipitously announced that 2,000 American soldiers in Syria would be coming home.  He planned a similar troop reduction in Afghanistan.  The U.S. president doesn’t appear to have the stomach for prolonged military engagements.

Would a military alliance uniting a number of the Warsaw conference participants, encourage Trump to change his mind about attacking Iran?  He complains bitterly when he perceives that the U.S. alone is shouldering the military and financial burdens for such enterprises.  Perhaps if there were ten or twenty countries to unite in such an attack, he might relent?  As any observer of the U.S. president realizes, there is no way to know day-to-day what he thinks or predict what he will do.

But we must see Netanyahu’s declaration of war as a real threat that could be acted upon either by Israel alone; or along with its new allies.  For over a decade, I have sounded a clarion call against such a misadventure.  The reason Shamai Leibowitz and I joined in a campaign to expose the top-secret conversations of the Israeli embassy was we both believed as early as 2009, that Israel wanted to go to war and that it needed to lay the groundwork in this country in order to do so.  Those transcripts revealed the Israeli government ghostwriting anti-Iran op-eds in local newspapers, hosting conferences attacking Iran, organizing meetings between American Jewish leaders and members of Congress.  All with one goal in mind: prepare the American public for war.

Some analysts believe that this entire campaign was an elaborate ruse designed to make the U.S. government believe Israel would go to war, so that we would do everything we could to satisfy Israel that we wanted to stop Iran obtaining WMD as much as it did; and that we would go to any length to do so.

No one will know till the first bomb drops on Tehran, who is right.  But I would not want to be the one who dismissed the chance of war and then woke to TV images of “Shock and Awe, Iran .”

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Featured image is from the US State Department 

President Trump’s proclamation of a state of national emergency on the southern US border is a frontal assault on constitutional norms and democratic rights in America. It is the first time in American history that a president has sought to usurp the constitutional prerogative of Congress to decide how public funds are to be spent.

The actual text of the proclamation, released by the White House Friday afternoon, confirms that Trump is seeking to accomplish the building of a wall along the US-Mexico border primarily through the US military and using the vast resources of the Pentagon. After describing the situation at the border as one that “threatens core national security interests” because it “is a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics,” the proclamation states:

“Because of the gravity of the current emergency situation, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to provide additional support to address the crisis.”

The proclamation invokes section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, part of a 1953 law that authorizes the secretary of defense to mobilize up to one million military reservists for a period of up to 24 months. This section has been used to mobilize the reserves for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan and was invoked by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. In other words, Trump is seeking to treat the US-Mexico border as a major military battlefield, with immigrants and refugees cast as “invaders” threatening the United States.

Trump also invokes Section 2808 of title 10, which authorizes the Pentagon to carry out construction activities in support of military operations. This has previously been understood to refer to the building of barracks, fortifications, airstrips, roads, prisoner-of-war camps and other facilities required by the military during active combat operations. The wall along the US-Mexico border is to be treated as a similar military necessity.

The actual directive from Trump to the Pentagon chief, in this case acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, authorizes him to “order as many units or members of the Ready Reserve to active duty as the Secretary … determines to be appropriate.” The secretaries of the departments of Defense, Interior, and Homeland Security are additionally ordered to “take all appropriate actions … to use or support the use of the authorities herein invoked, including, if necessary, the transfer and acceptance of jurisdiction over border lands.”

This is a broad and sweeping grant of authority to the Pentagon for what amounts to the complete militarization of the US-Mexico border.

The declaration of a national emergency allows the president to invoke a total of 136 distinct statutory powers, only 13 of which require further congressional action, meaning that 123 powers are available to the executive branch without any congressional input. These powers range from suspending all laws regulating chemical and biological weapons to allowing the drafting of retired military officers for emergency service.

This order is in flagrant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the US military from engaging in law enforcement operations within the borders of the United States. To disguise this illegality, Trump’s order describes the military as operating “to assist and support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security at the southern border.”

Most fundamentally, Trump’s order is in direct defiance of the US Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution reads, in part: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law …” This language has invariably been understood to mean that the legislature possesses the “power of the purse,” and that the executive branch (which includes the Treasury) may spend money only as authorized by Congress.

As recently as 2014, congressional Republicans sued the Obama administration, alleging that funds were being paid out under the Obamacare program to insurance companies in the form of “cost-sharing reduction payments” that had not been appropriated by Congress. Although the Congress, at the time under Democratic control, had clearly intended to authorize the payments, the actual language drafted for the bill failed to include this provision. The federal courts upheld the Republican lawsuit and struck down the payments.

A House Republican leader, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, declared at the time,

“The principle there is separation of powers, constitutional authorities that Congress appropriates the money.”

Today, most congressional Republicans are expected to support Trump’s action in flagrant defiance of the separation of powers.

Congressional Democratic leaders called Trump’s declaration of a national emergency “unlawful.” A joint statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared:

“The President’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution.”

“The President is not above the law,” Pelosi and Schumer added. “The Congress cannot let the President shred the Constitution.”

But that is precisely what is about to happen. The House of Representatives may pass a resolution of disapproval, which then must be voted on by the Senate within 18 days. Even if a half dozen Republican senators support the resolution, Trump will then veto it, with little likelihood of a two-thirds majority in either house to override the veto.

Neither Pelosi nor Schumer, nor any other leading congressional Democrat, has suggested that Trump’s action is an impeachable offense, or that the president should be removed from office for a flagrant violation of his sworn oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution. Instead, they have advocated lawsuits, leading ultimately to a decision by the US Supreme Court, with its five-member ultra-right majority, including two justices nominated by Trump himself.

Trump boasted of his likely triumph at the Supreme Court during his rambling press conference Friday at which he announced that he had signed the declaration of national emergency. He expressed contempt for the opponents of the border wall, who he predicted would win favorable decisions at the district and appeals courts, only to be overturned by the Supreme Court, as was the case in the litigation over his ban on Muslim travelers entering the United States.

The decision by the Democrats to appropriate $1.375 billion for border wall renovation and construction, incorporated into the overall federal funding bill Trump has agreed to sign into law, strengthens Trump’s legal position. His attorneys will argue that Congress has already agreed to build the wall, and the only disagreement is over how fast to do so, and that the courts must defer to the judgment of the “commander-in-chief” on an issue of “national security.”

Trump’s press conference was largely devoted to fascistic ranting against immigrants and asylum seekers, portraying them as a hostile invasion force bringing drugs, crime and terrorism into the United States. In a particularly ominous note, he hailed the anti-drug policies of the Chinese Stalinist dictatorship, which regularly executes prisoners convicted of drug trafficking, suggesting that such barbaric methods had allowed China to “solve” its drug problem. Trump’s emergency declaration is a step towards just such a “final solution” in the realm of immigration.

This is language that has never been heard before from an American president. It comes close to that of another Trump favorite, Philippine President Duterte, whose police death squads have slaughtered thousands of residents of working class slums, claiming they are “drug dealers.”

When such comments are made in the Rose Garden, there should be no mistake: The United States is teetering on the brink of dictatorship. There is a colossal disparity between the seriousness and urgency of this danger and the complacency of the response by the Democrats and the media.

The Democrats, who have worked relentlessly to promote the military and intelligence agencies in their factional conflict with Trump, are far more concerned about preventing any mobilization of the working class against Trump’s authoritarian measures than they are concerned about their tactical differences with the White House.

What is happening in the United States is part of an international process. Under the impact of the global economic crisis of capitalism, and the increasingly violent and reckless clashes between the major powers—spearheaded by the United States—democratic forms of rule are breaking down. This is accelerated, above all, by the growing social tensions within every capitalist country, as economic and social inequality reaches unheard-of proportions.

Under these conditions, working people cannot look to any section of the capitalist ruling elite and its political establishment—including the Democratic Party in the United States—to defend democratic rights. This task requires the building of an independent political movement of the working class, expressed already, in an embryonic form, in the expanding wave of strike struggles around the world. The Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS fight to develop this movement of working people and make it a politically conscious struggle for a socialist and internationalist program.

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In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union adopted the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in an effort to eliminate missiles on hair-trigger alert for nuclear war due to their short flight times. It was the first time the two countries agreed to destroy nuclear weapons. That treaty outlawed nearly 2,700 ballistic or land-based cruise missiles with a range of roughly 300 to 3,000 miles.

The Trump administration thought nothing of pulling out of the INF. On February 2, the United States suspended its obligations under the treaty, starting a dangerous chain reaction that brings us closer to nuclear war. Russia followed suit and pulled out of the treaty the next day.

Then the three countries with the largest nuclear arsenals quickly test-launched nuclear-capable missiles. France conducted a test of its medium-range air-to-surface missile on February 4. The next day, the United States fired a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). And an hour and a half later, Russia launched an RS-24 Yars ICBM.

Richard Burt participated in the negotiations of the INF during the Reagan administration. Last fall, he predicted that U.S. withdrawal would lead to Russia’s deployment of intermediate-range missiles and the United States’ development of new sea- and air-based weapons systems. Sure enough, on February 4, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced his country plans to build mid-range, nuclear-capable missiles within two years.

“New intermediate-range cruise and ballistic missiles and low-yield warheads now being planned both in Russia and United States are nothing other than filed-down triggers to all-out thermonuclear war,” Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, told Truthout.

He warns of “nuclear winter,” which is the end of civilization as we know it. A consultant to the Defense Department and the White House in 1961, Ellsberg drafted Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war.

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, concurs.

“Trump has fired the starting pistol on Cold War II. Only this one could be bigger, more dangerous, and the world may not be so lucky this time around.”

Trump’s Actions Undermine Nuclear Disarmament

The adoption of the INF led to the 1991 signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which considerably reduced the number of long-range strategic nuclear weapons. The New START, signed in 2010, requires the U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of deployed nuclear warheads from a maximum of 2,200 in 2010 to 1,550 in 2018. Trump’s cavalier withdrawal from INF does not portend well for the renewal of New START in 2021.

Moreover, Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2018 would allow the United States to use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks. This new U.S. policy opens the door to first-use of nuclear weapons, which is prohibited by international law.

The Nuclear Posture Review also violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the United States is a party. This treaty requires parties “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

The Doomsday Clock Says “Two Minutes to Midnight”

In order to convey the urgency of the threat to humanity and the planet, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock. It uses imagery of the apocalypse (midnight) and a nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). The decision to either move or leave in place the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made each year. The Clock is a universally recognized measure of vulnerability to catastrophe caused by nuclear weapons, climate change or other emerging technologies that could pose a threat. On January 24, the Bulletin once again kept the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight. And that was before the U.S. and Russia pulled out of the INF.

“Trump and Putin are both posturing as gunslingers in a Western movie,” Ellsberg warned. “But the weapons in their quick-draw holsters are not pistols; they are doomsday machines. And this is not high noon; it is two minutes to midnight.”

Toward Denuclearization

In his book, Ellsberg proposes the U.S. government undertake the following measures toward the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons:

1. A U.S. no-first-use policy;
2. Probing investigative hearings on war plans to avoid nuclear winter;
3. Eliminating ICBMs;
4. Ending the pretense of preemptive damage-limiting by first-strike forces;
5. Foregoing profits, jobs and alliance hegemony based on maintaining that pretense; and
6. Otherwise dismantling the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which Ellsberg calls the American Doomsday Machine.

On January 30, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, took a good first step. They introduced the No First Use Act, to establish in law that it is the policy of the United States not to fire nuclear weapons first so “that the United States should never initiate a nuclear war.”

The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) forbids ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It also prohibits the transfer of, use of, or threat to use nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices. The treaty, adopted in 2017, will enter into force after 50 nations have ratified it. Thus far, it has 21 ratifications. But the five original nuclear-armed countries, which also happen to be the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Russia, France, China and the U.K. — did not participate in the treaty negotiations and have not agreed to it.

Resistance against nuclear weapons also takes the form of civil disobedience, such as the recent action by the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7

When I was growing up in the early days of the Cold War, the fear of nuclear annihilation was pervasive. Although U.S. nuclear weapons have been on hair trigger alert for 73 years, “nuclear weapons have become normal,” Patrick O’Neill told Truthout. He and six other Catholic activists are facing up to 25 years in prison for their symbolic action to disarm the nuclear weapons on Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia. They chose April 4, 2018, the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to mount their protest.

In May 2018, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 were charged with conspiracy, destruction of property on a naval station, depredation of government property, and trespass, stemming from their action at the Kings Bay Naval Base. The base is homeport to six nuclear ballistic missile submarines each armed with 16 Trident II missiles. They carried with them a copy of Ellsberg’s book and left it on the base.

The defendants, who will likely go to trial this spring, maintain that any use or threat to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction is illegal, Kings Bay Plowshares 7 spokesperson Bill Ofenloch told Truthout. They are also arguing that their prosecution violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, because their actions were motivated by their Catholic belief that nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal. The Act was passed in 1993 to strengthen protection of free exercise of religion. Finally, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 are claiming that Trump’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons and his illegal conduct have not been prosecuted, so the government’s decision to prosecute only those who protest against nuclear weapons constitutes unlawful selective prosecution.

Co-defendant Martha Hennessy is the granddaughter of Catholic Worker Movement co-founder Dorothy Day. The movement, founded in 1933, comprises 203 Catholic Worker communities committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry and forsaken. Catholic Workers protest war, racism, violence and injustice. (The Catholic Worker newspaper is still published and sells for a penny a copy.)

Hennessy told Truthout,

“The U.S. withdrawal from the INF treaty is designed to ensnare Russia and the world in a new nuclear arms race.”

She warns,

“This is empire run amok, we have lost our democracy, let us pray we don’t lose our world and each other.”

It is incumbent upon all of us to resist the inexorable march toward nuclear winter. We must join together in coalitions and protest to Congress, the White House, in writing and in the streets. There is no time to lose. It is two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

As Washington’s Secret Team continues to line-up its guns against the elected government led by Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, it’s worth reminding viewers of another recently executed regime change operation – a portion of which was caught on tape – where US State Department officials could be heard discussing  their new hand-picked, post-coup government in the Ukraine. 

When the latest phase of the current crisis in Venezuela broke in the middle of January, cabinet officials in Washington immediately declared the elected government in Caracas as “illegitimate,” and put forward their own hand-picked “interim president.” US National Security Advisor John Bolton started the ball rolling by boldly announcing,

“The United States does not recognize Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate claim to power. His ‘election’ in May 2018 was viewed internationally as not free, fair or credible.”

Bolton’s proclamation was followed by a TV decree by US Vice President Mike Pence formally recognizing a previously unknown opposition parliamentarian, Juan Guaido, as Washington’s new choice for president of Venezuela. This was then followed by a tweet  from President Trump:

“The citizens of Venezuela have suffered for too long at the hands of the illegitimate Maduro regime,” before  adding, “Today, I have officially recognized the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela.”

President Trump then upped the ante, warning Maduro that “all options are on the table,” clearly implying the possibility of military intervention by Washington.

While the general public may never be privy to behind-the-scenes conference calls between the likes of Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Jimmy Story and Guaido, it is extremely instructive to revisit the infamous 2014 leaked phone call between then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt – a stunning leak which reveals exactly how Washington appointees were in fact micro-managing their new putsch regime in Kiev – completely outside of the country’s democratic process. Watch:

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Featured image is from 21st CW

Of relevance to the Venezuelan crisis and US military threats:

 Incisive and timely article by Shane Quinn first published by GR on July 22, 2017. 

In all these countries, the speaker of House could not be appointed interim president to replace the dictator,  because the Parliament had been duly abolished courtesy of Uncle Sam. There was no parliament, there was no speaker of the House, no attempt by Washington to restore democracy, opposition activists were arrested and tortured with the support of the  US. 

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Some anniversaries are widely observed in the West: Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Holocaust Memorial Day, the September 11 atrocities, and so on. Yet there are other undesirable anniversaries that have been largely disappeared.

Left-wing nationalist Joao Goulart became the democratically elected president of Brazil in September 1961, setting alarm bells clattering in the liberal Kennedy administration. Goulart began implementing structural reforms in the massive resource-rich South American country, that would help integrate the general population into society. (1) 

Joao Goulart (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The United States was loathe to sit helplessly by as this movement came within “our hemisphere”, as President John F. Kennedy described it. Goulart, also known as “Jango”, was hostile toward US capitalist democracy that seeks to primarily serve elite powers.

Shortly before his death, Kennedy had been preparing the groundwork to oust Goulart, with the coup (March 31-April 1) occurring less than five months under his successor’s reign, Lyndon B. Johnson. (2)  “We just can’t take this one [social movement],” warned Johnson. (3) Goulart’s toppling received crucial CIA funding and arms, while Brazil was placed under a neo-Nazi dictatorship that tortured their people for over 20 years. (4)

CIA terminates the 10-year Guatemalan Revolution (1954) 

Guatemala, a small central American nation, remains a ghastly nightmare to this day. The causes for her suffering can be traced to President Dwight D. Eisenhower implementing a CIA-run coup that installed successive military dictatorships. (1) Guatemala had been enjoying a 10-year revolution (1944-54): firstly, under Juan Jose Arevalo, who introduced a minimum wage and increased funding to education. (2) 

Arevalo’s democratically elected successor in 1951, Jacobo Arbenz, instituted land reforms to grant property to landless peasants. (3) Such inclusive measures were deemed an unacceptable threat to US hegemony over the Western hemisphere. 

Arbenz’ policies threatened the United Fruit Company (UFC), a powerful corporation exploiting Guatemalan workers which had direct ties to Eisenhower’s administration (the Dulles brothers). (4) 

The UFC aggressively lobbied Eisenhower, who authorised the CIA to aid a force led by the impending right-wing dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas. With further threat of invasion by American forces, the Guatemalan army eventually refused to fight on – an error of historic proportions. (5) Almost four decades of civil war followed, as successive US-backed dictators committed atrocities such as genocide against the Maya peoples. (6)

Isabel Peron overthrown by US-backed forces (1976)

The 1976 Argentine coup was the sixth, and final, forced government change that took place in the country during the 20^th century. The US-backed Argentine Armed Forces installed the most vicious Latin American military dictatorship of all, responsible for tens of thousands of murdered and “disappeared”, under convicted war criminals such as Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone. (1) 

Revealingly, the Nazi-style regime was a favorite of US president Ronald Reagan. (2)

Isabel Martinez de Peron (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The coup toppled Isabel Peron, the first female leader in world history, wife and successor of deceased ex-president Juan Peron. Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, met with several Argentine military commanders suggesting they crush their enemies before human rights issues become known to the American public. (3) 

“We read about human rights problems, but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better,” he said, and not the first time Kissinger (Nobel Peace Prize winner) was implicated in war crimes.

US invasion of Grenada (1983)

The American invasion of the minuscule Caribbean island of Grenada (under President Reagan) drew a scathing international response from the UN General Assembly. (1) It “deeply deplores” the intervention, which “constitutes a flagrant violation of international law”, further condemning “the deaths of innocent civilians… the killing of the Prime Minister [Maurice Bishop].”  

The intervention was even opposed by most NATO countries and US allies such as France, Portugal, Australia, Spain and the Netherlands. (2) All irrelevant criticism for elite Western figures that believe the United States should be a law unto its own. The usual pretexts for the invasion of Grenada were put forward by the US government, and obediently relayed by the free press: Grenada was a “Marxist dictatorship” and the US army was on a “rescue mission” to defeat a Cuban military presence defending “this outpost of Soviet imperialism”. (3, 4, 5) 

The true reason for the attack? To expel a government not amenable to American hegemonic demands, and that may act as a further example of defiance (after Cuba) – the abysmal after effects for Grenadians was quickly airbrushed from history.

Juan Bosch toppled in the Dominican Republic (1963)

United States interference in the Dominican Republic traces back to the early 20^th century of the William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson administrations. (1) Wilson, for example, ordered the invasion of the country by US marines in 1916, their presence lasting over six years – an occupation reviled by the Dominican population. (2)

Juan Bosch (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The democratic election of socialist reformer Juan Bosch in February 1963, replacing a military junta, caused undue concern in elite American circles. (3) Their fears were quickly realised as Bosch undertook progressive steps the Dominican population had never known before (or since), initiating plans to reduce poverty, declaring labor rights, strengthening unions, rights for farmers, and so on.

Bosch was declared “a communist” by pro-US business magnates and members of the army. (4) On September 25, 1963, a group of commanders led by Elias Wessin y Wessin, with crucial US support, expelled Bosch from the country.  (5)

“In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” 

The sentence above, which typically cites George Orwell as the source, serves equally well as a motto for community radio journalism at its best.

Unfiltered by corporate, government or other interests, radio stations that derive their revenue from listeners and supporters in their communities are free to challenge the powerful, when other media will not.

The Global Research News Hour struggles week after week to shine light on state and corporate propaganda, particularly that which furnishes a pre-text for war. Thus truth-telling becomes a necessary part of the resistance to oppression disguised as ‘humanitarian interventions’ or ‘self-defence.’

Taking one week a year to raise funds from the community has become a necessary part of community radio. This second week of February is the time selected for CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg, host to the Global Research News Hour, to petition listeners for support.

This week, we are posting the live show which aired on February 15th, and included interviews with colleagues both past and present. They include fellow programmer and sometime Global Research News Hour collaborator Scott Price, fellow programmer Kent Davies, former CKUW News Director Geoffrey Young, and former CKUW Program Director Robin Eriksson. All make the case for supporting independent journalism.

The 2019 drive ended on February 15th. Please do not phone the number announced during the program, but donate online at fundrive.ckuw.ca.

Please also consider pledging to the Global Research website by clicking on this link.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Alternative programming:

Broadcasters wishing to air a more traditional program are free to download and air the following show from the summer of 2018. It concerns the role of the neocons in distorting not only government policy but also news-media. It also includes an old interview with investigative journalist Robert Parry, previous to his untimely death.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 4pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time. 

This week, BBC reporter Riam Dalati confirmed that last year’s “Assad sarin attack” on Douma was indeed “staged”. After a “six month investigation” he concludes,

“I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.”

FLASHBACK TO April 2016.  BBC Documentary on Malaysian Airlines Crash MH17. How the BBC Refutes its Own Lies

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Article first published by GR on April 26, 2016

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The BBC has announced the release of a documentary on the crash of Malaysian airlines MH17, which will be broadcast on May 3 [2016]”:

Alarmingly, the devastating crash occurred just four months after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Is this just a coincidence? The cause of the crash has been focus of a host of conspiracy theories, many of which involve Russia, Ukraine and the CIA.

The official investigation report into MH17 flight argues that only a powerful ground-to-air missile could be responsible. Yet, there are eyewitness accounts of other aircrafts seen flying next to MH17 close to impact. To further fuel the conspiracies, Russia and Ukraine blame each other but both countries are unable to provide all the critical radar data from that day.

Family members do not trust the official explanations and there is a long way to go to bring about justice for the victims. This programme tracks down eye witnesses, and speaks with secret intelligence sources to try to sort fact from fiction. Don’t miss this compelling Conspiracy Files unfold to see whether the mystery can be unravelled.” ( See BBC notice here),

In an unusual twist, the description of the BBC documentary (above) while tacitly refuting the official narrative, also refutes earlier BBC reports pointing to shrapnel from a missile attack (28 July 2014) which followed an earlier controversial BBC report also in July 2014 pointing to the downing of MH17 by an aircraft. The latter video BBC report was taken down and suppressed by the BBC.

According to Australia News in a review of the forthcoming [May 2016] BBC production, the Kiev regime is identified as the culprit:

A CONTROVERSIAL new documentary will investigate claims that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Ukraine fighter jet, instead of a Russian missile.In a new BBC documentary titled ‘The Conspiracy Files: Who Shot Down MH17?’, eyewitnesses will share their accounts of how they saw the aircraft being downed by a nearby fighter jet.

“There are eyewitness accounts of other aircraft seen flying next to MH17 close to impact,” a statement from the BBC said.

The report also suggests that:

“The documentary is also set to analyse the possibility that the downing of the jet was a CIA plot to pin the blame on Russia.”

The geopolitical implications of these statements are potentially dynamite.

They put Washington on the defensive.

What can we expect from the US State Department and John Kerry:

“Sorry, President Putin, we made a mistake, yeah it was Ukraine which brought down the aircraft and we blamed the Russians, sorry for the economic sanctions, we got our countries mixed up”

Highly unlikely.

Already Britain’s tabloids including the BBC are saying there are SEVERAL THEORIES. According to the Daily Mail, the allegation concerning the role of the CIA:

“was put forward by private investigator, Sergey Sokolov, who claimed that the CIA were helped by the Ukrainian secret service and Dutch security service, to place the bombs on the plane in Holland.”

He said: ‘This terrorist act was a pretext for firstly intensifying sanctions on Russia, secondly to show the world that Russia is a barbarian country and thirdly to strengthen the presence of Nato in Europe, particularly Ukraine.’

In all likelihood, Washington will either remain mum or casually dismiss the BBC documentary, while upholding its ongoing hostility towards Moscow.

While the BBC has announced that the documentary refutes the official story as contained in the latest Dutch safety board report (i.e to the effect that MH17 was brought down by a BUK surface to air missile), we will have to wait for the release on May 3, BBC TV Channel 2 to get the full story, including the innuendos. the conspiracy theories, etc.

It is worth noting that according to former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay in a July 2014 statement “the downing of the Malaysia Airines jet could constitute a war crime”.

Analysis

At Global Research, from the outset we have documented extensively the downing of MH17 by a military aircraft. It is important that the underlying record be fully assessed.

Our archive of 100+ Global Research articles and reports on the downing of MH17.  confirms that Malaysian Airlines MH17 was not brought down by a BUK surface to air missile. It was brought down by a military aircraft. This was confirmed in our early reports shortly after the downing of MH17.

 The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile. (Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile” Global Research, July 30, 2014)

[click image right to enlarge]

Based on detailed analysis Peter Haisenko reached  the conclusion that the MH17 was not downed by a missile attack:

This aircraft was not hit by a missile in the central portion. The destruction is limited to the cockpit area. Now you have to factor in that this part is constructed of specially reinforced material

4. The OSCE Mission

It is worth noting that the initial statements by OSCE observers (July 31, 2014) broadly confirm the findings of Peter Haisenko:

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported that shrapnel-like holes were found in two separate pieces of the fuselage of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines aircraft that was believed to have been downed by a missile in eastern Ukraine.

Michael Bociurkiw of the OSCE group of monitors at his daily briefing described part of the plane’s fuselage dotted with “shrapnel-like, almost machine gun-like holes.” He said the damage was inspected by Malaysian aviation-security officials .(Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2014)

The monitoring OSCE team has not found evidence of a missile fired from the ground as conveyed by official White House statements. As we recall, the US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power stated –pointing a finger at Russia– that the Malaysian MH17 plane was “likely downed by a surface-to-air missile operated from a separatist-held location”:

The team of international investigators with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are uncertain if the missile used was fired from the ground as US military experts have previously suggested, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. (Malay Mail online, emphasis added)

The initial OSCE findings tend to dispel the claim that a BUK missile system brought down the plane.

Evidently, inasmuch as the perforations are attributable to shelling, a shelling operation conducted from the ground could not have brought down an aircraft traveling above 30,000 feet.

Peter Haisenko’s study is corroborated by the Russian Ministry of Defense which pointed to a Ukrainian Su-25 jet in the flight corridor of the MH17, within proximity of the plane. (see air traffic data in 1. above)

5. The BBC Initial Report: Donesk Witnesses Confirm presence of  Military Aircraft

(This report was subsequently Suppressed by the BBC, the video on youtube was taken down)

Ironically, the presence of a military aircraft was also confirmed by a BBC  report conducted at the crash site on July 23.

All the eyewitnesses  interviewed by the BBC confirmed the presence of another military aircraft flying within proximity of Malaysian Airlines MH17 at the time that it was shot down: 

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when …

Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.

Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].

BBC Report below (suppressed)

The original BBC Video Report published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014 was removed by the BBC.

In a bitter irony, The BBC was  censoring its own news productions.

This is the BBC Report, still available on Youtube

BELOW SCREENSHOT OF BC TV REPORT ENTITLED “AND THERE WAS ANOTHER AIRCRAFT” SUPPRESSED BY THE BBC

And there was Another Aircraft

The BBC’s Refutation Media Spin

Following the publication of its initial report and its suppression, the BBC quoting an official Ukraine statement  reported that:

 Screenshot of BBC Headline on July 28, 2014

 Media spin supported Washington’s accusations directed against Russia including the sanctions regime.

About-turn at the BBC? Unlikely

Will the soon to be released BBC documentary contribute to refuting the official lies and fabrications? Namely refuting the earlier lies of the BBC.

The media descriptions suggest that the documentary will contain various innuendos and half-truths, which ultimately sustain the media lies. According to the BBC,

“Conspiracy theories swirl around many accidents, terror attacks or disasters. It’s not surprising, then, that a host of different claims surround the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. There are theories about fighter jets and different types of missiles. So what really happened?

Will the BBC explain why it censored its own July 2014 TV reports, which had been published online and then carefully removed. 

Click Here to access an archive of 100 Global Research articles and reports on the downing of MH17. 

Support MH17 Truth: Machine Gun-Like Holes Indicate Shelling from a Military Aircraft. No Evidence of a Surface-to-Air Missile Attack. By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 08, 2016

See the detailed study of Peter Haisenko:

Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile” By Peter Haisenko, July 30, 2014

Scientists, environmental groups, doctors and citizens around the world are appealing to all governments to halt telecommunications companies’ deployment of 5G (fifth generation) wireless networks, which they call “an experiment on humanity and the environment that is defined as a crime under international law.”

Research has shown that wireless radiation can cause DNA damage, neuropsychiatric effects and other health problems.

RT America’s Michele Greenstein joins Rick Sanchez to discuss.

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On January 17, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) passed the bill No. 4128 on new amendments regarding the subordination (denomination) of religious organizations and the procedure of state registration of religious organizations with the status of legal entities. The relevant law No. 2673-VIII was signed by President Poroshenko on January 28 and came into force on January 31, 2019.

Though the bill was designed to simplify the process of changing the religious subordination of a religious community, it actually introduces a new, more complicated scheme of registration and reregistration for religious organizations of all confessions including Protestants.

So, reregistration becomes not just a long-lasting process full of red tape but also is rather expensive. Thus, according to Art. 15 of the Law of Ukraine “On State Registration of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations”, the signature of every community member must be authenticated by a notary.

Moreover, the law No. 2673-VIII requires to submit a new charter of a religious community along with the list of the Assembly participants, which is an unjustified state interference in the internal affairs of religious organizations and infringes believers’ right on confidentiality of their religious views envisaged in Art. 4 of the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”.

It’s worth noting that a request to submit the community members’ signatures contradicts European standards, for example Point 25 of the Guidelines on the Legal Personality of Religious or Belief Communities published in 2015 by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR):

Any procedure that provides religious or belief communities with access to legal personality status should not set burdensome requirements.68 Examples of burdensome requirements that are not justified under international law include, but are not limited to, the following: that the registration application be signed by all members of the religious organization and contain their full names, dates of birth and places of residence; that excessively detailed information be provided in the statute of the religious organization; that excessively high or unreasonable registration fees be paid; that the religious organization has an approved legal address; or that a religious association can only operate at the address identified in its registration documents. Such requirements would not appear to be necessary in a democratic society for the grounds enumerated in international human rights instruments. Also, religious or belief communities interested in obtaining legal personality status should not be confronted with unnecessary bureaucratic burdens or with lengthy or unpredictable waiting periods. Should the legal system for the acquisition of legal personality require certain registration-related documents, these documents should be issued by the authorities.

There is another unjustified burden for the religious activity of brotherhoods, missions, religious schools – they are required to submit documents confirming the right to own or use the property where they are registered. It is also impossible for newly formed religious communities to comply with the new demand (according to Art. 14 of the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”) to hand in a “properly authenticated copy of a document on the right of property or usage” since the community cannot obtain any property rights without becoming a legal entity first.

Another contradiction is that during reregistration, religious communities must produce “the original registration certificate of the religious organization’s charter” as such document is not determined by the Ukrainian legislation and cannot be issued or demanded.

As the adopted law No. 2673-VIII stipulates, one of the reasons for rejecting the documents for registration is “their non-compliance with the existing requirements”, but it is not stated by which acts these requirements are set. This enables the authorities to voluntary decide whether the submitted documents comply or not with the requirements and leads to corruption.

Moreover, according to the same law No. 2673-VIII, if the authorities decide to reject the registration documents without reviewing them or refuse to register the charter, they do not have to provide to the religious organization a written response with all remarks related to the papers and an explanation in what manner the legislation was not complied with.

Obviously, such an irresponsibility of the registration body paves the way for a biased revision of the submitted documents and increased corruption risks.

Shortly before the second reading in the Parliament, churches, religious and public organizations appealed to the deputies to correct the above-mentioned drawbacks but contrary to the Verkhovna Rada’s regulations, the lawmakers were not permitted to do so.

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Marija Bogdanovic is founder and Executive Director of the Endowment for Public Awareness (EPA). 

Featured image is from UNIAN

Colonial media traffics in war lies as policy.  It advances anglo-zionist imperial projects of global war and poverty. Powerful interests benefit from global warfare as target countries are destroyed and domestic populations are impoverished. 

Vast flows of monies are transferred to the black hole of Pentagon spending – including trillions of “unaccounted for” dollars[1] — that should be spent productively, on sustainable Life-oriented economies rather than on Death-perpetuating diseconomies.

So, when BBC journalist Riam Dalati recently confirmed that the Douma hospital scene “was staged”[2], he was making an “admission against interest”, in the sense that his admission contradicts the colonial media storyline that “Assad was gassing his own people” again.

This admission should impact those who rely on colonial media war lies as their sources of disinformation.

The aftermath of the April 7, 2018 Douma false flag was consequential.  Shortly thereafter, the US, France, and the UK attacked Syria with over 100 terror missiles (BEFORE the OPCW had made an investigation) and the West’s ISIS proxies launched an attack from the Yarmouk camp, located 8 kilometers from the center of Damascus[3].

Fake atrocity stories have been a staple of war propagandists[4] throughout the Regime Change war on Syria, all with a view to falsely demonize the Syrian government and its President, and to serve as false “humanitarian” pretexts to commit Supreme International War Crimes.  Western agencies, including  White Helmet[5] terrorists, have played starring roles in these productions, and now the war propaganda transmission lines are openly fraying.

North Americans might now have an occasion to consider the years of real, primary source, independent evidence and investigations which have long since destroyed the cartoonish mainstream narratives, their fabricated “evidence”, and their humanitarian story lines.

Nothing about the West’s war on Syria is humanitarian, none of the atrocity stories against President Assad and his government withstand the scrutiny of independent investigations, and the totality of the war lies amount to criminal war propaganda just as the totality of the West’s crimes against Syria amount to Supreme International War Crimes.

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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.

[1] Lee Camp, “The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)” Strategic Culture Foundation, 2 November, 2018.( https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/02/pentagon-cant-account-for-21-trillion-thats-not-typo.html) Accessed 15 February, 2019.

[2] Tyler Durden, “BBC Producer’s Syria Bombshell: Douma ‘Gas Attack’ Footage “Was Staged’. Zero Hedge, 14 February, 2019.( https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-14/bbc-shocks-douma-gas-attack-scene-staged-producer-says-after-6-month-syria) Accessed 25 February, 2019.

[3] Mark Taliano, “Trump is Playing a “Dirty Game”? Report from Damascus at 4am at the Height of the Bombings.” Global Research, 14 April, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-is-playing-a-dirty-game-report-from-damascus-at-4am-at-the-height-of-the-bombings/5636201) Accessed 15 February, 2019.

[4] Mark Taliano, “Mainstream War Propaganda. Embedded with the Terrorists.” Global Research, 22 February, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/mainstream-war-propaganda-embedded-with-the-terrorists/5629924) Accessed 15 February, 2019.

[5] Mark Taliano, “Video: Who Are the White Helmets? Fake News and Staged Rescues

Canada’s beloved ‘humanitarian heroes’, the White Helmets.” Global Research, 26 December, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-who-are-the-white-helmets-fake-news-and-staged-rescues/5663906) Accessed 15 February, 2019.

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 decision of excluding China from the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) evolved into tense diplomatic relations among the countries located in the South China Sea. Former Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, warned that the exclusion of China from the military exercise represents a first step to encounter a militarisation process supported by the Chinese government in the South China Sea, resulting in US government measures against Beijing.

The territorial disputes in the South China Sea could result in an armed conflict given its importance in three major settings: location, strategic resources, and military advantages. As for location, the cargo ships crossing the South China Sea carry one third of the world’s trade. With regard to strategic resources, there is a wide range of products such as oil and gas. Last but not least, the country controlling this maritime route will bear military advantages because it will hold access to Asia.

With a mutual defense treaty, the U.S military presence would be more relevant in the South China Sea through the support of the Philippine government. The military alliance between the two countries was reinforced four years ago after the signature of a defense agreement, which consists of the establishment of five military bases in the Philippines [1]. According to this agreement, the American military forces will carry out regular operations together with the Philippine troops to face any external threats.

Source: icds.ee

Hence, military installations represent a threat to peace in Asia because American ships are constantly navigating around the South China Sea. The closeness of the Philippines to the South China Sea and their military bases would therefore allow the American fleet to have a permanent presence in Asia. This increasing presence would obviously entail the response of the Chinese government, which might protect its maritime boundaries with a deployment of troops.

It is worth remembering that the previous government took a case to a United Nations court to recognize its sovereignty over the Spratly islands, which were in turn also claimed by the Chinese government [2]. The UN tribunal ruled that the islands belong to the Philippines, but the Chinese government did not recognise this decision, arguing that the ruling was unconstitutional in accordance with international law. This decision was also considered unconstitutional by Chinese media, owing to the fact that the tribunal was not entitled to rule over the property of the islands [3]. The Chinese government made it clear that the court had no jurisdiction over the territorial sovereignty of China.

On the other hand, the Philippine government decision went against their compromise reached during the summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), looking to resolve the territorial disputes through negotiations with Chinese officials. Since the new Philippine government took office last year, not only did the president Rodrigo Duterte reject the UN decision, but he also refused Donald Trump’s recent offer to be a mediator in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea [4].

However, the new posture of Duterte’s government has not translated into a resolution of the territorial disputes with China in the negotiations between the two countries. Moreover, the Philippine president reaffirmed, during Trump’s trip to Asia, the commitment to carrying out the building of military bases last November. As a matter of fact, the building of the first military base has already begun in spite of the fact that the military agreement is unconstitutional for not having the Senate approval.

Likewise, the U.S military assistance to the Philippines has increased significantly for the last ten years. In this sense, it has increased by four times during the period 2011-2017 [5]. This destructive arsenal, which includes firearms and high-end equipment for air and maritime operations, was given to fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, according to the U.S embassy in the Philippines.

Yet, the war against terrorism and drug trafficking has provoked 12,000 deaths of Philippines during Duterte’s government [6]. Philippine police has been blamed by the population for committing several crimes against its people, pointing out responsibilities. Furthermore, the government has prosecuted activists, journalists and human rights defenders who dared to criticize the government’s strategy to eradicate terrorism and drug trafficking.

In addition, the president Duterte has not addressed the sources of violence caused by horrible living conditions in the Philippines where the poverty rate was over 25 % last year. In this scenario, child work is the symbol of unfair labor practices in many places such as plantations, mines, and factories where many children are undermining their professional future [7]. These practices surged as a result of American colonialism that has imposed brutal forms of exploitation on the majority of the population.

In this context of violence and extreme poverty, president Donald Trump said that the Rodrigo Duterte administration has done a “great job”, taking into account the complexity of problems in Philippines [8]. Therefore, the US has become supportive of this government, which needs military support to repress social movements. In return, the Philippine government would allow the US to stay in the South China Sea.

In doing so, the Philippine government will destabilize the “One Belt one Road” initiative proposed by Chinese president Xi Jinping [9]. According to the initiative, the starting point will be the Chinese city of Chongqing, then it will reach the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and finally it will end in Africa and Europe. To finalize the infrastructure projects that hold the initiative, not only are Chinese representatives negotiating with Asian governments, but also they established dialogue forums in the ASEAN.

The maritime route has great geopolitical importance for Chinese infrastructure projects in Asia. On the one hand, Chinese products will be carried through transportation lines to be sold in European markets. Secondly, South Asian countries’ products (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, among other countries) will be brought to the coast of Asia. Ultimately, the route will link the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor to the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor, which will improve the standard of living of the majority of inhabitants.

Across the route, the Chinese government plans to make a significant investment to exploit maritime resources mainly through mariculture, to support transportation with the building of seaports and to bolster tourism by improving public services. These projects will benefit other important initiatives, for instance railways, industrial parks, and economic cooperation zones, which are related to the establishment of seaports, safe maritime routes, and the prevention of natural disasters.

Nonetheless, the most important barrier to carry out these projects has been the inability of Asian governments to resolve the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a situation that has been aggravated by the actions of the Philippine government. It is now when the cooperation among Asian countries is necessary so that the US do not undermine the efforts to support productive integration in Asia.

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This article was originally published on Alai.

Ulises Noyola Rodríguez is a collaborator of Global Research.

Notes

[1] Reuters, Philippines says U.S. military to upgrade bases, defense deal intact, January 26, 2018.

[2] BBC, South China Sea: Philippines and Beijing await court ruling, July 12, 2016.

[3] The Telegraph, South China Sea ruling: why the China-Philippines court case matters, July 12, 2016.

[4] Global Times, S.China Sea doesn’t need outside ‘help’, November 13, 2017.

[5] U.S Defense Department, Congressional Budget Justification, 2017.

[6] Human Rights Watch, Philippines’ Duterte Confesses to ‘Drug War’ Slaughter, September 18, 2018.

[7] International Labour Organisation, Child labour in the Philippines, 2016.

[8] Reuters, Philippines say Trump recognized ‘great job’ Duterte is doing, May 2, 2017.

[9] Xinhua, Vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, June 20, 2017.

Admiral Craig Faller announces an unprecedented joint military operation with Brazil to the US Senate Armed Services Committee. What does it mean for national sovereignty?

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Brazil’s participation in US SOUTHCOM is part of a broader process that began with the coup of 2016. The aggression against our sovereignty is much more serious than we imagined. The reasons for this are as follows.

The projection of a country’s interests in the complex and competitive World scenario essentially occurs in two forms: foreign policy and defense policy.

Therefore, while the full projection of Brazil’s strategic interests in the international scenario depends on a consistent foreign policy, it has to be linked with a sound defense policy.

Undoubtedly, diplomatic persuasion should be the principal means of asserting national interests, especially those of peaceful nations such as Brazil. However, it must be acknowledged that such persuasion works most effectively when complemented by strategic deterrence.

As former Foreign Minister and Defense Minister Celso Amorim said a few years ago,

“The world’s seventh largest economy, a member of BRICS and the G-20, cannot have all the importance that Brazil has assumed and not to have a properly equipped military. The existence of trained armed forces strengthens diplomatic ability and minimizes the possibility of aggression, allowing defense policy to contribute to a foreign policy that is focused on peace and development.”

A country of Brazil’s geographic, demographic and economic dimensions can not do without an efficient defense policy. Even in the context of a peaceful region such as South America, Brazil, with its abundant strategic resources (fresh water, biodiversity, land, pre-salt petroleum reserves, etc.) and its recent international geopolitical projection, arouses jealousies and rivalries which must be neutralized.

Foreign policy and defense policy are complementary policies. Both project the kind of country it wants to be on the world stage. But what type of nation to these policies project today?

Since the 2016 coup, both the foreign policy and the defense policy that have been outlined, which are now consolidating and deepening with Bolsonaro, project a smaller, fragile country which submits itself to the US’ orbit of geopolitical and geostrategic interests. Essentially, we are being transformed into a giant Puerto Rico.

The setbacks in foreign policy have become quite clear. While anxiously seeking uncritical alignment with the United States and its allies such as Israel, all previous successful strands of foreign policy that dramatically increased our international prominence, such as that of Mercosur and regional integration, South-South cooperation, integration with BRICS, strategic partnerships with emerging countries, investment in Arab and African countries, emphasis on multilateralism and the generation of a multi-polar world, etc, have gone out the window.

But these setbacks are also happening in defense policy in a somewhat more discreet and less noticeable manner. They have been underway since the coup in 2016, but now they have acquired greater speed and depth with a new government that openly salutes the United States.

In the PT governments, an attempt was made to articulate and “active and haughty” foreign policy, which projected an independent and strong country onto the world stage, with a consistent defense policy that aimed to create full strategic deterrence and actively contribute to Brazil’s economic and technological development.

Thus, in 2005, the new National Defense Policy (PDN) was launched, which gave special emphasis to training in the production of materials and equipment with high added value in technology, with a view to reducing the country’s external dependence in this strategic area. In addition, a number of strategic projects such as the nuclear submarine and the new fighter jets were created or strengthened to promote strategic deterrence in all scenarios.

In turn, the National Defense Strategy (NDT), launched in 2008, established the “revitalization of the defense material industry” as one of the three pillars for national defense, alongside the reorganization of the Armed Forces and its composition policy. In this way, the Strategy affirmed the inseparable link between defense and development. The BITD (Industrial Defense Base) came to be seen as a driver of technological innovations, with civil applications. It also stimulated independent technological development, especially in the nuclear, cybernetic and space sectors.

The National Defense Policy and the National Defense Strategy complemented the independent foreign policy of that time, both with regard to obtaining adequate armaments and promoting strategic deterrence, as well as stimulating autonomous economic and technological development. Foreign policy and defense policy therefore pointed to the same direction: the construction of an independent nation with its own geopolitical and geostrategic interests.

Now, the defense policy, in tandem with the Bolsonaro’s poor foreign policy clearly illustrates the country’s weakening and deepening of its economic, political and technological dependence.

The first major blow against the previous defense policy was struck in 2016. Constitutional Amendment No. 95 of 2016, which froze primary expenditures for a long period of 20 years, meant an inevitable economic constraint on the pursuit of strategic deterrence and the development of a significant industrial defense base.

In all projected simulations, defense investments are expected to suffer brutal contractions, since the new mandatory constitutional expenses are expected to increase substantially in the coming years due to population growth. Even assuming that defense spending does not suffer a nominal contraction during this period, a highly improbable hypothesis, its mere freezing will imply (assuming that Brazil returns to a 2.5% annual growth rate) a substantial decrease in spending as a percentage of GDP. Even with this average growth rate it will fall from 1.4% of the GDP in 2014 to 0.85% of the GDP in 2036.

In addition to the damage that Constitutional Amendment No. 95 of 2016 will inevitably cause to the National Defense Strategy, it is also necessary to analyze how the Lava Jato investigation has caused considerable losses to the Industrial Defense Base. In fact, all the companies that have been paralyzed and fragilized by Lava Jato play a crucial role in this Strategy and in the Industrial Base, since the companies investigated are strongly present in all of the major projects in the area.

We have no doubt that the combination of Lava Jato, which is weakening the business arm of the National Defense Strategy, with Constitutional Amendment No. 95, of 2016, which will drastically reduce state investment in this area, could make Brazil return to its role in the 90s, when the emphasis given by neoliberalism was on the country’s disarmament.

In addition to these economic factors, it is important to mention that the US Army participated, at the invitation of the Brazilian government, in a joint military exercise in November 2017 on the triple Amazon border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia. This fact reveals a troubling political decision for national sovereignty, in the field of defense and the defense industry.

It was one of the most unprecedented and bizarre decisions in Brazil’s recent military history. Before the coup, our country had been investing in the sovereign management of the Amazon in partnerships with South American countries that were established in regional cooperation mechanisms, particularly those of UNASUR and those of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Thus, this invitation to a foreign superpower which is not part of the Amazon Basin, represented a point outside the curve, in relation to national sovereignty in one of Brazil’s most strategic regions.

These exercises have come in the wake of a series of bilateral initiatives that are part of a post-coup government strategy for subaltern re-approximation with the United States, in both foreign policy and in defense policy.

Within this framework, the Brazilian Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense signed the Master Information Exchange Agreement for Research and Development (MIEA). With this decision, post-coup governments will now invest in cooperation with the US as a way of “developing” our defense industry. In practice, this means giving up real autonomy in the fields of industrial and technological development for national defense.

Apparently, sectors of the Armed Forces have renounced the relatively autonomous technological development provided for in the National Defense Strategy, and are now mistakenly betting on a restructured relationship of dependency with the US.

One sign of this is the new renegotiation of the notorious Alcântara Agreement, which would impede the development of our satellite launching program and replace it with an American military base, establishing a new dependancy on the US.

Boeing’s purchase of Embraer, in light of the dual civilian and military use of aeronautical technology, will also jeopardize important military projects, as well as prevent autonomous technological development in a sensitive and strategic field.

All of these setbacks which began in 2016, are now clearly deepening with the Bolsonaro government.

The offer for building a US military base on Brazilian territory, announced by Bolsonaro himself, though temporarily denied by Vice President General Hamilton Mourão, would equate us with countries like Honduras, which has transformed into a mere US satellite.

Brazil’s participation in the bellicose and dangerous US plan to destabilize the Venezuelan government is another indicator of a subservience that directly opposes the interests of our country in the region, which would be much better served by a negotiation strategy that preserves regional integration and peace on the continent.

Now a new announcement has buried the hopes of everyone who was still betting on the preservation of Brazilian sovereignty.

On February 7, Admiral Craig Faller, head of the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), announced to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that Brazil will participate in its SPMAGTF (Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force) and will lead the multinational naval exercise UNITAS AMPHIB. This means that our country will actively and directly engage in US-led military operations. That is, Brazil will voluntarily place itself in a position of military subordination to US actions in our region.

In addition, Admiral Faller also announced that Brazil will send a general to serve as Deputy Commander for SOUTHCOM. These are very grave announcements.

The United States is strongly committed to fighting the influence of China and Russia in our region and identifies countries as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba as allies of these “enemies”, who must be fought hard.

Therefore, SOUTHCOM will be used offensively in Latin America to meet this North American geopolitical goal. It is not a question, as the panglossians may imagine, of mere training exercises for humanitarian purposes, but also of military actions aimed at destabilizing regional governments and establishing dependency ties with the armed forces of allied countries.

The US will not aim to put its boots on the ground in these operations, but will encourage the involvement of troops from countries like Brazil and Colombia. They want us to do the dirty work.

There is also a clear goal of ensuring privileged access to our region’s strategic natural resources. It does not appear to be a mere coincidence that the US Fourth Fleet was reestablished after 58 years, precisely in 2008, shortly after Brazil announced the discovery of the pre-salt offshore petroleum deposits, which transformed it into the nation with the world’s 3rd largest petroleum reserves.

The fact is that ever since Brazil established the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone (ZOPACAS), through UN Resolution 41/11 of October 27, 1986, the United States has been trying to oppose Brazil’s projection into the Atlantic. Therefore in 2008, the same year they recreated the Fourth Fleet, the US also created the African Command (USAFRICOM), with the clear intention of opposing the projection of Sino-Brazilian interests into that continent.

In 2010, both the Pentagon and NATO pressured the Brazilian government to support the extension of NATO’s jurisdiction into the South Atlantic. However, the government of that time vigorously voiced Brazilian opposition to the US and NATO. Defense Minister Nélson Jobim said he considered the “security issues of the two halves of the ocean” to be distinct, and that after the Cold War, NATO had “become an instrument of its exponential member, the US, and of the European allies”. Those were good times.

Now, with this embarrassing decision, Brazil loses its own geostrategic projection into the South Atlantic and the Blue Amazon, where the pre-salt is located.

Note that a few years ago the US Navy began conducting multinational exercises with NATO and African member countries to patrol maneuvers in the Gulf of Guinea where the African pre-salt reserves are located.

All of these measures and actions converge into one scenario: the economic and institutional bases of our Defense Policy and National Defense Strategy are being undermined, and political decisions are being made that place our armed forces as subordinate, US proxies.
These political decisions on defense, coupled with a foreign policy of geopolitical subordination to the United States, which pleases the former army captain who saluted John Bolton and his Nights Templar-obsessed Foreign Chancellor is transforming us into an unfortunate dog of the US Empire.

The destruction of the Industrial Defense Base and the economic constraints on investments in National Defense, which will be aggravated by the focus on ultra-liberalism, will lead to disarmament, weakening of major strategic projects, technological dependence and the absorption of obsolete US military equipment.

As this happens, we will not just be a dog. We will be a toothless mutt, barking at the our master’s enemies.

The South Atlantic will now be dominated by NATO.

This article was originally published by Brazil Wire

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In a spectacular display of solidarity and strength, envoys from such distant capitals as Beijing and Havana, Moscow and Tehran, Pyongyang and Caracas, Damascus and Managua and numerous other states stood together, side by side, in front of the United Nations Security Council, declaring their determination to protect the UN Charter and International Law, and holding sacrosanct the sovereignty and inviolability of each member state.

All these present, and approximately 50 more aligned, are states whose combined populations comprise more than half the people of the world, and all have been victimized and pauperized by the predations of neoliberal capitalist states bleeding the wealth of their peoples.

As Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza read out their new statement, declaring the illegality of unilateral coercive economic sanctions, and territorial invasions, it became obvious that the power of this new solidarity, which includes China, Russia, Cuba, DPRK, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. constitutes a formidable force which Western capitalism will antagonize at its own peril. This is a long overdue counterforce to Western domination of the United Nations, a domination based on money, on the large payments enabling the US and other capitalist powers to bribe, threaten and otherwise control the direction of the UN, and distort and destroy the independence, impartiality and integrity which the UN requires in order to maintain its legitimacy, and implement the sustained global peace and justice for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt created it.

Ambassadors at the UN

Since the collapse of the USSR it has become blatantly clear at the UN (and virtually everywhere else) that money talks – indeed money shrieks . It therefore now seems obvious that the combined UN dues of these newly affiliated nations probably exceeds the contributions of the United States to the United Nations, and, if skillfully managed, this new organization of hitherto ravaged states will now have the power to threaten to withhold their combined dues, threatening a strike would could paralyze the United Nations unless their own interests, and not solely the interest of the United States and Saudi Arabia, are respected, and their own voices honored. There is incessant talk of the need for reform of the United Nations. It is probable that this new organization within the UN is the reform that is necessary – indeed inevitable.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

Anyone who still entertains any illusions in the ‘progressive’ nature of the Trudeau Government of Canada, would have been shocked to witness the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, assembling a collection of regional representatives of the Washington Consensus in Ottawa, on February 4, to further the coup plot against Venezuela.  The so called Lima Group that she brought together dutifully issued a statement calling for the “national armed forces of Venezuela to demonstrate their loyalty to the interim president in his constitutional functions as their commander in chief.” 

Despite the progressive pretensions of the Liberal Government in Ottawa and the ill deserved reputation that Canada has for ‘peacekeeping’ and for being a moderating influence in international affairs, the present course under Trudeau and Freeland is quite consistent with the Country’s role as the other G7 power in North America, a global exploiter in its own right.

Canadian Imperialism

In truth, when Freeland adopts the tone of US Manifest Destiny and speaks of Latin America and the Caribbean as Canada’s ‘neighbourhood,’ she is only being a little more public than others might be about a perspective that dominates the thinking and behaviour of Canadian government and Big Business.  The rapacity of Canadian mining operations in Latin America is without rival. The promotion of business interests has led to major Canadian involvement in the suppression of democratic rights and the imposition and preservation of compliant right wing regimes. Canada was heavily involved in the 2004 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Aristide Government in Haiti and the horrors that followed this. A similar pattern exists with regard to the suppression of democracy in Honduras. Canadian Government leaders express fake outrage over the supposed denial of democratic rights in Venezuela even as they maintain a stoney silence on continuing repression in Honduras.

When it comes to Venezuela, the official line of the Canadian Government is that efforts to destabilise the Government of that Country only began with Maduro’s call for a Constituent Assembly in July 2017. This, however, is a complete falsehood as an article by Yves Engler amply demonstrates. Links to right wing opposition forces go back to at least 2005 and “Canada is the third most important provider of democracy assistance,” as support for those working to return Venezuela to a place within the Washington Consensus is ironically described.  However, during the past eighteen months, the orchestrated economic problems in Venezuela, the belligerence of the Trump Administration and the right wing tide in much of the region have created a much greater resolve in Canadian ruling circles to intensify the attack on the Maduro Government and to try to open the Country to unbridled plunder and exploitation.

Canada Takes Leading Attack Role

When Washington’s carefully groomed and well trained puppet, Juan Guaido, staked his claim to the role of ‘interim president,’ the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa were as ready as the Trump Administration in Washington to play their part. Canadian diplomats worked to unify the opposition forces, to line up as much international backing for their appointed stooge and leading Canadian politicians did all they could to present Guaido’s blatant violation of the Venezuelan Constitution as a legitimate quest for  the ‘restoration of democracy.’

The most important role of Canada, however, lies in the fact that it’s track record of exploitation and domination in Latin America, while considerable in its own right, is not as massive or infamous as the conduct of US imperialism in its self declared ‘backyard.’ The Canadian Government was, therefore, less compromised and better placed to co-ordinate the key role of compliant, right wing regional regimes.  The Lima Group was formed in 2017, with Canada playing a leading role and the US staying out of the affair. It brought together the governments of those Latin American and Caribbean countries that were ready to openly attack Venezuela to an extent that the Organisation of American States (OAS) could not be won over to.  Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland has played a tireless role in trying to recruit new  members to her nasty little club.

When Freeland assembled the representatives of the governments of Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Saint Lucia in Ottawa on February 4, she worked to craft an artful final statement that would avoid any call for direct military intervention from outside Venezuela while working to strengthen internal opposition and maximise the possibility of the military changing sides. As stated at the outset, a direct call to the military was featured in the statement. News reports show how this is now being followed with a strategy designed to draw sections of the Army into conflict with the Maduro Government.  Two days after the Lima Group meeting, a provocative ‘humanitarian aid convoy’ approached the Columbian Venezuelan border where it was blocked by troops. “The main goal now is to look to break the military – and the humanitarian aid is basically the Trojan horse to try to do that,” observed one commentator, aware of the effort to generate tensions between Maduro and the military leadership.

Regime Change Plan Proceeds

As the unholy alliance of imperialist powers and compliant regimes deepens the attack on Venezuela, the Trudeau Government can be expected to play a leading and despicable role in the affair. Within Canada, there is opposition. Some elected members of the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) have expressed a level of criticism of the Liberal Government’s conduct. The top leadership of the Party, however, has played a sad role. As I write this, the NDP Foreign Affairs Critic, Helene Laverdiere, has openly supported Washington’s puppet president and claimed she speaks for the parliamentary party. NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, continues to take the less than impressive public position that he doesn’t know who the rightful President of Venezuela is. Trade union support for the people of Venezuela and their struggle in the face of threat is significant in Canada and the media is furiously attacking trade unions that show such support. There have been protests in solidarity with Venezuela and the meeting of the Lima Group itself in Ottawa was directly confronted by protesters.

Chrystia Freeland and the Trudeau Liberal Government are part of a systematic effort to ensure that the same agenda of austerity, privatisation and environmental despoilation that has made gains in other Latin American countries is imposed without pity on Venezuela. Yet, resistance to the role of super exploited powerlessness has a long history south of the Rio Grande. Masses of people in Venezeula know that the ‘democracy’ the Trump Administration wants for them is too horrible to submit to. They know that the battle cry for freedom and democracy in their part of the world is ‘Yankee Go Home!’ They are also learning to their cost that the Ugly Canadian needs to be driven off at the same time.

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John Clarke became an organiser with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty when it was formed in 1990 and has been involved in mobilising poor communities under attack ever since.

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It may rank as one of the great ironies in humanity’s lifespan that, as our highly educated first world leads the assault on global environments, it is the “backward” indigenous people attempting to curb those attacks. These remarkable occurrences are unfolding across the world, as so-called civilized societies step up their efforts to extract resources which is destroying planetary ecosystems, and resulting in what is now our world’s sixth mass extinction.

Over thousands of years, native inhabitants have resided in the sprawling rainforests of South America, the bush and deserts of Australia, the open plains of Africa and North America. Indigenous communities, who comprise 5% of the earth’s human population, are inextricably tied to the lands embedded in their souls. This ancient history forges an indelible bond to the territories that are their home, so it is only natural they should wilfully fight in maintaining what is rightfully theirs.

The association that native peoples hold to their surrounding environment has been that of a sustainable one, based on understanding and respect – while the unfeasible exploitation of riches, rampant elsewhere, is an alien and distasteful phenomenon.

Hunting and fishing habits of indigenous societies are deliberately placed in restricted bounds, thereby allowing stocks within their realm to stay at maintainable levels; unlike mass commercial fishing for instance, which has devastated fish species around the world. By 2017, almost 90% of the earth’s fish stocks were either “fully exploited or over-fished”.

As wealthy nations march towards disaster through institutionalized, profit-driven strategies, native inhabitants have remained, if undisturbed, as they have been for millenia. Indigenous folk even tolerate and in some cases worship our planet’s iconic predators, such as the wolf and eagle of the Himalayas, the jaguar and anaconda of South America, and so on.

Should native populaces be forcibly removed from their respective regions, or the areas desecrated by outside influence, reason of existence is shattered and disintegration follows. The remote tribes of Amazonian Ecuador, like the Waorani people, have a saying that, “The rivers and trees are our life”.

The Waorani are threatened by oil exploration and the poisonous chemicals that it spreads. This habitat destruction infringes on the territory of Ecuador’s native communities, who have formed stoic gatherings to protest these policies, along with other harmful practices like mining. The Waorani have vowed to fight and if needs be die where they stand. For many, especially of the older generations, it is better to be killed in their birthplace rather than be driven out and scattered into the modern world.

Similar viewpoints would seem strange to much of the remainder of humanity which, as the years flick by, are implanted in great concrete landscapes. Today about 55% of the globe’s human population live in a city domain or urban area, and that figure is expected to rise above 66% by 2050.

Mankind’s growing detachment from nature and the devastation of earthly environments are having enormous impacts. The present extinction rate rivals the fifth great loss of life 66 million years ago, when an asteroid crashed into southern Mexico resulting in apocalyptic worldwide scenes and the ensuing fall of dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, those such as the Native Americans were almost eradicated in the generations after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the continent in 1492. By the time Columbus arrived, there were already 90 million or more native inhabitants living throughout the Americas stretching back centuries.

Columbus himself, who was a colonialist and slave trader, led the way with genocide of the tribal peoples. By 1650 around 95% of the indigenous population of Latin America had been wiped out, as a result of large-scale killings and infectious diseases carried by the colonial settlers.

Following English Captain James Cook’s appearance on the Australian east coast in August 1770, there was an estimated total of more than 500,000 Aborigines living in the country. Aboriginal roots in Australia trace tens of thousands of years into history.
Captain Cook, who was killed in Hawaii during spring 1779, was not responsible for what followed – but by the year 1900, Aborginal numbers in Australia had been decimated by over 90% to less than 50,000, mostly due to death from foreign-introduced maladies. Thousands of Aborigines were also murdered by British troops and settlers, systematically displacing the natives from their lands and claiming it for themselves.

In more recent times, indigenous groups in Australia have been protesting against ongoing oil and mining ventures, while also highlighting their long history of persecution.

Currently unfolding on the other side of the world in Canada are sustained actions, by First Nations groups, to prevent a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline from running through northern British Columbia. One member, Jennifer Wickham of the Wet’suwet’en community, said that,

“The goal has always been the same for Canada and indigenous people: it’s to remove us from our land and have access to the resources”.

Similar circumstances have played out elsewhere in Canada, and also in the United States. Remnants of America’s indigenous societies have protested the erection of oil pipelines, like Keystone XL, from infringing on their territories and sucking the area dry of its natural substances.

These policies continue despite climate change deteriorating at an alarming rate, with world carbon emissions at an unprecedented high. The ceaseless plunder and burning of fossil fuels surely cannot last into the future, should humans wish the globe to remain habitable as a whole.

Mainly responsible for the environmental devastation are indeed those wealthy, first world countries like Canada and the US, or rather their ruling elites – whose systems of governance have been usurped by massive corporate and vested interests, increasingly entwined in the state over the past couple of generations.

Crucially, there is little separation between private power and that of the state, so government strategies are engineered to benefit sectors of privilege and influence. The American president Donald Trump is a mega-rich corporate businessman stretching back decades, akin to his father before him, real estate developer Fred Trump.

As president, Trump has sought particularly harmful initiatives to further enrich his base. The US leader’s assaults on the environment, since almost the first day of entering office, will continue unchecked as his administration pursues a scheme designed to maximize profits.

One need look at some of the figures constituting Trump’s cabinet, like major investment bankers Steven Mnunchin and Wilbur Ross, while Sonny Perdue, the US Secretary of Agriculture, is a noted climate change skeptic.

Trump’s attitude towards global warming is that he believes it is occurring, but says “I don’t want to be put at a disadvantage” by tackling it. His actions are in fact speeding the race to calamity, with America’s carbon emissions having risen by over 3% in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years. As America is the planet’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter (behind China), and per capita the greatest, these results are having serious repercussions.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Indigenous American

On February 14, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) ambushed an ISIS unit in the Damascus desert killing several terrorists. SAA troops also capturing a large number of weapons and equipment, including a Konkurs anti-tank guided missile launcher, several RPG-7 launchers, several machine guns, mortars, a satellite communication system and two vehicles.

According to SAA sources the ISIS unit was likely attempting to sneak these weapons and equipment to ISIS cells operating near the area of al-Tanf.

In northern Hama and southern Idlib, the SAA repelled several infiltration attempts by the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The both radical groups have recently expanded their influence within the Idlib demilitarized zone, which has been demilitarized only by its name so far.

According to local sources, the Russian Military Police and the Turkish Armed Forces started conducting joint patrols north of Manbij, on the contact line between areas controlled by Turkey-led forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Earlier in 2019, the Russians established a field base in just a few kilometers southwest of Manbij.

It is interesting to note that the first patrol reportedly took place on February 14 when Turkish, Iranian and Russian leaders gathered in the Russian city of Sochi to hold a meeting on the situation in Syria.

The sides discussed a wide range of related topics, including the withdrawal of US forces, the return of refugees, the so-called Kurdish issue, the Idlib de-escalation zone and a political settlement in post-war Syria. The sides assured a constructive format of their negotiations and reaffirmed commitment to the political solution of the conflict. However, there are some unsettled contradictions.

The future of Kurdish armed groups, which are considered by Turkey as terrorist organizations, is one of the sensitive points. Ankara de-facto insists that a military option has to be employed to neutralize them while Tehran and Moscow are ready to integrate their representatives into the political format if they recognize the Damascus government. In Idlib the situation is different. In this area, Turkey is in fact opposing military measures, which  should be employed towards Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-like terrorist groups because this will mean de-facto defeat of the so-called opposition in this area.

According to the final statement of the Sochi summit, another round of talks in Syria will be held in April. If the sides find no compromise and US forces do not start their withdrawal by that moment, there will be little pre-conditions for a further de-escalation of the conflict.

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Most people are under the impression that democracy and Islam are somehow incompatible. However, I don’t see any contradiction between democracy and Islam, as such. Although, I admit, there is some friction between Islam and liberalism.

When we say there is a contradiction between Islam and democracy, we make a category mistake which is a serious logical fallacy. There is a fundamental difference between democracy and liberalism. Democracy falls in the category of politics and governance, whereas liberalism falls in the category of culture. We must be precise about the definitions of terms that we employ in political science.

Democracy is simply a representative political system that ensures representation, accountability and the right of electorate to vote governments in and to vote governments out. In this sense, when we use the term democracy, we mean a multi-party, representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties in order to ensure that it is voluntary. Thus, democracy is nothing more than a multi-party, representative political system.

Some normative scientists, however, get carried away in their enthusiasm and ascribe meanings to technical terminology which are quite subjective and fallacious. Some will use the adjective liberal to describe the essence of democracy as liberal democracy while others will arbitrarily call it informed or enlightened democracy. In my opinion, the only correct adjective that can be used to describe the essence of democracy is representative democracy.

After settling on theoretical aspect, let us now apply these concepts to the reality of practical world, and particularly to the phenomena of nascent democratic movements of the Arab Spring. It’s a fact that the ground realities of the Arab and Islamic worlds fall well short of the ideal liberal democratic model of the developed Western world.

However, there is a lot to be optimistic about. When the Arab Spring revolutions occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, and before the Arab Spring turned into an abysmal winter in Libya and Syria, some utopian dreamers were not too hopeful about the outcome of those movements.

Unlike the socialist revolutions of 1960s and 1970s, when the visionaries of yore used to have a magic wand of bringing about a fundamental structural change that would culminate into equitable distribution of wealth overnight, the neoliberal democratic movements of the present times are merely a step in the right direction that will usher the Arab and Islamic worlds into an era of relative peace and progress.

The Arab Spring movements are not led by the likes of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Jawahar Lal Nehru and other such charismatic messiahs that socialist thinkers are so fond of. But these revolutions are the grassroots movements of a society in transition from an abject stagnant state toward a dynamic and representative future.

Let us be clear about one thing first and foremost: any government – whether democratic or autocratic – would follow the same economic model under the contemporary global political and economic dispensation. It’s a growth-based neoliberal model as opposed to an equality-based socialist model. It’s a fact that the developing, Third World economies with large populations and meager resources cannot be compared with the social democracies of Scandinavian countries where per capita incomes are more than $40,000.

A question would naturally arise that what would the Arab Spring movements accomplish if the resultant democratic governments would follow the same old neoliberal and growth-centered economic policies? It should be kept in mind here that democracy is not the best of systems because it is the most efficient system of governance. Top-down autocracies are more efficient than democracies.

But democracy is a representative political system. It brings about a grassroots social change. Enfranchisement, representation, transparency, accountability, checks and balances, rule of law and consequent institution-building, nation-building and consistent long term policies; political stability and social prosperity are the rewards of representative democracy.

Immanuel Kant sagaciously posited that moral autonomy produces moral responsibility and social maturity. This social axiom can also be applied to politics and governance. Political autonomy and self-governance engender political responsibility and social maturity.

A top-down political system is dependent on the artificial external force that keeps it going. The moment that external force is removed, the society reverts back to its previous state and the system collapses. But a grassroots and bottom-up political system evolves naturally and intrinsically. We must not expect from the Arab Spring movements to produce results immediately. Bear in mind that the evolution of the Western culture and politics happened over a course of many centuries.

More to the point, the superficially “socialist” Arab revolutions of 1960s and 1970s only mobilized the elite classes. Some working classes might have been involved, but the tone and tenor of those revolutions was elitist and that’s the reason why those revolutions failed to produce desirable long-term results. The Arab Spring movements, by contrast, have mobilized the urban middle class of the Arab societies in the age of electronic media and information technology.

In the nutshell, if the Arab Spring movements are not about radical redistribution of wealth, or about creating a liberal utopia in the Middle East overnight, what is the goal of these movements then? Let me try to explain the objectives of the Arab Spring movements by way of an allegory.

Democracy is like a school and people are like children. We only have two choices: one, to keep people under paternalistic dictatorships; two, to admit them in the school of representative democracy and let them experience democracy as a lived reality rather than some stale and sterile theory. The first option will only breed stunted bigots, but the second option will engender an educated human resource that doesn’t just consume resources but also creates new resources.

Finally, I would like to clarify that the militant phenomena in Libya and Syria has been distinct and separate from the political and democratic phenomena of the Arab Spring movements as in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen.

A question arises that when political movements for enfranchisement turn violent, do their objectives cease to be legitimate? No, the objectives remain the same, but from a pacifist standpoint, we ought to make a distinction between political movements for democratic reforms, to which we should lend our moral support; and the militant phenomena, which must be avoided at any cost due to immense human suffering that proxy wars and military interventions anywhere in the world inevitably entail.

In legal jurisprudence, a distinction is generally drawn between lawful and unlawful assembly. It is the inalienable right of the people to peacefully assemble to press their demands for political reform. But the moment such protests become militarized and violent, they cease to be lawful.

Expecting from heavily armed militants, as in Libya and Syria, who have been described by the Western mainstream media as “moderate rebels,” to bring about political reform and positive social change is not only naïve but is bordering on insanity.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kodak Agfa

A native Kashmiri carried out the deadliest fedayeen attack against Indian occupation forces in history after he drove his explosive-laden vehicle into a 78-bus convoy and killed over 42 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) paramilitary troops, instantly drawing global attention to the indigenous struggle of his people and threatening to tip the electoral scales against Prime Minister Modi during this May’s general election.

The Pulwama “Surprise”

The world is still trying to make sense of the strategic significance of this week’s Pulwama attack, but there seems to be a consensus that it’ll have far-reaching political consequences that will reverberate for the indefinite future. A native Kashmiri just shocked all of India by carrying out the deadliest fedayeen attack against occupation forces in history after he drove his explosive-laden vehicle into a 78-bus convoy and killed over 42 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) paramilitary troops. The global reaction was swift and saw a group of prominent governments condemn what happened, which encouraged India to exploit this event for its own domestic and international political purposes by predictably blaming Pakistan.

The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, said in a statement that

“The attack in Pulwama in the Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir is a matter of grave concern. We have always condemned heightened acts of violence in the Valley. We strongly reject any insinuation by elements in the Indian government and media circles that seek to link the attack to the State of Pakistan without investigations.”

Truth be told, although Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM, designated as a terrorist group by the UN in general and specifically banned by a few of its individual members in particular such as Russia and Pakistan) claimed responsibility for the attack, it was nevertheless carried out by a native Kashmiri.

Pointing The Finger At Pakistan

Fake news abounds about the group’s alleged connections to the Pakistani state and its intelligence services, but the fact is that this was never proven and is actually a perfect example of a weaponized infowar narrative propagated for the Hybrid War purpose of increasing international pressure on Pakistan, including through the possibility of implementing sanctions against it on this pretext. India will undoubtedly seek to advance the latter scenario in parallel with encouraging allied forces in the American military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) to make a media sensation out of what happened in order to embarrass the Trump Administration for diplomatically coordinating its Taliban peace talks with Pakistan.

Bad News For The BJP

For as much as some in India think that their country could exploit that attention for its own benefit by attempting to misportray Pakistan as a “state sponsor of terrorism” like it always does whenever these types of attacks occur, there’s a very high likelihood that this will fail because of the profound risk that widespread awareness about the occupation forces’ “security inadequacies” in Kashmir will deepen the political divide among its already sharply polarized electorate and even elements of its own “deep state”. The first-mentioned fault line is obviously between pro- and anti-BJP activists, but also between those who support the ruling party but believe that Modi hasn’t been “tough enough” on Kashmir and especially Pakistan.

It’s possible that those disgruntled/disillusioned BJP supporters might vote for other candidates or sit out the elections entirely unless Modi resorts to spinning another fantasy about “surgical strikes” and the like, but even then, some of them might see through the charade. The anti-Modi opposition might also be super-charged by what happened because quite a few of them are against the government’s heavy-handedness in Kashmir and even privately believe that the region isn’t worth the cost of human lives, money, and self-inflicted damage to their country’s international reputation as a “democracy” to justify its continued occupation. The Pulwama attack will therefore make Modi’s reelection prospects all the less likely unless he doubles down on the neoliberal BJP’s fake populist promises.

India’s “Deep State” Divisions: Realists vs. Ideologues

On top of that, it can’t be discounted that the already dissatisfied factions of the Indian “deep state” might throw their weight against Modi’s reelection after concluding that he’s simply incapable of protecting India’s state interests as they understand them. After all, it was less than two months ago that Aslam Achu, RAW’s BLA asset who was accused of masterminding the Karachi terrorist attack in late-November, was assassinated in Afghanistan in a dramatic intelligence debacle that was either a false flag to get rid of a man who “knew too much” or an epic blunder on Modi’s part by sending such an important asset to a dangerous country where he was bound to die one way or another.

Achu’s assassination worsened the serious rift in RAW between the national security realists and the Hindutva ideologues, the former of whom are very critical of Modi’s irresponsible handling of security affairs (which began with his late-2015 de-facto blockade of Nepal and subsequent handing of India’s decades-long vassal to its Chinese rival as a result) while the latter blindly support him regardless of what he does out of loyalty to his tacit geostrategic vision of building “Akhand Bharat” (“Greater/Undivided India”). Suffice to say, the latest attack in Kashmir accentuated these acute “deep state” differences and might even lead to the rank-and-file realist faction “rebelling” against their BJP-imposed ideological bosses by “creatively discrediting” Modi and indirectly aiding the opposition.

Concluding Thoughts

India will do its utmost to distract the masses by making it seem like the Pulwama attack was a “terrorist conspiracy” carried out by the Pakistani state as an “act of war” against it even though this event was entirely executed by a local born-and-raised Kashmiri who was driven into desperation by the occupation forces’ abuses against his people. Try as it might, however, India won’t succeed in exploiting the global attention that this attack generated for the Kashmiri cause, with the most likely political outcome being that New Delhi’s efforts to deflect the blame away from itself and onto Islamabad will boomerang back and ultimately upset the country’s fragile domestic and “deep state” political balances.

The widening fault lines between the BJP and the opposition, within the BJP itself, and among the realist and ideologue factions of the country’s “deep state” might contribute to the ruling party’s underperformance in this May’s upcoming general elections and the creation of a coalition government that might implement much-needed checks and balances on the BJP’s authoritarian rule. As paradoxical as it may seem, this scenario would mean that the Pulwama attack might return India back to its self-professed “democratic” system, though it’s unlikely to lead to the restoration of democracy in Kashmir so long as the Indian state “others” the occupied people as Pakistanis and deprives them of their fundamental right to a referendum on self-determination.

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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 NDTV.com

Chinese Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua has cancelled trade talks with Britain’s Finance Minister, Mr Philip Hammond, after Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson threatened to deploy an aircraft carrier in Beijing’s backyard, The Sun newspaper reported on Thursday (Feb 14).

Mr Hu was due to hold trade talks with Mr Hammond this weekend.

Instead, the newspaper said, Mr Hu cancelled the talks in protest at Mr Williamson’s speech on Monday.

Mr Williamson had said in a fiery speech that Britain must be prepared to boost its “lethality” and threatened to send the warship to the Pacific in response to Beijing’s military ambitions.

To read complete article on The Straits Times click here

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US weapons are once again falling into the hands of militants fighting in one of Washington’s many proxy wars – this time in Yemen – the militants being fighters of local Al Qaeda affiliates.

CNN in its article, “Sold to an ally, lost to an enemy,” would admit:

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.

The article also claims:

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, its main partner in the war, have used the US-manufactured weapons as a form of currency to buy the loyalties of militias or tribes, bolster chosen armed actors, and influence the complex political landscape, according to local commanders on the ground and analysts who spoke to CNN.

Weapon transfer included everything from small arms to armored vehicles, CNN would report.

The article would include a response from Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael, who claimed:

The United States has not authorized the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates to re-transfer any equipment to parties inside Yemen.

The US government cannot comment on any pending investigations of claims of end-use violations of defense articles and services transferred to our allies and partners.

Despite obvious evidence that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are both violating whatever agreements the Pentagon claims to have with both nations, the US continues fighting their joint war in Yemen for them in all but name.

The US role in Yemen includes not only arming Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also training their pilots, selecting targets, sharing intelligence, repairing weapon systems, refuelling Saudi warplanes, and even through the deployment of US special forces along The Saudi-Yemeni border.

Because of this continued and unconditional support – Pentagon complaints over weapon transfers it claims were unauthorized ring particularly hollow. More so when considering in other theaters of war, US weapons also “accidentally” ended up in the hands of extremists that just so happened to be fighting against forces the US opposed.

(Repeated) Actions Speak Louder than Pentagon Excuses 

An entire army of Al Qaeda-linked forces was raised in Syria against the government in Damascus through the “accidental” transfer of US weapons from alleged moderate militants to designated terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra affiliate and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS).

And while this was presented to the public as “accidental” –  years before the war in Syria even erupted, there were already warning signs that the US planned to deliberately use extremists in a proxy war against both Syria and Iran.

As early as 2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin – an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published in the New Yorker titled, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” would warn (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

From 2011 onward, admissions throughout prominent Western newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post would admit to US weapon deliveries to “moderate rebels” in Syria.

Articles like the New York Times’, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid,” and “Kerry Says U.S. Will Double Aid to Rebels in Syria,” the Telegraph’s,  “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” and the Washington Post’s article, “U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels,” would detail hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons, vehicles, equipment, and training funneled into Syria to so-called “moderate rebels.”

Yet even as early as the first year of the conflict, Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra – a US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization – would dominate the battlefield opposite Syrian forces.

The US State Department in its own official press statement titled, “Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” explicitly stated that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

If the US and its allies were admittedly transferring hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons, equipment, and other support to “moderate rebels,” who was funding and arming Al Nusra even more, enabling them to displace Western-backed militants from the Syrian battlefield?

The Western media had proposed several unconvincing excuses including claims that large numbers of defectors to Al Qaeda and its affiliates brought with them their Western-provided arms and equipment.

The obvious answer – however –  is that just as Seymour Hersh warned in 2007 – the US and its allies from the very beginning armed and backed Al Qaeda, intentionally created its ISIS offshoot, and used both in a deadly proxy war they had hoped would quickly conclude before the public realized what had happened.

It had worked in Libya in 2011, and the quick overthrow of the Syrian government was likewise anticipated. When the war dragged on and the nature of Washington’s “moderate rebels” was revealed, implausible excuses as to how Al Qaeda and ISIS became so well armed and funded began appearing across the Western media.

Accident or Not – US Military Intervention is the Biggest Threat to Global Security 

As the alternative media now attempts to shed light on the ongoing US proxy war in Yemen, a similar attempt to explain how Al Qaeda has once again found itself flooded with US support is being mounted. Just as in Syria – the obvious explanation for Al Qaeda forces in Yemen turning up with US weapons is because the use of Al Qaeda and other extremists was always a part of the US-Saudi-Emarati strategy from the very beginning.

CNN’s revelations were not the first.

An Associated Press investigation concluded in August 2018 in an article titled, “AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida battle rebels in Yemen,” that (emphasis added):

Again and again over the past two years, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States has claimed it won decisive victories that drove al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West. 

Here’s what the victors did not disclose: many of their conquests came without firing a shot.

That’s because the coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.

While the US pleads innocent and attempts to blame the arming of Al Qaeda in yet another of Washington’s proxy wars on “accidental” or “unauthorized” weapon transfers, it is clear that Al Qaeda has and still does serve as a vital auxiliary force the US uses both as a pretext to invade and occupy other nations – and when it cannot – to fight by proxy where US forces cannot go.

The US – which claims its involvement in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen is predicated on containing Iran who the US accuses of jeopardizing global security and of sponsoring terrorism – has aligned itself with actual, verified state sponsors of terrorism – Saudi Arabia and the UAE – and is itself knowingly playing a role in the state sponsorship of terrorism including the arming of terrorist groups across the region.

Iran and the militant groups it has backed – accused of being “terrorists” – are ironically the most effective forces fighting groups like Al Nusra and ISIS across the region – illustrating Washington and its allies of being guilty in reality of what it has accused Syria, Russia, and Iran of in fiction.

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

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Now approaching nearly a year after the April 7, 2018 alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria — which the White House used as a pretext to bomb Syrian government facilities and bases throughout Damascus — a BBC reporter who investigated the incident on the ground has issued public statements saying the “Assad sarin attack” on Douma was indeed “staged”. 

Riam Dalati is a well-known BBC Syria producer who has long reported from the region. He shocked his nearly 20,000 twitter followers on Wednesday, which includes other mainstream journalists from major outlets, by stating that after a “six month investigation” he has concluded,

“I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.”

​​​​​​One of many widely circulated images of the Douma hospital scene from April 2018. The Times (UK) published the image with the following headline: Syria attack: ‘We found bodies on the stairs. They didn’t see the gas in time’

The “hospital scene” is a reference to part of the horrid footage played over and over again on international networks showing children in a Douma hospital being hosed off and treated by doctors and White Helmets personnel as victims of the alleged chemical attack.

The BBC’s Dalati stated on Wednesday: “After almost 6 months of investigations, I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged. No fatalities occurred in the hospital.” He noted he had interviewed a number of White Helmets and opposition activists while reaching that conclusion.

He continued in a follow-up tweet:

Russia and at least one NATO country knew about what happened in the hospital. Documents were sent. However, no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene.

Dalati’s mention of activists at the flats “manipulating the scene there” is a reference to White Helmets and rebel activist produced footage purporting to show the deadly aftermath of a chemical attack inside a second scene — a bombed out apartment showing dozens of dead bodies.

The BBC’s Riam Dalati made his verified account private in the hours after the tweets. 

Tragic and gruesome images of what appeared the “gassed” corpses of young children and women strewn about an apartment building, were recycled endlessly in mainstream media at the time, which the Trump administration referenced in its decision to strike Damascus with some 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Dalati continued:

Truth is James Harkin got the basics right in terms of Douma’s “propaganda” value. The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise. However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.

The BBC producer added the following details as part of the thread:

I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation. In fact, one of the 3 or 4 people filming the scene was Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh Al-Islam. The narrative was that “there weren’t enough drs” but here is one filming and not taking part of the rescue efforts. Will keep the rest for later.

A few hours after making the statements Dalati switched his verified Twitter account to “private”, likely after the Russian Embassy in the UK seized upon and began promoting the admission. A number of articles quickly appeared in Russian media as well.

.@BBC’s Syria producer @Dalatrm admits “Assad sarine attack in #Douma was staged”. Remarkable that British MSM chose to ignore it. No breaking news, no articles, nothing. pic.twitter.com/aAo7xq3nPQ

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) February 14, 2019

The Russian Foreign Ministry weighed in on Thursday after the BBC producer’s admission, especially since it’s been Moscow’s position the whole time that the events surrounding the Douma attack were staged.

Russia’s TASS news agency cited ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who slammed the “theater of the absurd” connected to the April 7 events:

“The culmination of this theater of absurd may be a statement by a BBC producer who confirmed based on his own research that the footage [in Syria’s Douma] had been staged with direct participation of the White Helmets,” Zakharova said, noting that Russia wants to listen to the company’s position because it actively covered the events from the perspective of supporting the steps of the so-called US-led coalition in Syria.

Russia is now demanding that the BBC produce the results of its investigation for Moscow to review and evaluate.

The BBC’s Dalati made the statements in response to a lengthy investigative report by James Harkin writing for The Intercept. Harkin had examined the scenes and physical environs of the alleged Douma attack and interviewed eyewitnesses on site. His report paints a complex picture of propaganda and deeply compromised rebel sources such as Saudi-backed Jaish al Islam, which had control of Douma amidst a Syrian government onslaught to retake the town.

The “hospital scene” footage, now called “staged” by a BBC producer, circulated widely among media outlets at the time: 

Harkin made mention of plausible early reports that the Douma victims had actually died of asphyxiation while hiding in an enclosed space or bunker due to repeat waves of conventional ordinance fired by the Syrian Army:

When it came to Douma, the Russians weren’t the only ones who were skeptical, at least initially, that chemical weapons had been used. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based outfit that leans toward the opposition but whose reporting network inside the country is usually seen as most authoritative by the international media, noted the day after the attack that people had died in Douma through suffocation, but couldn’t say whether chemical weapons had been used.

The Intercept report also highlighted the fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigation flatly contradicted Washington’s claims that sarin had been used. Instead, “samples collected at both locations turned up ‘various chlorinated organic chemicals’ along with ‘the residues of explosive’ — not quite the same thing as saying that chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon…” according to the report.

Harkin further underscored that the OPCW’s on-site findings came as “something of a surprise” to analysts who had long parroted the early US and mainstream media claims of a confirmed chemical attack:

At least some of that caution appears to have been warranted. Three months after the attack, the OPCW released its interim report into what happened in Douma. The report found no evidence of organophosphorus nerve agents like sarin either at the site or in samples from the casualties — something of a surprise, because the suspected use of sarin had been one of the justifications for American airstrikes back in April, and alleged Syrian chemical weapons facilities their primary target. But the investigators did find something else.

Interestingly, the BBC’s Dalati had actually first hinted he knew that elements surrounding the Douma attack had been staged a mere days after the incident.

In a now deleted April 11, 2018 tweet, he had stated: “Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative.”

Thus far mainstream networks have not picked up on this latest bombshell admission from the BBC producer, but it will be interesting to see if there’s any formal response from the BBC based on the Russian foreign ministry’s request.

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The conference jointly hosted by the US and Polish governments in Warsaw this week under the phony banner of working to “Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East” has laid bare the immense and imminent threat that US imperialism is preparing to drag humanity into another and potentially world catastrophic war.

On the eve of the conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the only prominent head of government to fly to Poland for the event, gave an interview in Warsaw in which he declared the importance of the conference was that it involved “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

The text of this bellicose statement was then posted on the Israeli prime minister’s twitter account. Subsequently, apparently as a result of political pressure from the event’s US and Polish sponsors, the tweet was changed to read “in order to advance the common interest of combating Iran.”

Much of the media treated Netanyahu’s original statement as a gaffe. It was nothing of the kind. The Israeli prime minister was describing the real aims of the conference in Warsaw in blunt terms because it suited his own political interests as he confronts an election in two months amid mounting corruption scandals and is anxious to rally his right-wing base.

Israel and the reactionary monarchical dictatorships of the Persian Gulf, which were well represented at the Warsaw gathering, constitute the two pillars of the anti-Iranian axis being forged by the Trump administration.

The attempts by US and Polish officials to mask the genuine purpose of the conference with talk about “peace” and “security” were farcical. Polish officials insisted that the meeting did not concern any one country, but rather “horizontal issues” confronting the region, such as weapons proliferation, terrorism, war, etc. As it turned out, however, Iran was found to be at the root of each and every one of these problems.

US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a sanctimonious sermon in which he denounced Tehran for threatening a “another Holocaust” and attempting to recreate the Persian Empire by opening up a “corridor of influence” through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Pence, who peppered his speech with Biblical references and claimed that faith and God would deliver peace to the Middle East, described Iran as “the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and that state which sows the greatest harm and greatest discord across the region about which we gather here today.”

This phrase “leading state sponsor of terrorism” has been repeated ad nauseum by US officials, with no attempt to substantiate the allegation with facts or evidence. This from a government that poured billions of dollars into funding terrorist wars by Al Qaeda-linked militias in the quest for regime-change in both Libya and Syria.

Even as the Warsaw conference was taking place, a terrorist suicide bombing in Iran claimed the lives of at least 27 members of the country’s Revolutionary Guard coming home from deployment on the country’s border with Pakistan. A shadowy Al Qaeda-connected group with ties to Washington’s main ally in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for the attack.

As for the “state which sows the greatest harm and greatest discord,” can anyone claim with a straight face that Washington, which has waged a quarter-century of unending and ruinous wars in the region, razing entire societies to the ground and leaving millions dead, maimed and displaced, has any close competition for this title?

The most jarring element of Pence’s speech, however, was directed against Washington’s erstwhile NATO allies for failing to toe the US line in relation to Iran. The US vice president demanded that Germany, France and the UK, all signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, follow Washington’s lead in tearing up the agreement and imposing an economic blockade that is tantamount to an act of war.

Outside of the UK, none of the European powers sent so much as a foreign minister to the Warsaw gathering, which was seen accurately as a US-sponsored rally for war against Iran. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who participated in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear accord, also declined to attend.

Pence accused “some of our leading European partners” of trying “to break American sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.” He was referring to a financial mechanism introduced by the UK, Germany and France to allow the barter of goods between European companies and Iran without direct financial transactions or the use of the US dollar in order to evade sweeping US extraterritorial sanctions. The measure was taken in an attempt to prop up the Iran nuclear deal and prevent Tehran from renouncing it in the face of the wiping out of all of the sanctions relief that it was supposed to entail.

The US vice president demanded that the European powers “stand with us” by killing the nuclear accord and, presumably, preparing for war with Iran. Acknowledging that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear accord, Pence declared that the issue was not compliance, but the undesirability of the deal itself.

US imperialism has never forgiven the masses of Iranian workers and poor for their 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah, the linchpin of US domination of the region. While that revolution was usurped by the bourgeois-theocratic regime established under Ayatollah Khomeini, Washington has refused to settle for anything less than regime-change and the re-imposition of a US puppet dictatorship.

Pence warned in his Warsaw speech that any attempt to evade the US sanctions regime would “create still more distance between Europe and the US.”

In the run-up in 2003 to the US invasion of Iraq, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ridiculed the opposition of Germany and France to the criminal war of aggression by referring to these countries as “old Europe” and extolling the support for US imperialism from a “new Europe,” consisting of the Eastern European regimes and, principally, Poland.

The sponsorship of the Iran war conference by Poland, which has not played a particularly decisive role in the affairs of the Middle East, resurrects this earlier bid to pit “new” against “old” Europe.

Warsaw’s support for the anti-Iranian crusade is bound up with its right-wing government’s own bid to secure a permanent US military presence in Poland as a supposed bulwark against any threat from Russia. In September of last year, Polish President Andrzej Duda proclaimed at a White House press conference his government’s desire for the erection of a “Fort Trump” on Polish soil.

The virulent anti-Iranian rhetoric spouted at the Warsaw conference for “peace” and “security” was matched by a diatribe against Russia delivered by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who combined his attendance at the conference with an appearance with troops on maneuvers in Poland.

Pompeo invoked his military career as a tank officer in Germany during the Cold War. He declared that while at that time Germany’s Fulda Gap was seen as the point of confrontation with a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Poland now occupied a similar position because of “Russian aggression.”

Today, Washington’s bid to play off the right-wing regimes of “new Europe” against its erstwhile allies in “old Europe” is bound up not only with a potential bloodbath in Iran, but with the preparations for a new world war. US imperialism is determined to assert its hegemony over Iran, the Middle East, Central Asia and Venezuela in order to establish its unchallenged control over all of the world’s energy reserves, giving it the ability to deny access to its principal global rival, China.

The Warsaw conference, for all of its farcical aspects and overheated rhetoric, has a deadly serious content. It constitutes a nodal point in the drive towards a third world war between the world’s major nuclear powers.

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As Congress voted Thursday to approve spending $1.375 billion for border fencing, wall repairs and other barriers on the US-Mexico border, as part of a much larger bill funding one quarter of the federal government through September 30, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would sign the funding bill into law, but would accompany this by declaring a national emergency on the US-Mexico border.

“President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action—including a national emergency—to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.

Under the emergency declaration, the White House claims, Trump would have the authority to direct the US military to build the full-scale wall he has demanded along the border, but which Congress, under both Republican and Democratic control, has refused to support. Trump would reportedly use the assumed emergency powers to redirect funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes to pay for the wall instead.

Under Article I of the Constitution, Congress has the power to appropriate funds.

“No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” the text reads.

Given the clear constitutional reservation to Congress of the “power of the purse,” Trump’s emergency decree has the character of an authoritarian, dictatorial move. It would represent a new assertion of executive authority, and, together with the very limited resistance expected from the legislative branch, a significant erosion of the constitutional system of “checks and balances” devised after the American Revolution to prevent the growth of a monarchical type of unrestrained executive power.

The responses of the two top congressional leaders are revealing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican, had publicly opposed the declaration of a national emergency to evade congressional authority over spending—until Thursday afternoon, when he told the Senate, just before the vote on the federal funding bill, that Trump had agreed to sign the bill only if he combined it with an emergency declaration. McConnell said he now supported such a decree.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top congressional Democrat, criticized Trump’s expected declaration, saying,

“The president is doing an end run around Congress.”

She said that Democrats were “reviewing our options,” which could include a congressional resolution of disapproval, or a legal challenge.

At the same time, she was visibly ambivalent about the right of a president to assert emergency powers, suggesting that a Democratic president could make use of the same power on an issue like gun control. Noting the first anniversary of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, she continued,

“That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would.”

The implications of this political collaboration (from the Republicans) and complacency (from the Democrats) are quite ominous. Neither bourgeois party is waging a fight to defend the constitutional separation of powers or oppose what is, in effect, the declaration of unlimited presidential power.

Neither Pelosi or any other Democrat has suggested that such a declaration is a violation of the constitution, let alone an impeachable offense. Similarly, the media discusses the action entirely from the standpoint of its immediate impact on the border issue, or on Trump’s political fortunes in 2020, but not as an attack on democratic rights. Public opinion is being desensitized to this threat.

It is worth recalling that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed in 2001, initially adopted as an urgent necessity to respond to the 9/11 attacks, has been interpreted by successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, as a blanket declaration of war on any organization or government targeted by the US president.

In a similar fashion, the declaration of a national emergency to resolve a domestic political dispute in favor of the president could be repeated and extended. The first time it is done, it may be controversial; the second time, there will already be a precedent; the third time, it will become routine.

The assumption of emergency powers makes the president the arbiter of Washington, able to draw on huge and effectively unlimited resources, such as the $800 billion budget for the Pentagon, the main focus of the Trump White House in its search for funding for the border wall. In using Pentagon funds and ordering military personnel to build the wall—either directly, through the Army Corps of Engineers, or by using Pentagon subcontractors—Trump would effectively settle this domestic political issue through the exercise of his powers as commander-in-chief.

According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, there have been 58 national emergency declarations since the National Emergencies Law was adopted, codifying the procedure, in 1976. Of these, 31 declarations are still active. Nearly all the emergency declarations have been directly linked to the foreign policy of the US government and to the president’s authority as commander-in-chief. The vast majority involve presidential directives blocking US trade or financial dealings with designated foreign individuals, organizations or governments, or entire countries.

The list of countries subject to such emergency declarations is a roster of those once or currently targeted for aggression and subversion by Washington. Among the declarations on the Brennan list are those currently directed against individuals, parties or governments in Iran, Venezuela, Sudan, Nicaragua, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Congo, Belarus, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Central African Republic, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. There are also blanket orders dealing with terrorist groups, narcotics traffickers, and trade in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or their components. There are orders, now expired, against targets in Serbia, Bosnia, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Panama, Haiti, Angola, and South Africa under apartheid.

Only one emergency declaration concerns a US domestic crisis, the outbreak of the H1N1 flu epidemic in 2009, which was allowed to expire after the epidemic subsided.

No president in modern history has ever used the declaration of a national emergency to bypass Congress or decide a dispute over domestic policy.

One declaration of national emergency, so-called Proclamation 7463, was issued by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. This is the measure under which the president orders National Guard units to serve overseas, a key component of the US military effort in the invasions and subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. It has been renewed year after year, first by Bush, then Obama, and in 2017 and 2018 by Trump.

Meanwhile, Congress has never exercised its right to review the actions taken under these emergency declarations. In fact, according to one report, no president has ever carried out the requirement to report to Congress every six months on what funds have been expended in furtherance of these emergency decrees.

None of these democratic and constitutional issues were raised in the desultory and limited debates held before the Senate and House votes Thursday on the funding legislation. The bill, providing more than $300 billion to eight federal departments and many lesser agencies, passed the Senate 83–16 and the House 300–106.

Only five Senate Democrats opposed the bill, including four announced presidential candidates—Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Independent former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, widely expected to run again in 2020, voted for the bill, as did Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley, declared or undeclared presidential hopefuls.

In the House of Representatives only 19 Democrats opposed the bill to provide $49 billion in funding to the Department of Homeland Security, including $1.375 billion in wall funding. They were joined by 87 ultra-right Republicans who wanted the full $5.7 billion in wall funding initially demanded by Trump.

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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Iran can proceed with a legal action to recover billions of dollars in frozen assets that the United States says must be paid to purported American survivors and relatives of victims of attacks spuriously blamed on the Islamic Republic.

On Wednesday, judges at the Hague-based tribunal dismissed Washington’s allegations the case should be thrown out, and that the court did not have jurisdiction in the lawsuit.

The US Supreme Court ruled in April 2016 that the $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must go to victims of attacks, including the 1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut, without corroborating its allegations of Iran’s involvement.

Iran first lodged the case on the cash in June that year, stating that the US decision had breached the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights, which the two countries signed in Tehran before the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and severance of diplomatic ties between the former allies.

Tehran also argued that Washington had illegally seized Iranian financial assets and those of Iranian companies.

Last October, Iran won a legal victory when the ICJ ruled that the US must lift sanctions against Tehran targeting humanitarian goods such as food and medicine.

A general view of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing in The Hague, the Netherlands, on October 1, 2018 (Photo by AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in response that Washington was pulling out of the 1955 treaty with Tehran.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton also announced that his country was leaving the 1961 Optional Protocol and Dispute Resolution to the Vienna Convention, which establishes the ICJ as the “compulsory jurisdiction” for disputes unless nations decide to settle them elsewhere.

The frozen Iranian assets were reportedly part of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign currency reserves held in Citibank accounts in New York.

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York, acting on information provided by the Treasury Department, ordered Citibank to freeze the money in June 2008.

In an interview with The New Yorker published on April 25, 2016, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the seizure of Iran’s frozen assets by the US was “highway robbery,” vowing that the Islamic Republic will retrieve the sum anyway.

“It is a theft. Huge theft. It is highway robbery. And believe you me, we will get it back,” he added.

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Cuba condemns the U.S. government’s escalating preparations for a military adventure in Venezuela and calls on the international community to mobilize to prevent its consummation

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The Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba condemns the escalation of pressures and actions by the U.S. government in preparation for a military adventure under the guise of a “humanitarian intervention” in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and calls on the international community to mobilize in order to prevent its consummation.

Between February 6 and 10 of 2019, several military transport aircraft have flown to the Rafael Miranda Airport in Puerto Rico, the San Isidro Air Base in the Dominican Republic, and other strategically located Caribbean Islands, most certainly without the knowledge of the governments of those nations. These flights took off from U.S. military facilities where Special Operation Troops and U.S. Marine Corps units operate. These units have been used for covert operations, even against leaders of other countries.

Media and political circles – including within the U.S. – have revealed that extremist figures of the government with a long history of actions and slander aimed at causing or instigating wars, such as John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor; and Mauricio Claver-Carone, Director of the National Security Council’s Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs, counting on the connivance of Marco Rubio, Senator of the anti-Cuban mafia in Florida, designed, directly and thoroughly organized, and funded, from their posts in Washington, the attempted coup d’etat in Venezuela by means of the illegal self-proclamation of a President.

They are the same individuals who, either personally or through the State Department, have been exerting brutal pressures on numerous governments to force them to support the arbitrary call for new Presidential elections in Venezuela, while promoting recognition for the usurper who barely won 97,000 votes as a parliamentarian, against the more than 6 million Venezuelans who elected Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros last May.

After the resistance mounted by the Bolivarian and Chavista people against the coup, evidenced by the mass demonstrations in support of President Maduro, and the loyalty of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, the U.S. government has intensified its international political and media campaign, and strengthened unilateral economic coercive measures against Venezuela, among them the freezing of Venezuelan funds in third countries banks, worth billions of dollars, and the theft of the this sister nation’s oil revenue, causing serious humanitarian damage and harsh deprivation to its people.

In addition to this cruel and unjustifiable plunder, the U.S. intends to fabricate a humanitarian pretext in order to launch a military attack on Venezuela and, by resorting to intimidation, pressure, and force, is seeking to introduce into this sovereign nation’s territory alleged humanitarian aid – which is one thousand times inferior as compared to the economic damages provoked by the siege imposed by Washington.

The usurper and self-proclaimed “President” shamelessly announced his disposition to call for a U.S. military intervention under the pretext of receiving the aforementioned humanitarian aid, and has described the sovereign and honorable rejection of that maneuver as a crime against humanity.

High-ranking U.S. officials have been arrogantly and blatantly reminding us all, day after day, that when it comes to Venezuela, “all options are on the table, including military action.”

In the process of fabricating pretexts, the U.S .government has resorted to deception and slanders, presenting a draft resolution at the UN Security Council which, cynically and hypocritically expresses deep concern for the human rights and humanitarian situation…, the recent attempts to block the delivery of humanitarian aid, the millions of Venezuelan refugees and migrants, the excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, the breakdown of regional peace and security in Venezuela, and calls for taking the necessary steps.

It is obvious that the United States is paving the way to forcibly establish a humanitarian corridor under international supervision, invoke the obligation to protect civilians and take all necessary steps.

It is worth recalling that similar behaviors and pretexts were used to by the U.S. during the prelude to wars it launched against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, which resulted in tremendous human losses and caused enormous suffering.

The U.S. government attempts to remove the biggest obstacle – the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution – to imperialist domination of Our America and deprive the Venezuelan people of the largest certified oil reserves on the planet and numerous strategic natural resources.

It is impossible to forget the sad and painful history of U.S. military interventions perpetrated more than once in Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Honduras, and most recently Grenada and Panama.

As was warned by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz on July 14, 2017, “The aggression and coup violence against Venezuela harm all of Our America and only benefit the interests of those set on dividing us in order to exercise their control over our peoples, unconcerned about causing conflicts of incalculable consequences in this region, like those we are seeing in different parts of the world.”

History will severely judge a new imperialist military intervention in the region and the complicity of those who might irresponsibly support it.

What is at stake today in Venezuela is the sovereignty and dignity of Latin America and the Caribbean and the peoples of the South. Equally at stake is the survival of the rule of International Law and the UN Charter. What is being defined today is whether the legitimacy of a government emanates from the express and sovereign will of its people, or from the recognition of foreign powers.

The Revolutionary Government calls for an international mobilization in defense of peace in Venezuela and the region, based on the principles established in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, which was adopted by heads of state and government of CELAC in 2014.

It likewise welcomes and supports the Montevideo Mechanism, an initiative promoted by Mexico, Uruguay, the Caribbean Commonwealth (CARICOM), and Bolivia, which seeks to preserve peace in Venezuela based on the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, legal equality of states, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts, as stated in its recent declaration.

It welcomes the positive consideration given to this initiative by President Maduro Moros and the international community, and expresses its concern given the U.S. government’s categorical rejection of the dialogue initiatives promoted by several countries, including this one.

The Revolutionary Government reiterates its firm and unwavering solidarity with Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros, the Bolivarian Chavista Revolution and the civic and military unity of its people, and calls upon all peoples and governments of the world to defend peace and mount a joint opposition, over and above political or ideological differences, to a new imperialist military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will damage the independence, sovereignty and interests of all peoples from the Rio Bravo to Patagonia.

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Although people often conflate democracy and liberalism, there is a fine distinction between politics and culture. A democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics, whereas liberalism as a value system falls under the rubric of culture.

When we say that Islam and democracy are inconsistent, we make a category mistake as serious as the Islamists’ misconception that democracy is somehow un-Islamic. They, too, mix up democracy with liberalism.

Although I do concede there is some friction between liberalism as a cultural temperament and Islam as a conservative religion, democracy isn’t about religion or culture, as such. Democracy is simply a multi-party, representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties in order to ensure that it is voluntary.

Thus, democracy and politics are mostly about matters of governance and economics, while culture is mostly about social and moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, would like to construct around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as a heuristic principle this distinction holds true.

Moreover, when I will explain the political pragmatism of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Movement for Justice (Tehreek-e-Insaf), the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters.

Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is an educated, well-informed, articulate and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate, he is much better informed than most of our domestic politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers would not agree due to his fierce anti-imperialism and West-bashing demagoguery, but I’ll try to explain.

Like I have argued earlier that there is a difference between politics and culture; anti-imperialism is a political stance and liberalism is a cultural temperament. The renowned American political philosopher John Rawls introduced the theory of “Reflective Equilibrium” to political science.

It posits that our minds try to create harmony between different sets of beliefs and actions. If there is divergence between our beliefs and actions, it leads to cognitive dissonance. In order to avoid this reflective disequilibrium, we try to attune our beliefs and ideology to bring them in conformity with our actions and vice versa.

Now, if Imran Khan is supposedly a conservative Islamist, then his mind must be a psychological singularity. A playboy cricketer-turned-politician, who spent most of his youth in the West chasing famous celebrities all over the world, how could he be an Islamist or a conservative?

How would his mind maintain a reflective equilibrium between his beliefs and licentious actions? It is simply inconceivable for him to be an Islamist or a conservative. The only ideology that suits his temperament and lifestyle is freewheeling liberalism.

A clarification is needed here: when I say that he is not an Islamist, I mean that he is not a political Islamist; I am not questioning his personal faith as a Muslim. He seems like a liberal and secular Muslim.

Although the phrase “secular Muslim” might sound oxymoronic to perceptive readers, it’s a fact that culture plays a much more substantial role in forming our mindsets than religion, as such. A Muslim living in a developed Western society would generally adopt a liberal interpretation of scriptures; a Muslim who has been brought up in the urban middle class of the Muslim-majority countries would adopt a moderately conservative interpretation of sacred texts; and a rural and tribal Muslim who has been indoctrinated in a religious seminary would adopt extreme interpretation of the same scriptures.

More to the point, it’s not just Imran Khan’s playboy nature that makes him a liberal. He also derives his intellectual inspiration from the Western tradition. The ideal role model in his mind is the Scandinavian social democratic model which he has mentioned on numerous occasions, especially in his speech at Karachi before a massive rally of singing and cheering crowd in December 2012.

His relentless anti-imperialism as a political stance should be viewed in the backdrop of Western military interventions in the Islamic countries. What neocolonial powers have done in Afghanistan and the Middle East evokes strong feelings of resentment among Muslims all over the world. Moreover, Imran Khan also uses anti-America rhetoric as an electoral strategy to attract conservative masses, particularly the impressionable youth.

Notwithstanding, if Imran Khan is a liberal at heart, what is his political party the Pakistan Movement for Justice then? Many of its stalwarts like Assad Umar, Shireen Mazari, Jahangir Tareen and Shah Mehmood Qureshi also have liberal credentials.

Additionally, we need to keep in mind the fact that Imran Khan’s political party derives most of its support from women and youth. Both these segments of society, especially the women, are drawn more toward egalitarian liberalism than patriarchal conservatism, because liberalism promotes women’s rights and its biggest plus point is its emphasis on equality, emancipation and empowerment of women who constitute more than 50% of population in every society.

Nevertheless, I think that a better way to determine the Pakistan Movement for Justice’s position in the Pakistani political spectrum would be to break it down in various components and then analyze them. The Punjab and Karachi chapters (urban centers) of the Pakistan Movement for Justice are quite liberal in their outlook; some right-wing politicians even accused Imran Khan’s rallies in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad as obscene in the Pakistani social milieu. Those rallies weren’t obscene by any stretch of imagination, but in a segregated, patriarchal culture, the mere intermixing of men and women at public places is also frowned upon.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chapter of the Pakistan Movement for Justice, however, casts some aspersions on its liberal credentials, where it swept the polls in the 2013 and 2018 general elections, and formed a coalition government with the religious hardliners after the 2013 parliamentary elections. But the elections in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were fought on a single issue: Pakistan’s stance on the war on terror and its partnership with the US.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan, has been the war on terror’s worst affected province of Pakistan; in both the parliamentary elections, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Movement for Justice stood for dialogue and political settlement with militants, whereas the Pashtun nationalist, Awami National Party (ANP), favored military operations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and tribal areas. But since the residents of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have witnessed firsthand the sufferings of internally displaced people of Swat and tribal areas, therefore they overwhelmingly chose pro-peace Pakistan Movement for Justice over pro-war Awami National Party.

Finally, it appears that the Pakistan Movement for Justice’s supporters in Punjab, Karachi and even in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s urban areas have a more liberal outlook, whereas its supporters in the rural areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are comparatively conservative.

Therefore, my conclusion would be that Imran Khan himself is a liberal but his political party is an assortment of electable politicians from diverse political backgrounds, though it has the potential to emerge as a liberal political party on the Pakistani political landscape.

In a nutshell, compared to the certified liberal political party Pakistan People’s Party, I would place the Pakistan Movement for Justice as right-of-center, but in relation to the right-wing Pakistan Muslim League, I would categorize the Pakistan Movement for Justice as left-of-center political party in the Pakistani political spectrum.

Unlike the elitist Pakistan People’s Party, however, which is led by the Westernized Sindhi feudal landlords and represents the traditional and rural masses of the southern Sindh province, the broad-based and urban middle class vote bank of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Movement for Justice is genuinely representative and liberal in outlook.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In the CIA’s greatest hits (Arbenz, Mossaddegh, Allende etc.) the overthrown government had been in office for only a few years. Victims never really governed. They confronted calculated obstruction from their malevolent predecessors’ state machines. Chavez faced this in 2002. Reaction struck with force, and failed; thereby inoculating the Bolivarians.

For 20 years Chavez’s Bolivarian movement has overseen Venezuelan armed forces recruitment and promotion. The old guard is history. Chavez and Maduro maintained high ratios of generals to troops; they dismissed the recalcitrant, and routinely shuffled seating arrangements. Few potentially disloyal generals command followings of devoted cadre. Not only do Venezuela’s coup-plotters struggle with marshalling a strike force; they must lookout for legions of uniformed Maduro loyalists.

Divisions within the armed forces are not the coup-plotters’ gravest concern. In 2009 Chavez sought to deter coups, and invasions, by launching the Milicia Nacional Bolivariana (MNB).

MNB’s troop strength and battle readiness are state secrets about which Venezuelan officials release contradictory information. Pronouncements about MNB numbering 1 million are aspirational. Maduro recently announced plans to increase MNB to 1.6 million members; each “armed to the teeth.” Presently, about 400,000 civilians routinely engage in MNB combat training.

Venezuela’s armed forces have 350,000 personnel including 150,000 ground troops dispersed across several services.

Given the difficulties coup-plotters encounter garnering a critical mass from within the armed forces proper, the MNB’s presence prevents most malcontents from even thinking about a coup. Analysists too, should stop thinking about “coups” and start talking about a foreign-sponsored insurgency presaging full-blown war.

Maduro loyalists hold the keys to the arsenal doors. These guarded chambers contain 300,000 assault rifles; FNs and AK103s. (Venezuela’s AK103 factory may, or may not, be operational.) These arsenals also contain 45,000 sniper rifles.

In anticipation of asymmetrical warfare Bolivarian doctrine emphasises “heavy infantry.” The MNB will bring to battle several hundred: large mortars, small howitzers and heavy recoilless rifles – each towable behind pick-up trucks. Maduro loyalists possess thousands of infantry portable anti-armour weapons; and 5,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles of a design that downed a few dozen US helicopters in Iraq.

The implications of this elude Trump. He suffers from “blow-back.” He relies on Deep State misinformation that denies the Venezuelan Government any popular base.

In 2006 Chavez’s coalition (in power since 1999) regrouped as the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). Over two parliamentary and three presidential elections PSUV averaged 6.8 million votes. In 2018 Maduro received 6.2 million votes (a greater share of the electorate than voted for Trump). PSUV also performs well in municipal elections. A million PSUVers participate in candidate selection and platform drafting. PSUV is a larger socio-political bloc than are the US Republicans.

Since 2011 the PSUV-led government’s Great Housing Mission has constructed 2.5 million apartments therewith endowing 20% of Venezuelans with modern, dignified, affordable housing. Rural land reform and related programs have earned PSUV strong support from small farmers and agricultural labourers. PSUV’s network of 50,000 neighborhood councils hold meetings, elect representatives and lobby governments. (A recent decree asked each council to send one delegate to the MNB for combat training.) Another PSUV auxiliary, the “collectivos,” consists of thousands of politicised paramilitaries.

The point being:

Maduro’s government won’t be dislodged by anything short of war. If bombed out of the cities the Bolivarians will regroup into a galaxy of rural cooperatives populated by compatriots skilled in that crucial guerrilla warfare technique: farming. While Maduro warns of Vietnam 2.0; a Syrian analogy beckons.

In 2010 Syria had 21 million citizens. During 2011 foreign-funded anti-government protests turned increasingly violent. In November combat broke out in select urban areas. Mercenaries brandishing imported arms played leading roles. 500,000 Syrians have since perished. 13 million are homeless; half of whom fled the country. $100 billion worth of buildings lay in ruins. This fate awaits Venezuela because certain imperial circles prefer this outcome to the status quo’s trajectory.

The improvised imperial strategy, circa February 15 2019, is to use aid shipments to instigate clashes between authorities and oppositionists. Ensuing violence will justify tightening the embargo and arming the opposition. Mercenary-led insurgents will establish camps along the Colombian border and will barricade those urban enclaves where opposition support is concentrated. This scenario, in fact every scenario, leads down the road to Damascus …unless Trump miraculously sees the light.

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First of all, we need to understand that how the neoliberal mindset is constructed. As we know that mass education programs and mass media engender mass ideologies. We like to believe that we are free to think, but as a matter of fact, human beings don’t exist in vacuums; the human mind is always socially constituted and socially situated.

Thus, our narratives aren’t really “our” narratives. These narratives of injustice and inequality have been constructed for the public consumption by the corporate media, which is nothing but the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments and business interests.

The media is our eyes and ears through which we get all the inputs and it is also our brain through which we interpret raw data. If the media keeps mum over vital structural injustices and blows isolated incidents of injustice and violence out of proportions, then we are likely to forget all about the former and focus all our energies on tangential issues which the media portrays as the real ones.

Monopoly capitalism and the global neocolonial political and economic order are the real issues, while Islamic radicalism and terrorism are the secondary issues which are itself a by-product of the former. This is how the mainstream media constructs artificial narratives and dupes its audience into believing the absurd. During the Cold War, it created the “Red Scare” and told its audience that communism is an existential threat to the free world and the Western way of life. Its audience willingly bought this narrative.

Then, the West and its regional collaborators financed, trained and armed the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” and used them as proxies against the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, they declared the former “freedom fighters” to be terrorists and another existential threat to the free world and the Western way of life. Its gullible audience again bought this narrative.

Similarly, during the Libyan and Syrian proxy wars, the former terrorists once again became freedom fighters – albeit in a more nuanced manner, this time around the corporate media sells them as “moderate rebels.” And the naive audience of the mainstream media once again willingly bought this narrative. It really stretches the limit of human credulity that how easy it has been for the mainstream media to sell “fake news” and false narratives to its uncritical audience.

The Western powers’ collusion and conflicted relationship with the Islamic jihadists in Libya and Syria isn’t the only instance of its kind. The Western powers always leave such pernicious relationships deliberately ambiguous in order to fill the gaps in their self-serving diplomacy and also for the sake of “plausible deniability.”

In the 1980s during the Cold War, the neocolonial powers used the jihadists as proxies in their war against the former Soviet Union. The Cold War was a war between the capitalist bloc and the communist bloc for global domination. The communists used their proxies the Vietcong to liberate Vietnam from the imperialist hegemony. The capitalist bloc had no answer to the cleverly executed asymmetric warfare.

The communist bloc clearly had a moral advantage over the capitalist bloc: the mass appeal of the egalitarian and revolutionary Marxist and Maoist ideologies. Using their “Working men and women of all the countries, unite!” slogan, the communists could have instigated an uprising anywhere in the world; but how would the capitalists retaliate, through “the trickle-down economics” and “the American way of life” rhetoric? The Western policy-makers faced quite a dilemma, but then their Machiavellian strategists, capitalizing on the regional grassroots religious sentiment, came up with an equally robust antidote to the revolutionary communism: the Islamic Jihad.

During the Soviet-Afghan conflict from 1979 to 1988 between the capitalist and communist blocs, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab petro-monarchies took the side of the former, because the Soviet Union and the Central Asian states produce more energy and consume less. Thus, they are net exporters of energy. Whereas the capitalist bloc is a net importer of energy.

It suited the economic interests of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to maintain and strengthen a supplier-consumer relationship with the capitalist bloc. Now the BRICS countries are equally hungry for the Middle East’s energy, but it’s a recent development. During the Cold War, an alliance with the industrialized world suited the economic interests of the Gulf Arab petro-monarchies. Hence, the communists were pronounced as Kafirs (infidels) and the Western capitalist bloc as Ahl-e-Kitaab (People of the Book) by the Wahhabi-Salafi preachers of the Gulf Arab states.

All the celebrity terrorists, whose names we now hear in the mainstream media every day, were the product of the Soviet-Afghan war: such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, the Haqqanis, the Taliban, the Hekmatyars etc. But that war wasn’t limited only to Afghanistan. The alliance between the Western powers and the Gulf States during the Cold War funded, trained and armed the Islamic jihadists all over the greater Middle East region. We hear the names of jihadist groups operating in the regions as far afield as the Central Asian States and the North Caucasus.

Notwithstanding, it is generally assumed that political Islam is the precursor to Islamic extremism and jihadism. However, there are two distinct and separate types of political Islam: the despotic political Islam of the Gulf variety and the democratic political Islam of the Turkish and the Muslim Brotherhood variety.

The latter Islamist organization never ruled over Egypt except for a brief year-long stint. It would be unwise to draw any conclusions from such a brief period of time in history. The Turkish variety of political Islam, the oft-quoted “Turkish model,” however, is worth emulating all over the Islamic world.

I do understand that political Islam in all its forms and manifestations is an anathema to liberals, but it is the ground reality of the Islamic world. The liberal dictatorships, no matter how benevolent they are, have never worked in the past, and they will meet the same fate in the future.

The mainspring of Islamic radicalism and militancy isn’t the moderate and democratic political Islam, because why would people turn to violence when they can exercise their right to choose their rulers? The mainspring of Islamic militancy is the despotic and militant political Islam of the Gulf variety.

The Western powers are fully aware of this fact, then why do they choose to support the same forces that have nurtured jihadism and terrorism when their professed goal is to eliminate Islamic extremism and militancy? It is because it has been a firm policy principle of the Western powers to promote “political stability” in the Middle East rather than representative democracy.

The neocolonial powers are fully cognizant of the ground reality that the mainstream Muslim sentiment is firmly against any Western military presence and interference in the energy-rich Middle East region. Additionally, the Western policymakers also prefer to deal with small cliques of Middle Eastern “strongmen” rather than cultivating a complex and uncertain relationship on a popular level of the masses of the Islamic world, certainly a myopic approach which is the hallmark of the so-called “pragmatic” politicians and statesmen.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

What’s billed as Spain’s “trial of the century” began in Madrid before the nation’s Supreme Court on Tuesday.

On trial are 12 activist Catalan politicians – falsely charged with rebellion, misuse of public funds, and civil disobedience.

They justifiably support the universal right of self-determination, shouldn’t have been arrested, imprisoned, and forced to stand trial for backing the legitimate rights of the Catalan people.

Under international law, people everywhere have the right to choose their sovereignty and political status with no outside interference.

The UN Charter affirms “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people…”

Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states:

“All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states

“(e)veryone has the right to a nationality (self-determination). No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his (or her) nationality nor denied the right to change his (or her) nationality.”

Catalans, Spanish Basques, Kurds, Palestinians, Puerto Rican activists, and others elsewhere are entitled to seek self-determination, a fundamental principle under international law, regarded as jus cogens, a higher or compelling law.

In October 2017, Catalans overwhelming voted for independence by national referendum. Madrid and Spain’s Constitutional Court refused to recognize the results, defying international law.

A dozen Catalan separatist officials are on trial, nationally televised proceedings likely to last several months. At stake is whether Spain’s Supreme Court will uphold the legitimacy of self-determination, affirmed under international law. Results of the trial may affect other independence movements.

Individuals on trial include illegally removed Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, former Catalan parliament Speaker Carme Forcadell, activist politician Jordi Sanchez, activist Jordi Cuixart, along with eight former Catalan cabinet members.

Their politically charged trial is being held before a seven-judge Supreme Court panel, the court house heavily guarded, supporters of the defendants rallying outside, chanting and carrying signs saying: “Freedom for political prisoners.”

A smaller rival group disgracefully called them “coup plotters.” Defense attorney for two of the accused, Andreu Van den Eyndehe, told the court that his clients have the legal right to seek independence under international law, adding self-determination “is a synonym of peace, not of war.”

If convicted, defendants face up to 25 years in prison – for pursuing the legal right of the Catalan people to seek self-determination.

Seven other former Catalan officials are in self-imposed exile to avoid facing unjust prosecution, including former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.

In Berlin on Tuesday, he called the trial a “stress test” for Spain’s democracy – like America in name only.

He also asked “why (the) European Union is more concerned by what is going on…in Venezuela than what is happening in Madrid,” adding:

“My political activity will be based in Belgium for the sake of freedom and independence of Catalonia and its people and ensuring its fair claims.”

The German High Court of Schleswig-Holstein state (where he was living in exile) ruled he could only be extradited if charged with misuse of public funds, rejecting the charge of rebellion against him because no evidence indicated that he intended to use force to seek Catalan independence.

German prosecutors still seek to extradite him to Spain. He’s subject to arrest if forced back. He vowed to continue fighting to prove his innocence, adding the German court rejected “the main lie of the state” against him, ruling that Catalonia’s self-determination referendum was not rebellion as Madrid claims.

Much rides on whether Spain’s Supreme Court delivers the same ruling, along with hopefully rejecting other wrongful charges against Catalan separatists on trial.

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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.

In 2003 I was asked by Kentucky State Senator Georgia Davis Powersto help research and write a book about her great aunt Celia Mudd, who was born into slavery but ultimately inherited the Lancaster property in Bardstown and became a prominent local philanthropist. Here is chapter three of a new work in progress called Inheritance.

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It was a rosy May afternoon and they were all singing. But the song wasn’t about running away and enough voices boomed to shake the Earth. Celia Mudd heard the commotion, rushed down from the second floor, abandoning piles of laundry in need of folding, and raced to the courtyard scattering chickens in her path.

Everyone was there, field hands and house slaves from farms nearby, Negro soldiers back from the fighting, brothers and sisters and cousins, even Grandma Patty dancing a jig around the cistern. Finally it had happened. Hallelujah, Freedom!

Jefferson Davis was in a Georgia jail and most of his troops were surrendering. In Kentucky the union commander had announced that all Negroes, even former slaves, had the right now to go where they pleased, leave the state if they wanted. All they needed were the “free papers” being issued by General Palmer’s officers and they could say good riddance to their masters, find paying work, and ride the rails or a riverboat like any white man. Thousands were on their way.

Celia didn’t understand the details. But the basic message came through clear as a bell. Their old life was over and a new, better one was about to begin. Leaping into Emily’s arms, she hugged her mother as they spun in circles, laughing and joining in the joy. “That’s right, child,” said Emily, tears streaming. “We on our way to freee-dom. Thank you, Lord.”

“Where that, mama? We leaving now?”

“We’ll see. But first we got to hear what them whites got to say for themselves. Grandma, she says Missus Ann and Boss Sam gonna offer everybody jobs. Then we have a meet and talks it over. What you want to do, honey?”

Serious beyond her six years, Celia crinkled her brow and pursed her full lips, acting coy as she considered the options. When she was ready she wriggled free and stood up straight, bare feet planted like a heroic statue. “I want us all to be together,” she announced, “and I want to go see Mr. Lincoln and thank him for what he done.”

Emily was touched, but also impressed with her child’s thoughtful disposition. Going all the way to Washington was beyond anything she could imagine, however. Just getting back to Viney Level, maybe linking up with other family members there, seemed like an almost impossible goal. And even if they reached the Capitol, Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t be there. He’d been shot by that actor Booth a month before. Emily didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter that.

It might not even be safe to leave. Ex-slaves who passed by the farm brought frightening tales of pens where owners kept Negroes in leg irons. Some rebels were ignoring the federal decree, not to mention the fact that they’d lost the war. Women and children were being shot by white farmers and renegade soldiers, for being “fugitives” or just for ending up on the wrong road. The military camps were overcrowded. In cities homeless families were jammed into abandoned buildings and stables. And there weren’t nearly enough jobs. In some ways it sounded worse out there than what they would leave behind.

The first thing was to find out what the Lancasters planned to do. There had been rumors for years that Missus Ann wanted to free them all and offer wages if they wanted to stay and work their share. She was partial to the writing of Cassius Marcellus Clay, a wealthy, Yale-educated ex-slaveholder who argued that the institution of slavery hurt economic development and the poor whites unable to compete with a captive Negro work force.

Sam was more confused and conflicted, moving over the last few years from “compensated emancipation” to colonization and recently resignation to the inevitability of abolition. But the family had not acted on such beliefs, afraid of retaliation from rebel raiders or the town’s vocal majority of Southern sympathizers. Until two weeks ago William Clark Quantrill had been terrorizing the countryside just twenty miles south of them, stealing horses and food and brutally punishing anyone deserting the Confederacy. Palmer’s men had finally cornered and captured him. But most of Quantrill’s guerrilla fighters were still on the loose.

After the break with her son Robert two years ago, Ann had issued an edict: no one was ever to strike a servant again. She also pledged that, once Emily’s children were old enough she would personally teach them to read.

When Bragg was defeated at Perryville and forced to retreat through Cumberland Gap into Tennessee, Ann called for a party, with fiddlers and ham for everyone. Confederate Kentucky had lasted less than two weeks. After that they’d heard about raiding parties, mainly slash-and-run affairs designed to distract and destroy. But the Union army basically controlled the state.

By spring 1865 Sam was examining farm finances to see what freedom would cost. Shortly before sunset, just as the party was winding down, he strode onto the porch flanked by his mother and Matt. The visible nervousness of the bosses sent a hush through the crowd. Celia fought her way to the front and plopped down on a low step. She gazed up at the burly farmer as he explained the situation.

“It appears that the war is finally over,” Sam explained, “and we’re all still part of the United States. And you all know what that means.” A cheer went up. “That’s right, you’ve been made free. Free to go or stay.

“All right, settle down a minute,” he said, struggling to be heard over the ruckus. “Now, there’s talk going around about what happens next. I guess you already know of the proclamation by Mr. Lincoln. Well, let me tell you a few more things. First, the Congress of the United States has passed an amendment to the Constitution. It’s not official until enough states go along, but what it says is that slavery is over forever. And that’s fine with us. So, if you want to leave go right ahead. No one’s going to get in the way.”

“Better not,” threatened an intense black soldier in a torn Union coat.

Sam wasn’t intimidated. “Like I said, it’s up to you. But not everyone in these parts feels the same, so if you do start walking, stick together and steer clear of trouble. To some folks you’re still runaways and they’d just as soon shoot as say good evening.”

Ann leaned forward, placed a hand on his shoulder, and whispered something. Just a few feet below, Celia strained to hear. Sam paused, nodded agreement, and then looked directly at the child, his expression shifting from worry to barely concealed amusement. As their eyes locked she felt a surge of inexplicable security, as if he was sending a message: don’t be afraid.

“For anyone who lives here,” he said, “let me just say this. You want to stay on and do a day’s work, you’ll get a day’s pay. It probably won’t be much at first. Times are hard, you know that. But you’ll be treated right and share our food and live as you please. So that’s it. What’s past, we can’t change that. But we can start today, to learn to live together as free men and women.”

It wasn’t nearly the apology that Emily, Patty and the others who had served the family hoped one day would come. Not by a mile. Sometimes in recent weeks, as the news of imminent Confederate feat began to reach them, Emily imagined the farm being overrun by her people, and the Lancasters locked in the smokehouse pleading for mercy. In that dream she lit a torch and set the building ablaze.

But there had been too much death already. She knew taking revenge wouldn’t set things right. Better to start clean and make the best of the life ahead.

When he finished talking Sam stepped cautiously forward, one hand extended as an offering, a small gesture of reconciliation. No one moved or said a word, momentarily stunned by the maneuver. Emily grabbed Celia, pulling her close in case the mood turned ugly. But Grandma Patty broke the tension. She elbowed past the farmhands and walked straight up to Sam, cupping his big hand in both of her own.

“Like the Good Book say, we got to forgive, and let go the sins of the past,” she said. “Praise the Lord.”

“Amen,” he whispered, followed by a heavy sigh of relief. The atmosphere lightened and people started hugging, shaking hands, and breaking into smaller groups to discuss the new reality. As Matt came down Ann made a bee line for Emily, eager to hear what she planned the do.

“Don’t know yet,” Emily replied defensively. “We still got people up in Maryland. But…”

“That could be a dangerous trip, and unnecessary. We can help find your family. Meanwhile, we need you here. And I would surely miss this lovely child.” Ann leaned down and gave Celia a warm smile, asking, “Would you like to stay?”

Nodding slowly, Celia explained exactly what she wanted – her family living together and freedom for everyone.

“That’s very fine. But how would it be if I taught you to read? Would you like that?” Ann then gave Emily a silent look of request. “If it’s all right with your mama.”

“That would be nice, missus.”

“Mama says yes. How about you?”

Celia glanced back and forth, assessing the two women, then put a finger to her lower lip and made her announcement. “Yes, ma’am. I want to read and write and do numbers.”

“A regular bookkeeper, or a teacher. Then that’s how it will be.”

But Sam wasn’t so sure when Ann presented the idea an hour later. “Teaching negro children too much might be bad for business later,” he said.

They had retreated into the house to take stock after mingling for a respectable period. Meanwhile, the party regrouped at the edge of the woods fueled by music and extra rations of whiskey. Sam was impressed that they’d managed to get through it without coming to blows. Some of the blacks would stay, and they would be better off without the rest, at least until the place was back on firmer footing. It wouldn’t be the same, but having employees instead could have advantages. On the other hand, the more those employees knew the more demanding they’d become.

Quickly bored with the family conversation, Matt decided that it was time for some fun. Of the brothers he had always been the most at ease with Celia’s people. To Grandma Patty, who had know him for years, he was almost like another child. He worked his share, shoulder to shoulder with her Nicholas. But he preferred a good time and took no interest in either business or his mother’s religious and intellectual pursuits. He was a good old Kentucky boy, at home with his own good fortune, ever ready to go on a tear, and oblivious to what went on in the world beyond the county line.

The bash had hit its stride by the time he arrived. One group was patting juba, rhythmically slapped their knees and shoulders and clapping hands as they sang. The rest were swinging wide and double shuffling, drinking and singing their joy as they buck and winged around the crackling campfire. Matt took a swig and joined in, trying awkwardly to follow their fluid moves.

Perched above it all on the tree branch, Celia was entranced with the bacchanalian scene. She had been to some Saturday frolics but none like this one. Dancing, when it was permitted, was normally retrained, mainly reels and simple steps. The older kids would run foot races sometimes and the men would box or wrestle, butting heads like sheep. But the limited amount of alcohol usually on hand helped keep the festivities from turning wild. Tonight, however, they weren’t just having a frolic, they were celebrating like she had never seen. The women were spinning like tops, skirts flying, and the men were jumping for joy.

She watched her mother hugging Allen Mudd for what might be the last time. Emily was laughing and crying, all at once, torn between the pure exhilaration around her and sadness about Allen’s sudden announcement. After seven years as lovers during his summer visits, after three children and maybe another on the way, he was leaving. That is, if he could keep from murdering Donatus Mudd, his ex-master, he was going to Louisville or Lexington to see about city life.

Emily would miss him, yet didn’t plead with him to stay. She’d finally overcome her illusions and accepted the fact that being together wasn’t their free choice. It was hard to admit, but they both deserved a fresh start.

The rhythm around the fire quickened. They were shouting now, smacking hands and beating time. “Mammy, don’t you cook no more,” they sang. “You’s free, you’s free.” Celia clapped along, caught up in the moment, everyone together and happy, filled with bright hopes for a new beginning. Free at last, free at last.

Then a shot rang out and the feeling instantly evaporated.

Steadying herself on the tree branch, Celia squinted and saw Robert Lancaster at the edge of the clearing, his rifle smoking and pointed up at the heavens. He glared at them, as if unable to believe what he saw. The singing abruptly stopped. But after a few seconds voices rose, this time in a collective grumble.

“What the hell is this?” He growled it and lowered his rifle, determined to stay in control. “Since when do we have this in the middle of a week?”

“Since Freedom!” The shout was defiant.

“Who said that?” Robert scoured the crowd, searching for the person with enough nerve to give him lip. More than a dozen black faces stared back.

“Cool down, General.” This voice was different, calm and friendly. Matt stepped into view from behind a tree just below Celia’s dangling feet and approached his brother, his hands high in mock surrender. “We’re having a little to-do here, in honor of changing circumstances. Why don’t you just stand at ease and have a drink.”

“Shut your damn hole, Matt. What circumstances?”

“In case you missed it, the war is over. And mama decided it was high time to face reality. They’re free, ain’t that right?” This prompted a wave of outbursts, from “that’s right” to “God almighty!” Matt savored the moment, a rare opportunity to put his over-stuffed brother in his place.

“Ah. Mama decided.” Robert bowed his head and let out a frustrated sigh. He knew now that he wasn’t frightening anyone, that in fact he was probably lucky they hadn’t surrounded and beaten him, and let the gun drop to his side.

“Is that so? And you and Sam think this is the perfect time to give a bunch of uppity, well, colored folks as much liquor as they want. I see, a brilliant plan. And what else, money for the trip north? Might as well, because this place is finished.”

He took a long look at his surroundings and traded steely stares with the most furious men in the crowd, then flashed a fake smile, turned his back, and headed for the big house. Celia watched with mounting curiosity as Matt stumbled close behind, already plotting his next impertinence. By the time the two brothers reached the front door, the celebration outside had resumed, almost as if nothing had happened.

Ann and Sam were in the parlor, a large comfortable room off the foyer filled with brightly upholstered pieces in the Empire style. Since summer was coming, the windows were disrobed of their heavy winter drapery and replaced with white muslin panels that fluttered in the evening breeze. Leaning against the tiled mantle Sam tapped his pipe into the fireplace and continued to discuss the latest reports from Washington.

“They think Davis was part of the conspiracy,” he explained. Two weeks earlier, the captured ex-president of the confederacy had been charged, with eight other defendants, for Lincoln’s murder. He was still being held in Georgia but the trial had begun without him. “It was supposed to be a kidnap, retaliation for the Dahlgren raid. Remember that, mama? When Lincoln sent that colonel to Richmond to get Davis and hold him for ransom. Damned stupid. So, of course they wanted to try the same thing.”

“But they shot the man.”

“Booth got tired of waiting, that’s what they say. Conover, that Yankee writer, he testified he knew about the whole thing in February – if you can believe anything he says. Booth and Surratt met with the rebels up in Canada, he says, and one of them says killing a tyrant isn’t murder. That’s the story anyway.”

“And you believe that liar?” Robert snorted his contempt as he marched into the room. He had paused at the threshold long enough to set down the rifle, do some eavesdropping, and come up with a challenge.

“Maybe Davis didn’t know,” Sam answered, “but Booth was obviously working for the South and plenty of people wanted Abe out of the way.”

“Including some of his own.” Through his business contacts Robert kept up with the latest gossip from both sides. The prevailing rumor at the moment, much discussed but never mentioned in print, was that men close to the president, possibly even his own Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, wanted Lincoln out. There was talk of an incriminating diary kept by Booth that mentioned high officials. But it had conveniently disappeared. Some even claimed that the assassin himself, reportedly gunned down in Virginia, was actually alive and on his way to California with the aid of powerful friends.

“I find that even harder to believe,” Sam snapped. “A Union plot to kill their own leader, just as he’s winning the war?”

“It’s possible. Stanton hated him, so did the radical Republicans. And don’t forget those northern speculators; he was cutting into their cotton profits. You have to look below the surface, see who really stands to gain.”

“Well, you’re the expert on that.” Sam didn’t mean it as a compliment.

“That I am. And I have to say, you are embarking on a path even more insane than I could have imagined. You let these darkies think they’re free to do as they please and, next thing you know, they’ll leave you flat or burn you down. Mother, do you really believe they are capable of rational thinking? They’re children. And like all children they need discipline, structure, and direction. Not abolitionist clap trap, and certainly not enough whiskey to marinate the county.”

“It’s over,” Sam said bluntly. “We know it, they know it. And the quicker we make peace, the quicker we get this place back on its feet.”

Robert rolled his eyes and sat across from his mother. “I know we’ve never agreed about this,” he admitted. “But please, don’t move too fast. They’re not ready. I mean, they can’t even read.”

“I’ll teach them, starting with little Celia.”

“My God! If anyone finds out it won’t be the niggers that kill you. It’ll be your neighbors. Sam, you’re going to let this happen?”

“I don’t much like it. Spoil a hand, you know. But…”

“Mother, let me explain a few things. The economy is a wreck right now, all over the state. The fighting may be over, but the war isn’t, and it won’t be for a long time. People are bitter, families divided. The roads are ruined and half the cattle and horses are gone. And our men, they’re coming back without arms and legs, by the thousands, if they’re coming back at all. This is a very volatile situation we have here.”

Ann cut him off with a wave. “I understand all that. It’s terrible, terrible. A tragedy for everyone. But something good must come out of it, or else it was absolutely pointless.”

“This isn’t the time, or the way. It’ll ruin us.”

“Stop talking about us!” Sam stressed the last word and delivered it with a sting that hit his brother like a slap across the cheek. “You left this land behind. Sold out. That was your choice. And you’ve made your money since, fine. But this is our choice and it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Wrong. It affects me if my mother’s in danger, if you’re about to destroy everything she has. Who will have to clean up that mess?” The siblings were standing face to face, Sam in his overalls, Robert in his three-piece banker’s suit. “I can’t stand by and let you do that. I won’t.”

“Tough talk,” Sam taunted.

“Better watch out, big brother. He brought his rifle.” Matt had been following the argument, gauging the right moment to bring up Robert’s gunplay. “Ker-pow! Like to scare them niggers to death.”

Sam reacted instantly. He grabbed Robert by the shoulders and threw him against the mahogany shelves of the etagere. What-nots scattered and crashed to the floor. “You raised a weapon on them? You bastard! Do it again and I’ll shove it down your throat. We don’t need your advice, or your money.”

It took some effort for Robert to break free from his brother’s bearlike grasp. Once he did, he tripped his way to the opposite side of the room while struggling to retain some dignity. After straightening his suit he took a long, deep breath and surveyed the scene. He was on alert, poised for another attack. His mother looked terrified and near tears. At the doorway, Matt brandished his gun with a smile. And behind him, peeking in from the foyer, Celia saw everything.

She had crept in silently, concealing herself beneath a hallway chair, and heard most of the conversation. Terrible words about black folks killing white folks, and how her people were too dumb to be free. And brother threatening brother. These people seemed crazy to her, as if they’d been possessed.

“Well then,” said Robert, mustering the most officious tone he could manage. “I can see that my help isn’t wanted here. Therefore, I will simply say good evening and be on my way. Mother. Samuel.”

He moved toward the door, nodding as he passed, and calmly snatched the rifle back from Matt. “Brother, thank you.” He was about to leave it at that, then reconsidered.

“One thing,” he said icily. “When the day comes that you require my aid — and it most certainly will come – I’ll require something more than an apology. When that happens, don’t take it personally. That’s simply how business is done.”

Then, before Celia could avoid it, he kicked her aside and hurried into the night.

To be continued…

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Bibi Netanyahu misspoke. During a “peace conference” in Warsaw, Poland he said Israel wants war with Iran, then he turned around and said that’s not what he meant and “war” in Hebrew has a different meaning. 

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Israel's PM Netanyahu talks of "war" with Iran, then changes his tune.

Read more @business: https://t.co/Qwbhb5frLD pic.twitter.com/eNZs66vFnH

— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) February 14, 2019

Israel has pushed the idea of a “war” against Iran for decades. Iran sits atop a list of countries Bibi and the Likudniks want to take out. It was “mission accomplished” in Iraq and Libya, but a failure in Syria. Iran is a tough nut to crack and not a pushover like Iraq (where twelve years of brutal sanctions worked to soften the country up prior to the Bush dynasty’s second round of “creative destruction”). 

Here’s Bibi calling for mass murder in the lead-up to his destruction of Iraq. I say “his” because the “war” was orchestrated by a coterie of Likudnik operatives in the Bush administration. 

"If you take out Saddam," Netanyahu told Congress in 2002, "I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran… will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone." pic.twitter.com/ZNTxpSP3a2

— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) February 14, 2019

If you believe there are multiple meanings of the word “war” in Hebrew and Bibi misspoke or his true meaning was lost in translation, you’re not paying attention. The Israeli state is eager to kill Iranians and flatten Tehran in similar fashion to Aleppo or Fallujah. 

Bibi will need Sunni Arabs—in particular the vicious Wahhabi brand—Europe, and of course the United States, for his master plan to be a success. That’s what’s going on right now in Poland—a sort of pre-war powwow, getting all the ducks lined up in a row. 

But if you listen to the wife of a former Federal Reserve chairman, Netanyahu and VP Pence are in Poland to honor Jews who died in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Andrea Mitchell managed to implicate the Polish government in that sad historical event. Did she forget the Nazis invaded Poland? 

.@VP and @Netanyahu signing visitor book at Polish museum honoring Polish Jews who died in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis pic.twitter.com/AHeqHjkJNm

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 14, 2019

Mike Pompeo was a bit more circumspect in his language. He declared “pushing back”—economic warfare eventually followed up with bombing raids—will solve the region’s problems. 

My dispatch from the summit in Poland that's definitely not about Iran:

-Pence: Europe must abandon nuclear deal with Iran
-Pompeo: It's time to 'confront Iran'
-Netanyahu: Let's 'combat'/go to 'war' with Iran
-Giuliani: We need Iran regime-change
https://t.co/Jd4jrLnlsu

— Kim Hjelmgaard (@khjelmgaard) February 14, 2019

The former tank commander said Israel has the “right” to defend itself, but didn’t bother to enlighten on the particular threat the Jewish state—flush with billions of US dollars and military hardware—faces. 

Certainly not nuclear bombs. It is well-known, despite the fantasies of Likudniks and converts like Pompeo, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program. Israel, on the other hand, has a long secret nuclear program and steadfastly refuses to declare its nukes. Iran understands there is no shortage of homicidal lunatics in Israel, most prominently Bibi who would like you to believe “war” means something entirely different in Hebrew. 

Did @netanyahu really say “war” with Iran? I was there and the word was ”milchama” = war. pic.twitter.com/ZzhrDs2lWA

— Aron Heller (@aronhellerap) February 13, 2019

The Warsaw confab is dedicated to a singular purpose—organizing the destruction of Iran with the blessing of Iran’s Arab neighbors. Bibi hopes to put together an Arab force for an invasion, thus making sure Arabs and Americans—the latter will undoubtedly be sucked into this quagmire—die to make Israel safe for apartheid and rabid settler serial murder of Palestinians. 

Meanwhile, the Christian Zionist Mike Pence demands Europe withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. 

Honored to speak at #WarsawSummit. The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal & join us as we bring the economic & diplomatic pressure necessary to give the Iranian people, the region, & the world the peace, security & freedom they deserve. pic.twitter.com/Eez267BFeV

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) February 14, 2019

If we can believe the Islamophobe Pamela Geller, Pence has warned the evil mullahs want to perpetuate a “new Holocaust” that will “erase Israel from the map.” 

Obviously, Ms. Geller lacks imagination, preferring instead to fall back on a discredited fantasy that Iran wants to kill every last Jew in the Middle East, never mind that any attempt to do so would result in it becoming an irradiated parking lot. 

Mike Pence: Iran is plotting a ‘new Holocaust’ that would ‘erase Israel from the map’ as he urges European Union nations to withdraw from Obama-era nuclear dea: Does anyone believe Europe is capable of doing the right thing? https://t.co/DiOGbkOpTL pic.twitter.com/1gd3ncubzt

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) February 14, 2019

There is a little propaganda sideshow coinciding with the war summit in Poland. Monica Witt, a former US counterintelligence officer, was charged this week with spying for the Iranian government. The indictment followed on the heels of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s promise to resist economic and psychological attacks by the United States. 

Monica Elfriede Witt is #wanted by the #FBI for her alleged involvement in criminal activities to include espionage & conspiracy to commit espionage. If you have info concerning Witt, contact your local FBI office or the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. https://t.co/f0OsA1hayy pic.twitter.com/eb4pe5UsEe

— FBI (@FBI) February 13, 2019

Finally, the charade in Warsaw allowed the cult of personality around Maryam Rajavi and her terroristic MEK (People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran) to gain media attention. Rudy Giuliani was on hand to give a speech urging violence, murder, and social and political chaos in Iran. 

.@RudyGiuliani: In order to have peace and security in the Mid-East there has to be a major change in the theocratic dictatorship in #Iran. It must end and end quickly in order to have stability.#FreeIranWithMaryamRajavi #FreeIran #FreeIranRally@USAdarFarsi pic.twitter.com/Q7jOOdFyEc

— Iran Freedom (@4FreedominIran) February 13, 2019

Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, hit the bull’s eye when he said,

“[Giuliani] seems wholly addicted to the group’s honorarium checks, and he refuses to let it bother him that the MEK has American blood on its hands.  He is the picture of a man without principle.”

I believe that’s too kind. Giuliani is sociopath dedicated to Israel’s hegemonic drive in the Middle East and its willingness to kill thousands and possibly millions of Iranians, so long as the killing is done by Arabs and, of course, stupid Americans brainwashed into the belief that mass murder and the starvation of children are characteristics of the neoliberal form of  democracy. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

The first eight months of WWII with no fighting was called The Phoney War.

 Using millimetre waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phoney war of another kind.

This phoney war is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennas^[1] – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.

In the first instance, 5G is likely to make people electro-hypersensitive (EHS).^[2] Perhaps it was sitting in front of two big computer screens for many of the 18 years I worked at the UN that made me EHS. When the UN Office at Vienna installed powerful WiFi and cellphone access points – designed to serve large, public areas – in narrow, metal-walled corridors throughout the Vienna International Centre in December 2015, I was ill continuously for seven months.

I did my best for two and a half years to alert the UN staff union, administration and medical service to the danger to the health of UN staff of EMR from these access points, but was ignored. That’s why, in May 2018, I took the issue to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres[transcript]. He is a physicist and electrical engineer and lectured on telecommunications signals early in his career, yet asserted that he knew nothing about this. He undertook to ask the World Health Organization to look into it, but seven months later those public access points remain in place. I received no replies to my many follow-up emails.

As a result, I welcomed the opportunity to join the effort to publish an International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space because it was clear to me that, despite there having been 43 earlier scientific appeals, very few people understood the dangers of EMR. My experience as an editor could help ensure that a new 5G appeal, including the issue of beaming 5G from space, was clear, comprehensive, explanatory, and accessible to the non-scientist. The International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space is fully referenced, citing over a hundred scientific papers among the tens of thousands on the biological effects of EMRpublished over the last 80 years.^[3]

Having spent years editing UN documents dealing with space, I know that outer space is hotly contested geopolitically and any untoward event involving a military satellite risks triggering a catastrophic response.^[4]Space law is so inadequate – just one example is the complexity of space liability law^[5],[6] – that we could really call the Earth orbits a new Wild West. China caused international consternation in 2007 when it demonstrated an anti-satellite weapon by destroying its own satellite. Space debris is the main concern among space-faring nations, with a so-called Kessler syndrome positing a cascade of space debris that could make the Earth orbits unusable for a thousand years.^[7] Does launching 20,000+ commercial 5G satellites in such circumstances sound rational to you?

I live in Vienna, Austria, where the 5G rollout is suddenly upon us. Within the last five weeks, pre-5G has been officially announced at Vienna airport and 5G at the Rathausplatz, the main square in Vienna, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors to its Christmas market each December and skating rink each January, which are special treats for children. Along with birds and insects, children are the most vulnerable to 5G depredation because of their little bodies.^[8]

Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR poisoning:^[9] nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs. Other biological effects such as tumours and dementia usually take longer to manifest, but in the case of 5G, which has never been tested for health or safety, who knows?^[10]

Seemingly overnight a forest of 5G infrastructure has sprouted in Austria. In the space of three weeks one friend has gone from robust health to fleeing this country, where she has lived for 30 years. Each person experiences EMR differently. For her, it was extreme torture so she and I spent her last two nights in Austria sleeping in the woods. Interestingly, as she drove across southern Germany, she suffered torture even worse than in Austria, while in northern Germany she had no symptoms at all and felt completely normal, which suggests that there has been as yet no 5G rollout there.

There are no legal limits on exposure to EMR. Conveniently for the telecommunications industry, there are only non-legally enforceable guidelines such as those produced by the grandly named International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, which turns out to be like the Wizard of Oz, just a tiny little NGO in Germany that appoints its own members, none of whom is a medical doctor or environmental expert.^[11]

Like the Wizard of Oz, ICNIRP seems to have magical powers. Its prestidigitation makes non-thermal (non-heating) effects of EMR exposure disappear into thin air, for taking into account the tens of thousands of research studies demonstrating the biological effects of EMR would invalidate its so-called safety guidelines.^[12] It has bewitched the International Telecommunication Union, part of the UN family, into recognizing these guidelines.^[13] And one little email sent to ICNIRP in October 2018 to submit Professor Martin Pall’s comments on ICNIRP’s new draft guidelines conjured up an immediate explosion of interest in the sender’s online presence – which had hitherto attracted none – from companies and individuals worldwide, one country’s immigration authorities, the office of the Austrian Chancellor (head of government), a firm of lawyers in Vienna and even Interpol!^[14],[15]

I hope that people read and share our Stop 5G Space Appeal to wake up themselves and others quickly and use it to take action themselves to stop 5G. Even eight short months of this 5G Phoney War could spell catastrophe for all life on Earth. Elon Musk is set to launch the first 4,425 5G satellites in June 2019 and “blanket” the Earth with 5G, in breach of countless international treaties. This could initiate the last great extinction, courtesy of the multi-trillion-US-dollar 5G, the biggest biological experiment and most heinous manifestation of hubris and greed in human history.10

People’s first reaction to the idea that 5G may be an existential threat to all life on Earth is usually disbelief and/or cognitive dissonance. Once they examine the facts, however, their second reaction is often terror. We need to transcend this in order to see 5G as an opportunity to empower ourselves, take responsibility and take action. We may have already lost 80 per cent of our insects to EMR in the last 20 years.^[16] Our trees risk being cut down by the millions in order to ensure continuous 5G signalling for self-driving cars, buses and trains.^[17]Are we going to stand by and see ourselves and our children irradiated, our food systems decimated, our natural surroundings destroyed?

Our newspapers are now casually popularizing the meme that human extinction would be a good thing,^[18],[19] but when the question becomes not rhetorical but real, when it’s your life, your child, yourcommunity, your environment that is under immediate threat, can you really subscribe to such a suggestion?

If you don’t, please sign the Stop 5G Appeal and get active in contacting everyone you can think of who has the power to stop 5G, especially Elon Musk^[20] and the CEOs of all the other companies planning to launch 5G satellites, starting in just 20 weeks from now. Life on Earth needs your help now.

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A UN staff member Claire Edwards informs the UN Secretary General of the harm resulting from 5G and wireless proliferation.

The biological effects of EMF radiation are amply documented.

We may be facing a global health catastrophe of the order of magnitude well in excess of tobacco and cigarettes. 

5G is designed to deliver concentrated and electronic radiation.

Scroll down for full transcript

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For a nation that prides itself on being the world’s wealthiest, most innovative, and most technologically advanced, the US’ healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US’ health system also ranks dead last among high-income countries.[1] Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and has continued to decline for the past three years. On the other hand, countries with universal healthcare coverage find their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing.  The fundamental problem in Washington is that both parties are beholden to the pharmaceutical and private insurance industries. Neither has the courage or will to spurn their corporate donors to do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans’ quality of health and well-being. 

Our system is horribly broken. If this weren’t so, the single-payer debate would not be as contentious as it is at this moment. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage.  Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with. 

It is not difficult to imagine how the dismal state of American medicine could be the result of a system that has completely sold out to free-market ideology and the bottom line interests of drug makers, healthcare mega-corporations, the insurance industry and Wall Street. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach? 

The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. Last year, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as “politically and morally wrong.”  Ki-moon belongs to a group known as The Elders founded by Nelson Mandela and funded by Sir Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel, a group of older wise statesmen and stateswomen around the world determined to tackle global crises during their remaining years and unafraid to take on the capitalist system. Among their initiatives is global universal healthcare, and the US has been an enormous roadblock to reaching that goal. [2]  

The US’ healthcare system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance firms at the top that ultimately supervise the racket.  The entire system is another example of the moral deterioration that fuels the inequality plaguing the nation for the past three decades. 

Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. His campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation’s leading voices calling for universal health coverage since 1986.   Among the 35 most developed OECD nations, 32 have some form of universal healthcare systems.  However, past efforts to even raise the issue have been rapidly attacked and falsely discredited. The fact of the matter is that a huge army of private interests are determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due it being a fully for-profit operation.  Industry and older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will in the long-term save over $2 trillion annually. It will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, as we outline below, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.  

During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Already in his 80s when he joined the Obama team to help lead the young Senator to victory with the promise that America would finally catch up with other nations, he sounded like a defeated man. Dr. Young shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration’s agenda. During the closed-door negotiations that spawned the weak compromised bill known as Obamacare, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he stated, he never heard from Obama again after the election.  The record shows that the principal parties meeting with the Obama administration were from the insurance and medical industries. It is they who created Obamacare. It was left to the charismatic and charming Obama to offer this up to the public as a spectacular victory. 

Today the pharmaceutical, HMO, and insurance industries, as well as medicine’s most prominent professional associations, medical schools and Wall Street firms comprise a powerful cartel with its tentacles wrapped around the throats of politicians and federal health agencies, determined to refashion healthcare in its own rapacious image. Obama’s domestic promises and accomplishments, including Obamacare, were anemic at best. The policies he enacted only further muddied the waters with esoteric taxes, shortsighted giveaways, and bureaucratic hurdles.  Meanwhile, the physical and mental health of the nation continues to erode. 

Corporate Democrats argue that Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, the ACA turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more.  Since the law was enacted, the average price for a family health policy has risen by $2,200. Patient out-of-pocket hospitalization costs are also increasing and have now reached $329 billion.[3] The ACA is riddled with loopholes benefiting the private insurers who actually wrote the bill. After Obama left office, 28 million people remained uninsured. Rather than healthcare spending lessening, as Obama promised, it has exploded.  Since Trump took his place upon the throne, an additional 7 million Americans fell into medical hardship and joined the uninsured.[4] Over five percent of American children under 18 remain uninsured.[5] These figures are in no way indicative of a “strong economy.” 

Clearly, a universal healthcare program would require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employs approximately half a million people. Yet the private health insurers’ profits continue to surge. For the first three months of 2017, the top five for-profit insurers collected $4.5 billion in net earnings.[6] Yet this seems conservatively low. Last year, Modern Healthcare reported that United Health alone cracked the $200 billion revenue mark in 2017, showing a 30 percent profit increase.[7]  And none of this extreme wealth went directly towards preventing disease. It is all a middle-man scam.   

Democrats are becoming more sharply divided over the matter of universal healthcare. It will be a critical issue for Democrats looking to enter the White House in 2020, and corporate Democrats beholden to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries will face harsh opposition for reelection. Nancy Pelosi fills much of her campaign war chest with contributions from the healthcare industry, which amounted to $1.18 million last election cycle.[8]  According to Kaiser Healthcare News, the top three Democratic House leaders — Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn – have collected over $2.3 million in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry since the 2008 election. Hoyer in particular receives more PAC financing from drugmakers than any other member of Congress.[9] 

Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost.  Although there is already a socialized medical system in place — every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it — fiscal conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network, including the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University, are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. 

Government medical coverage already reaches between 38-46 percent of Americans, according to the US Census Bureau.[10] The Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; it would quickly be offset by enormous savings as the years pass. 

In one analysis, “the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage.”[11]

High administrative costs overshadow all aspects of US healthcare, not just the insurance industry. Twenty-five percent of hospital spending is administrative, compared to 16 percent in the UK. In 2015, CNBC reported that $275 billion was wasted in insurance paperwork. In addition, there are billing services, which in 2012 averaged $471 billion to physicians, hospitals, supply services, and private and public insurers. 

Therefore, the private insurance industry and private billing services would have to be either removed from the equation altogether or radically reformed in order to comply with federal rules rather than dictating them.  The Green Party’s Dr. Margaret Flowers, the national coordinator of Health Over Profit for Everyone, argues that a single payer system is “the best way to put private insurers on the margins of our healthcare system and to control the pharmaceutical industry” as well as their exorbitant drug prices.[12] 

Indeed, a universal healthcare system would increase federal spending. But at the same time, independent analyses indicate it would reduce the nation’s total healthcare costs, a critical goal we should be striving for. Compared to other nations, the US spends a disproportionate amount on healthcare.  According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in 2017, the US spent approximately $10,740 per person.[13] However, as we will note below, this is a misleading figure. It conceals the deeper problems running through the system.  Compare this to Switzerland, the second highest per capita spender at $8,000, or 28 percent less.  At present, healthcare accounts for 18% of the US’ GDP, an unsustainable figure as costs increase. After the US and Switzerland, per capita expenditures decrease dramatically, with Germany (the third highest) at $5,700.  France, Canada, Belgium, Japan, Australia and the UK each spend less than half what the US does.[14]

An investigative review published by The Atlantic found that more than half of healthcare spending goes to only five percent of patients! If this money were equally distributed, then the $10,740 per capita expenditure for every adult and child might make sense. The writer calls this tiny segment of patients who dominate health costs the “Platinum Patients.”[15]  Most of these medical “frequent flyers” are the elderly and the chronically ill who have reached the final months or days of their lives.[16] This is where tens of billions of dollars in care and treatment are spent annually. This segment of patients is also the most lucrative for private insurers, hospitals and doctors – patients whose charts can be larded with unnecessary diagnostic tests, drug prescriptions and medical procedures to further scam the system. 

Funding a National Health Program would primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. The Green New Deal proposed by Senator Sanders and the new young Democrat progressives in the House would tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. Life, including healthcare, was affordable then.

But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional twenty new taxes that were levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts.  The entire ACA was messy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.  And the people who suffered the most from these hidden details, yet were mandated by law to purchase private insurance, were those that just missed the poverty line cutoff. 

Other public health costs are completely out of kilter, presenting a completely avoidable drain on the system. The fact that Obamacare created and strengthened two parallel systems — federal and private — with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste. 

A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. The energy behind the younger generation of Democrat legislators is admirable, but we question whether they possess the wisdom to address the fullness of our health crisis. We must look at the crisis holistically and in a systemic way.  Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, may only reduce costs, possibly only temporarily. It will not curtail nor slash escalating rates of disease. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans’ poor state of health. We must not shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model must structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending. 

For example, years ago, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, noted that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease “ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures.”[17]

On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation’s $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending.[18] 

The rate of autism has increased 15 percent in only a two year period. It now stands at 1 in 28 boys (2.7 percent) and 1 in 152 girls.[19] The CDC estimates that 1 in 40 children between 3 and 17 years of age are autistic.[20]  In 2015, the economic burden of autism disorders was $268 billion; it is expected to almost double to $461 billion by 2025.[21]  There are no signs that this alarming trend is slowing or stopping; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to search honestly and conscientiously for the underlying causes of this epidemic.

All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry’s unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence.  Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require an overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the Centers for Disease Control, a thoroughly compromised and corrupt agency that cries out for demolition and rebuilding. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests.

It will also require placing all private corporate interests and their lobbyists on the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to avoid gross conflicts of interest. This would be the correct approach; however, we have little faith that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, are willing to undertake such actions. 

Most important, America’s healthcare system, as well as the Green New Deal, almost completely ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs – that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries’ bottom line.  Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics. 

This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health.  Unfortunately, unlike Europe, the US continues to permit numerous toxic chemicals, including many known carcinogens, to find their way into common everyday products. Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that “the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different” when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products.[22]  Whereas the EU has banned 1328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11.  The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.[23]  

Other toxic chemicals are commonly used in the American food industry. Potassium bromate and azodicarbonamide (ADA) are frequently found in baked foods, yet both are banned in Europe due to cancer risks.  Attempts to ban potassium bromate from breads and buns, pastry dough, and pizzas started twenty years ago, yet the fast food industry continues to use it extensively. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled the chemical a likely human carcinogen.  Likewise, the FDA continues to argue that azodicarbonamide, or ADA, a whitening agent used in flour, is safe, although animal studies have also revealed carcinogenic activity.[24]  Other health-threatening chemicals used in raising farm animals, such as genetically engineered bovine growth hormone and ractopamine (used to increase metabolic weight gain in cows, pigs and turkeys), are also prohibited in the EU but not the US.[25] 

These are only a few among hundreds of chemicals and food additives that the FDA lists as safe but the EU has banned. One reason Europeans are so much healthier than Americans is because their governments take more immediate measures and step in once a chemical is shown to pose serious health risks. This is one preventative measure the US must adopt in order to reduce avoidable healthcare costs. Corporations should no longer be given a free pass to poison our population. There are no safe levels for any carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting chemical, and that applies across the board – for every healthy and sickly man, woman and child. 

Next, the food Americans consume must be evaluated for its health benefits. We see no problem in taxing the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We would also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products.  All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such a tax measure would help pay for a medical New Deal, it should be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. The public must understand the reasons why their favorite junk foods are being taxed and the health risks they face by consuming them. 

Measures to improve the quality of Americans’ health demand a harsh reality check. After acknowledging that $3.4 trillion is being spent on American healthcare every year, we must look at how it is being spent. It is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that our suggestions will be taken seriously. Ultimately, the best solution is to remove the extravagant profit motive from the system, eliminate the private insurance and billing industries completely, and invest in a national preventative health program. Preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.  

Physicians are also forced into a bind, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources.  In 2010, $55.6 billion (2.4%) of annual healthcare spending went towards medical liability insurance. It is time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today’s doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. Forbes reports that the cost of medical malpractice runs at about $55 billion per year.[26]  This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides.  In 2017, $200 billion was spent on unnecessary medical tests, compared to $6.8 billion just 6 years earlier. The blowback has been a tragic rise in medical errors, patient injuries and deaths. 

According to a 2017 review by Dr. Raj Gopalan, vice president of Innovation and Clinical Informatics at Wolters Kluwer, there are at least two million confirmed adverse drug reactions in the US every year, causing 100,000 deaths. These medication errors and complications add an additional $136 billion to the US’s annual healthcare bill.[27] Furthermore, there is the loss of work and productivity due to medical error. The Journal of Health Care Finance estimates that every year, 10 million work days valued at approximately $1.2 billion are lost due to measurable medical errors. The reality is likely much worse, and an earlier analysis by Loyola University Medical School estimated that the total economic impact across the board for all losses due to iatrogenic events and deaths is nearly $1 trillion every year.[28]

No-fault insurance is a common-sense scheme that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings. In recent years, reports have indicated that the US is experiencing a shortage of doctors, with too many med school graduates entering highly specialized and lucrative medical professions in order to increase their income. We believe that all medical and nursing education should be free. From the time students graduate, they should receive an excellent living wage, even before proceeding to any specialty – all without the specter of debt looming over their future. 

No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug prices like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, no substantial progress has been made. And now even generic drug prices are skyrocketing, according to a CBS News investigation. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported a “orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.”[29]

For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, “was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700.”[30] The active ingredient in the drug tretinoin costs 80 cents to manufacture, yet a full bottle costs $1,100. Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent mark up when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril’s mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs![31] These numbers show how bloated and rapacious the medical industrial complex is. Drug prices like these are another reason why do not have universal healthcare. 

Medication costs, therefore, need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing scourge of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay. 

The same is true for exorbitant hospital costs. A one dollar bag of intravenous saline can cost up to $546, plus an additional $127 to administer it.[32] A single aspirin pill can cost $30, six times the pharmacy’s cost for a full bottle, if given in the ER.[33]  A Fox News report noted that a visit to the ER for a headache might bankrupt you with over a $17,700 bill, or bilk you with a $24,100 bill for a sprained ankle.[34] Unfortunately, the private insurance industry permits this unchecked price-gouging, and hospitals simply take advantage of the medical services racket.

The chart below summarizes estimated costs that may be saved by converting to a national universal healthcare program. If a truly concerted effort were made to overhaul our system, savings could reach over $2.6 trillion. This figure does not even include the billions in savings that could be achieved if drug price increases were regulated. The current figures pertain to reviews and reports available between 2012-2017.

Regardless of its critics, a single-payer program is completely feasible and well within the nation’s reach. Dean Baker at the Center for Economics and Policy Research states,

“The government already pays for more than half of the nation’s health care bill through Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits and other public sector programs. Getting to Medicare for All would mean covering the other half of current expenses, along with the additional costs of paying for the uninsured and under-insured who are not getting the care they need.”[35]

Finally, we must acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder.  For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The economic metrics used cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means.

Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system “brutal” because it “rations [people] out of the system.”  He defined rationing as “withholding something from someone that is beneficial.”[36] Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects over 35 million people who have been priced out the system and left uninsured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. Out-of-pocket expenses for services insurers refuse to provide can also bankrupt a family. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory. 

We have to be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from the flow of Big Pharma money into their pockets for their campaigns. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level we see in other developed nations’ programs is to remove the drug industry’s rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation. 

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.

Notes

1  https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal-article/2017/jul/last-first-could-us-health-care-system-become-best-world?redirect_source=/publications/in-brief/2017/jul/last-to-first-could-us-health-system-become-best-in-world  

2  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/25/ex-un-chief-ban-kioon-says-us-healthcare-system-is-morally-wrong

3  http://www.actuary.org/content/prescription-drug-spending-us-health-care-system

4  https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-264.html

5  https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-264.html

6  https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insurance-companies-1513302495-18f3710a-c0b4-4ce3-8b7f-894a755e6679.html

7  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/unitedhealth-earnings-up-more-than-30-percent.html

8  https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary/nancy-pelosi?cid=N00007360

9  https://khn.org/news/democrats-taking-key-leadership-jobs-have-pocketed-millions-from-pharma/

10  https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-264.html  

11  http://www.gp.org/single_payer_will_lower_the_total_cost_of_health_care  

12   http://www.gp.org/single_payer_will_lower_the_total_cost_of_health_care  

13  https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html

14  https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-average-wealthy-countries-spend-half-much-per-person-health-u-s-spends

15  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/how-we-spend-3400000000000/530355/

16  Ibid. 

17  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/27/the-u-s-spends-more-on-health-care-than-any-other-country-heres-what-were-buying/?utm_term=.27bd1bc2855e  

18  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/27/the-u-s-spends-more-on-health-care-than-any-other-country-heres-what-were-buying/?utm_term=.27bd1bc2855e

19  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180426141604.htm

20  https://consumer.healthday.com/cognitive-health-information-26/autism-news-51/u-s-autism-rate-rises-to-1-in-40-children-report-739912.html

21  https://www.statista.com/statistics/316036/cost-of-autism-spectrum-disorders-us/

22  https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/banned-europe-safe-us/  

23  https://www.beautybyearth.com/over-1000-toxic-ingredients-banned-in-europe-but-not-in-us/

24  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/well/eat/food-additives-banned-europe-united-states.html

25  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/well/eat/food-additives-banned-europe-united-states.html

26  https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2010/09/07/the-true-cost-of-medical-malpractice-it-may-surprise-you/#6a9856bb2ff5

27  https://www.healthitoutcomes.com/doc/the-high-cost-of-medication-errors-0001

28  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23155743

29 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamacare-60-minutes/

30  https://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2017/3/As-We-See-It/Page-01

31  https://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2016/3/New-England-Journal-of-Medicine-Exposes-Generic-Price-Scandal/Page-01

32  https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/health/exploring-salines-secret-costs.html

33  https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/outrageous-e-r-hospital-charges-what-to-do

34  https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/outrageous-e-r-hospital-charges-what-to-do

35  https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/04/medicare-for-all-is-not-a-fantasy/  

36  https://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/Exprts_intrvw/u_reinhardt.htm  

During today’s Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on the future of 5G wireless technology and their impact on the American people and economy, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) raised concerns with the lack of any scientific research and data on the technology’s potential health risks.

Blumenthal blasted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—government agencies jointly-responsible for ensuring that cellphone technologies are safe to use—for failing to conduct any research into the safety of 5G technology, and instead, engaging in bureaucratic finger-pointing and deferring to industry.

In December 2018, Blumenthal and U.S. Representative Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18) sent a letter to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr seeking answers regarding potential health risks posed by new 5G wireless technology. At today’s hearing, Blumenthal criticized Carr for failing to provide answers, and instead, just echoing, “the general statements of the FDA, which shares regulatory responsibility for cell phones with the FCC.”  Blumenthal also decried the FDA’s statements as “pretty unsatisfactory.”  A PDF of Carr’s complete response is available here.

During an exchange with wireless industry representatives, Blumenthal asked them whether they have supported research on the safety of 5G technology and potential links between radiofrequency and cancer, and the industry representatives conceded they have not.

Blumenthal stated:

“If you go to the FDA website, there basically is a cursory and superficial citation to existing scientific data saying ‘The FDA has urged the cell phone industry to take a number of steps, including support additional research on possible biological effects of radio frequency fields for the type of signals emitted by cell phones.’ I believe that Americans deserve to know what the health effects are, not to pre-judge what scientific studies may show, and they also deserve a commitment to do the research on outstanding questions.”

“So my question for you: How much money has the industry committed to supporting additional independent research—I stress independent—research? Is that independent research ongoing? Has any been completed? Where can consumers look for it? And we’re talking about research on the biological effects of this new technology.”

At the end of the exchange, Blumenthal concluded,

“So there really is no research ongoing.  We’re kind of flying blind here, as far as health and safety is concerned.”

In November 2018, the National Toxicology Program released the final results of the longest and most expensive study to date on cellphones and cancer. Those studies found “some evidence” of a link to cancer, at least in male rats. However, the study only focused on the risks associated with 2G and 3G cell phones.

The latest 5G wireless technology relies on the deployment of many more new antennas and transmitters that are clustered lower to the ground and closer to homes and schools. There has been even more limited research with respect to the health ramifications of 5G technology, and the FCC has thus far failed to adequately explain how they have determined 5G is safe.

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Today, the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota issued a landmark dismissal [1] of all claims against all defendants in the USD$900 million case against Greenpeace and others brought by Energy Transfer [2].

The decision to dismiss this lawsuit, which alleged Greenpeace engaged in racketeering and defamation, sends a strong message to all companies trying to silence their critics with baseless legal claims.

Greenpeace USA General Counsel Tom Wetterer said in response to the decision:

“Justice has been served. This is a huge victory not just for Greenpeace but for anyone and everyone who has ever stood up against powerful corporate interests. Today’s decision to dismiss Energy Transfer’s baseless lawsuit against Greenpeace and others sends a clear message to companies trying to muzzle civil society that corporate overreach will not be tolerated. It is also a check on corporate efforts to silence dissent.

“We are confident that this decision will set a precedent that deters Energy Transfer and other corporations from abusing the legal system in their quest to bully those who speak truth to power. Greenpeace will continue to fight for the ability of all people to advocate for human rights and the planet.”

The decision to dismiss this case comes in a key moment of growing resistance to pipelines around the world. In just the past year more than 400,000 people around the globe have supported Greenpeace’s demand that leading global banks not fund Energy Transfer and tar sands pipelines in light of the threats they pose to human rights, Indigenous rights, and the climate.

The racketeering case dismissed today is the second case filed by Trump’s go-to law firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, against Greenpeace on behalf of corporate interests. In 2016, Resolute Forests Products filed a strikingly similar strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) for CAD$300 million through Kasowitz [3]. Last month, Judge Tigar dismissed the RICO, and most of the other, claims against all Greenpeace entities. In 2013, the logging giant filed a separate defamation case against Greenpeace Canada and two staff members in Ontario. This case is still pending and Greenpeace Canada continues to vigorously fight the remaining claims.

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Just leaked today that Senator McConnell, Trump’s echo, has indicated that Trump will declare a national emergency today, even as he signs a compromise bill with Pelosi and the Dems to fully fund his Wall. Mainstream media thinks this is big time news. Comes as a surprise. But I predicted it back on January 7, 2019 in a tweet @drjackrasmus.com.

To quote myself in response to talk whether Trump will declare a national emergency to get his way on the Wall:

“Can (and will) Trump declare national emergency to fund his wall? Yes and Yes. Dem Congress in 1976 law gave him wide powers. 100s laws since say which. He’ll move $ from Defense budget to wall. Dems to be outmaneuvered again. US slouching further toward dictatorship”

Pelosi and Dems will act indignant. But as the historical record is clear, the Dems gave him this authority decades ago. Congress has been steadily giving up its authority to an Imperial Presidency for decades. Now we’re about to move into an era of legislation by Executive-Presidential action. So much for checks and balances and the basic structure of the US Constitution.

Under the US Constitution only the House of Representatives can initiate spending authorization and define how much will be spent on what. That era is over. Now the President can declare emergency and spend on whatever he wants. That’s another drift in US democracy toward dictatorship. That is, where the executive accretes legislative function to itself and ‘dictates’ what will be spent on what and when.

Trump has deep proclivities toward tyranny (ie. sees himself above the law, the definition of a Tyrant) and toward rule by dictate (where he declares law and spends as he wants, not the elected legislature).

So what will the Dems do now? Essentially nothing, I predict. They will huff and puff and file legal suits and use it all as ammunition for their re-election plans in 2020. But will they impeach Trump? Not a chance. They’ll just hold hearings now until November 2020.

What about the Mueller Report and forthcoming indictment? Will they use that to go after Trump now that he’s taking over some of their legislative function by declaring national emergency? Don’t expect much there either. There already are signs that the Mueller ‘Report’ the public gets to see will be an abridged, edited, and carefully whitewashed version. The real report will be shown to only a select few Congresspersons, in secret behind closed doors. And they will have to agree not to discuss it publicly as a condition of reading it. But without public pressure, nothing will happen. There can be no Democracy without public access to what the government is doing.

Meanwhile the Neocons are back in the drivers’ seat in the Trump administration. Bolton, Pompeio, Navarro, Lighthizer,–with mouthpieces like Coulter, Hannity, and others shouting in the background–are running policy. On the foreign policy front, preparations for deploying tactical nuclear war are moving forward, early stages of a proxy invasion of Venezuela are underway, the US is pulling out of treaties with Russia and moving forces closer to its border, phony negotiations pervade the mainstream media, for public consumption, about negotiations with North Korea, the US is adopting a hard line to thwart and stop China technology development, US allies in Europe and elsewhere being ‘brought into line’ to accept US policies or pay the price of sanctions or worse. In short, the US empire is gathering up its loose ends and preparing for a new phase, to restore its global hegemony in a more aggressive foreign policy form.

On the domestic US front, as neoliberal economic policies are being intensified under Trump (i.e. tax cuts for the rich and their corporations, more war spending, more free money from the Fed to subsidize the markets, coming attacks on social security, medicare, educations, etc.) in what is becoming increasing clear is an more aggressive, Neoliberal 2.0 form, the domestic political and Democracy landscape is being whittled away and reconstructed in order to make way and ensure the more aggressive neoliberal economic policies become embedded and institutionalized for another decade.

In other words, what we see happening in the US today in a more aggressive and confrontational US foreign policy, and an intensifying subsidization of capital incomes, amidst an atrophying of Democratic Rights and civil liberties at home. The new, nasty, more aggressive foreign policy and further destruction of US democratic rights are just the consequence of Trump’s new, aggressive neoliberal economic policies. The US elite know the next recession, coming soon, will significantly exacerbate the economic problems at home, while intensifying the political instability abroad. And they are preparing–at home and abroad.

Trump’s imminent declaration of national emergency to get his wall–a big leap toward circumventing the US House and Congress and the US Constitution–is just the latest event in this historical economic and political drift.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression, Clarity Press, August 2017, and the forthcoming ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, also by Clarity Press, 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The US health system is the most high cost and dysfunctional health care system in the world. The reason is that it is privatized. In the rest of Western civilization the system is socialized.

The reason health care is socialized in civilized countries is not only to provide health care to citizens who otherwise could not afford it, but also to reduce the cost. In a privatized system, a profit has to be turned at every level: the general practitioner, the specialist, the diagnostic facility, the ambulance service, the emergency room, the hospital, the hospice, the health insurance company. All of these levels of profit build up the cost.

In the hybrid system with which the US is afflicted, regulation drives the cost even higher. It is not only government regulation because of Medicare and Medicaid, but also private regulation imposed by private insurance companies. In America, alone in the world, medical care comes second to paperwork.

Doctors working in medical clinics have to dictate the results of each patient seen, the diagnosis, the treatment, and so forth, in sufficient detail to satisfy the payer of the bill, whether public or private. The dictation time eats into the doctor’s treatment time. In other words, the paper work requirements reduce the amount of time the doctor has to see patients. The paperwork also requires nurses to organize and compile it. And this is not the end of it.

Health care corporations employ people to monitor the doctors to make sure the physican dictates enough to create a record that Medicare, Medicaid, or the private insurance company will accept as evidence of billable service.

Even a libertarian economist who views the massive costs upon costs of the American system cannot find any economies to attribute to private enterprise.

In a socialized health care system, none of the many levels require a profit in order to continue to operate. As there is no billing of Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies by private corporations, there is no need for the high cost of preventing fraud. Nurses and doctors can attend to patients instead of paperwork. Of course, in any system cost-saving regulations can expand cost-producing bureaucracies, and no system will work well without moral and virtue rules that instill a compassionate and responsible attitude on the part of health care providers.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the cost of health care in the US would diminish dramatically if the US had a socialized health care system in which there is no profit, no paperwork, only health care. And this is why it will not happen.

In the US system, health care is profitable to private interests. They are concerned with their profits, not with the cost of health care to people. It is profitable to all the fraud prevention, public and private, bureaucracies. It is profitable to the members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, as private health care companies are major donors.

If you doubt this, consider that Democrats, or many of them, say that they are for a single payer health care system, by which they mean a socialized health care system in which there is no profit and no regulatory cost. But they are not really in favor of such a system as the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi’s health policy aide made clear to private insurance company executives. Pelosi’s health care adviser, Wendell Primus, pledged Democratic Party support to the insurance industry in the fight against single-payer health care.

Pelosi’s plan is to achieve “universal coverage” via the Obama Affordable Care Act. This misnamed legislation achieves health coverage for Americans by mandating that they purchase private insurance policies for their health insurance. Many Americans have not, because the premium, together with the deductible and co-pays are so high that few can afford to use the policy. The perfect deal for a health insurance company is to collect a premium on a policy whose deductibles and copays make it too expensive to use.

What we need to ask outselves is: Why can’t we Americans get affordable health care? A socialized system could pay high salaries to doctors and nurses to guarantee their commitment. Their education could be subsidized. Pharmaceutical companies can be nationalized. Scientists dedicated to finding cures don’t care who they work for. The entrepreneural argument is a red herring.

The answer is that government does not serve the citizens. Government is just another private business that serves those whose campaign contributions put senators, representatives, and presidents in office. What liberals, conservatives, and libertarians do not understand is that government is a private activity like a capitalist business, not a public organization.

Government is just another privatized sector. It serves those who pay. As people needing health care can seldom pay, the system is in the hands of the private insurance companies.
The only “health care reform” that America will ever have is the reform that drives the cost of healthcare even higher.

Pelosi’s sellout to the insurance companies is more evidence that the concept of “public goods,” that is, the government’s provision of goods and services to citizens, needs rethinking. For example, consider national defense. In what sense is the massive US military/security complex budget a public good as contrasted with taxpayer-provided profit to a small number of subsidy-seeking private corporations? In what sense does US foreign policy serve the public as opposed to the armaments corporations, oil companies, and Israel Lobby? It is impossible to look at the US government budget and not see that it feeds private interest groups with strong lobbies.

Consider the symbiotic relationship between foreign policy and the military/security budget. The massive Pentagon budget and the massive power of the CIA and NSA require a dangerous enemy. Thus, US foreign policy creates the “Russian threat,” the “Chinese threat,” the “Iranian threat,” the “Al Qaeda threat,” the “ISIS threat,” the “Saddam Hussein threat,” the “Gaddafi threat,” the “Assad threat,” and now the “Maduro threat.” In order to maximize profits, the military/security complex increases the risks of war. In other words, the profits come at an expense greater than the budget imposed on taxpayers. In the case of war with Russia, the cost is the destruction of life on earth.

Propaganda serves the same role in democracies as it does in dictatorships. The public have to be deceived in order for citizens to accept an agenda that serves others than themselves. The public’s patriotism and gullibility pave the way for propaganda’s success. Currently Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton are preparing the public for US military intervention in Venezuela with false claims that Cuba has taken control of Venezuela’s security apparatus, and Hezbollah and Iran have active cells operating in Venezuela. This alleged risk to America has “to be taken down” in Venezuela and “all across the globe.”

All over the Western world the public has been sold out by government; yet only in France is there effective protest.

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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.

Featured image is from PYMNTS.com

On February 13, the Syrian Air Force conducted a series of airstrikes on ISIS hideouts in the area of Kiribat al-Hosn in the Damascus desert. The airstrikes reportedly came in response to a recent increase in the activity of ISIS cells in this area.

The Damascus desert as well as the desert areas near the US-occupied al-Tanf zone are still a safe haven for a few hundred ISIS-linked militants. Just last week, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) eliminated a group of 6 ISIS members involved in a reconnaissance operation near the administrative border of al-Suwayda province.

The situation in the desert area may deteriorate even further if the SAA and its allies do not employ the measures needed to neutralize this threat.

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Meanwhile, reports appeared that the SAA has sent reinforcements to southern Syria. The reason for the deployment givem by some pro-government outlets is the reinforcement of SAA positions near the Golan Heights, where Israeli strikes recently took place. However, the very same forces can be used to secure the countryside of al-Suwayda in the event of the growing ISIS threat from the desert.

In the Idlib de-escalation zone, the SAA conducted one of the most intense shellings of militant positions since the start of the year. According to pro-opposition sources, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies came under fire in al-Lataminah, Lahaya, Maarkaba, al-Buwaydah, Qalaat al-Madiq, al-Hwaiz, al-Twinah and al-Hurriyah in northern Hama as well as Sukayk, Khan Shaykhun and al-Tamanah in southern Idlib.

The Syrian state media said that the strikes were a response to violations of the ceasefire regime by militant groups. In turn, militants accused the Assad government of violating the de-escalation deal.

It should be noted that Russia has recently toughened its attitude towards the de-escalation zone issue. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov officially stated that that the Idlib agreement is only a temporary measure and “no agreement suggests the endless preservation of this terrorist nest in Syrian territory”.

The US-led coalition is working to establish a permanent military base in southwestern Iraq, near the country’s border with both Syria and Jordan, the Iraqi al-Maalomah news outlet reported on February 13 citing a source in the province of al-Anbar. This would not be the first attempt of the US military to fortify its presence in this part of the country. In November 2018, a commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units revealed that the coalition had tried to occupy the H3 airbase, known as Abu Rida al-Baldaui, in western al-Anbar.

These actions are a part of the wider effort to establish an infrastructure allowing the US military to control key highways linking Syria and Iraq. On February 3, US President Donald Trump openly declared that despite the Syria withdrawal, US forces will remain in Iraq in order to watch Iran.

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The Royal Navy should be able to “develop a reign of terror down enemy coasts”, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said today.

During a speech outlining military spending priorities, Williamson said:

“In 1940, Winston Churchill said: “Enterprises must be prepared with specially trained troops of the Hunter class who can develop a reign of terror down enemy coasts”.

Our actions mean we will deliver on Churchill’s vision for our Royal Navy and for our Royal Marine commandos.”

According to the National Army Museum, Churchill’s quote ends by proposing a “butcher and bolt policy” of commandos behind enemy lines, “leaving a trail of German corpses behind them”.

Williamson’s speech was interpreted as a show of force against both Russia and China, as he said he would send the military’s new aircraft carrier to the South China Sea.

The Defence Secretary also defended the concept of foreign military intervention, saying that the price of not intervening is often higher than the price of intervening.

Williamson’s “reign of terror” comments are characteristic of the inflammatory language he favours. He was widely mocked when he said that “Russia should go away. It should shut up.”

When asked four times by Richard Madeley if he regretted these words, he failed to answer and Madeley ended the interview.

According to BuzzFeed News, Williamson’s general use of language has angered his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence. One former adviser reportedly said:

“The shooting from the hip and choice of words has raised a few eyebrows because it’s not particularly statesmanlike.

There is a tendency for some who arrive in the department to want to play with the toys and grandstand, which is something to be avoided – it’s not great. The language has been a little bit alarming to those in the services.”

Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith also criticised Williamson’s “sabre-rattling”. In response to his speech, she said:

“The Conservatives have slashed the defence budget by over £9bn in real terms since 2010 and they are cutting armed forces numbers year after year.

“Instead of simply engaging in yet more sabre-rattling, Gavin Williamson should get to grips with the crisis in defence funding that is happening on his watch.”

On the other hand, Campaign Against Arms Trade criticised Williamson’s current planned increase in military spending instead of the cuts of the past eight years.

The anti-arms organisation also objected to Williamson’s comments about increasing “lethality” and “hard power”. Spokesperson Andrew Smith said:

“With the UK at a crossroads, the Government should redefine its role, but that should mean an end to interventionism and the focus on projecting military strength around the world – not more of the same failed policies that have done so much damage.

Williamson rightly condemns those that flout and ignore international law, but the Government is arming and supporting Saudi forces widely accused of violating international humanitarian law in atrocities against Yemen.

At a time when budgets are being squeezed and cut across the country, and when millions are being hit by austerity, the Government is finding even more money for the military.

It’s time for Williamson and his colleagues to take a different view on security. Where the UK, and other rich nations, can make a positive difference is through overseas aid, supporting civilian peace-building efforts, and investing in renewable energy and green technologies to combat climate change, which is the number one threat to our security and that of the world.”

Williamson is rumoured to be planning either a Tory leadership run himself, or to support another candidate in exchange for a top job under the next leader.

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Joe Lo is a reporter for Left Foot Forward.

Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment.

What makes this particular nuke new is the fact that it carries a far smaller destructive payload than the thermonuclear monsters the Trident has been hosting for decades — not the equivalent of about 100 kilotons of TNT as previously, but of five kilotons. According to Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the W76-2 will yield “only” about one-third of the devastating power of the weapon that the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Yet that very shrinkage of the power to devastate is precisely what makes this nuclear weapon potentially the most dangerous ever manufactured. Fulfilling the Trump administration’s quest for nuclear-war-fighting “flexibility,” it isn’t designed as a deterrent against another country launching its nukes; it’s designed to be used.  This is the weapon that could make the previously “unthinkable” thinkable.

There have long been “low-yield” nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear powers, including ones on cruise missiles, “air-drop bombs” (carried by planes), and even nuclear artillery shells — weapons designated as “tactical” and intended to be used in the confines of a specific battlefield or in a regional theater of war. The vast majority of them were, however, eliminated in the nuclear arms reductions that followed the end of the Cold War, a scaling-down by both the United States and Russia that would be quietly greeted with relief by battlefield commanders, those actually responsible for the potential use of such ordnance who understood its self-destructive absurdity.

Ranking some weapons as “low-yield” based on their destructive energy always depended on a distinction that reality made meaningless (once damage from radioactivity and atmospheric fallout was taken into account along with the unlikelihood that only one such weapon would be used). In fact, the elimination of tactical nukes represented a hard-boiled confrontation with the iron law of escalation, another commander’s insight — that any use of such a weapon against a similarly armed adversary would likely ignite an inevitable chain of nuclear escalation whose end point was barely imaginable. One side was never going to take a hit without responding in kind, launching a process that could rapidly spiral toward an apocalyptic exchange. “Limited nuclear war,” in other words, was a fool’s fantasy and gradually came to be universally acknowledged as such. No longer, unfortunately.

Unlike tactical weapons, intercontinental strategic nukes were designed to directly target the far-off homeland of an enemy. Until now, their extreme destructive power (so many times greater than that inflicted on Hiroshima) made it impossible to imagine genuine scenarios for their use that would be practically, not to mention morally, acceptable. It was exactly to remove that practical inhibition — the moral one seemed not to count — that the Trump administration recently began the process of withdrawing from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, while rolling a new “limited” weapon off the assembly line and so altering the Trident system. With these acts, there can be little question that humanity is entering a perilous second nuclear age.

That peril lies in the way a 70-year-old inhibition that undoubtedly saved the planet is potentially being shelved in a new world of supposedly “usable” nukes. Of course, a weapon with one-third the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where as many as 150,000 died, might kill 50,000 people in a similar attack before escalation even began. Of such nukes, former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was at President Ronald Reagan’s elbow when Cold War-ending arms control negotiations climaxed, said,

“A nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon. You use a small one, then you go to a bigger one. I think nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons and we need to draw the line there.”

How Close to Midnight?

Until now, it’s been an anomaly of the nuclear age that some of the fiercest critics of such weaponry were drawn from among the very people who created it. The emblem of that is the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a bimonthly journal founded after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by veteran scientists from the Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear weapons. (Today, that magazine’s sponsors include 14 Nobel Laureates.) Beginning in 1947, the Bulletin’s cover has functioned annually as a kind of nuclear alarm, featuring a so-called Doomsday Clock, its minute hand always approaching “midnight” (defined as the moment of nuclear catastrophe).

In that first year, the hand was positioned at seven minutes to midnight. In 1949, after the Soviet Union acquired its first atomic bomb, it inched up to three minutes before midnight. Over the years, it has been reset every January to register waxing and waning levels of nuclear jeopardy. In 1991, after the end of the Cold War, it was set back to 17 minutes and then, for a few hope-filled years, the clock disappeared altogether.

It came back in 2005 at seven minutes to midnight. In 2007, the scientists began factoring climate degradation into the assessment and the hands moved inexorably forward. By 2018, after a year of Donald Trump, it clocked in at two minutes to midnight, a shrill alarm meant to signal a return to the greatest peril ever: the two-minute level reached only once before, 65 years earlier. Last month, within days of the announced manufacture of the first W76-2, the Bulletin’scover for 2019 was unveiled, still at that desperate two-minute mark, aka the edge of doom.

To fully appreciate how precarious our situation is today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists implicitly invites us to return to that other two-minutes-before-midnight moment. If the manufacture of a new low-yield nuclear weapon marks a decisive pivot back toward jeopardy, consider it an irony that the last such moment involved the manufacture of the extreme opposite sort of nuke: a “super” weapon, as it was then called, or a hydrogen bomb. That was in 1953 and what may have been the most fateful turn in the nuclear story until now had just occurred.

After the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, the United States embarked on a crash program to build a far more powerful nuclear weapon. Having been decommissioned after World War II, the Pantex plant was reactivated and has been the main source of American nukes ever since.

The atomic bomb is a fission weapon, meaning the nuclei of atoms are split into parts whose sum total weighs less than the original atoms, the difference having been transformed into energy. A hydrogen bomb uses the intense heat generated by that “fission” (hence thermonuclear) as a trigger for a vastly more powerful “fusion,” or combining, of elements, which results in an even larger loss of mass being transformed into explosive energy of a previously unimagined sort. One H-bomb generates explosive force 100 to 1,000 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

Given a kind of power that humans once only imagined in the hands of the gods, key former Manhattan Project scientists, including Enrico Fermi, James Conant, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, firmly opposed the development of such a new weapon as a potential threat to the human species. The Super Bomb would be, in Conant’s word, “genocidal.” Following the lead of those scientists, members of the Atomic Energy Commission recommended — by a vote of three to two — against developing such a fusion weapon, but President Truman ordered it done anyway.

In 1952, as the first H-bomb test approached, still-concerned atomic scientists proposed that the test be indefinitely postponed to avert a catastrophic “super” competition with the Soviets. They suggested that an approach be made to Moscow to mutually limit thermonuclear development only to research on, not actual testing of, such weaponry, especially since none of this could truly be done in secret. A fusion bomb’s test explosion would be readily detectable by the other side, which could then proceed with its own testing program. The scientists urged Moscow and Washington to draw just the sort of arms control line that the two nations would indeed agree to many years later.

At the time, the United States had the initiative. An out-of-control arms race with the potential accumulation of thousands of such weapons on both sides had not yet really begun. In 1952, the United States numbered its atomic arsenal in the low hundreds; the Soviet Union in the dozens. (Even those numbers, of course, already offered a vision of an Armageddon-like global war.) President Truman considered the proposal to indefinitely postpone the test. It was then backed by figures like Vannevar Bush, who headed the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which had overseen the wartime Manhattan Protect. Scientists like him already grasped the lesson that would only slowly dawn on policymakers — that every advance in the atomic capability of one of the superpowers would inexorably lead the other to match it, ad infinitum. The title of the bestselling James Jones novel of that moment caught the feeling perfectly: From Here to Eternity.

In the last days of his presidency, however, Truman decided against such an indefinite postponement of the test — against, that is, a break in the nuke-accumulation momentum that might well have changed history. On November 1, 1952, the first H-bomb — “Mike” — was detonated on an island in the Pacific. It had 500 times more lethal force than the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. With a fireball more than three miles wide, not only did it destroy the three-story structure built to house it but also the entire island of Elugelab, as well as parts of several nearby islands.

In this way, the thermonuclear age began and the assembly line at that same Pantex plant really started to purr.  Less than 10 years later, the United States had 20,000 nukes, mostly H-bombs; Moscow, fewer than 2,000. And three months after that first test, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved that hand on its still new clock to two minutes before midnight.

A Madman-Theory Version of the World

It may seem counterintuitive to compare the manufacture of what’s called a “mini-nuke” to the creation of the “super” almost six decades ago, but honestly, what meaning can “mini” really have when we’re talking about nuclear war? The point is that, as in 1952, so in 2019 another era-shaping threshold is being crossed at the very same weapons plant in the high plains country of the Texas Panhandle, where so many instruments of mayhem have been created. Ironically, because the H-bomb was eventually understood to be precisely what the dissenting scientists had claimed it was — a genocidal weapon — pressures against its use proved insurmountable during almost four decades of savage East-West hostility. Today, the Trident-mounted W76-2 could well have quite a different effect — its first act of destruction potentially being the obliteration of the long-standing, post-Hiroshima and Nagasakitaboo against nuclear use. In other words, so many years after the island of Elugelab was wiped from the face of the Earth, the “absolute weapon” is finally being normalized.

With President Trump expunging the theoretical from Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” — that former president’s conviction that an opponent should fear an American leader was so unstable he might actually push the nuclear button — what is to be done? Once again, nuke-skeptical scientists, who have grasped the essential problems in the nuclear conundrum with crystal clarity for three quarters of a century, are pointing the way. In 2017, the Union of Concerned Scientists, together with Physicians for Social Responsibility, launched Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War, “a national grassroots initiative seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear weapons policy and lead us away from the dangerous path we are on.”

Engaging a broad coalition of civic organizations, municipalities, religious groups, educators, and scientists, it aims to lobby government bodies at every level, to raise the nuclear issue in every forum, and to engage an ever-wider group of citizens in pressing for change in American nuclear policy. Back From the Brink makes five demands, much needed in a world in which the U.S. and Russia are withdrawing from a key Cold-War-era nuclear treaty with more potentially to come, including the New START pact that expires two years from now. The five demands are:

• No to first use of nukes. (Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Adam Smith only recently introduced a No First Use Act in both houses of Congress to stop Trump and future presidents from launching a nuclear war.)

• End the unchecked launch-authority of the president. (Last month, Senator Edward Markey and Representative Ted Lieu reintroduced a bill that would do just that.)

• No to nuclear hair-triggers.

• No to endlessly renewing and replacing the arsenal (as the U.S. is now doing to the tune of perhaps $1.6 trillion over three decades).

• Yes to an abolition agreement among nuclear-armed states.

These demands range from the near-term achievable to the long-term hoped for, but as a group they define what clear-eyed realism should be in Donald Trump’s new version of our never-ending nuclear age.

In the upcoming season of presidential politics, the nuclear question belongs at the top of every candidate’s agenda. It belongs at the center of every forum and at the heart of every voter’s decision. Action is needed before the W76-2 and its successors teach a post-Hiroshima planet what nuclear war is truly all about.

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James Carroll, TomDispatch regular and former Boston Globe columnist, is the author of 20 books, most recently the novel The Cloister (Doubleday). His history of the Pentagon, House of War, won the PEN-Galbraith Award. His memoir, An American Requiem, won the National Book Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Featured image: The W76-2 will be launched aboard Trident II D5 missiles. (Ronald Gutridge/U.S. Navy)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
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Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

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

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

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

The International Red Cross has declined to participate in Washington’s controversial humanitarian aid plan to Venezuela, it was announced this weekend.

“We will not be participating in what is, for us, not humanitarian aid,” stated Colombia’s International Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson, Christoph Harnisch.

The assistance, which is being coordinated by Venezuela’s self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaido, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), is reportedly comprised of US $20 million worth of medical, food, and personal hygiene supplies which are currently being warehoused in the Colombian border city of Cucuta. The Venezuelan government has denied USAID personnel entry into the country, claiming that the aid is being used as a cover for a foreign intervention to install Guaido in Miraflores presidential palace.

Harnisch also raised concerns about the aid being instrumentalized for political ends, calling on parties to have “respect for the term ‘humanitarian.’” Last week, ICRC Director of Global Operations Domink Stillhart had likewise told reporters that he considered the aid to have a “political tone”.

The Red Cross currently provides medical assistance to a number of Venezuelan hospitals under pre-existing and recently expanded international agreements with Maduro’s government.

On Wednesday, ICRC President Peter Maurer told reporters that the body will be doubling its budget to assist the Venezuelan government in countering the effects of the deep economic crisis.

“Our focus is really to, on the one side increase our response to Venezuelans, and on the other hand to keep away from the political controversy and political divisions which are characteristic to the crisis in Venezuela,” Maurer told press in Geneva.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has likewise raised objections to Washington’s “politicised” aid plan.

“Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or other objectives,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York last Wednesday.

UN spokespeople have also recently vowed to increase the budgets of current aid programs carried out in coordination with the Maduro administration.

President Maduro has staunchly rejected US aid, claiming that while Venezuela has problems, it is not “a beggar country.”

He also pointed out that the reported $20 million in US aid pales in comparison to the estimated US $30 million per day the new US oil embargo will cost Venezuela this year. On January 28, US National Security Advisor John Bolton unveiled the latest round of economic sanctions prohibiting corporations under US jurisdiction from purchasing oil from Venezuela’s PDVSA state oil company, which he said will deny the company US $11 billion in revenues in 2019. Bolton also announced a freezing of Houston-based PDVSA subsidiary CITGO’s assets, which are valued at US $7 billion.

“If [the US] wants to help, then lift the sanctions,” Maduro urged at a recent press conference. He also qualified the plan as a media “show” and a “trap” which looks to “justify [foreign] intervention in the country.”

Fears of a direct military intervention in Venezuela have grown in recent weeks after both US President Donald Trump and opposition leader Juan Guaido refused to rule it out.

Adding to these concerns, Venezuelan authorities announced that they confiscated a cache of illegal firearms they say were smuggled into the country from Miami last Tuesday. The 19 assault rifles, 118 explosive charges, 90 radio antennas and six latest generation smartphones arrived on a Boeing 767 cargo flight from the 21 Air company to Valencia airport.

The firearms were confiscated on a cargo plane arriving at Valencia airport from Miami. Photo | Lechuguinos

Maduro has ordered a reinforcement of border security in response to the increased threats, with the armed forces loyally executing his order not to let the USAID personnel enter the country.

He has also been under attack this week following the circulation of a picture of the Tienditas bridge connecting Venezuela and Colombia blocked by tankers, with international commentators accusing him of closing the bridge this week. The bridge was culminated in 2015 but was never opened due to border tensions between Venezuela and Colombia that flared up later that year.

US establishment figures from both sides of the political aisle, including Vice President Mike Pence, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have lined up to back the aid plan, denouncing Maduro for refusing to open Venezuelan borders and urging him to step aside as Venezuela’s leader.

Only a tyrant would prevent the delivery of food and medicine to people he claims to lead. The international community must support Juan Guaido and the National Assembly. It is time for Maduro to step aside and allow a democratic transition. The Venezuelan people deserve better.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 9, 2019

What’s in the aid?

According to a USAID statement released Friday, the aid packages are supposed to “provide relief to Venezuelans coping with severe food and medical shortages.”

USAID is an arm of the US State Department and has been involved in a number of scandals in recent years which have led to its expulsion from Russia for political meddling and Bolivia for conspiracy.

The press release explains that the plan is to supply Venezuelans with vegetable oil, flour, lentils and rice which they claim will feed 5,000 Venezuelans for 10 days.

Also reportedly included in the shipment is ready-to-use food supplements for 6,700 Venezuelan children for two months and high energy bars for 10,000 children for one month.

Equally, the US body says it looks to deliver a 10-day supply of soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other personal hygiene products for 7,500 Venezuelans, as well as emergency medical kits for 10,000 hospitals for 3 months.

No details about proposed distribution plans inside Venezuela nor qualifying criteria for the aid were made public.

Venezuela is entering the sixth year of severe economic contraction caused by a variety of factors, including collapsing oil prices, crippling US-led sanctions, as well as corruption and economic mismanagement.

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Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner from Caracas.

Congress will not support U.S. military intervention in Venezuela despite hints by President Donald Trump that such action had not been ruled out, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said on Wednesday.

“I do worry about the president’s saber rattling, his hints that U.S. military intervention remains an option. I want to make clear to our witnesses and to anyone else watching: U.S. military intervention is not an option,” U.S. Representative Eliot Engel said at the opening of a hearing the OPEC nation.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has to approve foreign military action. Engel also warned about the possible effects on the Venezuelan people of U.S. sanctions on state oil company PDVSA. The United States in January imposed sanctions aimed at limiting President Nicolas Maduro‘s access to oil revenue.

“I appreciate the need to squeeze Maduro,” Engel said. “But the White House must think through the potential repercussions that these sanctions could have on the Venezuelan people if Maduro does not leave office in the coming weeks.”

Testifying at the hearing, Trump’s pick to lead U.S. efforts on Venezuela, former U.S. diplomat and convicted war criminal Elliott Abrams, said Washington would keep up pressure on Maduro and his inner circle by “a variety of means.”

“But we will also provide off-ramps to those who will do what is right for the Venezuelan people,” he said.

Abrams drew intermittent protests at the start of the hearing. “You are a convicted criminal!” one man shouted before being escorted out of the room.

Abrams, assistant secretary of state during the administration of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was convicted in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal. He was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

The United States and its right-wing allies in Latin America have come out in support of a right-wing coup attempt against the Venezuelan government of socialist President Nicolas Maduro after they supported a decision by opposition lawmaker, named Juan Guaido, to declare himself an “interim president” of Venezuela on Jan. 23 in violation of the country’s constitution.

In return, Maduro has repeatedly called for the restoration of talks between his government and the opposition in order to maintain peace and avoid a U.S.-backed coup, or even military intervention by the United States in favor of removing him and placing an unelected right-wing government.

Guiado and his allies Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his National Security advisor have so far responded to such calls by escalation and rejection of any dialogue. They continue to call for the military to intervene, while sources in the United States have revealed that Trump is “seriously considering” military intervention into Venezuela if Maduro does not step down.

To further the pressure, the United States imposed harsh economic sanction on the Venezuelan oil industry and its national oil company, while also blocking the bank accounts of the Venezuelan state in the United States, vowing to only remove such restrictions when Guiado achieves control of the state institutions.

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In recent weeks, the chances of a dreaded no-deal Brexit occurring have increased exponentially ahead of the deadline on March 29th.

A new study has looked into that scenario’s potential impact on jobs across the world. Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the analysis was carried out by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), focusing on 56 industrial sectors across 43 countries while assuming a 25 percent drop in EU exports to the UK in the event of a hard Brexit.

It found that Germany could lose the most jobs with around 103,000 threatened if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Even though Europe’s economic powerhouse could be impacted most in terms of the sheer number of jobs, the situation is different when it comes to the share of total employment threatened.

In this case, only 0.24 percent of Germany’s workforce would be under threat compared to 1.03 percent of all jobs in Ireland. That’s despite “only” 19,800 Irish jobs potentially being impacted.

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US presidents have bombed or invaded places like Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Sudan to distract from domestic scandals or to gain a quick boost in popularity. But, do Canadian politicians also pursue regime change abroad to be cheered on by the dominant media as decisive leaders?

In a discussion on regime change in Venezuela after last Monday’s “Lima Group” meeting in Ottawa, Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole praised Canadian policy but added that the Liberals used the meeting of countries opposed to Nicolas Maduro’s government to drown out criticism of their foreign policy. O’Toole claimed the “Lima Group” meeting was “put together quite quickly and I think there are some politics behind that with some of the foreign affairs challenges the Trudeau government has been having in recent months.” In other words, O’Toole believes the Liberals organized a gathering that concluded with a call for the military to oust Venezuela’s elected president to appear like effective international players.

Understood within the broader corporate and geopolitical context, O’Toole’s assessment appears reasonable. After being criticized for its China policy, the Liberals have been widely praised for their regime change efforts in Venezuela. In a sign of media cheerleading, CTV News host Don Martin began his post “Lima Group” interview with foreign minister Chrystia Freeland by stating “the Lima summit has wrapped and the object of regime change is staying put for the time being” and then he asked her “is [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro any step closer to being kicked out of office as a result of this meeting today?” Later in the interview Martin applauded the “Lima Group’s” bid “to put the economic pincers around it [Venezuela’s economy] and choking it off from international transactions.”

In recent days Ben Rowswell, a former Canadian ambassador in Caracas, has been widely quoted praising the Liberals’ leadership on Venezuela.

“It’s clear that the international community is paying attention to what Canada has to say about human rights and democracy,” Rowswell was quoted as saying in an article titled “Trudeau’s Venezuela diplomacy is a bright spot amid China furor”.

Rowswell heads the Canadian International Council, which seeks to “integrate business leaders with the best researchers and public policy leaders”, according to its billionaire financier Jim Balsillie. Long an influential voice on foreign policy, CIC hosted the above-mentioned forum with O’Toole that also included the Liberal’s junior foreign minister Andrew Leslie and NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière. CIC’s post “Lima Group” meeting forum was co-sponsored with the Canadian Council of the Americas, which is led by Kinross, Kinross, ScotiaBank, KPMG and SNC Lavalin. On the day of the “Lima Group” meeting CCA head Ken Frankel published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail headlined “Venezuela crisis will be a true test of Canada’s leadership in the hemisphere.” Frankel told CPAC he was “always supportive of Canadian leadership in the Hemisphere” and “the Venezuela situation has presented … a perfect opportunity for the Trudeau government to showcase the principles of its foreign policy.”

At the CCA/CIC forum Laverdière made it clear there’s little official political opposition to Ottawa’s regime change efforts. The NDP’s foreign critic agreed with Canada’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela, as she did on Twitter, at a press scrum and on CPAC during the day of the “Lima Group” meeting in Ottawa. (Amidst criticism from NDP activists, party leader Jagmeet Singh later equivocated on explicitly recognizing Guaidó.)

With the NDP, Conservatives, CIC, CCA, most media, etc. supporting regime change in Venezuela, there is little downside for the Liberals to push an issue they believe boosts their international brand. To get a sense of their brashness, the day of the “Lima Group” meeting the iconic CN Tower in Toronto was lit up with the colours of the Venezuelan flag. A tweet from Global Affairs Canada explained, “As the sun sets on today’s historic Lima Group meeting, Venezuela’s colours shine bright on Canada’s CN Tower to show our support for the people of Venezuela and their fight for democracy.”

The Liberals drive for regime change in Venezuela to mask other foreign-policy problem is reminiscent of Stephen Harper’s push to bomb Libya. Facing criticism for weakening Canada’s moral reputation and failing to win a seat on the UN Security Council, a Canadian general oversaw NATO’s war, seven  CF-18s participated in bombing runs and two Royal Canadian Navy vessels patrolled Libya’s coast.

The mission, which began six weeks before the 2011 federal election, may have helped the Conservatives win a majority government. At the time Postmedia published a story titled “Libya ‘photo op’ gives Harper advantage: experts” and Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom published a commentary titled “Libyan war could be a winner for Harper”.  He wrote:

“War fits with the Conservative storyline of Harper as a strong, decisive leader. War against a notorious villain contradicts opposition charges of Conservative moral bankruptcy. The inevitable media stories of brave Canadian pilots and grateful Libyan rebels can only distract attention from the Conservative government’s real failings.”

Similar to Venezuela today, the regime change effort in Libya was unanimously endorsed in Parliament (three months into the bombing campaign Green Party MP Elizabeth May voted against a second resolution endorsing a continuation of the war).

“It’s appropriate for Canada to be a part of this effort to try to stop Gadhafi from attacking his citizens as he has been threatening to do,’’ said NDP leader Jack Layton.

After Moammar Gaddafi was savagely killed six months later, NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel released a statement noting,

“the future of Libya now belongs to all Libyans. Our troops have done a wonderful job in Libya over the past few months.”

Emboldened by the opposition parties, the Conservatives organized a nationally televised post-war celebration for Canada’s “military heroes”, which included flyovers from a dozen military aircraft. Calling it “a day of honour”, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the 300 military personnel brought in from four bases:

“We are celebrating a great military success.”

Today Libya is, of course, a disaster. It is still divided into various warring factions and hundreds of militias operate in the country of six million.

But who in Canada ever paid a political price for the destruction of that country and resulting destabilization of much of the Sahel region of Africa?

A similar scenario could develop in Venezuela. Canadian politicians’ push for the military to remove the president could easily slide into civil war and pave the way to a foreign invasion that leads to a humanitarian calamity. If that happened, Canadian politicians, as in Libya, would simply wash their hands of the intervention.

Canadians need to reflect on a political culture in which governing parties encourage regime change abroad with an eye to their domestic standing.

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The parallels between aspects of the Contra scandal and the current situation in Venezuela are striking, particularly given the recent “outrage” voiced by mainstream media and prominent U.S. politicians over Maduro’s refusal to allow U.S. “humanitarian aid” into the country.

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Two executives at the company that chartered the U.S. plane that was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela last week have been tied to an air cargo company that aided the CIA in the rendition of alleged terrorists to “black site” centers for interrogation. The troubling revelation comes as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has rejected a U.S. “humanitarian aid” convoy over concerns that it could contain weapons meant to arm the country’s U.S.-backed opposition.

Last Tuesday, Venezuelan authorities announced that 19 rifles, 118 ammo magazines, 90 radios and six iPhones had been smuggled into the country via a U.S. plane that had originated in Miami. The authorities blamed the United States government for the illicit cargo, accusing it of seeking to arm U.S.-funded opposition groups in the country in order to topple the current Maduro-led government.

A subsequent investigation into the plane responsible for the weapons caché conducted by McClatchyDC received very little media attention despite the fact that it uncovered information clearly showing that the plane responsible for the shipment had been making an unusually high number of trips to Venezuela and neighboring Colombia over the past few weeks.

Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based analyst, told McClatchy in a telephone interview that the plane, which is operated by U.S. air cargo company 21 Air, had been “flying between Philadelphia and Miami and all over the place, but all continental U.S.” during all of last year. However, Watkins noted that “all of a sudden in January, things changed” when the plane began making trips to Colombia and Venezuela on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day.

According to Watkins’ analysis, this single plane had conducted 40 round-trip flights from Miami International Airport to Caracas and Valencia — where the smuggled weapons had been discovered — in Venezuela, as well as to Bogota and Medellin in Colombia in just the past month.

Publicly available flight radar information shows that the plane, although it has not returned to Venezuela since the discovery of its illicit cargo, has continued to travel to Medellin, Colombia, as recently as this past Monday.

Multiple CIA ties

In addition to the dramatic and abrupt change in flight patterns that occurred just weeks before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence prompted Venezuelan opposition member Juan Guaidó to declare himself “interim president,” a subsequent McClatchy follow-up investigation also uncovered the fact that two top executives at the company that owns the plane in question had previously worked with a company connected to controversial CIA “black sites.”

Indeed, the chairman and majority owner of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, and 21 Air’s director of quality control, Michael Steinke, both have “either coincidental or direct ties” to Gemini Air Cargo, a company previously named by Amnesty International as one of the air charter services involved in a CIA rendition program. In this CIA program, individuals suspected of terrorism were abducted by the intelligence agency and then taken abroad to third-country secret “black sites” where torture, officially termed “enhanced interrogation,” was regularly performed.

Steinke worked for Gemini Air Cargo from 1996 to 1997, according to a 2016 Department of Transportation document cited by McClatchy. Moreno, although he did not work for Gemini, registered two separate business at a Miami address that was later registered to Gemini Air Cargo while the CIA rendition program was active. McClatchy noted that the first business Moreno registered at the location was incorporated in 1987 while the second was created in 2001. Gemini Cargo Logistics, a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, was subsequently registered at that same location in 2005.

21 Air has denied any responsibility for the weapons shipment discovered onboard the plane it operates, instead blaming a contractor known as GPS-Air for the illicit cargo. A GPS-Air manager, Cesar Meneses, told McClatchy that the weapons shipment had been “fabricated” by the Maduro-led government to paint his government as the victim. Meneses also stated that “the cargo doesn’t belong to 21 Air and it doesn’t belong to GPS-Air” and that it had been provided by third parties, whose identities Meneses declined to disclose.

Contras redux?

The revelation that the company that operates the plane caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela has connections to past controversial CIA programs is unlikely to surprise many observers, given the CIA’s decades-long history of funneling weapons to U.S.-backed opposition fighters in Latin America, Southeast Asia and other conflict areas around the globe.

One of the best-known examples of the CIA using airliners to smuggle weapons to a U.S.-backed paramilitary group occurred during the 1980s in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration delivered weapons to the Contra rebels in order to topple the left-leaning Sandinista movement. Many of those weapons had been hidden on flights claiming to be carrying “humanitarian aid” into Nicaragua.

The parallels between aspects of the Contra scandal and the current situation in Venezuela are striking, particularly given the recent “outrage” voiced by mainstream media and prominent U.S. politicians over Maduro’s refusal to allow U.S. “humanitarian aid” into the country. Maduro had explained his rejection of the aid as partially stemming from the concern that it could contain weapons or other supplies aimed at creating an armed opposition force, like the “rebel” force that was armed by the CIA in Syria in 2011.

Though the media has written off Maduro’s concern as unfounded, that is hardly the case in light of the fact that the Trump administration’s recently named special envoy in charge of the administration’s Venezuela policy, Elliott Abrams, had been instrumental in delivering weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, including hiding those weapons in “humanitarian aid” shipments. In subsequent testimony after the scandal broke in the 1980s, Abrams himself admitted to funneling weapons to the Contras in exactly this way.

With the recently uncovered illicit weapons shipment from the U.S. to Venezuela now linked to companies that have previously worked with the CIA in covert operations, Maduro’s response to the “humanitarian aid” controversy is even more justified. Unfortunately for him, the U.S.-backed “interim president,” Juan Guaidó, announced on Monday that his parallel government had received the first “external” source of “humanitarian aid” into the country, but would not disclose its source, its specific contents, nor how it had entered the country.

Esta entrega representa 20 raciones para cada beneficiario, y corresponde a la primera fase de atención a las poblaciones más vulnerables como consecuencia de la crisis humanitaria que estamos enfrentando. pic.twitter.com/nwSRsK6gA2

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) February 11, 2019

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute, and 21st Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss politics on radio and television. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Featured image: A 21 Air cargo plane coast on a runway in Colombia in 2018. Photo | Juan Pardo | Editing by MintPress

The lineup of Democrats who have already declared themselves as candidates for their party’s presidential nomination in 2020 is remarkable, if only for the fact that so many wannabes have thrown their hats in the ring so early in the process. In terms of electability, however, one might well call the seekers after the highest office in the land the nine dwarfs. Four of the would-be candidates – Marianne Williamson a writer, Andrew Yang an entrepreneur, Julian Castro a former Obama official, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Congressman John Delaney – have no national profiles at all and few among the Democratic Party rank-and-file would be able to detail who they are, where they come from and what their positions on key issues might be.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has a national following but she also has considerable baggage. The recent revelation that she falsely described herself as “American Indian” back in 1986 for purposes of career advancement, which comes on top of similar reports of more of the same as well as other resume-enhancements that surfaced when she first became involved in national politics, prompted Donald Trump to refer to her as “Pocahontas.” Warren, who is largely progressive on social and domestic issues, has been confronted numerous times regarding her views on Israel/Palestine and beyond declaring that she favors a “two state solution” has been somewhat reticent. She should be described as pro-Israel for the usual reasons and is not reliably anti-war. She comes across as a rather more liberal version of Hillary Clinton.

And then there is New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, being touted as the “new Obama,” presumably because he is both black and progressive. His record as Mayor of Newark New Jersey, which launched his career on the national stage, has both high and low points and it has to be questioned if America is ready for another smooth-talking black politician whose actual record of accomplishments is on the thin side. One unfortunately recalls the devious Obama’s totally bogus Nobel Peace Prize and his Tuesday morning meetings with John Brennan to work on the list of Americans who were to be assassinated.

Booker has carefully cultivated the Jewish community in his political career, to include a close relationship with the stomach-churning “America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach, but has recently become more independent of those ties, supporting the Obama deal with Iran and voting against anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) legislation in the Senate. On the negative side, the New York Times likes Booker, which means that he will turn most other Americans off. He is also 49 years old and unmarried, which apparently bothers some in the punditry.

California Senator Kamala Harris is a formidable entrant into the crowded field due to her resume, nominally progressive on most issues, but with a work history that has attracted critics concerned by her hard-line law-and-order enforcement policies when she was District Attorney General for San Francisco and Attorney General for California. She has also spoken at AIPAC, is anti-BDS, and is considered to be reliably pro-Israel, which would rule her out for some, though she might be appealing to middle of the road Democrats like the Clintons and Nancy Pelosi who have increasingly become war advocates. She will have a tough time convincing the antiwar crowd that she is worth supporting and there are reports that she will likely split the black women’s vote even though she is black herself, perhaps linked to her affair with California powerbroker Willie Brown when she was 29 and Brown was 61. Brown was married, though separated, to a black woman at the time. Harris is taking heat because she clearly used the relationship to advance her career while also acquiring several patronage sinecures on state commissions that netted her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The most interesting candidate is undoubtedly Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is a fourth term Congresswoman from Hawaii, where she was born and raised. She is also the real deal on national security, having been-there and done-it through service as an officer with the Hawaiian National Guard on a combat deployment in Iraq. Though in Congress full time, she still performs her Guard duty.

Tulsi’s own military experience notwithstanding, she gives every indication of being honestly anti-war. In the speech announcing her candidacy she pledged “focus on the issue of war and peace” to “end the regime-change wars that have taken far too many lives and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.” She referred to the danger posed by blundering into a possible nuclear war and indicated her dismay over what appears to be a re-emergence of the Cold War.

Not afraid of challenging establishment politics, she called for an end to the “illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government,” also observing that “the war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria – which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world.” She then backed up her words with action by secretly arranging for a personal trip to Damascus in 2017 to meet with President Bashar al-Assad, saying it was important to meet adversaries “if you are serious about pursuing peace.” She made her own assessment of the situation in Syria and now favors pulling US troops out of the country as well as ending American interventions for “regime change” in the region.

In 2015, Gabbard supported President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and more recently has criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. Last May, she criticized Israel for shooting “unarmed protesters” in Gaza, but one presumes that, like nearly all American politicians, she also has to make sure that she does not have the Israel Lobby on her back. Gabbard has spoken at a conference of Christians United for Israel, which has defended Israel’s settlement enterprise; has backed legislation that slashes funding to the Palestinians; and has cultivated ties with Boteach as well as with major GOP donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. She also attended the controversial address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2015, which many progressive Democrats boycotted.

Nevertheless, Tulsi supported Bernie Sanders’ antiwar candidacy in 2016 and appears to be completely onboard and fearless in promoting her antiwar sentiments. Yes, Americans have heard much of the same before, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years.

What Tulsi Gabbard is accomplishing might be measured by the enemies that are already gathering and are out to get her. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept describes how NBC news published a widely distributed story on February 1^st, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.”

But the expert cited by NBC turned out to be a firm New Knowledge, which was exposed by no less than The New York Times for falsifying Russian troll accounts for the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to suggest that the Kremlin was interfering in that election. According to Greenwald, the group ultimately behind this attack on Gabbard is The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which sponsors a tool called Hamilton 68, a news “intelligence net checker” that claims to track Russian efforts to disseminate disinformation. The ASD website advises that “Securing Democracy is a Global Necessity.”

ASD was set up in 2017 by the usual neocon crowd with funding from The Atlanticist and anti-Russian German Marshall Fund. It is loaded with a full complement of Zionists and interventionists/globalists, to include Michael Chertoff, Michael McFaul, Michael Morell, Kori Schake and Bill Kristol. It claims, innocently, to be a bipartisan transatlantic national security advocacy group that seeks to identify and counter efforts by Russia to undermine democracies in the United States and Europe but it is actually itself a major source of disinformation.

For the moment, Tulsi Gabbard seems to be the “real thing,” a genuine anti-war candidate who is determined to run on that platform. It might just resonate with the majority of American who have grown tired of perpetual warfare to “spread democracy” and other related frauds perpetrated by the band of oligarchs and traitors that run the United States. We the people can always hope.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

What is happening to Venezuela is a coup d’état and it has nothing to do with democracy, human rights, free and fair elections or international law. The US and Canada represent the antithesis of those values; defying the United Nations Charter and international law by interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Their hands are not clean, and their motives are not pure, because their foreign policy objectives everywhere are to promote the interests of their domestic corporations, oligarchs and war profiteers.

In 2017 the US and Canada formed a posse of vigilantes that they named the Lima Group. The members of the Lima Group are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. Mexico’s newly elected liberal government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has withdrawn from the Lima Group, saying that Mexico follows the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and self-determination in foreign policy. Viva AMLO! The Lima Group makes a mockery out of the United Nations and international law.

The US, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, handpicked the gang members of the Lima Group. Most are rightwing governments, and politically dominated by business-centric oligarchs, and wealthy families just like those that are trying to take control in Venezuela. Fascism, supported by corporations, elites and imperialists are on the march. There is a new wave of anti-immigrant, xenophobic, evangelical, homophobic, and social conservativesgaining power in Latin America, as elsewhere.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Idriss Jazairy specifically condemned the US and Canada for imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela. Jazairy stressed that the economic sanctions are immoral on humanitarian grounds, and they are an illegal attempt to overthrow the internationally recognized sovereign government of Venezuela. On January 31, 2019 the UN released a report that quoted him as saying:

“I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela… Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law…. Economic sanctions are effectively compounding the grave crisis affecting the Venezuelan economy, adding to the damage caused by hyperinflation and the fall in oil prices.”

Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who is also an international expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, said on his website on February 7th the following about the current situation in Venezuela:

“Members of the United Nations are bound by the Charter, articles one and two of which affirm the right of all peoples to determine themselves, the sovereign equality of states, the prohibition of the use of force and of economic or political interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states…… the enormous suffering inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the United States is nothing less than appalling. The economic war against Venezuela, carried out not only by the United States, but also by the Grupo de Lima in clear violation of Chapter 4, Article 19 of the OAS Charter, the financial blockade and the sanctions have demonstrably caused hundreds of deaths directly related to the scarcity of food and medicines resulting from the blockade.”

Zayas also said that what the US, Canada and the mainstream media are doing to Venezuela reminds him of the deliberate disinformation campaign that led to the US, and the “coalitions of the willing” that included Canada anonymously, illegally invading Iraq in 2003, and their destruction of Libya in 2011.

In the case of Libya in 2011, the so-called “no-fly zone” authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was for the intended purpose of bringing about a ceasefire. It specifically forbade any “boots on the ground”, which the US is known to have violated.

The US, Canada and other NATO forces illegally exceeded their UN mandate, and used it as a cover to completely destroy Libya and regime change. It later was learned that the supposed Gaddafi genocide, which the no-fly zone was intended to stop was a hoax. The point is that the US and its junior partners can never be trusted to tell the truth when a lie serves their purposes much better.

Whenever the US and its junior imperial partners resort to pleas of democracy and human rights, an ulterior motive should be assumed. For instance, the little the US and Canada care about democracy, human rights and free elections is shown by their long history of supporting non-democratic governments.

Canada has supported every US regime change project, and the overthrow of democratic governments, which did not conform to their mutual foreign policy objectives. Both countries’ foreign policies prefer corrupt business-centric rightwing repressive governments. Democracy and human rights conflict with the interests and profits of their exploitative and extractive corporations.

Both the US and Canada supported the apartheid government of South Africa right up until the very end; they support the apartheid government of Israel, which is the number one violator of human rights in the world; and they both sell arms and support the most repressive government in the world, Saudi Arabia. Human rights have not been an issue.

The US overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende of Chile, with Canada’s support. Both countries supported the junta regime of Augusto Pinochet, whom was later arrested for crimes against humanity. Both the US and Canada supported the illegitimate coup governments of Haiti in 2004, and in Honduras in 2009. By some estimates, the US (and Canada) support 73% of the dictators in the world. Human rights have not been an issue.

The US and Canada have been trying to overthrow the democratically elected reformist government of Venezuela, known as the Bolivarian Revolution, since 1999. Hugo Chavez’s elections were all certified by the Carter Foundation, the OAS and other legitimate observers. Chavez was elected in free, fair and democratic elections, but that did not matter to the US and Canada. They wanted to overthrow him anyway. Human rights were not an issue.

Democracy, human rights, the right-to-protect, humanitarian interventions and all the other righteous soundbites are just talking points for the US and Canada. They are only used against governments that get in their way, and never used against corrupt business-friendly governments, no matter how oppressive. Paul Jay, a Canadian, who is the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network says that he personally became aware in 2005 of Canada’s involvement in the conspiracy of regime change in Venezuela:

The hypocrisy of US concerns over human rights is on full display in a leaked US State Department memo from Brian Hook to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The memo is titled “Balancing Interests and Values”. The memo does not mince words about human rights concerns being only a tactic to use against adversaries:

“America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered…. allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries…. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them…. pressing those regimes [adversaries] on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

Hook continues his memo by giving Tillerson a history lesson on the art of US hypocrisy from 1940 to 2017.

In other words, rightwing dictators, military juntas, ethnic cleansing, fraudulent elections, human rights violations, political prisoners, torture and murder should be treated differently, and better, with compliant allies. Even when adversaries are democratically elected, they should be roasted in order to “extract costs”, according to Hook…. but not because the US cares about people.

There is no serious doubt about the legitimacy of the more than a dozen elections in Venezuela between 1998 to 2013. That did not prevent the US and Canada from “extracting costs”, and trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez anyway. Given the examples of the US and Canada overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Chile, Haiti and Honduras, the objections to Maduro are unbelievable.

In the past few years, there have been a half-dozen certified democratic elections in Venezuela. The real motives for opposing Maduro must be something else. It is obvious what that something else is. The real motives behind the US and Canada are Venezuela’s massive wealth in oil, gas, and other natural resources, such as gold, copper and coltan.

There are also tremendous profits to be had by bringing Venezuela into the Washington Consensus. US and Canadian banks profit from IMF and World Bank loans. The corrupt politicians and oligarchs steal the loans, and then it is the poor that have to repay them, through higher prices for life’s necessities, reduced wages and government-imposed austerity. The privatization of state-owned enterprises at corrupt fire-sale prices enrich oligarchs and corporations tremendously.

The Washington Consensus also forces unequal trade agreements and currency devaluation on poor countries. The resulting lower prices are used to extract natural resources, monocrops and sweatshop produced products for export. Small farmers are driven off the land because they cannot compete with dumped US and Canadian tax-payer highly-subsidized agricultural products, such as corn and wheat. Those that suffer are the local farmers, the poor, landless and indigenous people, who go from subsistence, to poverty, to wage slavery.

The chaotic political situation in Venezuela has been purposely made worse by the US and Canada. Since Venezuela is “cursed” with natural resources, especially oil, its economy has historically gone from boom to bust depending on international oil prices.

It was low oil prices, endemic poverty, gross inequality, and neoliberal economic policies that favored the rich in the 1990’s, which swept Chavez into power in the 1998 election. A majority of the Venezuelan people elected Hugo Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” of rewriting the constitution, increasing participatory democracy, frequent elections, and implementing social programs for the poor. The Carter Center (as well as the OAS) certified the election, and praised Venezuela’s modern voting systems as one of the best in the world:

“Venezuelans voted peacefully, but definitively for change. With more than 96 percent voting for the two candidates who promised to overhaul the system, Venezuelans carried out a peaceful revolution through the ballot box”, said Jimmy Carter’s Foundation upon Chavez’s victory.

The US opposed Chavez regardless of fair and democratic elections. A surprisingly honest 2005 article in the Professional Journal of the US Army explained why the US opposed Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution for economic and geopolitical reasons:

“Since he was elected president in 1998, Chávez has transformed Venezuelan Government and society in what he has termed a Bolivarian revolution. Based on Chávez’s interpretation of the thinking of Venezuelan founding fathers Simón Bolívar and Simón Rodríguez, this revolution brings together a set of ideas that justifies a populist and sometimes authoritarian approach to government, the integration of the military into domestic politics, and a focus on using the state’s resources to serve the poor—the president’s main constituency.”

“Although the Bolivarian revolution is mostly oriented toward domestic politics, it also has an important foreign policy component. Bolivarian foreign policy seeks to defend the revolution in Venezuela; promote a sovereign, autonomous leadership role for Venezuela in Latin America; oppose globalization and neoliberal economic policies; and work toward the emergence of a multipolar world in which U.S. hegemony is checked. The revolution also opposes the war in Iraq and is skeptical of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The United States has worked fruitfully in the past with Venezuela when the country pursued an independent foreign policy, but the last three policies run directly contrary to U.S. foreign policy preferences and inevitably have generated friction between the two countries.” [Emphasis added.] [See Appendix]

Whether it is Chavez or Maduro, the US, Canada and the oligarchs in Venezuela have been trying to kill the Bolivarian Revolution from when it was an infant in the cradle.

The opposition with the support of imperialists have been trying to get rid of the Bolivarian Revolution with every means imaginable. They have tried a US supported military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. It failed. They tried strikes by the management of the Venezuelan oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. It failed. They tried a recall election in 2004. It failed. Obama tried economic sanctions in 2015. It failed. The US and Canada tried an economic blockade in 2017. It has failed, as of this article. They tried to assassinate Maduro with a drone. It failed.

In 2018 the opposition boycotted the election. Maduro won by a landslide. He had invited the United Nations to be election observers, but the opposition kept the UN away. Other international observers certified the election. Now the opposition complains about the integrity of the election observers. The opposition is making a circus out of elections. The objections by the oligarchs, the US and Canada that the 2018 elections in Venezuela where fraudulent is itself a fraud. Their objectives are to knowingly “extract costs” that Venezuela can ill afford.

The US chose Canada to be the mouthpiece for the Lima Group, but the coup is being directed by imperial powers in Washington. Canadian politeness is not working, and its imperialism is out of the closet where it has been hiding. As Canadian historian Yves Engler puts it, the US carries the big stick in Latin America, and Canada comes along afterwards with the billy club. Engler is referring to Canadian peacekeeping missions, which he exposes as actually policing and counter insurgency missions. Yves Engler has written dozens of books and articles on Canadian imperialism.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be fooling some of the people, some of the time. But he is now under attack at home for corruption. His accusers say that he has obstructed justice in the world-wide corruption scandal involving the powerful international Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin. SNC-Lavalin is a mining, energy and engineering company that is typical of the corrupt face of Canadian imperialism.

Trudeau’s conspiracy with Trump to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Venezuela has unmasked Canada as a second-rate imperial power. Upon closer look, Canada has been protecting its oil and mining companies that have been raping Latin American countries, destroying their environment and poisoning their people for decades. Canadian imperialism has to obey its “deep state” too, as Canadian journalist Bruce Livesey puts it:

“Those who believe the oil industry has become a deep state point to how the political elites, whether Liberal, Conservative or NDP — from Justin Trudeau to Stephen Harper to Rachel Notley — go to bat for the industry….”.

Mining companies as well as oil and gas are a big part of Canada’s “deep state”. They control approximately 50 to 70% of the mines in Latin America, and they are not held accountable in Canadian courts for their destruction to the environment and harm to human beings in foreign countries. They dispossess the indigenous people and poor of their land. They hire goons to threaten, attack and murder those that try to form labor unions, or demonstrate about land confiscation and human rights abuses. Honduras is just one example of what happens when a democratically elected leader is overthrow by a US and Canadian-backed coup; Canadian mining companies move in. It is all exposed in the book “Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras”, by Tyler Shipley.

All extractive industries wound the planet. That happens with relatively more impunity abroad, but capitalism inflicts severe harm at home, too. [Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America. Photo Council on Hemispheric Affairs.]

Dispossessing native people of their land and natural resources comes natural to Canada. After all, like the US it was a settler colonial outpost for the British Empire. Both the US and Canada committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of their mutual Indigenous People. They were even allies and coordinated the genocide. According to historian Andrew Graybill:

“….the NorthWest Mounted Police were created and the Texas Rangers renewed and reorganized in the early 1870s specifically to address the pressing ‘native question’ confronting Texas and western Canada, among the few places where bison still roamed after 1870….. both Austin and Ottawa called on their rural police to manage indigenous populations facing societal collapse….by controlling or denying the Natives access to the bison.”

In other words, both the US and Canada collaborated in killing the buffalo to extinction. It was the coup de grâce for the starving “native question”. [This reminds us that the “settler” capitalist states have been morally despicable practically from inception, all propaganda to the contrary.—Ed ]

Mining is one of Canada’s biggest and most powerful and politically influential industries. Canada has approximately 60% of all mining companies in the world. Canadian companies such as Ascendant Copper, Barrick Gold, Kinder Morgan, and TriMetals Mining have operations in Canada, Latin America and elsewhere. They are continuing the ethnic cleansing of the “native question” in Latin America, and at home. (See map and statistics of Canadian Mining in Latin America.)

Canadian mining and natural resource companies are heavy handed when it comes to First Nations at home. TransCanada Corporation recently was in the news because of its pipeline route, which they are trying to put through First Nation’s land in the Wet’suwet’en territory, in northern British Columbia. On a court order, a militarized unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a road blockade, which the tribal leaders had put up to keep the pipeline company out of their nation. The Mounties whom lacked jurisdiction arrested 14 tribal leaders on their sovereign land.

During the reign of the British Empire, Canada helped the British put down slave rebellions in the Caribbean. Canada was involved in the slave trade, and slavery was legal in Canada until 1834. The products of slavery, such as cotton and sugar were used for trade and to industrialize Canada. When the British conquered New France, the 1760 declaration of surrender signed in Montreal specifically said:

“The Negroes and panis [aborigines] of both sexes shall remain, in their quality of slaves, in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall be at liberty to keep them in their service in the colony, or to sell them; and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman Religion.”

In the 19th century Canadian banking and insurance companies, along with those of the British, monopolized finance in British controlled parts of Latin America. Canada is still financially powerful in the English-speaking Caribbean. For example, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as Sun Life Financial are dominate in the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and Trinidad. After the decline of the British Empire, Canada assumed its natural role as a second-rate imperial power and junior partner for US imperialism.

In the Lima Group, Canada is the US’s junior partner. The US has the leading role from behind the curtain. To prove it, right on cue at the January 4th meeting of the Lima Group, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the curtain back in a video presentation to the group. Pompeo showed the members who they would have to answer to if they did not vote according to Washington’s wishes. The Lima group obeyed, and voted to politically isolate and economically blockade Venezuela, contrary to international law. Leaving nothing to chance, Pompeo again addressed the group from behind the video curtain at their February 4th meeting in Ottawa.

As Christopher Black wrote in New Eastern Outlook:

“The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War. We cannot forget its role in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.”

Black left out many other imperial crimes of the partners in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo, Palestine, Libya, Yemen, etc. The US and Canada are “always there for each other” and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in war and imperialism, in Justin Trudeau’s own words. Even against Cuba!

The current Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland recently referred to Venezuela as being in “Canada’s backyard”. As the SNC-Lavalin case illustrates, the Canadian “backyard” of imperialism also extends to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet Union republics, such as Ukraine.

This is not the 19th century. Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands are not anybody’s back yard. It is insulting, degrading and shows a colonial mentality for the US and Canada to even think about having a backyard.

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This article was originally published on The Greanville Post.

David William Pear is a columnist writing on U.S. foreign policy, economic and political issues, human rights and social issues. David is a Senior Contributing Editor of The Greanville Post (TGP) and a prior Senior Editor for OpEdNews (OEN). David has been writing for The Real News Network (TRNN) and other publications for over 10 years. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete (Florida) for Peace, CodePink, and the Palestinian-led non-violent organization International Solidarity Movement. 

Featured image: A Hands Off Venezuela protest in London on January 28, 2018. (Socialist Appeal/Flickr).