Global Research

Interview with a Brazilian journalist Rodrigo Craveiro on behalf of Correio Braziliense: (Jan. 30, 2019) on current prospects of Palestinian national movement.

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Fatah, Hamas, the Future of Statehood and Peace Prospects

Rodrigo Craveiro: With the dissolution of government do you see any risk for unity among all Palestinian factions? Why?

Richard Falk: It is difficult at this stage to interpret the significance of the recent dissolution of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which serves as the Parliament of the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank and enjoys formal recognition as the representive of the Palestinian people internationally. The PLO continues to exist as an umbrella framework to facilitate coordination among Palestinian political factions aside from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have never been associated with the PLO. It seems that dissolution of the PLC is related to the prospect of new leadership of the Palestinian Authority, especially the speculation that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas will soon retire, and be replaced. It is also possible that this move is an attempt by the PA to create a stronger basis for creating an actual Palestinian state in an atmosphere in which the Oslo diplomatic framework has been superseded.

Without the prospect of a diplomatic resolution of the conflict by negotiation between the parties, the Abbas leadership is trying to establish for Palestine the status of an international state by way of its own unilateral moves. Israel on its side it trying by its unilateral initiatives to create its own expanded state that extends Israeli sovereignty over all or most of the West Bank, which remains legally ‘occupied’ despite a variety of fundamental encroachments on Palestinian autonomy. In other words we are witnessing contradictory moves by both Israel and Palestine to achieve their goals by unilateral political moves rather than through international diplomacy under U.S. auspices based on a negotiated agreement reflecting compromise. In the process both the PA and Israel are in the process abandoning earlier pretensions of democratic governance. This move by Abbas to dissolve the PLC is most accurately interpreted as the further de-democratization of Palestine, and the establishment of a more robust autocratic governing structure that does not inspire trust among many Palestinians and their supporters throughout the world. The failure, for instance, of the PA to back BDS is indicative of the gap between global solidarity initiatives and the timid leaders provided the Palestinian national movements by Abbas leadership in Ramallah.

RC: How do you analyze the role of Hamas inside the political life of Palestinian people?

RF: It is again difficult to be too definite about the role of Hamas at this time. This is partly because Hamas is likely affected by the changes in the tactics and leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which continues to be internationally regarded as the sole representative of Palestinian interests while being subject to criticism and rejection by large segments of the Palestinian people, especially those spread about the world by being refugees, exiles, and displaced persons., For some time, Hamas has indicated its willingness to agree to a long-term truce (or hudna)with Israel lasting up to 50 years, but only on condition that Israel withdraws from the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as Gaza, and ends the blockade that has been used to deny the entry and exit of goods and people to Gaza ever since 2007. It is possible that a different leadership in Israel as a result of the April elections will produce a new Israeli approach to Gaza, which could include some kind of grant of autonomy or even independence as one type of alternative policy or intensified coercion that sought to destroy Hamas and its military capabilities as another.

What remains clear is that Hamas, as opposed to the PA, has been a consistent source of resistance to Israeli occupation and expansionism, although evidently willing to pursue its goals by political tactics rather than armed struggle. It is Israel that has insisted that Hamas is a terrorist organization, refusing even to consider establishing a ceasefire regime of indefinite length. It is also the case that Hamas is rooted in Islamic beliefs and practices, which are resented by secularized Muslims and non-Muslim Palestinians. This tension has erupted at various times in the course of the decade of Hamas governance in Gaza. Nevertheless, Hamas has popular support throughout occupied Palestine, and one explanation for the failure of the PA to hold elections is the anticipation that Hamas would likely be the winner, or at least make a strong showing.

RC: Do you consider Hamas a danger for peace efforts building by Palestinian factions with Israel in future? Why?

RF: There is no doubt that if the Palestinian Authority persists in excluding Hamas from participation in shaping the future of the national movement that the friction of recent years will continue, if not intensify. It is also possible that any new, post-Abbas PA leadership will try with increased motivation to find an embracing political framework that brings together the secular factions with those of religious persuasion, and especially Hamas. If the Trump ‘deal of the century’ is made public in coming months, and is treated as a serious proposal that is accepted as a basis of negotiation by the Palestinian Authority, then it would test whether the Palestinian people will be represented in a manner that joins in a single political actor secular and religious forces. The people of Gaza have suffered for many years, the conditions of poverty and environmental hazards are becoming more severe, with shortages of medical supplies, health hazards from polluted drinking water, astronomical levels of unemployment, and the absence of nutritious food creating emergency conditions for the entire civilian population of Gaza of about two million. Given these realities it is almost certain that Hamas will seek to pursue a more viable future for Gaza, but as the Great March of Return has demonstrated in recent months, the population, despite years of demoralization, retains a strong will to resist oppressive conditions of Israel domination.

RC: Until now all efforts to overcome the division between Hamas and Fatah didn’t work. Why? Why is it difficult to achieve a common sense?

RF: I believe the principal reasons that all attempts to achieve a sustainable accommodation tween Hamas and Fatah have failed relate to both ideology and questions of trust. This failure has also been a consequence of Israel’s overt and covert feverish efforts to promote Palestinian disunity and fragmentation. Israel’s emphasis on a politics of fragmentation in addressing the Palestinian challenge is expressed in many ways, including establishing separate governance regimes for the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, as well as for the Palestinian minority living in Israel and the refugees in neighboring countries.

On ideology there are two main sources of division between Fatah and Hamas—the secular/religious divide, and the greater readiness of Fatah to accept and legitimate the permanence of the Israeli state than is Hamas. For Hamas Israel remains a usurper of Palestine, and such a illegitimate state that can never be formally accommodated, although as suggested, Hamas is prepared to accept a truce of long duration without altering its underlying claims to exercise sovereignty over the whole of historic Palestine. If such a truce was to be agreed upon by Israel it would amount to a de facto acceptance of Israel, and vice versa. If the truce held, it could lead to some kind of indefinite extension that would allow both governing leaderships to feel that they achieved their primary goals, in other words, a win/win outcome.

Fatah, at least since 1988, as well as the PLO, has been willing to normalize relations with Israel and to agree to a territorial division of Palestine along the 1967 boundaries, provided that the arrangement provided for the retention of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. As matters now stand, it is almost unimaginable that Israel would accept the Hamas approach to a future relationship, and given the continuing expansion of the settlements it seems unlikely that Israel would agree to the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state under any conditions, that is, even if Hamas did not exist.

It is quite likely that Israel would seek to impose a one-state solution by annexing the West Bank in a manner similar to their annexation of the city of Jerusalem. The unresolved tensions between Fatah and Hamas are in my judgment less fundamental than is Israel’s increasing clarity about rejecting any negotiated compromise on such core issues as territory, refugees, and Jerusalem. Israel seems to regard the present situation as one in which it feels almost no pressure to compromise, and instead that it is possible for Tel Aviv to push forward toward an end of the conflict by claiming victory, a view endorsed by Zionist extremists and seemingly supported by the Trump diplomacy to date. I find these perspectives to be shortsighted and unsustainable. Even should the Palestinian leadership is forced given present realities to accept a political surrender, such an induced outcome will produce a ceasefire not a lasting peace. In this post-colonial age denying the Palestinian people their fundamental right of self-determination is almost certain to be unable to withstand the tests of time.

RC: In your opinion what is the recipe or formula to make all Palestinians join together in pursuing common goal, which is the establishment of Palestine State?

RF: I have partially given my answer to this question in earlier responses to your questions. In essence, I am arguing that given the present outlook in Israel, as well as regional and global considerations.

It is not possible to envision the establishment of a Palestinian state even if Palestinians were able to achieve unity and went on to accept the 1967 boundaries excluding the Israeli settlement blocs along the border. Israel no longer hides its intention to expand its state boundaries to encompass the whole of ‘the promised land,’ considered a biblical entitlement within the dominant view of the Zionist project.

As earlier suggested, Israel will do its best to disrupt Palestinian efforts to overcome the cleavages in their movement so as to keep the Palestinian movement as fragmented as possible. As long as the United States continues its unconditional support Israel seems able to ignore the adverse character of international public opinion, as exhibited at the UN and elsewhere. Israel makes little secret of the absence of any  pressure to seek a political compromise. Ever since the 1990s a political compromised has been assumed to mean an independent  Palestinian state. Only recently, as Israel’s expansionism has made a Palestinian state a diplomatic non-starter and even a political impossibility has the idea of a single state embracing both peoples gained traction.

This shift to a one-state approach has taken to two forms: a single democratic secular state in which the expansionist goals of Zionism are renounced, and no longer would a Jewish state as such exist. Jews would have to accept equality of treatment within such a non-ethnic state, although the establishment of a Jewish homeland might be possible. The alternative single statehood model would be to absorb all Palestinians into a single Jewish state of Israel, perhaps conferring full or more likely partial citizenship rights to Palestinians. Both of these statehood models are post-diplomatic, as is the PA effort to establish a state of its own while enduring a prolonged occupation.

The Israeli version of a single state outcome of the struggle is more in keeping with present realities than is the Palestinian version. Such as assessment also gains strength by noting that the main Arab neighbors of Israel, in particular Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have withdrawn support for Palestinian national aspirations, and are actively cooperating with Israel, giving an Arab priority to the containment of extremist threats to their governments and to their sectarian rivalry with Iran. All in all, the regional and global geopolitical trends of late remove almost all incentives on the Israeli side to do anything other than to manage the favorable status quo until the moment arrives when it seems right to declare and claim that the boundaries of New Israel encompass of the entire territory managed between the two world wars as the British Mandate of Palestine.

As matters now stand it is utopian to anticipate a Palestinian state or a single secular democratic state, but these conditions that seem currently so favorable to Israel are unstable and deceptive, and unlikely to last. There are signs that a position of balanced support as between  Israel and Palestine is gaining strength in the West, especially among the American public. Account should also be taken of a growing global solidarity movement that has become more militant, and exerts greater pressure on Israel, especially by way of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign (BDS). In this respect, conditions could change rapidly as happened in South Africa in the early 1990s against all expectations and expert opinion at the time. Israel is increasing regarded as an apartheid state, which the Knesset itself virtually acknowledged by enacting in 2018 the Basic Law of the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Finally, it should be appreciated that by virtue of Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid is classified as a crime against humanity. The experience of South Africa, although very different in its particular, is instructive with respect to the untenability over time of apartheid structures of control over a resisting ethnicity. Whatever the governance arrangement, Palestinian resistance will produce a cycle of insurgent and repressive violence, and this can provide stability for Israel only so long as its apartheid regime remains in place. If the apartheid regime is dismantled it would be accompanied by the end of any claim to impose a Jewish state on the Palestinian people.

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Featured image: Palestinian take cover as Israeli forces fire at protesters at the Gaza border on 14 December 2018 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Over the past week tens of thousands of pounds have been spent on Facebook adverts promoting a ‘no deal’ Brexit. It is not possible to find out who is funding these highly targeted campaigns, despite new regulations intended to make political messaging on Facebook more transparent.

Over the seven days to last Saturday, spending by campaigners pushing for ‘no deal’ far outstripped that of anti-Brexit groups. Some of these paid-for Facebook adverts described pro-EU MPs as “traitors” and “globalist scumbags”.

A single pro-Brexit group with almost no public presence spent almost £50,000 on Facebook. Britain’s Future – which does not declare its funders and has no published address – is running hundreds of very localised targeted ads pushing for ‘no deal’.

Politicians and campaigners have called for greater transparency of political advertising. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: “We have no idea who these people are or where their money comes from. It shows again how unfit for purpose the rules are that govern online campaigning and the use of data.”

‘Don’t let them steal Brexit’

Some of the adverts claim that a ‘no deal’ Brexit “will reduce barriers to world trade and cut prices”, a claim contradicted by most economists. Britain’s Future has also run over 100 adverts in the last week urging voters in specific Labour constituencies to write to their MP.

These targeted adverts include messages such as “Don’t let them steal Brexit” and include a link for voters to email their MP. Politicians have reported receiving a significant number of pro-’no deal’ messages in recent weeks.

Over the past week, anti-Brexit groups have spent far less money on Facebook adverts than pro-’no deal’ outfits, reversing a trend that had seen generally anti-Brexit groups spend more money on Facebook since last October.

Over the last four months, the People’s Vote and Best for Britain campaigns spent £266,369 and £183,943, respectively. Neither of these anti-Brexit groups is fully transparent either: both publish some details about themselves, such as addresses, but do not publish full details of all funders and donors. During the same time period, Britain’s Future has spent more than £200,000 on Facebook ads.

While anti-Brexit spending has slowed down in recent weeks, however, adverts pushing a ‘no deal’ Brexit have spiked. Britain’s Future has spent more than £110,000 on Facebook ads since mid-January. It is not clear where the money for this huge ad push has come from.

The only person publicly identified with the group is Tim Dawson, a former ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’ scriptwriter. Dawson is listed as editor on Britain’s Future’s website.

In November, Dawson told the BBC that he was “raising small donations from friends and fellow Brexiteers” after it was reported that a paid-for Britain’s Future advert topped Google searches for “what is the Brexit deal” ahead of the UK government’s own site. Dawson has yet to respond to queries from openDemocracy about the source of his funding.

Dawson has written for The Spectator, Spiked and other right-wing publications. In last year’s local election, he ran as a Conservative candidate in Hulme, in Manchester. He finished a distant sixth.

During the 2016 EU referendum Vote Leave and other campaigns spent almost £4m on social media adverts, including erroneous warnings that Turkey was joining the EU. Britain’s Future’s adverts are far more geographically targeted than Vote Leave’s were, and appear to be focused on influencing Labour MPs not to back Theresa May’s withdrawal bill on 14 February, which would increase the chances of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

Brexit Defence Force

Some paid-for pro-Brexit ads on Facebook are more sinister. A group called ‘Brexit Defence Force” paid hundreds of pound for adverts that included messages about “remoaner Globalist scumbags” and calling for a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

In one advert posted this week (below), John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was described as “a Saboteur amongst us” and a “nasty little globalist scumbag”. Above a cartoon image of a witch in a long black hooded cloak a message says “Burkow must go”.

It is impossible to find out who is actually paying for these adverts. Under rules introduced by Facebook last year, all political advertising in the UK has to be labelled and those placing the adverts to verify they are living at a UK postal address.

But Facebook’s new rules, introduced following concerns about social media campaigning during the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, do not force an advertiser to declare the ultimate source of the money for any political campaign. For groups such as Brexit Defence Forces and others it is simple to place adverts without having to disclose who is actually paying for them.

Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me?, which tracks political adverts, said  “While there are circumstances where anonymity for campaigners is necessary, we don’t think any of these campaigns are performing a democratic service by hiding their true identity.”

Last month, Facebook removed threats of violence against pro-EU MPs made in response to a paid-for Brexit Defence Force advert. But Facebook ruled that the advert itself – which accused anti-Brexit MPs of “treason” – did not breach its community standards.

As well as paid for ‘no deal’ adverts, many popular pro-Brexit Facebook sites have shared images depicting the European Union as Nazis and Theresa May as a traitor. Others have even used iconography from 1930s Germany to spread a hardline pro-Brexit message.

Another obscure anti-Brexit outfit, We are the 52%, has spent more than £4,000 over the last seven days. We are the 52%, which has spent almost £25,000 on Facebook ads since October, has also been pushing for a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

We are the 52% appears to be affiliated with Nigel Farage’s Leave Means Leave. The only person publicly connected with the group is former Vote Leave activist Theodora Dickinson (below).

Dickinson also runs a website that offers political communications services including “social media solutions for candidates and elected representatives”. openDemocracy has contacted We are the 52% to ask what the source of the funding for its Facebook adverts is but has yet to receive a response.

Labour’s Ben Bradshaw said:

“This is the latest example of shady groups that keep their identity secret pushing misleading and factually inaccurate hard-Brexit ads on social media. We have no idea who these people are or where their money comes from. It shows again how unfit for purpose the rules are that govern online campaigning and the use of data.”

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said:

“There is a clear agenda from a clique of comfortable businessmen and donors to block attempts at preventing a chaotic No-Deal scenario – the very worst Brexit outcome.

“We must uncover the true nature of murky pro-Brexit groups like Britain’s Future, to help finally debunk their propaganda and lay bare the true devastation of the Brexit these secretive groups are desperate for.”

Sam Jeffers said:

“People spending large sums to influence voters and MPs should be transparent by default. Equally, Facebook could implement stronger rules to force greater transparency on organisations who want to reach people through its service. As soon as possible, we want to see new rules for transparency of political campaigns, to reassure the voting public that the messages they see can be trusted – wherever they see them.”

London. A bleak London assailed by daily news about Brexit negotiation, prospects of food shortages and higher prices in the event of a no-deal with the European Union, provides the perfect apocalyptic backdrop for headlines. The city is ailing; the residents are panicked; and the authorities are gloomy.     

Such environments are ideal for talk about emergencies.  One doing much filling on London airtime is that of knife crime.  Not that knife crime in of itself is unusual: for years, stabbing implements have made their way into broader law and order issues in the city’s policing scene, a good number featuring errant youth.  These have encouraged a wide array of myths masquerading as solid fact: London, the city of the “no-go” area; Londonistan, city of perpetual, spiralling crime.

In 2008, Britain’s public institutions – political and public – became darkly enraptured with knife crime afflicting inner city areas, with a heavy focus on London.  Stabbings were reported in lurid fashion; threats to urban safety were emphasised.  As Peter Squires noted in a fairly withering examination of the phenomenon in British Politics,

“The knife crime ‘epidemic’, as it came to be called, coincided with a series of youth justice policy measures being rolled out by the government, and significantly influenced them.”

Kevin Marsh of the BBC, writing at the same time, wondered how best a news organisation might report such crime figures.

“How much does tone and prominence distort the real picture?  Is some coverage self-fulfilling prophecy?  Does it spread fear and anxiety way beyond the rational?” 

Marsh would admit that being a victim of a knife crime was “very, very unlikely”; and that young men, in the main, did not carry knives; “most young people are not components of what some politicians are calling the ‘broken society’.”

For all that, Marsh found himself admitting that “it’s part of the purpose of our media to draw things to our attention, however crudely.”  The crude element remains the sticking point, resisting nuance, despite the hope that reporters might help “us citizens really think hard about possible solutions”.

Knife crime has become the bread and butter of lazy reportage, one hitched to the coattails of the broken society argument.  Describing a broken fence is easier fare than describing a mended one; solutions remain dull, academic matters.  The emergency narrative tends to emerge ahead each time; matters of social causes and complexity receive short shrift.  In 2017, Gary Younge turned his noise up at the panic merchants, and deemed teenage knife crime “a tabloid obsession, blamed on feral youth running riot in our cities.”  Such fears speaks to an obsession with decay and decline; youth go wrong if society does not go right. 

In 2018, knife crime became a meme of terror.  The Express shouted with “London BLOODBATH” in a June headline, and subsequently began using it as a running title for any knife-related crime.  Political parties also capitalised on the atmosphere. In the east London borough of Havering, a local Conservative leaflet, buttering up electors ahead of the March local elections, promised mayhem.  “Mayor Khan and Corbyn’s men are desperate to grab power in our Town Hall, so get ready for… A London crimewave with even less police.”  In Lewisham East, UKIP candidate David Kurten added his bit in a by-election with a leaflet featuring the words “STOP THE KARNAGE” placed across a picture of a knife.

The dreary world of knife crime figures is erratic.  Between 2008 and 2014, offences involving knives or sharp instruments fell from 36,000 recorded offences to 25,000.  Then came an increase in 2015/6 – a nudge to 28,900.  The figures on death occasioned by knife crime are even more inscrutable, prompting Spiked Online to conclude that there was “no huge upsurge in knife violence because society overall is becoming less violent, and crime in general is falling.”  This was not to say that no concern should be felt: the issue is particular in London, and its effects disproportionate on young working-class black men. A possible explanation?  Not just indigence or exclusion, but nihilism and plain susceptibility. 

Barely two months into this year, and the rounds of panic are in full swing.  As always, it’s the deceptive field of statistics dragged out to give a picture of clear, bolt-the-doors-and-hide doom.  It began with a spate of violent actions on New Year’s Eve, which saw four young men stabbed to death in London, prompting London Mayor Sadiq Khan to berate the government for its squeeze on youth services, policing and education. 

Police statistics, pounced upon by the Evening Standard just in time for the evening commute on Monday, suggest that 41 percent across London’s boroughs involve those between the green years of 15 to 19.  Eight percent range from the even greener 10 to 14.

The Standard’s Martin Bentham sliced and spliced the announcement from the police with maximum, terrifying effect, all assisted by a picture perfect grim background of law enforcement officials at a crime scene on Caledonia road. 

“The new figures came as a Scotland Yard chief warned that attacks in the capital were also becoming ‘more ferocious’ as offenders were ‘more and more young’ tried to kill or injure by ‘getting up close and stabbing someone several times’. 

Descriptions on police tactics follow, resembling those of urban battle plans keen on frustrating potential attacks.  Chief Superintendent Ade Adelekan, head of the Met’s Violent Crime Task Force is quoted as claiming that “some progress” is being made.  There was also a more frequent use of search and “other tactics” including “the deployment of ‘embedded’ plain clothes officers to work with uniformed counterparts” in acts of prevention. 

As Younge rightly notes, such realities are “more complex – and we cannot save lives if we do not understand it.”  But understanding is a term absent in times of panic. These are times rich for exploitation.  With Brexit having become the great psychodrama, all else is ripe for distraction and manipulation.

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

Featured image is from iNews

Spanish rail equipment manufacturer CAF announced, on Friday, that it had refused to participate in a tender to build a section of the railway in occupied East Jerusalem as it violates international law.

An international tender to build and operate Jerusalem’s second light rail line has many companies rejecting to participate as they are fearful of arousing political opposition, since the proposed “Green Line” runs into parts of the city occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967.

The proposed Green Line, a project that could cost as much as 5 billion shekels ($1.4 billion) and stretch along 22 kilometers, proved to be problematic as it reaches Mount Scopus and Gilo.

The company, which is one of the most important Spanish companies in the field of railways, said it

“refuses to build a section of the railway in Jerusalem because the Israeli government included in the section a Palestinian land that will be confiscated in violation of the resolutions of international legitimacy.”

Representatives of the company’s workers who objected to the company’s participation in the construction of the section explained that the problem lies in the fact that the railway will pass through Palestinian lands to serve illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.

CAF stressed,

“Any project in any city of the world, especially Jerusalem, must respect in its implementation human rights and international legitimacy.”

CAF added,

“The General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, through various resolutions, have said that they are against the occupation of land through which will pass the section of the railway.”

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Featured image is from Ma’an News Agency

At a time when the eyes of the world are closely watching his country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has given an exclusive interview to RT Spanish, speaking about the threats of war and of foul play in politics.

The “Lima group”, which convened in Canada on Feb. 4, 2019, represents a group of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected government. 

More accurately, the group consists of plotters, conspirators, who are criminals under International Law.

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Ken Stone of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, February 4, 2019.

International criminal lawyer Christopher C. Black explains quite clearly in “The Lima Group: International Outlaws”[1] that

(t)he world can see that the Lima Gang, who like to use the phrase “the rule of law” in their diktats to others, are committing egregious crimes under international law and together these crimes are components of the supreme war crime of aggression. The Lima Group therefore is a group of international criminal conspirators and the every individual involved is a war criminal.  So when the Lima conspirators issue their press statement after the Ottawa meeting, planning aggression against Venezuela, calling for the overthrow, for the head of President Maduro and dressing it up in the usual language of the aggressor, of “human rights” and “democracy” and their fake and illegal doctrine of  “responsibility to protect” it will not be issued by nations interested in peace or who have respect for international law but by a gang of criminals, of international outlaws. (from NEO)

Not only are Lima group members conspiring to overthrow the sovereign nation of Venezuela, but the Canadian government is also pledging 53 million dollars to further this agenda.

The legitimate Venezuelan government will not have access to these funds.  In fact, Canada and its co-conspirators against Venezuela have been waging a criminal economic war against the country which has so far has cost Venezuela about 20 billion dollars, so the pledge is insulting at the very least, and again, it obviates root causes. If imperialist countries were to cease waging criminal economic warfare against Venezuela, there would be no need for “humanitarian” or any other aid in the first place.

In this short video, Doug Brown discusses the toll that economic warfare exacts on victim populations:

Doug Brown of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War 

On a more personal note, I would like to offer my opinion to Venezuelans:

If you support the “opposition” in Venezuela, you are supporting US military intervention. I have seen firsthand what “military intervention” looks like in Syria. Your country will be destroyed, looted, plundered. Your infrastructure will be destroyed. Your economy will be destroyed. Death squads and bombing raids and terrorism will plague your country for years, decades. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions will die. Russia and China have a strong legitimate presence in Venezuela, and Venezuela is a lynch pin country. Venezuela will not go gently into that good night.

Let us all hope that the rule of international law, and values of common sense and decency, will prevail.

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

Note

[1] Christopher C. Black, “The Lima Group: International Outlaws.” 4 February, 2019, New Eastern Outlook.
(https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/04/the-lima-group-international-outlaws/) Accessed 5 February, 2019.

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The United States has been working with oligarchs in Venezuela to remove President Maduro since he came to office in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez and was re-elected that year. After he won re-election to another six-year term in 2018, the regime change planners sought new strategies to remove Maduro, including an assassination attempt last August. The coup campaign escalated recently with the self-appointment of president Juan Guaido, who President Trump and US allies have recognized. Now, the ongoing coup attempt is escalating through a strategy of humanitarian intervention.

Trump has been talking openly about war to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves since mid-2017. Pentagon and former administration officials, who have since been removed from office, opposed the action. Now, Trump is surrounded by neocons who share his goal of removing Maduro and taking control of the country’s natural resources. War is an option being openly considered.

The US has no excuse to legally attack Venezuela. As Defense One reports,

“International law forbids ‘the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.’”

There are two exceptions mentioned in the UN Charter: self-defense and authorization by the U.N. Security Council, neither of which have been met in Venezuela. Domestically, Trump would also need the US Congress to authorize an attack, which is unlikely with a Democratic-controlled House not because Democrats oppose war but because they oppose Trump.

The United States has also claimed a highly questionable right to use force for “humanitarian intervention.” For example, the US and NATO 1999 intervention in Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention that became a war.

After a long-term economic war that has sought to starve Venezuela of resources and has cost the country billions of dollars annually, the United States is now claiming there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. It is moving to use this humanitarian crisis it helped to create as a path to war with Venezuela, with the help of US proxies, Colombia and Brazil. The tactic is to proclaim a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela requiring a humanitarian intervention and then to bring troops in to provide humanitarian aid as the BBC explains. Once the foot is in the door, it is simple to manufacture an excuse for conflict.

This weekend, the humanitarian intervention began to unfold when the coup president, Juan Guaido, announced the imminent distribution of humanitarian aid. Guaido announced the aid would be gathered at three points, and Venezuela’s army would be pressured to allow it into the country. The collection centers will be in Colombia, Brazil and on an island in the Caribbean. He announced aid will begin to be distributed in the coming days. He claimed the Venezuela military will have to make a decision whether or not to let this aid in to Venezuela. Guaido said he wants the people to play a supportive role by staying in the streets with demonstrations that will be announced soon.

Also over the weekend, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the US will send “critical supplies” requested by Guaido. Previously, Bolton has openly called for a military coup and sanctions to starve millions of Venezuelans into submission. On Twitter, USAID administrator Mark Green shared images of boxes embossed with the US flag en route to Venezuela.

Answering the call of President Guaido, the U.S. is mobilizing & transporting humanitarian aid for the people of #Venezuela. I applaud the hard work of USAID, the State Department and their partners in preparing critical supplies to move forward this weekend. https://t.co/JR9poraxWl

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 3, 2019

Elliot Abrams, who has a long history of war crimes and was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, said the US government is considering opening a “humanitarian corridor” and has maintained contacts with Brazil and Colombia on the issue. He acknowledged that Maduro’s “cooperation” would be necessary to transport the aid to the country. El Pais reported,

“The opening of this supply channel could require the participation of troops, whether Americans or from another country in the region, something that Chavism interprets as a clear threat.”

Vice President Mike Pence spoke this week about the deployment of humanitarian assistance with Carlos Vecchio, Guaidó’s ambassador to the United States, as well as Julio Borges, appointed as representative to the Lima Group. Borges will ask the Lima Group, which meets in Canada this week, for the “urgent” opening of a humanitarian corridor. Canada has played a junior role in the ongoing coup. Trudeau, who also levied economic sanctions against Venezuela, promised $53 million in humanitarian aid. Media critical of the coup have been denied access to these meetings

The United States launched this major operation in coordination with the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil, the most belligerent anti-Maduro allies of Guaido. The US National Security Council confirmed on Saturday that the deployment of aid has already begun.  The initial aid will contain medicines, surgical supplies, and nutritional supplements. It was scheduled to come from USAID to Bogota on Monday and then be moved for storage in a collection center in the border city of Cúcuta, the main entrance route for Venezuelans migrating to Colombia. Cúcuta has a high presence of Colombian paramilitaries and smuggling mafias and is where those who attempted to assassinate Nicolas Maduro last year were trained.

One of the goals of the humanitarian aid is to divide the Venezuela military which has refused to recognize Guaido. They seek to deepen the pressure on the military in order to break the solidarity of the Maduro government. TIME Magazine reports,

“The aid has become something of a litmus test for the military’s backing of Maduro.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said on Twitter that,

“Military & police leaders in #Venezuela must now decide to either help food & medicine reach people, or help #Maduro instead.”

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who has not recognized Guaido, said the United Nations “will not be part of” distributing the aid, as it wants to maintain “credibility” in order to help “find a political solution to the crisis.”

El Pais reports that

“Diplomats from several Latin American countries and from the more moderate sectors of the opposition fear that this will serve as a pretext to drag the conflict into the military.”

President Maduro has repeatedly rejected the entry of humanitarian aid because he knew it would provide justification for foreign intervention. He knows the US seeks Venezuela’s oil and other resources, “gold, gas, iron, diamonds, other material riches.”

Maduro called on the international community to stop the US threats of war against Venezuela. He said a war would be a blood bath, a David and Goliath struggle that would “leave Trump bloodstained.” Maduro said the Venezuelan people were prepared to defend their “sacred“ land from a US military invasion, but emphasized that he “prayed to God” such a conflict will never occur. Trump’s “military aggression” must be rejected so that “peace prevails.”

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image: A protest outside the United States Consulate in Sydney on January 23 2019 to demand no US intervention in Venezuela. Photo: Peter Boyle

Anyone for world peace over endless wars, as well as supporting cooperative Russian/US relations is vulnerable to character assassination attacks.

Am I a “Russian agent”, “asset” or “troll” for explaining hard truths on major domestic and geopolitical issues, for opposing Washington’s destructive imperial agenda, for slamming the notion that might makes right, for working daily for world peace, equity and justice, for being against the US aim to rule the world, risking its destruction by endless wars of aggression against one country after another?

On February 2, Dem Rep. Tulsi Gabbard officially announced her candidacy for US president, after indicating earlier she’d run, saying the following:

“We must stand up…against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage (and) new places for people to die…(treating troops) as political pawns and mercenaries for hire in wars around the world.”

“(T)he issue of war and peace” motivated her to run for president. In spring 2017, she stopped accepting political contributions from US weapons and munitions makers.

She joins a crowded field with numerous other announced Dem aspirants for the nation’s highest office – calling for “end(ing) regime change wars that have taken far too many lives and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like al Qaeda.”

Like virtually all others in Washington, she’s far short of a profile in courage. A former DNC vice chair, she largely votes along party lines, including on issues demanding opposition.

She backs the US-installed putschist regime in Ukraine,  saying America can’t stand “idly by while Russia continues to degrade the territorial integrity of” the country.

No “Russian aggression” exists anywhere, or threats against other nations, or meddling in foreign elections. Yet Gabbard urged “more painful (illegal) sanctions” on Moscow.

In 2017, she supported the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), imposing illegal sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.

She’s on the right side of opposing “counterproductive wars of regime change” – in Syria and elsewhere.

She accused “the US government (of) violating (the) law” by aiding ISIS and al-Qaeda, saying:

“The CIA has…been funneling weapons and money through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others who provide direct and indirect support to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.”

To her credit, she’s likely a voice in the wilderness in Washington, perhaps the only congressional member publicly stating what’s been going on in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and other terrorist groups are US creations, used as proxy troops, serving Washington’s imperial agenda.

For partially challenging longstanding establishment policies, an NBC News character assassination report accused her of serving “Russia’s propaganda machine,” calling her “a controversial Hawaii Democrat,” a “favorite” of Russian websites RT, Sputnik News, and Russia Insider, adding:

Her announcement “may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard” – accusing her of being “a pawn for Moscow.”

“Gabbard was mentioned on the three sites about twice as often as two of the best known Democratic possibilities for 2020, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.”

She responded to NBC News, saying it “used journalistic fraud to smear any adversary of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party – whether on the left or the right – as a stooge or asset of the Kremlin,” adding:

“(T)he neocon/neolib warmongers will do anything to stop me.”

NBC News used fake news provided by New Knowledge.

It’s a company with longstanding ties to the US National Security Agency and Pentagon, part of the endless Russia bashing campaign, caught red-handed fabricating fake news for undemocratic Dems in last year’s Alabama Senate race, falsely claiming Russian meddling, not a shred of evidence suggesting the Kremlin interfered in foreign elections anywhere.

New Knowledge was involved with Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project’s (COMPROP) disinformation report on alleged Russian use of social media platforms to help Trump triumph over Hillary.

Cold hard facts debunked the fake news claims. Google explained that accounts linked to Russia spent $4,700 for advertising in 2016.

Facebook said US presidential candidates spent “1000x more than any problematic ads we’ve found” – admitting virtually no evidence of Russian use of the platform for improper meddling.

Twitter found no accounts of “obvious Russian origin.” RT, RT America and RT en Espanol spent $274,100 for 1,823 US ads – none supporting one US presidential aspirant over another.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the total amount spent by candidates for all offices in US 2016 elections was around $6.5 billion, including for primary races.

The amount spent by 2016 presidential aspirants was $2.4 billion, including for primaries. In all races, Republicans and Dems each spent around 48% of the total amount (96% combined).

Trump spent $398 million compared to Hillary’s $768 million, nearly double DLT’s amount.

What possible impact could a minute fraction of these amounts connected to Russia have on their campaigns, especially when their ads supported no US candidates.

No Russian meddling occurred online or any other way, no credible evidence suggesting it, nothing connecting Gabbard to the Kremlin.

As explained above, she supported legislation imposing illegal sanctions on Russia, along with falsely accusing the country of “aggression” in Ukraine.

NBC News stands by its fake news report. Anyone opposing Washington’s imperial agenda is vulnerable to be attacked by US major media, operating as mouthpieces for wealth, power, and privilege.

As long as she remains in the race to become Dem nominee for president, Gabbard will be subjected to vilifying character assassination attacks – falsely connecting her to Russia and likely other damning accusations with no validity.

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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.

If Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil-rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

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For much of the past twenty years, critics of U.S. foreign policy have noted that it is often countries with sizeable oil reserves that most often find themselves the targets of U.S.-backed “humanitarian” interventions aimed at “restoring democracy.” Analysis of the nearly two-decades-long U.S. effort aimed at regime change and “democracy promotion” in Venezuela has long linked such efforts to the fact that the South American country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

However, the current U.S. effort to topple the government led by Chavista politician Nicolás Maduro has become notable for the openness of the “coup architects” in admitting that putting American corporations – Chevron and Halliburton chief among them — in charge of Venezuelan oil resources is the driving factor behind this aggressive policy.

Last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) – a key player in the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Caracas – tweeted:

Biggest [American] buyers of Venezuelan oil are Valero Energy & Chevron. Refining heavy crude from Venezuela supports great jobs in Gulf Coast. For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin working with administration of President [Juan] Guaidó & cut off illegitimate Maduro regime.”

In January, the U.S. government recognized Juan Guaidó of the U.S.-funded and CIA-linked Popular Will Party as the “legitimate” president of the country.

Biggest buyers of Venezuelan oil are @ValeroEnergy & @Chevron. Refining heavy crude from #Venezuela supports great jobs in Gulf Coast.

For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin working with administration of President Guaido & cut off illegitimate Maduro regime.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 24, 2019

A few hours after Rubio’s tweet, National Security Adviser John Bolton — who actively supported the U.S.-backed failed Venezuela coup in 2002  — appeared on Fox News and told host Trish Regan the following:

“We’re looking at the oil assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.”

Though that was a stunning admission in and of itself, Bolton didn’t stop there. He continued:

We’re in conversation with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here…. It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Bolton’s statements have garnered considerable attention in the alternative media community for their boldness, since leaked cables and documents have traditionally been the means through which the actual motivations of U.S. wars have been revealed. Largely overlooked, however, is the fact that Bolton stated that the Trump administration is working closely “with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo, here in the United States.” Given that Citgo is largely owned by Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), Bolton’s statement reveals that the corporations backing Washington’s regime-change push are those currently operating in Venezuela.

At present, there are only two American major oil and oil service companies with a significant presence in Venezuela – Chevron and Halliburton. However, Chevron is by far the leading American investor in Venezuelan oil projects, with Halliburton having written off much of its remaining business interests in the country just last year — losing hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.

These two companies have long been “historic partners” and have had a solid business relationship between them for decades. In addition, both have reaped the benefits of past U.S. interventions abroad — such as the Iraq War, where the U.S. government “opened” that country’s nationalized oil industry to American oil companies with military force.

Now with Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry in the crosshairs, Chevron and Halliburton are again set to benefit from Washington’s regime-change policies abroad. Furthermore, as Bolton’s recent statements suggest, these companies are also the top corporate sponsors of the current U.S.-backed coup to topple the government in Caracas.

Profitable but not Rockefeller-profitable

Chevron’s history in Venezuela is long and storied, as its presence in the country dates back more than a century. Over that time, Chevron’s presence in Venezuela has remained a constant despite the rule of drastically different governments, from military dictatorships to the socialist Chavista movement.

For much of its history in Venezuela, Chevron has had to deal with the Venezuelan government’s laws regarding oil production, particularly a 1943 law that held that foreign companies could not make greater profits from oil than they paid to the Venezuelan state. A few decades later in the 1960s, foreign corporations were made to manage their oil extraction projects in Venezuela by working closely with the Venezuelan Oil corporation, which later gave way to the current state oil company PDVSA, created in 1976. It was around this period that Halliburton first began work in Venezuela.

However, foreign corporations — particularly American ones — disliked having to settle for minority stakes in PDVSA projects and longed for the early days of Venezuela oil extraction when companies like Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil made wild profits off their Venezuelan oil assets.

After the “apertura petrolera” (or “oil opening” to foreign investment) in the early 1990s — and especially under the U.S.-backed government of Rafael Caldera, the president who immediately preceded Hugo Chávez — it seemed that the privatization of PDVSA was soon to become a reality and companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil and Halliburton enjoyed the “golden age” of American oil interests in Venezuela. However, Caldera’s fall from grace and the rise of Chavismo quickly shattered this decades-long dream of U.S. corporations and politicians.

Not only did Chávez end any possibility of PDVSA’s privatization, he also weakened what remaining influence transnational oil companies had over the state oil company. For instance, he appointed independent oil experts to PDVSA’s board of directors, upending years of precedent where PDVSA managers with close ties to international companies had been responsible for controlling the board’s membership.

Chávez further restricted corporate ownership on some oil projects to 49 percent and fired PDVSA’s then-president, replacing him with a political ally. These drastic changes, among others, led to a strike among many long-time PDVSA workers, a strike that immediately preceded the failed U.S.-backed coup attempt in April 2002.

Following the coup, Chávez dismantled a joint venture originally established in 1996 between PDVSA and the Venezuelan subsidiary of the U.S.-based company SAIC, known as INTESA. INTESA, per the agreement, had controlled all of PDVSA’s company data (and its secrets), which it then fed to the U.S. government and U.S. oil corporations until Chávez destroyed it. This is hardly surprising given that the managers of SAIC at the time included two former U.S. secretaries of defense and two former CIA directors. Though obviously a smart move for Chávez, it weakened an advantage of U.S. corporations who had inside information on PDVSA while INTESA was operational.

The tensions between the Chavista government and the U.S. government along with U.S. corporations only grew from there before reaching a crescendo in 2007. That year, Chávez announced a decree that would nationalize the remaining oil extraction sites under foreign company control, giving PDVSA a minimum 60 percent stake in all of those ventures. U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left their Venezuelan operations behind as a result, losing billions in the process. The president of ExxonMobil at the time was Rex Tillerson — who would later become President Donald Trump’s first secretary of state.

Yet, during this time, Chevron, unique among American oil companies, saw an opportunity and spent the next several years cultivating close ties to the Chavista government and Chávez himself. Through the efforts of Chevron executive Ali Moshiri, Chevron blazed a new trail that would later serve as a model for foreign oil companies seeking to do business in Chavista-led Venezuela. Halliburton and another U.S.-based oil services company, Schlumberger, also decided to continue business in Venezuela.

During this time, the Venezuelan government through PDVSA and Chevron entered into several joint ventures, one of the most important of which became known as Petropiar, which blends Venezuela’s heavy crude oil with other substances to make it more easily transportable. However, Chevron — due to Chávez’s reforms of the oil sector — was forced to settle for minority stakes in all of these ventures.

Halliburton, which has historically been a main operator for Chevron-owned oil fields, again partnered with Chevron’s post-2007 ventures in Venezuela and operates the Petropiar and Petroboscan oil fields that both have minority Chevron ownership.

For years, Chevron’s bet on Chavismo paid off and the profits rolled in. Moshiri even appeared in public on several occasions with Chávez, who once even called the Chevron executive “a dear friend.” However, following Chávez’s death in 2013 and the beginning of the U.S-backed economic siege of Venezuela soon after — first through joint oil-price manipulation in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and then through sanctions — the profits of PDVSA, and thus Chevron, have fallen dramatically. During this time, Houston-based Schlumberger drastically scaled back its operations in Venezuela.

Since then, relations between the Maduro-led government and Chevron have deteriorated precipitously and now, with the current U.S. coup in motion, Chevron is poised to turn on the Chavista government with the hopes that profits will not only improve but exceed what they were during the heights of the Chevron-Chávez partnership.

Betting on regime change

As oil production has lagged and profits have continued to slide, tensions between Chevron and the Maduro government have grown dramatically since 2017, when the Maduro-led government began arresting employees of Petropiar — the joint venture between Chevron and PDVSA — during a controversial corruption probe. For Chevron, the issue exploded after the Venezuelan government last April arrested two Chevron employees working at Petropiar, who were detained for seven weeks for their alleged role in fraud. Those tensions — in combination with worries that Chevron’s Venezuela operations could become unprofitable in less than five years — resulted in a report published by the Wall Street Journalclaiming that Chevron was considering leaving Venezuela entirely.

However, despite media speculation in the U.S., Chevron denied that it was planning to leave Venezuela anytime soon, with Clay Neff, Chevron’s president for Africa and Latin America, telling Bloomberg, “we’re committed to Venezuela and we plan to be there for many years to come,” and adding that reports that Chevron would soon leave the country were “not accurate.” “We’ve been in the country for almost 100 years, we know how to operate, we’re a very experienced operator and we’re committed to our partner PDVSA,” Neff declared.

Halliburton’s activities in Venezuela have also taken a hard hit in recent years, with the company losing over $1 billion in investments since 2017. In 2017, Halliburton was forced to write off $647 million in Venezuelan investments and then was forced to sell $312 million more last year — its last remaining investments. Halliburton’s chief financial officer, Christopher Weber, told the New York Times last year that “the collapse of the Venezuelan currency and the worsening political climate,” as well as U.S. sanctions, were responsible for the decision. Halliburton later said in a statement that it planned on “maintaining its presence in Venezuela and is carefully managing its go-forward exposure.”

Since both Halliburton and Chevron announced their plans to “weather the storm” despite growing tensions, it has become more and more evident that both companies have found the U.S. government’s promise of increased control over Venezuela’s oil sector through privatization much more appealing than facing the prospect of maneuvering around recently imposed U.S. sanctions on PDVSA — which have been in the works for months — as well as the prospect of dwindling profits stemming from the continued decline of the Venezuelan economy and the degradation of its oil-sector infrastructure.

This raises the possibility that Chevron and Halliburton had decided to ride out the Venezuelan economic crisis and growing tensions with Maduro because it was betting on an aggressive regime-change policy toward the country. Indeed, some analysts have stated that planning on the current iteration of regime-change policy in Venezuela only began this past November, around the same time that Chevron decided to stick it out despite falling profits.

The fact that Chevron’s operations in Venezuela are expected to collapse in less than five years, as a result of the country’s oil sector and larger economic woes, lends further support to the possibility that Chevron sought to back a Washington-based effort to dramatically alter the Venezuelan government.

In Halliburton’s case, the fact that the company has already lost over a billion dollars in its Venezuelan investments since 2017 offers a different motive, one that involves not only recouping those losses but also gaining increased contracts in a post-coup Venezuela. Halliburton executives surely remember the $39.5 billion in profits they made following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is worth pointing out that, in media reports, Halliburton has stated its commitment “to the market in Venezuela,” signaling that it is interested in retaining a role in the country’s oil sector regardless of who governs it.

It should then come as no surprise that recent U.S. government sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sectors included exemptions for both Halliburton and Chevron. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the U.S.-backed “president” of Venezuela — Juan Guaidó — has already signaled his plans to open up Venezuela’s state oil assets to foreign corporations if he succeeds in ousting Maduro.

According to oil rating agency S&P Global Platts, Guaidó has already made “plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle.” This plan would also create a “new hydrocarbons agency” that will “offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude” to international oil corporations.

The clear message here is that the U.S.-backed “president” of Venezuela is already signaling to his Washington backers that he will quickly privatize Venezuela’s state oil company if he succeeds in taking power, a move that has long been a key component of the platform of Venezuela’s U.S.-funded opposition, of which Guaidó is part.

Bolton’s recent statements have made it clear that Chevron and Halliburton are set to be the main benefactors of this privatization effort, as both are heavily invested in Venezuela and Chevron the only U.S. oil company still active in the country. The historically close relationship of both companies to the U.S. government, and covert coordination with the U.S. government in undermining or overthrowing governments in the recent past, also hint at their likely role in the current U.S. “meddling” in Venezuela.

Boosting profits through foreign intervention

If the U.S. succeeds in ousting Maduro and putting Guaidó in his place, it will only be the latest example of U.S. government policy that directly benefits the bottom lines of Chevron and Halliburton. In Chevron’s case, the company’s growth to become one of the largest oil companies in the world has consistently been aided by the U.S. establishment, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans held the presidency. Indeed, as Seeking Alpha noted:

Chevron’s stocks gained a combined 247% under Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush. Under President George W Bush, its shares rose by 157%. Meanwhile, Chevron’s shares picked up 222% and 112% under Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.”

Notably, Chevron has also worked with past U.S. presidents in undermining democratically-elected governments in order to advance its business interests, with the most recent example taking place in Haiti. Cables published by WikiLeaks showed that Chevron, in 2006 and 2007, partnered with ExxonMobil and the U.S. government to undermine the presidency of former Haitian president René Préval after he forged a deal with Chávez’s PetroCaribe alliance that allowed Haiti to buy subsidized Venezuelan oil.

Furthermore, Chevron also benefited greatly from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its representatives were among those who met with then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 to plan Iraq’s “postwar” — i.e., post-invasion — industry that led Chevron to acquire ownership of several Iraqi oil fields. Notably, the family of then-President George W. Bush is one of Chevron’s largest shareholders. In addition, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a Chevron executive throughout the 1990s, and was in charge of public policy for its board of directors immediately prior to joining the Bush administration. Rice even had a Chevron oil tanker named in her honor in 1993.

Though Chevron greatly benefited from the Bush administration’s destruction of Iraq, Halliburton came away the biggest winner from the Iraq war, making $39.5 billion off the conflict and its aftermath after being awarded numerous, lucrative contracts to “rebuild” the country. This outcome is unsurprising given that Cheney served as the company’s CEO for decades and retained $34 million in company stock throughout his tenure as U.S. vice president.

Iraq had been targeted by the Bush administration soon after Bush came to power, particularly following the formation of Cheney’s 2001 Energy Task Force, which called for the privatization of Iraq’s then-nationalized oil resources and reviewed maps of Iraq’s oil fields and lists of companies seeking contracts with Baghdad years before the war officially began.

Investing in a gung-ho president

Chevron’s hopes for a continued U.S. government policy that favors its growth domestically and globally have continued under the Trump administration and have been visible for some time, as evidenced by its $500,000 donation to Trump’s inaugural committee and their top executive’s praise for the “pro-business environment” cultivated by the Trump administration. Indeed, in March 2017, then-Chevron CEO John Watson told CNBC that he had already met with White House staff on “multiple occasions” in just the first three months of the administration and had been “encouraged by those meetings.” “We’ve seen a more pro-business environment … I think the approach they’re taking toward business — toward enabling our economy to grow again — is a real positive,” Watson added.

Halliburton too has long had high hopes for Trump given that the president held between $50,000 and $100,000 in company stock up until December 2016, when he sold his personal stocks to avoid “conflicts of interest” during his presidency. However, some of Trump’s earliest policy proposals were described by the media as directly benefiting Halliburton, including his administration’s push to open more publicly-held lands in the U.S. to oil drilling.

Furthermore, the recent scandal that forced Trump’s secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, to resign involved Zinke’s alleged corrupt dealings with Halliburton chairman David Lesar, suggesting that the Trump administration’s potential for a conflict of interest with Halliburton did not magically dissipate following Trump’s sale of his personal investments.

Since the early days of the administration, both Halliburton and Chevron have benefited directly from several Trump administration policies, both foreign and domestic. For instance, Chevron and Halliburton benefited substantially from the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which were recently found to have had “no major impact” on economic growth or company hiring practices but instead enabled mega-corporations to buy back stocks en masse in order to increase their companies’ stock prices. After the passage of those tax cuts, Chevron executives urged governments around the world to implement similar legislation.

In addition, consider Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which Reuters explained as “a global standard for governments to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets, and for companies to report payments made to obtain access to publicly owned resources, as well as other donations.” Bloomberg noted at the time that the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw had followed “a long lobbying battle waged by the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.”

The involvement of top U.S. oil corporations like Chevron in the administration’s decision to withdraw from the EITI led Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. Office at NGO Global Witness, to state that it was “Exxon and Chevron’s preference for secrecy that [had] made it impossible for the U.S. to comply.” Gilfillan then told Common Dreams:

When major Russian and Chinese oil companies are disclosing more information about their deals around the world than their U.S. counterparts, you have got to ask: what are Exxon and Chevron so desperate to hide?”

However, Chevron, for its part, has not agreed with every Trump policy, as the company did lob considerable criticism at the Trump administration last June over his imposition of steel tariffs during the first phase of the ongoing “trade war” with China. Yet, that criticism disappeared a few months later, when another Trump policy – his draconian sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector – took effect. As the Washington Examiner noted this past November, Trump’s sanction policy targeting Iranian oil “has proved a lucrative one for the shareholders who own oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron,” resulting in a jump for those companies’ third-quarter earnings “that topped Wall Street expectations by wide margins.”

The Examiner went onto note that Trump’s sanctions on Iranian oil exports led Chevron’s net income to more than double to $4.1 billion, with cash from operations reaching “the highest it has been in nearly five years.”

However, Halliburton’s reaction to Trump’s Iran policy is more mixed, given its considerable business interests in Iran and the fact that it had benefited from the Iran nuclear deal approved by the previous administration of Barack Obama. Yet, if the Trump administration’s regime-change policy targeting Iran succeeds, Halliburton will be among the top beneficiaries of that policy as well, given its already established presence in the country.

Now, with Venezuela’s massive oil resources in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, Chevron stands to gain once again from Trump’s foreign policy, which has been guided by oil politics in several instances.

Trump ready to test out his “Take the Oil” intervention policy

Though Trump has yet to make bold, Boltonesque public statements regarding the clear link between Venezuelan oil and his administration’s regime-change policy, his past statements regarding U.S. interventions in oil-rich nations elsewhere show that Trump has long backed U.S. intervention in foreign nations if it meant that the U.S. could secure that country’s natural resources, namely oil.

For instance, in 2011, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would support U.S.-backed intervention in Libya if the U.S. could “take the oil.” In the eight years since the U.S.-backed intervention, Libya remains without a central government and is now the site of rampant terrorist activity, a massive illegal arms trade, and a booming slave trade.

Watch | Trump says he would support Libya intervention if U.S. could “take the oil”

Then, in 2016, candidate Trump again asserted that the U.S. should “take the oil” when intervening or invading foreign nations. Trump told NBC News in September 2016 that the terror group Daesh (ISIS) emerged only because the U.S. had not taken Iraq’s oil after the 2003 invasion.

Trump also stated, with regard to Iraq, that:

We go in, we spent $3 trillion. We lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then look, what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, take the oil.”

While Trump has not publicly touted his “take the oil” policy in relation to the current situation in Venezuela, he has done so privately during several White House meetings early on in his presidency. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump requested a briefing on Venezuela in his second day in office, often speaking to his team about the suffering of Venezuelan people and the country’s immense potential to become a rich nation through its oil reserves.”

Thus, Bolton’s as well as Senator Rubio’s frank admissions that the Trump administration’s Venezuela regime-change policy is about the oil and giving that oil to American companies, are clearly aligned with a policy that the president himself has long supported.

Washington’s gift to Big Oil: privatize PDVSA, no matter the human cost

As with Iraq, Libya and other U.S. oil-motivated interventions of the past, the destruction of Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry and its privatization to American oil companies — especially Chevron and Halliburton — is the guiding factor behind the U.S.’ current regime-change policy targeting Caracas. While past administrations attempted to obfuscate their “wars for oil” as “restoring democracy,” Trump administration officials and other “coup architects” have recently “gone off script” and overtly stated the guiding principle behind its Venezuela policy.

However, the timing of the Trump administration’s regime-change push in Venezuela is key. While companies like Chevron and Halliburton have been hemorrhaging profits in recent years, they have so far withstood the fallout due to the record high production of U.S. shale oil. Yet, the “golden age” of U.S. shale is quickly disappearing, with top industry insiders like Harold Hamm along with Halliburton’s rival company, Schlumberger, expecting shale output growth to slow by as much as 50 percent this year. Hamm is a close confidant of President Trump.

If this comes to pass, American oil companies will be in a bad way. Yet, if Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

Worst of all, as the U.S.’ past interventions in Iraq and Libya and elsewhere have shown, Washington stands willing to kill untold thousands of innocent people in Venezuela — either through direct military intervention or a proxy war — to benefit American oil companies. Will the American people let yet another presidential administration destroy an entire nation for Chevron, Halliburton and other powerful American corporations?

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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.

I predicted three weeks ago that the Senate bill on the Middle East, which was rejected three times while the government was shutdown, would quickly receive cloture by a comfortable margin to end debate and proceed to a full vote in the Senate after the federal bureaucracy reopened. That has proven to be the case. Senate Bill S.1 was approved on January 29^th 76 for votes to 22 against. Every Republican voted for it, minus only Rand Paul and Jerry Moran, who did not vote. The Republicans were joined by 25 Democrats, all of whom had previous voted “no” to embarrass the White House over the shutdown. Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer, who has described himself as Israel’s protector in the Senate, switched his vote as did notoriously pro-Israel Senators Ben Cardin and Bob Menendez. The bill must now be passed by the Senate, which is certain to take place, before being sent on to the House of Representatives for its approval, where there will certainly be some limited debate. It then will go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Readers will recall that S.1 the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, sponsored by the singularly ambitious though demonstrably brain dead Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, included $33 billion in guaranteed aid to Israel for the next ten years, an unprecedented gesture to America’s closest ally and best friend in the whole world, as Congress might describe it.

But the legislation also incorporated measures to criminalize criticism of Israel, referred to as the Combating BDS Act of 2019. It has been correctly observed that that portion of the bill is clearly unconstitutional as it limits free speech, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is considered to be the bedrock of American civil liberties, but there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will agree if and when the law is contested. Once free expression is abridged for Israel there will be no end to other grievance groups exploiting the precedent to silence criticism and effectively negate the First Amendment.

The potential destruction of the Bill of Rights is only one aspect of the power that Israel has over American policymakers. The widely ballyhooed election of several Congresswomen who appear willing to challenge the Israeli orthodoxy on Capitol Hill is already being countered by the establishment within the Democratic Party, demonstrating once again how deep the corruption of America’s political class by Israel has gone.

In an early December speech before a largely Jewish audience at the Israeli-American Council gathering in South Florida, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demonstrated in no uncertain terms just how she and other Congressmen are more responsive to Israel and its supporters than they are to their own constituents. She said in response to a staged question during a “conversation” with Democratic Party top donor Israeli Haim Saban,

“I have said to people when they ask me, if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

Now “who we are” is a favorite expression used by a certain type of progressive that was made popular by the smooth talking but devious Barack Obama, meaning “I am taking the moral high ground so don’t ask me any questions or challenge what I have just said.” In Pelosi’s case she is saying precisely that, that American patronage of Israel is a moral imperative, a commitment forever that must be sustained no matter what Israel does and even if the United States itself should fall into ruin.

It is an absurd comment for someone who represents the people of her state and has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the ultimate pander to a right-wing Jewish audience that is socially progressive and consistently votes Democratic, which Pelosi celebrated, while at the same time cheering the bloody repression of the Palestinian people. And while Israel’s cheering section is doing all that, it is also dragging the American people into wars that need not be fought and stealing the taxpayers’ dollars to give to the racist Kleptocrats in charge in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Pelosi, like her partner in crime Senator Chuck Schumer, who also spoke at the conference, has a problem in paying for security along America’s southern border but she does not hesitate to send billions of dollars to Israel every year. One has to wonder at her priorities, but she knows that American Jews are more powerful and relevant to her party’s finances than doing the right thing would be, so there is no evidence of any hesitation on her part to throwing some Arabs and the outliers within her own party under the bus.

And Nancy also spoke of the dissidents in the Democratic Party, all five or so of them, saying

“Remove all doubt in your mind. It’s just a question of not paying attention to a few people who may want to go their own way…”

Apparently there is plenty of room under that bus for non-believers. And she also threw out a standard line of how “I believe that the establishment of the state of Israel was the greatest accomplishment of the twentieth century” while also unloading on the Arabs saying “We have to I think in Congress make it really clear to Palestinians that we expect them to be responsible negotiators and we haven’t seen a lot of that thus far.”

Apparently, Nancy is unaware that the “establishment” of Israel forced 700,000 people who had lived in Palestine for centuries out of their homes. And she apparently also has missed all those stories of Palestinian “terrorist” children and emergency workers being shot dead by Israeli snipers while they were “negotiating” such things as access to food, water, and medicines from the inside of the Gaza containment fence. Or maybe she’s forgotten about the towns in Israel that can legally ban Christian or Muslim residents as Israel is now officially a Jewish only state. Nancy Pelosi’s extreme efforts to demonstrate loyalty and devotion to a nation that the rest of the world views as a pariah is commendable, but only if one is a sociopath.

There is something completely dead at the heart of American politics which makes basic humanity unacceptable when confronted by a force for evil that has penetrated and manipulated both the national media and the governing political consensus. That is what Israel and its rabid band of supporters have done to the United States. First Amendment? Goodbye. If the U.S. government should crumble under the strain, don’t worry because our support for you is eternal. Kill a couple of hundred Arabs, shoot a few thousand more? No problem. It’s God’s will. And if Israel leads America into a nuclear war? Then we will do what we have to do to protect our ally.

Ask Pelosi and Schumer, “Have you been corrupted?” They will answer “No. Of course not. It is what we are.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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.

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The covert and overt interventions taking place against Venezuela by the United States and its allies are a form of aggression and a violation of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter making the nations involved international outlaws.

The attempted coup against President Maduro of Venezuela may have failed so far but the jackals that instigated it have not given up their objective of forcing the majority of Venezuelans benefiting from the Bolivarian revolution begun by President Chavez, back to the misery the revolution is trying to save them from.  The United States and its allied governments and media, working with American military and civilian intelligence services, are pumping out a constant flow of propaganda about the start of affairs in Venezuela to mislead and manipulate their own peoples so that they support their aggression and to undermine Venezuelans support for their revolution.

We have seen this type of propaganda before, the fake stories about “human rights” abuses, economic conditions, the cries of “democracy,” the propaganda about an  “authoritarian” leader, a “tyrant,” “dictator”, all labels they have used before against leaders of nations that they have later murdered; President Arbenz, Allende, Torrijos, Habyarimana, Milosevic, Hussein, Ghaddafi are examples that come quickly to mind, so that the same threats against Maduro are not just propaganda but direct physical threats.

We see the same pretexts for military aggression used and same euphemisms being employed, the same cries for “humanitarian intervention,” which we now know are nothing more than modern echoes of Hitler’s pretexts for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, to “save the oppressed Germans.”

We see the same smug lies and hypocrisy about the rule of law as they openly brag about their violation of international law with every step they take and talk as if they are gods ruling the world.

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.

Canada will take the lead in the aggression against Venezuela on Monday February 4^th when it hosts a meeting in Ottawa of a group of international war crime conspirators, known as The Lima Group, a group of Latin American and Caribbean lackeys of the United States, including Mexico and Canada which was set up by the United States at a meeting in Lima, Peru on August 8, 2017 with the express purpose of overthrowing President Maduro.

Canada’s harridan of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, stated to the press recently that

“Canada needs to play a leading role in the Lima Group because the crisis in Venezuela is unfolding in Canada’s global backyard. This is our neighbourhood. We have a direct interest in what happens in our hemisphere.”

“In Canada’s global backyard?”  It’s astonishing to read it. Canada regards the globe as its backyard? She manages to reveal a severe case of megalomania and insult the rest of the nations of the world at the same time.  Her statement that Venezuela “is our neighbourhood” is almost a direct adoption of the American claim to hegemony and “interventionism” in the western hemisphere as if Canada completely identifies itself with the United States, that is, in terms of foreign policy, has completely merged with the United States.

But, by doing so, the Canadian elite show themselves to be the enemies of progress and economic and social justice; shows them to be the antihuman reactionaries that they are. They also make themselves world outlaws.

Freeland claims that the Lima Group meeting will “address the political and economic crisis in Venezuela,” yet it is Canada that, along with the United States that has created the very crisis they are using as a pretext to attack President Maduro. It is they that have tried to topple both him and Chavez through assassination plots, threatened military invasion and economic warfare that has the sole purpose of disrupting the social and economic life of Venezuela, of making life as miserable as possible in order to foment unrest while conspiring with internal reactionary forces.

The Lima Group, began its dirty work in 2017 by issuing statements condemning the Bolivarian revolution, claimed that there was a break down of law and order in Venezuela and attempted to cancel the elections just held which gave President Maduro a solid majority of 68% of the votes in what all international elections observers judged free and fair.

Following the election of Maduro all of these nations withdrew their ambassadors from Venezuela. They did all this while claiming that their actions were taken “with full respect for the norms of international law and the principle of nonintervention” when they are plainly violating all norms of international law and the principle of non-intervention. They are also violating the UN Charter that prohibits any nation or group of nations from taken action outside the framework of the UN Security Council against any other nation.

The Ottawa meeting is in fact a meeting of criminal conspirators that are intent on committing acts of aggression, the supreme war crime against a sovereign nation and people.Intervention is generally prohibited under international law because it violates the concept of independent state sovereignty. All nations have the right to govern themselves as they deem fit and that no nation could rightfully interfere in the government of another.Since there can be no intervention without the presence of force or threats of its use the actions taken and threats made against Venezuela constitute the crime of aggression under international law.

The US and Canada are now threatening the use of armed force against Venezuela. John Bolton stated that all options are on the table and has even threatened Maduro with imprisonment in the US torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. Britain has seized Venezuelan funds sitting in London banks, and the US and its flunkies are now trying to stop Venezuela and Turkey from dealing in Venezuelan gold, and, to add to their net, accuse them of sending the gold to Iran in violation of their illegal “sanctions.”

The hypocrisy hits you in the face especially when some of the same nations in the Lima Gang recognised as far bas as 1826 at the Congress of Panama the absolute prohibition of intervention by states in each other’s internal affairs. In attendance, were the states of Columbia, Central America, Mexico, and Peru. Led by Simon Bolivar, the Congress declared its determination to maintain”the sovereignty and independence of all and each of the confederated powers of America against foreign subjection.”

At the Seventh International Conference of American States held in Montevideo in 1933,The Convention on Rights and Duties of States, issued at the conclusion of the conference, to which the U.S. was a signatory, declared that”no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” The legal position of the doctrine of nonintervention was

solidified three years later at Buenos Aires with the adoption of the Additional Protocol Relative to Non-Intervention. This document declared “inadmissible the intervention of any of the parties to the treaty, directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other of the Parties.” The U.S. government agreed to this treaty without reservation as well.

The United Nations has become the primary source of the rules of International behavior since World War II. The principle of nonintervention between states is everywhere implicit in the Charter of the United Nations. Article 1 of the U.N. Charter sets out the four purposes of the organization, one of which is “to maintain international peace and security,” a task which includes the suppression of “threats to the peace,” “acts of aggression” and “other breaches of the peace.” Another is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people.” Article 2(1) goes on to base the organization on “the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.”Articles 2(3) and 2(4) require Member States to utilize peaceful means in the settlement of disputes and to refrain from the use of force.

Article 2(4) states:

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

Thus, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of the economic and political pressures and the indirect subversion which is an integral part of covert action.

That covert action is forbidden under the law of the U.N. is supported

by the numerous resolutions passed by the General Assembly which assert the right to national sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention in general, while specifically condemning particular tactics used in covert action.

At the risk of tiring the reader, I think it is worthwhile to reiterate what the General Assembly of the United Nations has stated over and again beginning with Resolution 290 (iv) in 1949. Referred to as the “Essentials of Peace”

Resolution, this enactment called upon every nation to “refrain from any threats or acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of any State, or at fomenting civil strife and subverting the will of the people in any state.”‘

Resolution 1236 (XII) passed in 1957, declared that “peaceful and tolerant relations among States” should be based upon “respect for each other’s sovereignty, equality and territorial integrity and nonintervention in one another’s internal affairs.’

The first General Assembly resolution specifically prohibiting covert action was Resolution 213 1(XX). Entitled the “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty,” this resolution was based on proposals made by the Soviet Union, nineteen Latin American States, and the United Arab Republic, whose draft resolution was co-sponsored by 26 other non-aligned countries. The declaration restated the aims and purposes of the U.N. and noted the importance of recognizing State sovereignty and freedom to self-determination in the current political atmosphere. The eighth preambular paragraph of Resolution stated that, “direct intervention, subversion and all forms of indirect intervention are contrary” to the principles of the U.N. and, “consequently, constitute a violation of the Charter of the United Nations.”‘  The operative portion of the declaration consists of eight paragraphs, the first of which makes clear there can be no “intervention as of right”:

“1. No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.’

In another paragraph the Resolution precisely defined the scope of its prohibition against intervention, demonstrating the illicit status of covert activities:

“2. No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no state shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed toward the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State.”

Resolution 2225 (XXI) reaffirmed the principles and rules ex-pressed in Resolution 2131 (XX), and urged “the immediate cessation of intervention, in any form whatever, in the domestic or external affairs of States,” and condemned “all forms of intervention . . . as a basic source of danger to the cause of world peace.”

Finally, the Resolution called upon all states to, “refrain from armed intervention or the promotion or organization of subversion, terrorism or other indirect forms of intervention for the purpose of changing by violence the existing system in another State or interfering in civil strife in another State.”

By Resolution 2625 (XXV), the General Assembly adopted the “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” The Declaration had its origins with the first meeting of the Special Committee on the Principles of International Law held in 1964 in Mexico City. This document asserted seven basic principles of international law, then elaborated how these principles were to be realized. The seven principles embodied in the Declaration were: a) the principle prohibiting the threat or use of force in international relations;b) the principle requiring the peaceful settlement of disputes; c)the duty of nonintervention; d) the duty of states to cooperate with each other; e) the principle of equal rights and self-determination of all people;f) the principle of sovereign equality of states; and g) the good faith duty of states to fulfill their obligations under the Charter.

In its discussion of the first principle – that states refrain from the threat or use of force – the Declaration emphasizes the duty of each state “to refrain from organizing or encouraging the organization of irregular forces or armed bands, including mercenaries, for incursion into the territory of another state.” In addition, the Declaration insists that every state has a duty “to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another State or to allow such acts to be operated from its territory.”

I can go on listing other UN resolutions stating the same.  Again and again the General Assembly hammered home the importance of the principle of nonintervention as a central maxim of international law.

Resolution 34/103 addressed the inadmissibility of the policy of “hegemonism” in international relations and defined that term as the “manifestation of the policy of a State, or a group of States, to control, dominate and subjugate, politically, economically, ideologically or militarily, other States, peoples or regions of the world.”‘ The resolution,inter alia, called upon states to observe the principles of the Charter and the principle of nonintervention. By this resolution it was declared that the General Assembly, “Resolutely condemns policies of pressure and use or threat of use of force, direct or indirect aggression,occupation and the growing practice of interference and intervention,overt or covert, in the internal affairs of states.”‘

In 1981, the “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States” was adopted by the General Assembly through Resolution 36/103. One of the duties imposed upon states by the Declaration was: “The duty of a State to refrain from armed intervention, subversion, military occupation or any other form of intervention and interference,overt or covert, directed at another State or group of States, or any act of military, political or economic interference in the internal affairs of another State, including acts of reprisal involving the use of force.’ In addition, the Declaration called upon states to refrain from any action which seeks to disrupt the unity or to undermine or subvert the political order of other States, training and equipping mercenaries or armed bands, hostile propaganda, and the use of “external economic assistance” programs or “transnational and multinational corporations under its jurisdiction and control as instruments of political pressure and control.”‘

So, there you have it; the law. The world can see that the Lima Gang, who like to use the phrase “the rule of law” in their diktats to others, are committing egregious crimes under international law and together these crimes are components of the supreme war crime of aggression. The Lima Group therefore is a group of international criminal conspirators and the every individual involved is a war criminal.  So when the Lima conspirators issue their press statement after the Ottawa meeting, planning aggression against Venezuela, calling for the overthrow, for the head of President Maduro and dressing it up in the usual language of the aggressor, of “human rights” and “democracy” and their fake and illegal doctrine of  “responsibility to protect” it will not be issued by nations interested in peace or who have respect for international law but by a gang of criminals, of international outlaws.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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“Copyright Zambon Editore”

Capítulo 1

O NASCIMENTO DA BOMBA

1.1.O bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki

«Há dezasseis horas, um avião americano deixou cair uma bomba sobre Hiroshima, uma base importante do exército japonês. [ ] É uma bomba atómica. É uma consolidação da energia fundamental do universo. A força da qual o Sol extrai a sua energia»: assim anuncia o Presidente dos Estados Unidos, Harry Truman, na declaração de 6 de Agosto de 1945.   Três dias depois, no discurso radiofónico de 9 de Agosto, explica que «a primeira bomba atómica foi lançada sobre Hiroshima, uma base militar, porque neste primeiro ataque queríamos evitar, o mais possível, o massacre de civis».

Na realidade, Hiroshima não é uma base militar, como também não é Nagasaki, a cidade japonesa sobre a qual os Estados Unidos lançaram a segunda bomba atómica, em 9 de Agosto, o mesmo dia em que o Presidente Truman pronuncia o discurso radiofónico.

A bomba atómica de urânio de 15 kiloton (igual à potência explosiva de 15 mil toneladas de TNT) lançada sobre Hiroshima, sarcasticamente designada de Little Boy (rapazinho), matou imediatamente e nos seis meses seguintes, cerca de 140.000 pessoas – civis, na esmagadora maioria. Mas outras pessoas morreram nos anos seguintes, depois dos efeitos das radiações, embora muitos dos sobreviventes, os hibakusha, tenham sofrido efeitos biológicos a longo prazo. O número total de vítimas da bomba de Hiroshima, nos decénios seguintes, é estimado em mais de meio milhão. A bomba  atómica de plutónio de cerca de 22 kiloton, lançada sobre Nagasaki, (humoristicamente denominada Fatman = gorducho), mata imediatamente e nos meses seguintes 75.000 pessoas, na grande maioria civis, aos quais se juntaram muitos outros nos anos seguintes, enquanto muitos dos sobreviventes, sofreram os efeitos biológicos a longo prazo.

A justificação oficial do bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki é que só assim os Estados Unidos podem forçar o Japão à rendição, sem ter de pagar um preço elevado em vidas americanas. Na realidade o Japão está no limite extremo e não há necessidade de recorrer à bomba atómica para impôr-lhe a rendição. A verdadeira razão é outra. Enquanto Truman está na Conferência de Potsdam (7 de Julho a 2 de Agosto de 1945), juntamente com Churchill e Stalin, é-lhe comunicado secretamente que, a 16 de Julho, foi detonada em New Mexico, a primeira bomba atómica. O Projecto Manhattan, conduzido no máximo segredo desde Junho de 1942, tinha alcançado a sua meta. Truman tem agora a possibilidade de acabar a guerra com o Japão da maneira mais favorável aos Estados Unidos, impedindo que a União Soviética participe na invasão do Japão, decidida em Potsdam e de expandir, desse modo, a sua influência à região do Pacífico.

Para isso, ordena secretamente que a bomba atómica seja utilizada o mais rápido possível.Em 24 de Julho, dois dias antes da Declaração de Potsdam, na qual se intima o Japão à rendição incondicional, são escolhidas secretamente, como possíveis objectivos, quatro cidades japonesas: Hiroshima (com mais de 250 mil habitantes), Nagasaki (cerca de 200 mil), Kokura e Niigata (cada uma com 150 mil). As condições meteorológicas mais favoráveis, em 6 de Agosto, fazem cair a primeira escolha em Hiroshima. Três dias depois, a escolha cai sobre Nagasaki.

«A decisão de destruir Hiroshima e Nagasaki foi uma decisão política e não, uma decisão militar» ( ou seja, não foi ditada pela necessidade de derrotar militarmente o Japão), escreve a jornalista americana, Diana Johnstone. «A posse demonstrada dessa arma dava a Truman uma sensação de poder sentir-se livre para romper a promessa feita aos russos e de pressionar Moscovo, na Europa, de maneira ameaçadora. As bombas de Hiroshima e Nagasaki não mataram, apenas e sem motivo, centenas de milhares de civis. Elas abriram o caminho à Guerra Fria».

Os Estados Unidos procuram tirar a máxima vantagem do facto de, naquele momento, serem os únicos a possuir a arma atómica. Depois de tê-la definido, «a maior conquista que a ciência organizada já tinha realizado na História»,Truman sublinha na declaração de 6 de Agosto que, «mesmo não sendo habitual este governo esconder os seus conhecimentos à comunidade científica mundial, nas actuais circunstâncias, não se pretende divulgar os processos técnicos de produção.»

Ele sublinha, em seguida, que «a energia atómica pode exercer uma influência eficaz para a manutenção da paz mundial». O sentido é claro: dado que os Estados Unidos não pretendem divulgar os processos técnicos de produção, isto significa que serão eles, uma vez terminada a Segunda Guerra Mundial, a garantir a «paz mundial» servindo-se do monopólio das armas nucleares.

Manlio Dinucci

ÍNDICE DO LIVRO

Nota sobre o Autor

Nota da Redacção

1    O nascimento da Bomba 

1.1  O bombardeamento atómico de Hiroshima e Nagasaki

1.2  Os efeitos da explosão nuclear sobre uma cidade

1.3  Os efeitos da chuva radioactiva

1.4  O inverno nuclear

2    A corrida aos armamentos nucleares 

2.1  O confronto nuclear USA-URSS

2.2  Os mísseis balísticos intercontinentais

2.3  A crise dos mísseis em Cuba e a introdução da China entre as potências nucleares

2.4  A planificação do ataque nuclear 

2.5  O Tratado do Espaço Exterior e o Tratado de Não-Proliferação deArmas Nucleares

2.6  Os mísseis balísticos com ogivas múltiplas  

2.7  A bomba N

2.8  O Tratado dos Mísseis Anti-balísticos e da limitação das armas estratégicas 

2.9  A  Bomba secreta de Israel — Parte 1 + Parte 2 + Parte 3

2.10  A introdução da África do Sul, da Índia e do Paquistão entre as potências nucleares

3    O barril de pólvora nuclear

3.1  Um milhão de Hiroshimas

3.2  A «maleta nuclear»

3.3  Os falsos alarmes de ataques nucleares

3.4  Os acidentes com armas nucleares

3.5  Poluição radioactiva dos ensaios e das instalações nucleares

3.6  A ligação entre o nuclear militar e civil

3.7  Os acidentes nas centrais nucleares 

3.8  Os movimentos anti-nucleares durante a guerra fria

4    As guerras após a guerra fria 

4.1 O mundo numa encruzilhada

4.2  Golfo: a primeira guerra após a guerra fria

4.3  As armas de urânio empobrecido

4.4  A reorientação estratégica dos Estados Unidos 

4.5  A reorientação estratégica da NATO

4.6 A intervenção da NATO na crise balcânica e aguerra contra a Jugoslávia 

4.7  Campo de teste de bombardeiros de ataque nuclear e uso maciço de armas de urânio empobrecido 

4.8  A superação do Artigo 5 e a confirmação da liderança dos EUA.

4.9  O «Novo Modelo de Defesa» da Itália

4.10  A expansão da NATO para Leste, para a Rússia

5    A encenação do desarmamento 

5.1  As armas nucleares e o “escudo anti-míssil” na reestruturação das forças dos EUA

5.2  Os tratados START sobre redução de armas estratégicas

5.3  Proibição de testes nucleares e de testes “sub-críticos”

5.4  O Tratado de Moscovo e o novo START

5.5  A introdução da Coreia do Norte nas potências nucleares

5.6  Outros países capazes de fabricar armas nucleares

5.7  As armas químicas e biológicas 

6     A nova ofensiva USA/NATO 

6.1  11 de Setembro: grande-ataque terrorista via satélite 

6.2  11 de Setembro: as falhas da versão oficial

6.3  Afeganistão: o início da «guerra global ao terrorismo» 

6.4  A segunda guerra contra o Iraque

6.5  A guerra contra a Líbia

6.6  A guerra oculta contra a Síria e aformação do ISIS

6.7  O golpe de estado na Ucrânia

6.8  As guerras secretas com um rosto humanitário 

7    A Europa na frente nuclear 

7.1  A Europa no rearmamento nuclear do Prémio Nobel da Paz

7.2  Itália: porta-aviões nuclear USA/NATO no Mediterrâneo

7.3  A B61-12, a nova bomba nuclear USA para a Itália e para a Europa 

7.4  A ‘escalation’ USA/NATO na Europa

7.5  O «escudo» USA sobre a Europa 

8     Os cenários do Apócalipse 

8.1   A ‘escalation’ qualitativa do confronto nuclear

8.2   A preparação do ‘first strike’ nuclear

8.3  Armas electro-magnéticas e laser e aviões robot espaciais para a guerra nuclear

8.4   A ameaça mortal do plutónio e o aviso não escutado de Fukushima 

8.5   A ameaça do terrorismo nuclear 

8.6   As nano-armas: potenciais detonadores potenciais da guerra nuclear

9     No dia anterior, enquanto estamos a tempo

9.1   A estratégia  do Império Americano do Ocidente

9.2   O sistema bélico planetário dos Estados Unidos da América 

9.3   A atracagem da Itália à máquina de guerra USA/NATO

9.4  A desatracagem da Itália da máquina de guerra USA/NATO, 
para uma Itália soberana e neutra, liberta de armas nucleares 

APÊNDICE

 

Tradutora: Mania Luísa de Vasconcellos

“To wrongly name things is to add to the world’s ills”.

Let us adapt this quote attributed to Albert Camus to the Venezuelan contest. It would be something like “to recognise a parallel president is to serve the interests of foreign powers”. It seems like there have not been enough wars and refugees. In truth, who authorised France or Spain to appoint Guaidó as president of Venezuela, if not the controversial Donald Trump, US president?

By recognising Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is following the same interventionist foreign policy that has yielded excellent results in Libya or Syria, as anyone can confirm. Have there not been enough wars and refugees? Let us take the example of Honduras. Edwin Espina, does the name ring a bell? This young Honduran activist has been in jail for a year in the inhuman prison cells of the Juan Orlando Hernández regime. His crime is to have denounced the electoral fraud at the end of 2017. Ten years ago, the US played a decisive role in the coup against Mel Zelaya, and since then, the situation in Honduras has gone from bad to worse. For months, thousands of Hondurans have been fleeing the country. But since Honduras hosts an important US military base, it is referred to as a “democracy”.

Leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez have shamefully bowed before Trump and insulted the national sovereignty of French and Spanish peoples by announcing they would recognise Guaidó at the end of the eight day deadline they gave president Maduro. How did we get here? The United States has disregarded the United Nations principles by introducing the notion of “responsibility to protect”. In other words, legitimising intervention under the pretext that a government would attack its own people. The formula is not foolproof, but is has worked several times.

During the February 2nd rally, Guaidó announced that “humanitarian aid” would soon arrive from Cucuta, the Colombian town right on the Venezuelan border, known as a transit point for all kinds of smuggling and for the presence of paramilitaries. The goal of the US is to use Colombia, or even Brazil, to re-create the pattern of “humanitarian corridors” that was put in place during the Syrian conflict. And, under the guise of delivering aid, traffic weapons and infiltrate mercenaries. Soon after this demonstration, national security advisor John Bolton called on the leadership of the Venezuelan army to execute a coup. The US would rather not intervene to blatantly, and that is where lackeys come in handy.

Meanwhile, in Avenida Bolívar, a massive chavista march against foreign intervention and in defense of the 20 year legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution was held. At the same time, as everyone saw, the streets of France were perfectly calm, and the yellow vests have grown bored of the cold and the humane treatment by the police. Carry on, nothing to see here. The crisis is over there in Venezuela. And if reality does not match the news, then the trick is to stoke the flames from abroad. US vice-president Mike Pence knows a thing or two about this. He insisted that all options are on the table, including bombing and destroying an entire country as was done in Iraq, because “it is not the moment for dialogue, but for action”… What is that you say? That tens of thousands took to the streets in France demonstrating against repression, because they no longer support Macron after a mere year and a half in office? Nonsense.

It does not take a seasoned journalist or intellectual to understand that Venezuela is now in the stage where the future of humanity is being played out. Either a world in which imperial chaos reigns, or one with a multipolar balance that respects the United Nations.

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Die am 1. Februar von Außenminister Mike Pompeo angekündigte „Aussetzung“ des Washingtoner Vertrags über nukleare Mittelstreckensysteme (INF) hat den Countdown eingeleitet, der innerhalb von sechs Monaten die Vereinigten Staaten endgültig aus dem Vertrag herauszählen wird. Ab heute sehen sich die USA jedenfalls in der Lage, Waffen der im Vertrag verbotenen Kategorie – bodengestützte Mittelstreckenraketen (zwischen 500 und 5.500 km) – zu testen und einzusetzen.

Zu dieser Kategorie gehören die in den 80er Jahren in Europa aufgestellten Atomraketen – Pershing-2 ballistische Raketen, die von den Vereinigten Staaten in Westdeutschland aufgestellt wurden, und landgestützte Marschflugkörper, die von den Vereinigten Staaten in Großbritannien, Italien, Westdeutschland, Belgien und den Niederlanden aufgestellt wurden, unter dem Vorwand der Verteidigung der europäischen Verbündeten gegen die von der Sowjetunion auf deren eigenem Territorium aufgestellten ballistischen SS-20-Raketen.

Der 1987 von den Präsidenten Gorbatschow und Reagan unterzeichnete INF-Vertrag eliminierte alle Raketen dieser Kategorie, einschließlich der in Comiso (Sizilien) stationierten.

Der INF-Vertrag wurde von Washington in Frage gestellt, als die Vereinigten Staaten sahen, dass ihr strategischer Vorteil gegenüber Russland und China abnahm. Im Jahr 2014 beschuldigte die Obama-Regierung Russland ohne den geringsten Beweis, einen Marschflugkörper (Typ 9M729) getestet zu haben, der zu der vom Vertrag verbotenen Kategorie gehört. Und im Jahr 2015 gab sie bekannt, dass „die Vereinigten Staaten aufgrund der Verletzung des INF-Vertrags durch Russland den Einsatz von Bodenraketen in Europa in Betracht ziehen“. Dieser Plan wurde von der Trump-Administration bestätigt. Im Jahr 2018 genehmigte der Kongress die Finanzierung eines „Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprogramms für einen Marschflugkörper, der von einer straßenbasierten mobilen Plattform gestartet wurde“. Moskau seinerseits leugnete, dass sein Marschflugkörper gegen den Vertrag verstößt, und beschuldigten Washington im Gegenzug, in Polen und Rumänien Rampen für Abfangraketen (vom „Schild“) installiert zu haben, mit denen Marschflugkörper mit Atomsprengköpfen gestartet werden können.

In diesem Zusammenhang müssen wir uns an den geografischen Faktor erinnern – während eine in Europa stationierte US-Nuklearrakete mittlerer Reichweite Moskau treffen kann, kann eine ähnliche von Russland auf seinem eigenen Territorium stationierte Rakete die europäischen Hauptstädte erreichen, aber nicht Washington. Wenn wir das Szenario umkehren, ist es, wie wenn Russland seine nuklearen Mittelstreckenraketen in Mexiko installieren würde.

Der Plan der USA, den INF-Vertrag zu begraben, wurde von den europäischen Verbündeten der NATO voll unterstützt. Der Nordatlantikrat erklärte am 4. Dezember 2018, dass der „INF-Vertrag durch das Vorgehen Russlands“ in Gefahr sei, dem vorgeworfen wurde, „ein destabilisierendes Raketensystem“ eingesetzt zu haben. Der gleiche Rat hat gestern erklärt, dass er „die Maßnahmen der Vereinigten Staaten zur Aussetzung ihrer Verpflichtungen aus dem INF-Vertrag uneingeschränkt unterstützt“ und Russland aufgefordert, die verbleibenden sechs Monate zu nutzen, um „zu einer vollständigen Einhaltung des Vertrags zurückzukehren“.

Der Zusammenbruch des INF-Vertrags wurde auch durch den Beitrag der Europäischen Union unterstützt, die in der UN-Generalversammlung am 21. Dezember 2018 gegen die von Russland vorgelegte Resolution zur „Erhaltung und Umsetzung des INF-Vertrags“ stimmte, die mit 46 zu 43 Stimmen bei 78 Enthaltungen abgelehnt wurde. Die Europäische Union – von denen 21 ihrer 27 Mitglieder auch Mitglieder der NATO sind (das Vereinigte Königreich bleibt beim Austritt aus der EU Mitglied) – hat sich einstimmig für die Position der NATO ausgesprochen, die sich ihrerseits einstimmig für die der Vereinigten Staaten entschieden hat. Im Wesentlichen hat die Europäische Union also auch grünes Licht für den möglichen Einsatz neuer US-Atomraketen in Europa, einschließlich Italien, gegeben.

In einer Frage von dieser Bedeutung hat sich die Regierung Conte, wie auch die Vorgängerregierung, sowohl der NATO als auch der EU angeschlossen. Und über den gesamten politischen Kreis hinweg wurde keine einzige Stimme erhoben, um zu erklären, dass das Parlament darüber entscheiden sollte, wie es bei der UNO über den INF-Vertrag abstimmen soll. Und wieder wurde im Parlament keine Stimme erhoben, um zu fordern, dass Italien den Atomwaffensperrvertrag einhält und sich an die UNO bezüglich des Verbots von Kernwaffen hält, das die USA zwingt, ihre Atombomben B61 aus unserem Staatsgebiet abzuziehen und die noch gefährlicheren B61-12 nicht ab dem ersten Halbjahr 2020 zu installieren.

Da Italien mit den Muos und den Jtags in Sizilien auf seinem Territorium Atomwaffen und strategische Anlagen der USA besitzt, ist es als hochentwickelter Stützpunkt der US-Nuklearstreitkräfte und damit als Ziel russischer Streitkräfte wachsenden Gefahren ausgesetzt. Eine ballistische Mittelstrecken-Nuklearrakete benötigt zwischen 6 und 11 Minuten, um ihr Ziel zu erreichen. Ein schönes Beispiel für die Verteidigung unserer Souveränität, die in der Verfassung verankert ist, und für unsere Sicherheit, die die Regierung garantiert, indem sie den Migranten die Tür verschließt, sie aber weit öffnet, um US-Atomwaffen zuzulassen.

Manlio Dinucci

L’affossamento USA del Trattato INF e le complicità europee

il manifesto, 05. Februar 2019

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: K.R.

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Inquisitive observers of the Middle East’s politics would naturally wonder that why do the Western powers prop up the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, knowing fully well that they are the ones responsible for nurturing Islamic extremism. Does this not run counter to their professed goal of eliminating Islamic radicalism and terrorism?

Seemingly, the Western powers support the Gulf’s autocrats because it has been a firm policy principle of the Western powers to promote “political stability” in the Middle East instead of representative democracy. They are mindful of the ground reality that the mainstream Muslim sentiment is firmly against any Western military presence and intervention in the Middle East region.

In addition, 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, certainly a myopic approach which is the hallmark of so-called pragmatic politicians and statesmen.

Left to their own resources, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies lack the manpower, the military technology and the moral authority to rule over forcefully suppressed and disenfranchised Arab masses, not only the Arab masses but also the South Asian and African immigrants of the Gulf states. One-third of the Saudi Arabian population is composed of immigrants. Similarly, more than 75% of UAE’s population is also comprised of expats from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

The rest of the Gulf states, including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, also have a similar proportion of immigrant workers from the developing countries. Unlike the immigrants of the Western countries, however, who hold the citizenship status, the Gulf’s immigrants have lived there for decades and sometimes for generations, and they are still regarded as unentitled foreigners.

Regarding the Western powers interest in propping up the Gulf’s autocrats, it bears mentioning that in April 2016, the Saudi foreign minister threatened [1] that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Saudi government in the United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack – though the bill was eventually passed, Saudi authorities have not been held accountable; even though 15 out of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Moreover, $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment in the Western Europe and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investments in North America and Western Europe.

Furthermore, in order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few rough stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production exceeds 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq, each, has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day, each; while UAE and Kuwait, each, has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day, each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold more than half of world’s 1477 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

No wonder then, 28,000 United States troops have currently been deployed in their numerous military bases and aircraft carriers in the oil-rich Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine of 1980, which states:

“Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry’s sales of arms to the Gulf Arab States, a report [2] authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during its eight-year tenure.

Similarly, the top items in Trump’s agenda for his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 were: firstly, he threw his weight behind the idea of the Saudi-led “Arab NATO” to counter Iran’s influence in the region; and secondly, he announced an unprecedented arms package for Saudi Arabia. The package included between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales, and over a period of 10 years, total sales could reach $350 billion.

Therefore, keeping the economic dependence of the Western countries on the Gulf Arab States in mind during the times of global recession when most of manufacturing has been outsourced to China, it is not surprising that when the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decided to provide training and arms to the Islamic jihadists in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Obama administration was left with no other choice but to toe the destructive policy of its regional Middle Eastern allies, despite the sectarian nature of the proxy war and its attendant consequences of breeding a new generation of Islamic jihadists who would become a long-term security risk not only to the Middle East but to the Western countries, as well.

Similarly, when King Abdullah’s successor King Salman decided, on the whim of the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, to invade Yemen in March 2015, once again the Obama administration had to yield to the dictates of Saudi Arabia and UAE by fully coordinating the Gulf-led military campaign in Yemen not only by providing intelligence, planning and logistical support but also by selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition to the Gulf Arab States during the conflict.

In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab states by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs contribute substantial investments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to the Western economies.

Regarding the Pax Americana which is the reality of the contemporary global political and economic order, according to a January 2017 infographic [3] by the New York Times, 210,000 US military personnel are currently stationed all over the world, including 79,000 in Europe, 45,000 in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea and 36,000 in the Middle East.

Although Donald Trump keeps complaining that NATO must share the cost of deployment of US troops, particularly in Europe where 47,000 American troops are stationed in Germany since the end of the Second World War, 15,000 in Italy and 8,000 in the United Kingdom, fact of the matter is that the cost is already shared between Washington and host countries.

Roughly, European countries pay one-third of the cost for maintaining US military bases in Europe whereas Washington chips in the remaining two-third. In the Far Eastern countries, 75% of the cost for the deployment of American troops is shared by Japan and the remaining 25% by Washington, and in South Korea, 40% cost is shared by the host country and the US chips in the remaining 60%.

Whereas the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar – pay two-third of the cost for maintaining 28,000 US troops in the Persian Gulf where more than half of world’s proven oil reserves are located and Washington contributes the remaining one-third.

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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.

Notes

[1] Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html?_r=0 

[2] The Obama administration’s arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security-idUSKCN11D2JQ

[3] What the U.S. Gets for Defending Its Allies and Interests Abroad?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/16/world/trump-military-role-treaties-allies-nato-asia-persian-gulf.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

The corporate media is wholeheartedly behind the federal government’s push for regime change in Venezuela. The propaganda is thick and, as per usual, it is as much about what they don’t, as what they do, report. Here are some important developments that have largely been ignored by Canada’s dominant media:

• At the Organization of American States meeting called by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on January 25 the Canadian-backed interventionist resolution was defeated 18-16.
• The “Lima Group” of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected president was established 18 months ago after Washington, Ottawa and others failed to garner the votes necessary to censure Venezuela at the OAS (despite the head of the OAS’s extreme hostility to Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro).
• Most of the world’s countries, with most of the world’s population, have failed to support the US/Canada push to recognize National Assembly head Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela.
• The UN and OAS charters preclude unilateral sanctions and interfering in other countries’ affairs.
• UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for sanctions, Idriss Jazairy, recently condemned US/Canadian sanctions on Venezuela.

As well, here are some flagrant double standards in Canadian policy the media have largely ignored:

• “Lima Group” member Jair Bolsonaro won the recent presidential election in Brazil largely because the most popular candidate, Lula Da silva, was in jail. His questionable election took place two years after Lula’s ally, Dilma Rousseff, was ousted as president in a ‘parliamentary coup’.
• Another “Lima Group” member, Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez, defied that country’s constitution a year ago in running for a second term and then ‘won’ a highly questionable
• “At the same time”as Canada and the US recognized Juan Guaidó, notes Patrick Mbeko, “in Democratic Republic of Congo they refuse to recognize the massive recent victory of Martin Fayulu in the presidential election, endorsing the vast electoral fraud of the regime and its ally Félix Tshisekedi.”

Beyond what the media has ignored, they constantly cite biased sources without offering much or any background. Here are a couple of examples:

• The Globe and Mail has quoted Irwin Cotler in two recent articles on Venezuela. But, the decades-long anti-Palestinian and anti-Hugo Chavez activist lacks any credibility on the issue. At a press conference in May to release an OAS report on alleged rights violations in Venezuela, Cotler said Venezuela’s “government itself was responsible for the worst ever humanitarian crisis in the region.” Worse than the extermination of the Taíno and Arawak by the Spanish? Or the enslavement of five million Africans in Brazil? Or the 200,000 Mayans killed in Guatemala? Or the thousands of state-murdered “subversives” in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil?
• CBC and Canadian Press (to a slightly lesser extent) stories about former Venezuelan Colonel Oswaldo Garcia, whose family lives in Montréal, present him as a democracy activist. But, notes Poyan Nahrvar, Garcia participated in a coup attempt last year and then launched raids into Venezuela from Colombia until he was captured by the Venezuelan military.
• The media blindly repeats Ottawa’s depiction of the “Lima Group”, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as an organization established to “bring peace, democracy and stability in Venezuela.” One report called it “a regional block of countries committed to finding a peaceful solution” to the crisis while another said its members “want to see Venezuela return to democracy.” This portrayal of the coalition stands its objective on its head. The “Lima Group” is designed to ratchet up international pressure on Maduro in hopes of eliciting regime change, which may spark a civil war. That is its reason for existence.

As part of nationwide protests against the “Lima Group” meeting taking place in Ottawa on Monday, activists in Montréal will rally in front of Radio Canada/CBC’s offices. They will be decrying not only Canada’s interference in Venezuela but the dominant media’s effort to “manufacture consent” for Canadian imperialism.

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Venezuela will not allow foreign soldiers to invade, President Nicolas Maduro said calling for dialogue with opposition forces during a televised speech Monday.

“Che, Fidel, Chavez, they are our heritage, they give us strength,” the Bolivarian head of state said, reminding the crowd of supporters of the country’s past struggle for independence dating back to the colonial era to present day.

Since the attempted coup on Jan. 23 led by opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido, the United States has aligned its forces with the self-proclaimed “interim president,” declaring his unconstitutional claim legitimate, triggering similar calls from its allies around the world and in South America.

Maduro said,

“When our Comandante Chavez passed away, I became president, but my first act was to hold elections. I wasn’t going to govern without elections…why has Sanchez Castejon governed for so long in Spain without convening elections?

Threats of militarized intervention have resurfaced as well as new rounds of suffocating sanctions against Venezuela, targeting the country’s oil companies in the United States. Although both the Lima Group and the European Union have rejected militarized force, they have recognized the Guaido’s claim and are calling for Maduro to abdicate in favor of a new election.

“The attacks against us from the so-called ‘Lima Group’ are also an attack on the whole left, on all progressives who they persecute in their countries,” President Maduro said, describing the organization’s behavior as “disgusting and laughable.”

Regarding the repeated requests for intervention made by the Venezuelan opposition, the president said it was foolish for his homeland to encourage war.

“Those who march with the US flag asking for military intervention in their own country have no idea what they’re asking for, they have no idea of the damage they will bring,” said Maduro.

“In Venezuela, a battle is being played out for the right of all countries to pursue their own paths… I want to ask the world for the highest level of solidarity to create a powerful movement against the threats of war from the US,” the Bolivarian president said.

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Those of you who have been involved in the past in the battle to protect our children from poorly made vaccines or toxic chemicals in our food or in our water know the power of these industries and how they’ve undermined every institution in our democracy that is supposed to protect little children from powerful, greedy corporations. Even the pharmaceutical companies have been able to purchase congress. They’re the largest lobbying entity in Washington D.C.. They have more lobbyists in Washington D.C. than there are congressman and senators combined. They give twice to congress what the next largest lobbying entity is, which is oil and gas… Imagine the power they exercise over both republicans and democrats. They’ve captured them (our regulatory agencies) and turned them into sock puppets. They’ve compromised the press… and they destroy the publications that publish real science. (Robert F. Kennedy Jr, from the video below)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Chairman of the Board of Directors for Children’s Health Defence (a worthy cause if you’re looking for one to donate to) has been fighting against big corporations that have taken over and undermined American government health regulatory agencies for a number of years. One of the most recent examples is when Robert F. Kennedy Jr represented Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper who successfully brought forward a lawsuit alleging glyphosate caused his cancer. That’s right, he won!

There are currently thousands of cases pending against Monsanto, which is only one of multiple powerful companies influencing agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And to think, these are the agencies providing us with ‘science’ in order to get the food, medications, and other products produced by these big corporations to be deemed safe. Not only that, but these agencies are providing educational resources to medical schools, which Big Pharma has completely taken over as well.

It’s truly unbelievable that, in this day and age, education has turned into brainwashing. Science is corrupted, altered, changed, ignored, and swept under the rug just because it threatens the interests of a few powerful people and the corporations they hide behind.

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”   Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ) (source)

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s pesticide Round Up,  is a perfect example, as science has been showing for decades how incredibly harmful it is for human health and the environment, yet it’s approved as ‘safe’ for use in the western world. It’s no mystery why glyphosate is illegal in the majority of countries around the world. The same goes for genetically modified foods, which is what Round Up was designed to be used on. Years ago, a lawsuit forced the FDA to divulge its files on genetically engineered foods.

“As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science. They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that GMOs were safe.” – Jane Goodall

You can read more about that here.  You can also read more about the connection between GMOs and cancer as well as hundreds of scientists supporting the link here. Just like glyphosate, dozens of countries have cited health and environmental hazards for keeping GMOs out of their country.

In addition, Monsanto colluded with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stifle cancer research and any connections to their products. The European Union actually just approved the use of glyphosate, and their approval was found to be based on plagiarized science from Monsanto.

The corruption is never-ending when it comes to the link between corporations and government agencies. In fact, only a few years ago, more than a dozen scientists from within the CDC put out an anonymous public statement detailing the influence corporations have on government policies. They were referred to as the Spider Papers.

Dr. William Thompson is a longtime CDC scientist who has published some of the most commonly cited pro-vaccine studies, some of which claim that there is absolutely no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.  He pointed to a specific study that he co-authored in 2004 for the CDC, which claimed that “the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine does not cause autism or any particular subtypes of autism spectrum disorder.” This study is often cited when trying to justify the use of this vaccine, despite the fact that he later stated they deleted important findings from that study. He said that “it’s the lowest point in my career that I went along with that paper and uh, I went along with this, we didn’t report significant findings…  I’m completely ashamed of what I did, I have great shame now that I was complicit and went along with this. I have been a part of the problem.” (source)

Anxious to get this information out, Thompson sent various documents to Congressman Bill Posey, who addressed the congress, reading a statement that he had received from Dr. Thompson:

Sometime soon after the meeting, we decided to exclude reporting any race effects, the [CDC] co-authors scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the [MMR vaccine] study. The remaining four co-authors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can. (source)

As you can see, there are no shortage of examples that highlight the collusion between corporations and government regulatory agencies.

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These are the ten biggest news stories going on right now that you need to know that will, in some way, affect Britain. When Brexit arrives and the consequences start to unravel, whatever they may be, the world continues to move – one threat being that Britain becomes so self-involved it gets left behind. So keep up with these brief updates as TruePublica will now start to publish more of them from now on.

Cold war 2.0

Russia pulls out of Nuclear treaty in ‘Symmetrical’ response to U.S. move. President Putin of Russia, in a decision that was widely expected, suspended his country’s observance of a key nuclear arms control pact on Saturday in response to a similar move by the United States a day before.

Mr Putin also said that Russia would build weapons previously banned under the treaty and would no longer initiate talks with the United States on any matters related to nuclear arms control. Cold war 2.0 has clearly kicked-off. The last one was not just quite frightening, it threatened the existence of humanity.

Trade wars fall guy

While global markets would hail a U.S.-China trade deal, fears are growing that the European Union could be the fall guy in any breakthrough, which would allow Donald Trump to turn his attention to German cars or French luxury wines.

Alicia García-Herrero, Chief Economist at Natixis for Asia Pacific, and a researcher at the Bruegel think-tank, is among those who have warned that a deal “could cost Europe dearly” if China substitutes a large part of its European imports for U.S. goods in a bid to appease the Trump administration.

Brexit – Britain revives cold war emergency plans

British lawmakers instructed Prime Minister Theresa May to reopen a Brexit treaty with the European Union to replace a controversial Irish border arrangement – and promptly received a flat rejection from Brussels.

With two months left until Britain is due by law to leave the EU, investors and allies have urged the government to clinch a deal to allow an orderly exit from the club it joined in 1973. So far, it has failed.

The authorities have now revived Cold War emergency plans to relocate the royal family should there be riots in London if Britain. Thousands of MI5 are now located in Northern Ireland, the Army and army reservists are on standby and police forces all over the country have cancelled all leave from April.

EU subversion of democracy in Italy

Did the subversion of Italian democracy by the European Union play a role in Italy’s fall into recession? Italy’s pre-existing debts were already so large that the EU got an agreement from the previous Italian government that deficit spending would be restricted to 0.8% of GDP.

The new government prepared to implement the policies it had promised in its election campaign: a reduction in taxes and an increase in certain types of welfare spending, including a basic income experiment. They proposed a fiscal plan that would increase the spending deficit to 2.4% of GDP.

The EU said no. Crash.

EU-Japan trade agreement enters into force

The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and Japan entered into force on 1 February 2019. Businesses and consumers across Europe and in Japan can now take advantage of the largest open trade zone in the world.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said:

“This agreement has it all: it scraps tariffs and contributes to the global rulebook, whilst at the same time demonstrating to the world that we both remain convinced by the benefits of open trade.

Except, of course, Britain. It opted out of the EU and so the trade deal excluded it from day one.

‘Divide and conquer’: China puts the pressure on US allies

As tensions between China and the US mount over trade and the extradition of a senior Huawei executive, Beijing has reserved its most colourful language for America’s allies.

Analysts say China is trying to isolate the US by going after its allies. Two Canadians remain in detention in China over unspecified allegations of endangering national security and a third was sentenced to death for drug smuggling after a sudden retrial — cases widely believed to be retaliation for Ottawa’s arrest of Meng at the request of the US.

French ‘yellow vests’ in Paris face Police with banned ‘flashball’ guns

Several thousand “gilets jaunes” protesters have marched through Paris and other French cities on Saturday on the 12th weekend of action against the government.

Protesters carried French flags and held signs attacking the French president as being out of touch or calling for referendums tabled by citizens.

Protesters injured in previous weeks of violence were put at the front of the protests, some of whom wore eyepatches with a target sign on them. The government warned that police would not hesitate to use ‘flashballs’ in the event of violence by demonstrators after it was authorised by France’s highest administrative court. Flashball riot control guns are banned in much of Europe.

UK’s Info commissioner launches data protection audit after democracy bought off

The information commissioner has launched an audit into Leave.EU and the insurance company owned by the campaign’s key financial backer, Arron Banks, after fining the organisations a total of £120,000 for data protection violations during the EU referendum campaign.

Leave.EU was fined £15,000 for using Eldon Insurance customers’ details unlawfully to send almost 300,000 political marketing messages, and a further £45,000 for its part in sending an Eldon marketing campaign to political subscribers. Eldon was fined £60,000 for the latter violation.

The Geo-political struggle for Venezuela

The usual mainstream media suspects have their printing presses and news presenters set to max propaganda mode over Venezuela.

The CIA is working hard to stoke violence, and the genuine poor will soon start to die, both in those egged on to riot and in the security services. But do not get taken in by the complete nonsense that this is a popular, democratic revolution. It is not. It is yet another barefaced CIA regime change coup.

Big Banks in big trouble (again)

Eight banks are being targeted in a European Union probe that alleges traders colluded to acquire and trade euro government bonds, a month after the EU regulators implicated lenders in a separate bond-trading case.

The EU’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, is moving her attention to possible collusion between banks in the estimated $9.4-trillion market for European government debt. She’s already extracted huge fines from Google and a massive back-tax bill from Apple Inc. before she ends her five-year term later this year. While the EU’s powerful antitrust arm often lags far behind financial authorities in the U.S. and the U.K. in punishing collusion between traders, its fines can be hefty.

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Israel began the construction of the over-ground portion of the Gaza border barrier that will connect to the under-construction sea barrier aimed at preventing the movement of the Hamas military wing out of the coastal enclave and into Israel.

The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed, on Sunday, that the over-ground section of the barrier will be 65 kilometers (40 miles) long and will be six meters (20 feet) high.

The Israeli Defense Ministry’s border administration said,

“The border is uniquely suited to the threats from the Gaza Strip and will give a comprehensive solution to preventing entry into Israel.”

The barrier is meant to prevent underground tunnels from Gaza.

The barrier, estimated to cost 3 billion shekels ($833 million), will include a concrete wall fitted with sensors and reaching dozens of meters deep into the ground and standing six meters high from ground level.

The barrier’s construction comes after ten months of mass protests, also known as “The Great March of Return,” launched by thousands of Palestinians civilians in protest of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry’s latest statistics, 263 Palestinians, including more than 45 children, were killed by Israeli forces during the protests along the Gaza border.

The more than 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have suffered from a nearly 12-year Israeli-imposed land, air, and sea blockade, which has plunged the small territory into poverty and some of the highest unemployment rates in the world.

The UN has reported that Gaza could be “uninhabitable” by 2020.

The video below shows the start of the barrier’s construction:

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“The Americans need us only for the purpose of manipulation”

The former commander of the Polish Land Forces General Skrzypczak doubted the expediency of creating the American military base Fort Trump in Poland.

The Americans have their own interests – hoping to deter Russia by using Americans – that do not coincide with the expectations of Poland, explained the General.

“If the price [the appearance of a Fort Trump] is the fact that we will become quasi-allies of the Americans and suppliers of financial resources for their businesses, then a Fort Trump should not appear at all”

said the Polish General

The former commander also doubted the ability of Washington to come out as the winner in the conflicts that it provokes:

“Americans understand that beyond Iran there is China, and behind China there is Russia … Here everything is connected … America cannot win such a war”.

The US is trying to not allow the economic strengthening of Beijing in Europe and to disrupt the implementation of the Chinese infrastructure project “One Belt, One Road”. When fulfilling these tasks Washington tries to involve as many allies as possible. For example, suggesting to Poland to hold an anti-Iranian conference, without having invited representatives of Tehran.

“Why do we allow ourselves to be drawn into an anti-Iranian adventure, which is absolutely alien to us? Poland has no place in this. We are needed by the Americans today, but only for the purpose of manipulating us. Our diplomacy is so weak that it does not give an account of what levers the Americans use for the sake of achieving their goals”

noted the General

The “Nasdaq” website previously pointed out the interest of American weapons companies in the appearance of a Fort Trump in Poland. Against the background of negotiations on this topic between Washington and Warsaw, the stocks of weapons giants cooperating with the US State Department sharply increase. The stocks of the “Aero Vironment” company, which manufactures drones, rose in 2018 by 103%, “Engility Holdings” – by 21%, and “Aerojet Roketdyne Holdings” – by 8%. The Polish media says that a Fort Trump would be a pot of gold for the American military-industrial complex.

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This article was originally published in Russian on fondsk.ru, translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

What happens in Venezuela going forward will have major consequences for the entire region and the world; and, with the U.S. already pushing countries to pick sides, the world may soon become as divided as it was immediately preceding WW II.

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Since the decision of the Trump administration on Wednesday to recognize a member of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaidó, as an unelected “interim president,” the situation in the South American country has become increasingly tense, with efforts to force the current government of Venezuela — led by Nicolás Maduro — out of power having grown in intensity over the past few days.

Despite the enormous pressure his government faces from both local and international sources, Maduro has managed to maintain his position thanks to a combination of factors. These include the loyalty of the country’s well-armed military, in addition to popular support from Venezuelans who recently voted for Maduro, as well as Venezuelans who may not like Maduro but prefer him to a politician hand-picked and foisted upon them by the United States.

Yet, the long-standing campaign of the United States to effect regime change in Venezuela — a campaign that has been ongoing ever since Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, was elected in 1998 — has shown time and again that the U.S. is unwilling to let go of its dream of installing a “friendly” government in the world’s most oil-rich country.

For that reason, if the Trump administration’s attempt to simply install a Venezuelan president fails to produce the intended result (regime change), there is substantial concern that the U.S. will turn to other means to bring about a change in government, including the instigation of a new proxy war.

While direct military intervention by the U.S. has not been ruled out, it has long been seen as more probable — based on the U.S.’ troubling history of ousting leftist Latin American governments through right-wing coups — that the U.S. would follow the roadmaps it used to push for regime change in both Syria and Ukraine. In other words, the danger of another major proxy war — this time in Latin America — looms large and, much like what has transpired in Syria and Ukraine, the manufacture of such a conflict would again pit the U.S. against both Russia and China, both of which have invested heavily in Venezuela, and by extension in the current government, for nearly two decades.

Also troubling is the fact that the U.S. has already laid much of the groundwork for such a proxy war and the chaotic situation on the Venezuelan-Colombian border offers U.S. intelligence enough cover to funnel arms, money and personnel into Venezuela to further destabilize the country. If Maduro is to be believed, the U.S. has already been doing this for much of the past year.

Raising the temperature and the stakes

Juan Guaidó, a relative newcomer to Venezuelan politics and a founding member of the Popular Will political party, declared himself to be the new president of Venezuela on Wednesday, a move that was quickly backed by the U.S. with the support of all countries closely allied with the U.S. throughout the Americas, North and South.

The U.S. decision to back Guaidó, as has been pointed out by many analysts in recent days, was significant as it shows a clear effort by the U.S. to push the already tenuous situation in the country to its boiling point. Indeed, by effectively creating two governments within Venezuela, the clearest consequence is to deepen the rift in Venezuelan society by forcing the country’s citizens to choose sides.

Though Guaidó’s relatively short time in Venezuelan national politics gives him the benefit of having relatively little political baggage, his association with the Popular Will Party, known as Voluntad Popular in Spanish, makes it clear why he so quickly won the U.S.’ support.

Popular Will was founded by Venezuelan opposition firebrand Leopoldo López. Lopez is a member of the upper echelons of Venezuela’s political aristocracy, educated in elite institutions like the Hun School of Princeton, a private boarding school whose alumni include Saudi princes as well as the children of U.S. presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs. He attended Kenyon College in Ohio and then Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some journalists have asserted that López began a relationship with the CIA while at Kenyon.

A few years after beginning his political career, López — immediately prior to the U.S.-backed failed coup of 2002, in which he enthusiastically participated — began heading to Washington rather frequently “to visit the IRI (International Republican Institute) headquarters and meet with officials from the George W. Bush administration,” according to journalist Eva Golinger. The IRI is one of three foundations that comprise the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. government-funded NGO linked to numerous regime-change efforts abroad, including Egypt (2013) and Ukraine (2014). Notably, the IRI, along with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), both have funded Popular Will since its founding in 2010. López is currently the party’s national coordinator.

While the U.S.’ decision to back Guaidó was undeniably an effort to escalate the situation in Venezuela, the U.S. has also made it clear that it plans to continue pushing for escalation. Indeed, the U.S. has officially requested a UN Security Council meeting on Saturday “to discuss the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.” South Africa’s U.N. Ambassador Jerry Matjila stated that the “consultations” between the Security Council and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would be closed, though subsequent reports have claimed that the meeting would be open. The meeting, if it is approved by 9 out of 15 member states, will likely push for countries to choose between Guaidó and Maduro.

Given that the U.K., Spain and Germany have already backed Guaidó at the U.S.’ behest, more European nations are likely to follow, meaning that the international pressure facing the Maduro-led government will continue to grow following Saturday’s events. Thus, in addition to forcing the Venezuelan people to choose sides, the U.S. will likely be — over the weekend — forcing the international community to choose sides as well.

Notably, key countries — including Turkey, Russia, China as well as Maduro’s regional allies such as Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba — have backed Maduro. Given the presence of both Russia and China, who hold veto power on the UN Security Council, any resolution by that body that would support Guaidó will be dead on arrival. Yet, if the U.S. is able to win the support of a significant number of countries in its bid to withdraw Maduro’s “legitimacy” — whether by diplomatic or more forceful means — the Trump administration may feel confident enough to take matters into its own hands. This makes the recent comments of a top Trump official stating that “all options are on the table” in regards to Venezuela equal parts significant and chilling.

Groundwork for Syria/Ukraine-style regime-change op already laid in Venezuela

In pursuit of regime-change agendas abroad and as part of a larger strategy of containment aimed at Russia and China, the U.S. has followed a roadmap in recent cases that includes some or all of the following elements: the manufacture of a “humanitarian” justification for regime change; funneling of arms and weapons into the country via its foreign borders; mass funding of the political opposition; and covert involvement of U.S. government agencies, particularly the CIA.

In the case of Syria, a CIA-backed revolt, along with a compliant international media and complex network of pro-regime-change “humanitarian” organizations, were critical in creating the current situation, which was further exacerbated by the influx of weapons and funds to “moderate rebels” via the CIA and later U.S. allies. A few years later, Ukraine followed a distinct but similar roadmap. As was noted last year by South Front, the U.S.-backed regime-change operation in Ukraine in 2014 involved an outsized role from the U.S. State Department, billions of dollars in U.S. funding of the political opposition, and the early involvement of the CIA.

Unsurprisingly, many of these elements are currently at play in Venezuela. Since the late Hugo Chávez came to power in the 1998 election, the U.S. has funded the Venezuelan opposition to the tune of over $100 million. The humanitarian justification has long been played up by the international media, which has placed sole responsibility for Venezuela’s economic and political crisis on the Maduro-led government, despite the role of U.S. sanctions and economic warfare, as well as the U.S. government and the Venezuelan opposition groups it funds colluding to create the conditions for the current political crisis in order to facilitate their regime-change plan.

Though this last point is less known, it was confirmed following a leaked 2013 phone conversation of  Maria Corina Machado, another key figure in the U.S.-funded Venezuelan opposition and another top political ally of Guaidó and his associate Leopoldo López. In the leaked conversation, Corina Machado describes what Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, the chairman of the opposition umbrella group Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, told Undersecretary for Latin American Affairs Roberta Jacobsen, whom he had recently met in Washington. During the call, Corina Machado stated:

I found out that Ramon Guillermo Aveledo told the State Department that the only way to resolve this is by provoking and accentuating a crisis, a coup or a self-coup. Or a process of tightening the screws and domesticating to generate a system of total social control.”

In addition, there is substantial evidence that the still chaotic situation on the Venezuelan-Colombian border offers plenty of opportunity for U.S. intelligence agencies to funnel arms, insurgents and other agents of destabilization into Venezuela. Furthermore, the conflict there could potentially be used as the pretext for a direct role for the U.S. military in escalating the situation in Venezuela.

For decades, the Venezuelan-Colombian border has been the sight of considerable violence, much of it the result of in-fighting among leftist and right-wing paramilitary groups vying for control of the regional drug trade. It is increasingly porous, allowing the flow of paramilitary fighters, migrants, smugglers and others between the two nations, resulting in various controversies that have seen Maduro close the border from August 2015 to July 2016 following an attack by a Colombian group on the Venezuelan military.

Since then, drug-fueled violence and Colombian concerns over the exodus of Venezuelan migrants have led Colombia to increasingly militarize its side of the border, though some analysts have claimed recent violence from the National Liberation Army (ELN) leftist paramilitary group has led the Colombian and Venezuelan authorities to leave major expanses of the border “to its fate.”

Given the precarious situation on the Venezuela-Colombia border, it is a weak point through which state actors wishing to destabilize Venezuela could easily act. Some evidence, including the aforementioned incident in August 2015, suggests that such action has already taken place. For instance, in March 2017, the Venezuelan military dismantled a right-wing paramilitary camp near the Colombian border, which was stocked with numerous supplies including stolen Venezuelan military uniforms, Colombian military uniforms and — most notable of all — U.S. army uniforms. At the time, teleSUR asserted that the discovery “substantiates claims that the U.S. Army is training right-wing paramilitaries to spread terror in the region.”

More recently, last year, Maduro asserted that Colombian paramilitary groups were “seeping through” the Venezuelan-Colombian border and had been planning to “carry out a series of provocations” before being intercepted by Venezuelan authorities. At the time, he had blamed Colombian oligarchs and the U.S. government for orchestrating the “infiltration.”

Though some may choose to discount Maduro’s claims, the CIA essentially admitted in 2017 that it was actively attempting to foment regime change in Venezuela. In July of that year, Mike Pompeo — then CIA director — stated:

We are very hopeful that there can be a transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there, so that we can communicate to our State Department and to others.”

He then added:

I was just down in Mexico City and in Bogota a week before last talking about this very issue, trying to help them understand the things they might do so that they can get a better outcome for their part of the world and our part of the world.”

In addition, while the Venezuelan-Colombian border may be used to destabilize the situation by more covert means, the current situation along the border may also provide the U.S. a justification to intervene militarily. Indeed, the presence of the ELN group in both Venezuela and Colombia has led notable U.S. figures — such as the architect of the current coup, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) — to offer them up as reasons to list Venezuela as a “state sponsor” of terror.

Rubio has been pushing for Venezuela to be added the U.S.’ State Sponsors of Terrorism list for months. Last Saturday, however, Rubio claimed in a tweet that ELN “operates from Venezuela where Maduro has given them safe harbor,” though the group is equally active in both Colombia and Venezuela, Venezuelan soldiers are frequent targets of ELN attacks, and pro-Maduro Venezuela outlets often characterize ELN as an “illegal group”.

Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Sen. Marco Rubio meet with the wife of US-backed Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez. White House Photo

Though Rubio provided no evidence to support the claim that Maduro has given ELN members “safe harbor,” the growing strength of the group and its violent tactics could be just the pretext the U.S. or its regional allies would need to intervene more directly in Venezuela, especially considering that U.S.-linked think tanks have claimed that the ELN is now present in half of Venezuela. Indeed, making Venezuela an official “state sponsor of terrorism” would allow the U.S. to greatly increase its pressure on the country, both economically and diplomatically.

Left-wing terror group carried out the bombing that killed 21 people in #Colombia.

The groups leaders live in #Cuba under the protection of regime.

And the group operates from #Venezuela where Maduro has given them safe harbor. #StateSponsorsOfTerror https://t.co/5Yaz4A3GVV

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 19, 2019

Other events that have occurred in the past few years have suggested that a role for the U.S. military is in the cards as well — a possibility only strengthened by the emerging “state sponsor” narrative already being fielded by Sen. Rubio. For instance, in 2017, the U.S. military held a major military drill and established a “temporary” military base in close proximity to Venezuela with the governments of Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Since then, following the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, a Colombian official stated, “If Bolsonaro helps topple Maduro with military intervention, he will have Colombia’s support.” Though Bolsonaro later claimed that he has “no interest” in a military intervention in Venezuela, several of the top officials in his government — including his Vice President, Hamilton Mourao — have repeatedly called for a “humanitarian intervention” in Venezuela. The size and scope of such an intervention, however, has yet to be determined.

These complex situations along its border, the confirmed role of the U.S. in bringing about the country’s political crisis, and the looming possibility of military intervention — by either the U.S. or its regional allies — show that Venezuela currently has many of the same elements that were present in Ukraine in 2014 and Syria in 2011. The U.S. seems intent on bringing about regime change in Caracas by any means necessary, but Washington’s success will largely depend on the actions of Venezuela’s most powerful foreign allies, who incidentally are both Washington’s chief rivals — Russia and China.

Russia and China’s skin in the game

In the event that the internal situation in Venezuela — thanks largely to external pressure — devolves into a major conflict between Guaidó-supporting and Maduro-supporting sides, it will only be a matter of time before both Russia and China join the fray — either directly or indirectly — to prevent a U.S.-backed regime-change effort from succeeding.

A major reason the involvement of Russia and China is a given is that both have invested a tremendous amount of money in the country, particularly after Venezuela’s relationship with the U.S. greatly decayed during the early years of Chavista rule.

By a large margin, the largest foreign sponsors of Venezuela following the rise of the Chavista movement have been Russia and China. Though no exact measures of their investments in the South American nation are available, China is believed to have invested around $70 billion, in the form of loans as well as social projects and maintenance of the country’s oil production infrastructure. Most of those loans are set to be paid back to China in the form of Venezuelan crude. In addition, China and Venezuela have formed several joint ventures involving the production of automobiles, mobile phones and computers, among other goods. These investments and connections make China by far Maduro’s largest and most influential foreign sponsor and creditor.

However, as Foreign Policy wrote in 2017:

If Venezuela collapses …, China faces a large risk of diplomatic and financial blowback. Opposition politicians are well aware that China propped up … Maduro rule. A new Venezuelan government could well refuse to honor the Maduro-era obligations entirely and look to Washington for support instead.”

Russia is believed to have lent and invested around $17 billion in Venezuela over the past 20 years, significantly less than China. However, Russia — through state-run companies such as Rosneft — has gained significant ownership stakes in at least five major Venezuelan oil fields along with several decades worth of the future outputs of Venezuelan-held natural gas fields in the Caribbean. In addition, and most significantly from the U.S. perspective, in 2017 Venezuela offered 49.9 percent of Citgo — its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary — along with three Gulf Coast refineries and its pipeline network as collateral to Rosneft for $1.5 billion.

Rosneft’s interests in Venezuela are so great that its executive chairman, Igor Sechin, stated in 2017 that “we will never leave and no one will be able to kick us out of there.” Yet, as Leonid Bershidsky recently wrote in Bloomberg, “If Maduro falls and a U.S.-backed government takes his place, it’s highly likely that the Russian projects will be suspended and Venezuela’s debts won’t be repaid.”

In addition to the tremendous amount of money on the line for both nations, neither Russia nor China is willing to let the world’s most oil-rich country — with more proven crude oil reserves than Saudi Arabia — see its current government, which is friendly to their interests but hostile to those of the U.S., be toppled and replaced with its polar opposite. Not only would a new U.S.-backed government in Venezuela endanger the billions of dollars in loans that Maduro’s government owes to both countries, it would also endanger the independence of all of Latin America.

Indeed, many Latin American governments in recent years have been targeted by the U.S. for regime change, and most of these attempts were successful, including those in Honduras (2009), Brazil (2016) and Paraguay (2012). Venezuela, with its significant oil and gold reserves, is the obvious prize in the region but also arguably the strongest country opposed to U.S. dominance of the region. Were Venezuela to fall, it would greatly weaken the governments of Maduro’s regional allies, particularly Nicaragua and Cuba.

This is underlined by National Security Adviser John Bolton’s recent creation of a new Latin American “Axis of Evil” that he terms the “Troika of Tyranny,” encompassing Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. If Venezuela’s government is toppled, Bolton has already given the signal as to which nations will be the subsequent targets of regime-change efforts elsewhere in Latin America. Thus, Russia and China — lest they wish to see a domino effect of the toppling of most of the remaining Latin American countries not dominated by the U.S. — are more likely than not to do everything in their power to prevent the collapse of Maduro’s government.

It is also important to point out that, for its part, the United States can’t really back away either. While the U.S. strategy of “containing” Russia and China has been largely focused on starting and fomenting proxy wars in both geopolitically strategic areas and on their doorsteps, Russia and China’s strategy has been more covert and aimed at reducing their dependence on the U.S.-backed financial system, particularly the U.S. dollar.

This effort to undermine the U.S. dollar has frequently targeted the petrodollar, which has been a major factor in past U.S. military interventions, such as the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In 2017 Maduro, like Hussein and Gaddafi before him, stopped selling Venezuelan oil in dollars. In order to shore up the petrodollar system amid its own looming economic recession, the United States needs a government in Venezuela that will denominate the sale of its oil in dollars to keep the cornerstone of its global hegemony, the U.S. dollar, in demand despite unprecedented threats to its value.

Thus, with neither the U.S. nor its rivals able to back down without ceding a major geopolitical and strategic advantage to the other, it is almost assured that, as the situation in Venezuela escalates,  the involvement of all three will soon make Venezuela the most watched country — and the most dangerous — in the world.

“Another bloody battlefield of the color revolution”?

Given the enormity of their investments in Venezuela and their eagerness to keep the world’s largest oil reserves controlled by a government friendly to them but hostile to their greatest rival, Russia and China have unsurprisingly condemned in no uncertain terms the U.S.’ recent decision to recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president.

Russia’s response not only warned the U.S. against the “catastrophic consequences” of its effort to escalate the fragile situation in Venezuela but also hinted that the U.S. decision would lay the groundwork for a civil war. On Thursday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told International Affairs, “We warn against this … We believe that this would be a catastrophic scenario that would shake the foundations of the development model we see in the Latin American region.” In a phone call to Maduro, Russian leader Vladimir Putin described the U.S. move as “destructive interference.”

Then the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a separate statement that described the U.S. move to recognize Guaidó as president as being ”aimed at deepening the split in Venezuelan society, increasing the conflict on the streets, sharply destabilizing the internal political system and further escalation of the conflict,” with such escalation being “fraught with catastrophic consequences.” Some media outlets compared this statement to those made by Russia during past international exchanges with the West prior to intervention in Libya and Syria.

Since then, Russian military contractors have been deployed to Venezuela, which prompted Maduro to promise that Venezuela will not become another “Syria or Libya.” Some reports have claimed that the Russian military contractors have “been charged with stopping opposition sympathizers or members of Maduro’s own forces from detaining him.”

China’s response also hinted that the U.S. decision was aimed at stoking an internal war in the country. In an article published by the Chinese government-aligned Global Times, Beijing stated:

In recent years, Washington has enhanced its interference in affairs of Venezuela and Cuba and attempted to regain influence in Latin America. The fast recognition of Guaidó signaled the strong U.S. desire to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs.”

The article went on to note:

All sides must keep calm and be alert about possible provocation to militarily intervene in Venezuela … The international community should encourage forces of Venezuela to peacefully solve the issue within the framework of dialogue. Picking sides will not be conducive to the solution, but intensify the rivalry, worsen the situation and possibly push the nation into long-term turmoil.”

It ultimately added, “Venezuela should not be another bloody battlefield of the color revolution.”

The fact that the responses of both the Russian and Chinese governments to the U.S. decision to back Guaidó directly stated that the U.S. move is set to create another U.S.-backed proxy war masquerading as a “color revolution” is highly significant. Indeed, such clear assertions of this reality not only show how clearly the U.S. is pushing for a major escalation in Venezuela but also show that both Russia and China are aware that their interests in the country are under threat as a direct result of this U.S. push. This greatly increases the likelihood that any continued push for escalation from Washington will trigger strong responses from both countries and could quickly devolve into a tit-for-tat that could eventually develop into a major military conflict.

Is this how WW III gets going?

The current situation in Venezuela — if the U.S. continues to push for fresh escalations — has the potential to morph into one of the world’s most dangerous proxy wars, owing to the size of the prize (world’s largest oil reserves included) and the fact none of the major parties involved can back away without making major concessions to their chief geopolitical rivals. Russia and China, as previously stated, are unlikely to stand idly by as the U.S. installs a government that would undo their years of investment in the country and refuse to pay back billions in loans. Indeed, Russia has already sent military contractors into Venezuela, setting a precedent that could see more significant Russian support for Venezuela in the coming months.

Beyond that is the fact that the U.S. has made it clear that Venezuela if it succumbs to regime change, is merely the first on the new “Troika of Tyranny” list of leftist Latin American governments that the Trump administration seeks to topple. The goal is to make a Latin America that is obedient to the U.S., a crucial part of the ultimate U.S. goal of maintaining the existing unipolar world order. However, both Russia and China know that this goal is a microcosm of Washington’s end game and that they are both the ultimate targets. Such an agenda is hardly a secret given that it is directly stated in the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy.

However, it would be naive to assume that the U.S. will be planning to escalate only in Venezuela and not in other U.S. proxy conflicts such as Ukraine and Syria. Indeed, just two months ago, there was a flare-up in Ukraine in what is now known as the “Kerch Strait Incident” and provocations in Syria have commonly occurred throughout the conflict, particularly during moments when it seemed things were finally dying down. These flashpoints and more — such as the South China Sea, among others — can all be pressed on rotation by the U.S. in an effort to disorient its Russian and Chinese rivals.

Thus, Venezuela may become host to the latest in what is now a series of proxy wars and flashpoints across the world that Washington has erected as part of its long-term goal of preventing the formation a multipolar world order. And it may quickly become the most dangerous in terms of drawing larger world powers into the conflict, making the risk of a wider world war a striking possibility that cannot be ignored. What happens in Venezuela going forward will have major consequences for the entire region and the world; and, with the U.S. already pushing countries to pick sides, the world may soon become as divided as ever, with the risk of another “great war” looming large.

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

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The Israeli narrative of a nation/state returning to its homeland after a fifteen hundred year exile requires ongoing deft work by the David Ben-Gurion initiated Governmental Names Committee (Va’adat Hashemot Hamimshaltit, 1949). The Hebraization of Palestine is described in Nur Masalha’s “Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History” a strong scholarly academic addition to the subject of delegitimization of an indigenous people.

The first part of the book covers the era from the Bronze Age – roughly 25 hundred years ago – to the mid Ottoman era and the autonomous governance of al-’Umar and Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar.  It concentrates its analysis mostly on the name Palestine and its historical precedents in other languages from ancient maps and historical writings.

It does provide a few glimpses into the kind of society represented by the name, but is mostly concerned with the philology of the name itself.

As the work reaches the Ottoman empire, many more sources are used for reference and provide a much stronger perspective on the lifestyles of the indigenous Palestinian people and a split between the urban elites and the majority living in smaller villages and working the land.  In the late Ottoman empire, the early years of Christian Zionism/Orientalism/Biblicism, and in the early years of European based secular nationalist Zionism, more diverse sources are used to emphasize the denial of the indigenous Palestinians through language usage.

Masalha’s theme is simple:  to demonstrate the existence of Palestine through the centuries by studying the language used, its reference in historical works, and how the modern Hebraization brought on by the western Christian Biblical traditions combined with the Zionist enterprise attempts to deny the existence of Palestine and its people.

From that thesis he succeeds remarkably well, providing strong references of the use of the word Palestine up to and including Israeli usage after the 1948 nakba.   But well before that, the Orientalist Christian perspective had already begun the assault on Arabic/Palestinian historical geographic names previously supported by earlier works.

As the study continues into the modern era, many devices are used to erase and cover over any sign of Palestinian geographic inheritance.  Much of the initial changes in western knowledge were brought about by various biblical study groups searching for archeological evidence for their story.  When not finding much of that evidence, biblical names were simply appropriated and used for different regions, down to specific geographic features.  This latter methodology was continued by the early Jewish settlers and strongly reinforced after the creation of Israel.

Appropriation of Arabic names occurred through the process of alliteration, finding – or even inventing – a Hebraic word resembling the Arabic word.  A similar process was used for personal names of the Jewish European settlers by choosing a Hebrew word or as frequently an appropriated Arabic word to create a new patronymic.

One of the strongest methods is simply erasure.  This occurred before, during and after the nakba as many villages were physically destroyed, many others expropriated, and most being renamed using some form of Biblical/Hebraic names.  Erasure continues both geographically and culturally ranging from street signs to educational texts and instructions.

From the general trend of Musalha’s presentation, modern Hebrew is a contrived language, based on a confined liturgical element incorporating by necessity many modern terms, many Arabic/Palestinian terms, and many biblical terms rendered into a semblance of an ancient Hebraic language.  It also clearly demonstrates a history of a region called Palestine at the geographical crossroads of ancient and modern history, surviving under various rulers, some with more autonomy than others, but distinctly Palestinian.

Further, while not denying the existence of an Israeli entity, it is seen as an ongoing part of many different peoples and cultures that inhabited the area at one time or another.   The Israeli myth of a sudden influx of Arabs during the Muslim conquests is compared to the historical record of a gradual introduction of Arabic ideas and peoples into the region before the conquest.  Of note as well are the frequent references to the peaceful mixing and coexistence of the three major religions in the more modern landscape before the advent of the Orientalist Christian Zionism began to usurp the region.

Unfortunately for all that, Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History, has a problem that does not deny its academic argument.  The work for the purpose of spreading this information to the general public is far too scholarly and academic, something I can work through because of my background reading and my intentions as a reviewer, but would prove very difficult to attract attention to a general reader. The first section in particular, while referencing many maps using the word Palestine or its linguistic equivalents, does not provide any visuals – no maps.  A reference section with some plates showing the range of maps from ancient histories through to the British maps of Mandatory Palestine would be a valuable addition to the work.

Having said that, I must reiterate that his arguments support the main thesis very well. The latter half of the book both instructs this thesis and at the same time provides a more reader friendly discussion of not only the geography, but the essence of the people of Palestine.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

TRNN Correspondent Dimitri Lascaris reports from the ground in Caracas about Saturday’s pro- and anti-government marches, highlighting their peacefulness and equal size

Full transcript below.

 

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DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris, reporting for The Real News from Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday, February 2. I am standing at the main intersection in the quarter of Mercedes in Caracas. This is an affluent, if not the most affluent, part of the city. And today the opposition led by Guaido has called a massive protest to continue to exert pressure upon the government of Nicolas Maduro to resign.

I would estimate I’ve walked for about six or seven kilometers with protesters who are converging on this point of the city. I’ve been with them now for about an hour, and certainly I would say the crowd is–consists of at least tens of thousands of people. You only see a small part of it here. And by any rational measure it is a very large protest.

And it certainly does indicate, at least for the capital, Caracas, that there is a very significant degree of opposition to the government of Nicolas Maduro. What is also interesting is that the protesters have been quite peaceful. And law enforcement authorities, on their side, have been virtually invisible. I think I’ve seen no more than 25 police officers during the entire six, seven kilometre route that I walked. I’ve seen no military personnel. I haven’t seen any police officers dressed in riot gear. The ones that I did see, the few that I did see, seemed to be there for no other purpose than directing traffic.

What is notable about this, of course, is that Western leaders have characterized Nicolas Maduro as a brutal dictator, and have accused the security forces under his command of having committed numerous atrocities against Venezuelan protesters and those who support the opposition. I’ve seen absolutely no evidence of that here. The one small sign I saw of military presence was that at one point what appeared to be a military helicopter flew overhead as we were walking towards this point. And the crowd waved at the helicopter, and smiled, and started clapping, as if to to send a message of welcome to whoever was piloting the helicopter.

But in any case, one has to contrast these claims that Nicolas Maduro is a brutal dictator to what I’ve seen here today, and to what we see oftentimes in the West. I’ve attended numerous protests in Canada and the United States which were far smaller than this, and sometimes–almost routinely–you’ll see police officers, dozens of them, at sizable protests, dressed in riot gear. And sometimes the police dressed in riot gear, in protests I’ve seen in the United States even outnumbered the protesters.

And let us recall that the figurehead of this opposition, the self-proclaimed president, is openly asking the military to rebel against the elected President Nicolas Maduro, and is effectively fomenting a military coup. Despite that fact, and despite the fact that these protesters are here to show their support for that politician, who has never been elected as president of Venezuela, there’s absolutely no indication, at least at this protest, that the government seeks to suppress the right of those who are opposed to the Maduro regime to express their dissent, and even to call for the removal of the president.

Here I’m in the western part of the city, standing on Avenida Bolivar. And it’s a little bit difficult to tell, I think, from this angle, but this crowd of pro-Maduro Chavista supporters extends all the way down to the end of the Avenue, where that tall building is situated. There are, I would say with confidence, tens of thousands of people out here today just as I saw probably tens of thousands of people at the pro-opposition rally. The people here are very peaceful. The atmosphere is rather festive. Just as I noticed at the opposition rally, there is absolutely no detectable presence of riot police, and no military presence at all. And to the extent there are any police officers at all–and I’ve only seen a smattering of them–they seem to be there to do nothing more than ensure an orderly flow of the protesters and the traffic. Which is quite a contrast to what you see at protests, whether they’re–especially when they’re against the regime, the governing regime, in the West, and Europe, and Canada, and the United States. Nowadays there’s routinely some contingent of riot police present, and sometimes a rather large contingent of riot police.

But here that’s just not the case, and it’s difficult to square the claims that Maduro is a brutal dictator with what one sees on the streets here in Caracas today.

This is Dimitri Lascaris, reporting for The Real News from Caracas, Venezuela.

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Cold War 2.0 has hit South America with a bang – pitting the US and expected minions against the four key pillars of in-progress Eurasia integration: Russia, China, Iran and Turkey.

It’s the oil, stupid. But there’s way more than meets the (oily) eye.

Caracas has committed the ultimate cardinal sin in the eyes of Exceptionalistan; oil trading bypassing the US dollar or US-controlled exchanges.

Remember Iraq. Remember Libya. Yet Iran is also doing it. Turkey is doing it. Russia is – partially – on the way. And China will eventually trade all its energy in petroyuan.

With Venezuela adopting the petro crypto-currency and the sovereign bolivar, already last year the Trump administration had sanctioned Caracas off the international financial system.

No wonder Caracas is supported by China, Russia and Iran. They are the real hardcore troika – not psycho-killer John Bolton’s cartoonish “troika of tyranny” – fighting against the Trump administration’s energy dominance strategy, which consists essentially in aiming at the total lock down of oil trading in petrodollars, forever.

Venezuela is a key cog in the machine. Psycho killer Bolton admitted it on the record;

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

It’s not a matter of just letting ExxonMobil take over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves – the largest on the planet. The key is to monopolize their exploitation in US dollars, benefitting a few Big Oil billionaires.

Once again, the curse of natural resources is in play. Venezuela must not be allowed to profit from its wealth on its own terms; thus, Exceptionalistan has ruled that the Venezuelan state must be shattered.

In the end, this is all about economic war. Cue to the US Treasury Department imposing new sanctions on PDVSA that amount to a de facto oil embargo against Venezuela.

Economic war redux

By now it’s firmly established what happened in Caracas was not a color revolution but an old-school US-promoted regime change coup using local comprador elites, installing as “interim president” an unknown quantity, Juan Guaido, with his Obama choirboy looks masking extreme right-wing credentials.

Everyone remembers “Assad must go”. The first stage in the Syrian color revolution was the instigation of civil war, followed by a war by proxy via multinational jihadi mercenaries. As Thierry Meyssan has noted, the role of the Arab League then is performed by the OAS now. And the role of Friends of Syria – now lying in the dustbin of history – is now performed by the Lima group, the club of Washington’s vassals. Instead of al-Nusra “moderate rebels”, we may have Colombian – or assorted Emirati-trained – “moderate rebel” mercenaries.

Contrary to Western corporate media fake news, the latest elections in Venezuela were absolutely legitimate. There was no way to tamper with the made in Taiwan electronic voting machines. The ruling Socialist Party got 70 percent of the votes; the opposition, with many parties boycotting it, got 30 percent. A serious delegation of the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) was adamant; the election reflected “peacefully and without problems, the will of Venezuelan citizens”.

The American embargo may be vicious. In parallel, Maduro’s government may have been supremely incompetent in not diversifying the economy and investing in food self-sufficiency. Major food importers, speculating like there’s no tomorrow, are making a killing. Still, reliable sources in Caracas tell that the barrios – the popular neighborhoods – remain largely peaceful.

In a country where a full tank of gas still costs less than a can of Coke, there’s no question the chronic shortages of food and medicines in local clinics have forced at least two million people to leave Venezuela. But the key enforcing factor is the US embargo.

The UN rapporteur to Venezuela, expert on international law, and former secretary of the UN Human Rights Council, Alfred de Zayas, goes straight to the point; much more than engaging in the proverbial demonization of Maduro, Washington is waging “economic war” against a whole nation.

It’s enlightening to see how the “Venezuelan people” see the charade. In a poll conducted by Hinterlaces even before the Trump administration coup/regime change wet dream, 86% of Venezuelans said they were against any sort of US intervention, military or not,

And 81% of Venezuelans said they were against US sanctions. So much for “benign” foreign interference on behalf of “democracy” and “human rights”.

The Russia-China factor

Analyses by informed observers such as Eva Golinger and most of all, the Mision Verdad collective are extremely helpful. What’s certain, in true Empire of Chaos mode, is that the American playbook, beyond the embargo and sabotage, is to foment civil war.

Dodgy “armed groups” have been active in the Caracas barrios, acting in the dead of night and amplifying “social unrest” on social media. Still, Guaido holds absolutely no power inside the country. His only chance of success is if he manages to install a parallel government – cashing in on the oil revenue and having Washington arrest government members on trumped-up charges.

Irrespective of neocon wet dreams, adults at the Pentagon should know that an invasion of Venezuela may indeed metastasize into a tropical Vietnam quagmire. The Brazilian strongman in waiting, vice-president and retired general Hamilton Mourao, already said there will be no military intervention.

Psycho killer Bolton’s by now infamous notepad stunt about “5,000 troops to Colombia”, is a joke; these would have no chance against the arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the Maduro government; Cubans have demonstrated historically they are not in the business of handing over power.

It all comes back to what China and Russia may do. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor. Maduro was received by Xi Jinping last year in Beijing, getting an extra $5 billion in loans and signing at least 20 bilateral agreements.

President Putin offered his full support to Maduro over the phone, diplomatically stressing that “destructive interference from abroad blatantly violates basic norms of international law.”

By January 2016, oil was as low as $35 a barrel; a disaster to Venezuela’s coffers. Maduro then decided to transfer 49.9% of the state ownership in PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, to Russian Rosneft for a mere $1.5 billion loan. This had to send a wave of red lights across the Beltway; those “evil” Russians were now part owners of Venezuela’s prime asset.

Late last year, still in need of more funds, Maduro opened gold mining in Venezuela to Russian mining companies. And there’s more; nickel, diamonds, iron ore, aluminum, bauxite, all coveted by Russia, China – and the US. As for $1.3 billion of Venezuela’s own gold, forget about repatriating it from the Bank of England.

And then, last December, came the straw that broke the Deep State’s back; the friendship flight of two Russian nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers. How dare they? In our own backyard?

The Trump administration’s energy masterplan may be indeed to annex Venezuela to a parallel “North American-South American Petroleum Exporting Countries” (NASAPEC) cartel, capable of rivaling the OPEC+ love story between Russia and the House of Saud.

But even if that came to fruition, and adding a possible, joint US-Qatar LNG alliance, there’s no guarantee that would be enough to assure petrodollar – and petrogas – preeminence in the long run.

Eurasia energy integration will mostly bypass the petrodollar; this is at the very heart of both the BRICS and SCO strategy. From Nord Stream 2 to Turk Stream, Russia is locking down a long-term energy partnership with Europe. And petroyuan dominance is just a matter of time. Moscow knows it. Tehran knows it. Ankara knows it. Riyadh knows it.

So what about plan B, neocons? Ready for your tropical Vietnam?

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist.

Featured image is from SCF

President Trump, Vice President Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton escalated threats to launch a war against Venezuela, as large pro- and anti-government demonstrations filled Venezuela’s streets on Saturday.

In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that aired before the Super Bowl yesterday, Trump reiterated that military intervention “is an option.” Pence assured a crowd of far-right Venezuelan exiles in Miami on Friday that

“this is no time for dialogue, it is the moment for action, and the time has come to end the Maduro dictatorship once and for all… Those looking on should know this: all options are on the table.”

Bolton, who helped author the playbook that was used to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq, issued a blunt threat Friday that the US would kill or jail and torture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro if he did not resign. Comparing Maduro to Nicolae Ceaușescu and Benito Mussolini—both of whom were killed—Bolton told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt:

“The sooner he takes advantage of that [i.e., resignation], the sooner he’s likely to have a nice quiet retirement on a pretty beach rather than being in some other beach area like Guantanamo.”

Self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó, the US and their allies in South America and Europe are preparing a new provocation aimed at forcing the Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro, with Guaidó announcing that the US will deliver aid at three locations along the Venezuelan border in the coming days.

While Maduro and the Venezuelan military leadership have said they will refuse the aid, the US hopes that images of crowds gathering to receive food and medication will either provoke the military to defect to the opposition and help distribute the aid or provide valuable propaganda footage justifying the need for a “humanitarian” intervention.

Over the weekend, hundreds of armed Colombian soldiers dressed in battle fatigues deployed to one of the three “aid distribution” centers, Cúcuta, on the Venezuela-Colombia border. Colombia’s far-right President Iván Duque issued a statement proclaiming, “Few hours remain to the Venezuelan dictatorship.” At a press conference last week announcing Washington’s moves to topple Maduro, Bolton held under his arm a note pad with the words written in plain view: “5,000 troops to Colombia.”

Guaidó also announced that one of the “aid” locations would be on the border with Brazil, which deployed troops to the border last year, while the third would be on an island in the Caribbean.

The stepped-up pressure produced an initial crack in the Venezuelan military, which remains the backbone of the Maduro government. Over the weekend, one Air Force general and a small group of mid-level Air Force officials defected and issued public statements calling on their colleagues to join them.

Germán Ferrer, a sitting Venezuelan legislator and United Socialist Party member who opposes Maduro, told the CBC that Maduro has disabled combat aircraft for fear the Air Force will turn on the government.

The US is imposing blanket sanctions on Venezuelan oil that amount to a blockade on oil exports. This act of economic war is intended to increase social misery.

Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations told a conference call of bankers, government officials and oil executives last week that the sanctions will lead to “more deprivation, even given the low base we’re at, more among the population.” The sanctions will force thousands to flee the country, she added:

“You’re going to see more refugees pouring into countries throughout the hemisphere and elsewhere around the world.”

The Brookings Institution explained that the present stage of the coup operation is aimed at “building an off-ramp for the Maduro regime.” In the parlance of US imperialism, countries whose leaders do not take the “off-ramp” are, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, subject to a hailstorm of bombs and missiles from the air and US troops or proxy armies on the ground.

As the Council on Foreign Relations’ O’Neil told the corporate conference call,

“If it [sanctions] doesn’t work in dislodging this regime, then there’s not a lot left in the toolkit besides things like military intervention.”

A military intervention in Venezuela—population 30 million—could kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people and transform Latin America into an imperialist slaughterhouse.

The geopolitical intelligence think tank Stratfor recently noted,

“A military intervention could quickly snowball into one of the largest worldwide military operations since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

Francisco Toro, a Washington Post columnist and anti-Maduro think tank analyst, told the Council on Foreign Relations gathering that a military intervention would lead to “a kind of Syrian civil war” and confrontation between nuclear-armed powers.

He said:

“There is this definite threat that if a military operation takes any amount of time in Venezuela, that other countries then start to move in too. And you can imagine, easily, Brazil moving into the southeast, Colombia into the southwest. You can imagine Russia trying to defend its oil interests, because Russia has big oil investments in Venezuela. You can imagine China doing I don’t know what. And Cuba has already intelligence penetration into the Venezuelan armed forces.”

Maduro’s strategy is three-fold. First, he is seeking to present himself as palatable to US imperialism and open to negotiation with the far-right opposition. Second, he is using the threat of “another Vietnam” as bargaining leverage against a US military intervention. Third, he is violently crushing working class opposition over inflation, poverty and record levels of social inequality.

Maduro rejected the demand of several European imperialist powers that he announce by February 2 the holding of new presidential elections. As the deadline passed, European governments—including the UK, France, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany—officially joined the US in recognizing Guaidó as president.

Maduro will now participate in large military exercises scheduled to last from February 5 to February 10. His government has also reportedly armed tens of thousands of members of a civilian reserve force with World War Two-era bolt-action rifles in anticipation of a possible invasion.

Key to the government’s strategy is a ferocious military crackdown on working class demonstrations and food riots. While the military and police have maintained a more passive presence at “official” demonstrations held by the right-wing opposition, government forces have murdered dozens of workers and youth participating in demonstrations over lack of access to food, water and other basic necessities.

The Maduro regime has responded to these demonstrations, which largely take place at night in the slum areas, with midnight raids by death squads, “disappearing” working class opponents in an effort to terrorize the areas that once were bastions of support for Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez Frias. The corporate media does not report these crackdowns.

In this way, Maduro is attempting to prove to his opponents in the US and Europe—as well as his backers in Russia and China—that he remains the best option for ending instability and keeping the oil flowing.

At its roots, Washington’s intensifying efforts at regime-change in Venezuela are part of a “pivot to Latin America” aimed at eradicating Chinese and Russian influence and transforming the whole Western Hemisphere into the exclusive cheap-labor and primary resource platform for US imperialism.

In November 2018, when Bolton announced the “Troika of Tyranny”—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—he was elaborating the strategic view that the US cannot successfully conduct operations against Russia in Eastern Europe, against China in South Asia, or against both Russia and China in Central Asia, without eliminating their presence in “America’s backyard” and freeing up the region’s resources for the US war machine. The establishment of a US-ruled “Fortress Americas” was a central foreign policy component of the “America First” movement in the early 1940s.

In a March 2018 document published by the US Army War College titled “The Strategic Relevance of Latin America in the US National Security Strategy,” the Army notes that in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, “most democratic societies in the Western Hemisphere” are “feckless and unconsolidated, thereby representing a threat to the national security of the United States by external actors (such as China and Russia) opposing US interests in the region.”

The strategy document indicated another reason for possible military operations in Venezuela: the need for the US military to test its operating capacities in heavily populated urban areas.

“Latin American megacities are also a laboratory for the US Army in cooperation with its strategic partners in addressing another important issue, or, perhaps, an old issue in the post-Cold War international system: how to fight a conventional war in an unconventional environment,” the document states. “Megacities are the new arena for conflicts in the 21st century. Therefore, the US Government and Army cannot afford to be caught off guard when called upon to exercise and accomplish its mission.”

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The White House decision to withdraw American troops from Syria as soon as possible may or may not be on track depending on whom one believes. But one thing that is for sure is that the recent suicide bomber attack in Manbij, Syria, which killed four Americans and has been attributed to ISIS, has inspired the opponents of the drawdown to renew their claim that the terrorist group is still an active threat to the United States. President Donald Trump is now being subjected to heavy bipartisan and media pressure to reverse his decision.

It is perhaps a coincidence that the attack should take place not long after the White House announcement of the withdrawal, thereby giving ammunition to those who wish to stay in Syria, admittedly illegally, for the foreseeable future. Or is it perhaps something else? Why, one must ask, did ISIS do something against its own interests by attacking Americans and thereby increasing the odds that U.S. armed forces would remain in Syria? Wouldn’t it have been preferable to just let the American military leave, thereby eliminating one enemy from the playing field?

Former arms inspector Scott Ritter, in a detailed analysis of what is going on in Syria, has asked those questions and comes up with an explanation. Far from being an enemy of ISIS, the U.S. has actually served to protect the group. American presence in northeast Syria, where the ISIS remnants are still holding on, has actually prevented the final destruction of the terrorist group. Without the U.S. serving as an impediment, the armed forces of Syria aided by Russia and Iran would have already crushed ISIS in its remaining enclaves.

Thus it is, against all conventional wisdom, the United States that is serving as ISIS’s protector, and the group staged the bombing deliberately with that in mind because it is better from their viewpoint to have American forces remain. They also clearly understood enough about American politics and its media to realize that they would be giving fuel to those in Congress and among the mainstream punditry to put more pressure on Trump to have the troops remain in place.

That is how you start a war, or at least keep one going. It is called deception, or, when carried out by a state actor, a false flag in that the event is capable of being misinterpreted or mis-attributed to produce a desired result. There have been numerous deception operations throughout history used to start wars. The battleship Maine was not blown up by the Spaniards in Havana Harbor in 1898, but it served as a useful pretext to start a war that stripped Spain of its colonies. The Zimmerman telegram in World War I was a phony, but it helped bring the U.S. into the war against Germany. More recently there were the two Gulf of Tonkin incidents, both lies, which dramatically increased American involvement in Vietnam. And one should not forget the largely fabricated humanitarian and national security arguments made to attack Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

If one goes by the message coming out of the White House and State Department, it would appear that the next country being targeted by the U.S. for regime change is Iran. And the best way to start the war would be to have the Iranians, or someone pretending to be the Iranians, attack a U.S. naval vessel in the Persian Gulf. If it were carried out by, let us suggest, the Israelis or Saudis, both of whom have motive to do so, it would be a false-flag operation leading to war. It would also be a false flag if the U.S. itself were to carry out the attack pretending to be Iranians. One recalls from the movie “Patton” the general’s hatred of the Russians and his rant at the end of the film, “In 10 days I’ll have us at war with those sons of b****** and I’ll make it look like their fault.” There are, unfortunately, many in D.C. who would support such an approach, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Some observers are concerned that the current lineup of administration hotheads is so devoid of scruples that it might well be planning to either provoke or false-flag the United States into the longed-for war against Iran.

Unfortunately, to a certain extent, Iran is playing into the scheming by America’s hawks. Early in December, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened to stop all shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz if Washington moves to block Iranian oil exports when sanctions kick in early in May. He said,

“If someday, the United States decides to block Iran’s oil, no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf.”

Washington for its part is also upping the ante, having sent an aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, to the Persian Gulf recently as part of a “show of force.” Iran has also beefed up its forces by deploying a considerable naval force to the Indian Ocean near the Persian Gulf, ready to move into the strait and close it if ordered to do so. Iran claims that it “completely controls the strait.”

As nearly 30% of all seaborne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz with the Stennis and Iranian forces on standby in the same area, the possibility of a fight starting either deliberately or by accident is growing. In early December, State Department Special Representative on Iran Brian Hook declared during a press conference that Washington would “not hesitate to use military force when our interests are threatened . . . the military option on the table.”

One does not have to suggest that either the United States or one of its alleged allies in the Middle East will inevitably take the low road and stage an incident, but the possibility remains it will occur to someone that this would be the easiest path to war. Others, who want war but are more cautious in terms of how they will initiate it, are probably waiting for the May 5 deadline when the U.S. embargo on Iranian oil sales kicks in. Iran will be forced to react, and the U.S. is no doubt preparing to strike back. We will thereby have a new war that serves no one’s interest apart from Israel and the Saudis and which will potentially devastate the region.

The American people will have to do the actual fighting and dying while also paying the bills afterwards and will emerge as the biggest losers.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review.

Featured image is from American Free Press

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by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

List Price: $24.95

click here to order

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In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

American Herald Tribune: Why did the US suspend the INF treaty with Russia? Is it a matter of Trump breaking treaties or is it the will of the establishment?

Paul Craig Roberts: Washington withdrew from the INF treaty as part of the attempt, ongoing since the Clinton regime, to achieve military hegemony over Russia. Clinton broke Washington’s word and moved NATO to Russia’s borders. George W. Bush withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in order to create a shield that would give Washington a first-strike advantage over Russia. Russia responded with hypersonic missiles that cannot be intercepted. Trump withdrew from the INF treaty in order to place missiles on Russia’s borders that permit Russia no reaction time.

A second reason for Washington’s withdrawal is that Washington wants to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles against China.

A third reason is that the additional $1 trillion budgeted by the Obama regime for more nuclear weapons needs an excuse, and restarting an arms race by withdrawing from the INF treaty creates an excuse for Washington to hand over $1 trillion more of taxpayers’ money to the military/security complex.

American Herald Tribune: How do you think the government of Nicolas Maduro can survive the US coup? What measures should be employed to secure their economy against US sanctions?

Paul Craig Roberts: Maduro would have to arrest Juan Guaido who without any doubt is guilty of sedition. Maduro would have to arrest the Venezuelan elites who are cooperating with the CIA against the duly elected government of Venezuela, and he would have to nationalize the media to take it out of the hands of coup plotters.  He would also have to ensure that the country’s oil revenues make it into the government’s budget instead of into the hands of thieves and use the resulting financial stability to stop the high inflation.  He should also arrange for Russian troops to protect their airbase and for Chinese troops to protect their oil investment.  The presence of these troops would likely prevent a US invasion from Columbia.

American Herald Tribune: Does Europe have the will to set up its own monetary system independent of the US?

Paul Craig Roberts: Europe has its own central bank and its own currency.  One problem with European financial independence is that large European banks have the same problem as the large New York banks and the European Central Bank cooperates with the Federal Reserve in managing the problem.  The necessity of keeping crisis at bay prevents European independence.  If Europe were to create a payment and clearing system independent of Washington, the likely response would be US sanctions against European firms and banks doing business in the US.  If European firms are unwilling to give up their US business, there is not much Europe can do.

American Herald Tribune: Some say the ‘special purpose vehicle’ SPV, called INSTEX, is an important milestone in the European effort to counterbalance U.S. economic power. What’s your take on that?

Paul Craig Roberts: The same consideration makes it difficult for the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) and INSTEX, a bartering mechanism that bypasses dollar transactions to continue Europe’s trade with Iran.  Washington has told Europe that if your enterprises want their access to US markets to continue, do as we say with regard to Iran and Russia.  With this being Washington’s attitude, Europe would have to break with the US and redirect its business to other parts of the world.  This would require nationalist leaders such as France’s Marine Le Pen.

American Herald Tribune: Sec. Pompeo tweeted in Farsi against Iran’s government and called Iran’s revolution “40 years of failure”. What is the reason for his disgust of Iran’s Islamic Revolution?

Paul Craig Roberts: Washington’s campaign against Iran reflects Israel’s hold over US foreign policy.  Israel wants to expand in the Middle East, which requires removing the obstacles to that expansion.  On Israel’s agenda is the water resource in southern Lebanon.  Twice Israel has sent its army to occupy the territory and twice was driven out by the Hezbollah militia.  Hezbollah is supplied with funds and arms by Syria and Iran.  Thus, the Israeli-directed US attack on Syria and Iran. If these two countries can be destabilized like Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah will be left without support and unable to oppose Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Featured image is from Sky News

The U.S. military has long insisted that it maintains a “light footprint” in Africa, and there have been reports of proposed drawdowns in special operations forces and closures of outposts on the continent, due to a 2017 ambush in Niger and an increasing focus on rivals like China and Russia. But through it all, U.S. Africa Command has fallen short of providing concrete information about its bases on the continent, leaving in question the true scope of the American presence there.

Documents obtained from AFRICOM by The Intercept, via the Freedom of Information Act, however, offer a unique window onto the sprawling network of U.S. military outposts in Africa, including previously undisclosed or unconfirmed sites in hotspots like Libya, Niger, and Somalia.  The Pentagon has also told The Intercept that troop reductions in Africa will be modest and phased-in over several years and that no outposts are expected to close as a result of the personnel cuts.

According to a 2018 briefing by AFRICOM science adviser Peter E. Teil, the military’s constellation of bases includes 34 sites scattered across the continent, with high concentrations in the north and west as well as the Horn of Africa. These regions, not surprisingly, have also seen numerous U.S. drone attacks and low-profile commando raids in recent years. For example, Libya — the site of drone and commando missions, but for which President Donald Trump said he saw no U.S. military role just last year — is nonetheless home to three previously undisclosed outposts.

“U.S. Africa Command’s posture plan is designed to secure strategic access to key locations on a continent characterized by vast distances and limited infrastructure,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, though he didn’t provide specifics on the number of bases. “Our posture network allows forward staging of forces to provide operational flexibility and timely response to crises involving U. S. personnel or interests without creating the optic that U. S. Africa Command is militarizing Africa.”

According to Adam Moore, an assistant professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles and an expert on the U.S. military’s presence in Africa,

“It is getting harder for the U.S. military to plausibly claim that it has a ‘light footprint’ in Africa. In just the past five years, it has established what is perhaps the largest drone complex in the world in Djibouti — Chabelley — which is involved in wars on two continents, Yemen, and Somalia.”

Moore also noted that the U.S. is building an even larger drone base in Agadez, Niger.

“Certainly, for people living in Somalia, Niger, and Djibouti, the notion that the U.S. is not militarizing their countries rings false,” he added.

For the last 10 years, AFRICOM has not only sought to define its presence as limited in scope, but its military outposts as small, temporary, and little more than local bases where Americans are tenants. For instance, this is how Waldhauser described a low-profile drone outpost in Tunisia last year: “And it’s not our base, it’s the Tunisians’ base.” On a visit to a U.S. facility in Senegal this summer, the AFRICOM chief took pains to emphasize that the U.S. had no intension of establishing a permanent base there. Still, there’s no denying the scope of AFRICOM’s network of outposts, nor the growth in infrastructure. Air Forces Africa alone, the command’s air component, has recently completed or is currently working on nearly 30 construction projects across four countries in Africa.

“The U.S. footprint on the African continent has grown markedly over the last decade to promote U.S. security interests on the continent,” Navy Cmdr. Candice Tresch, a Pentagon spokesperson, told The Intercept.

While China, France, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates have increased their own military engagement in Africa in recent years and a number of countries now possess outposts on the continent, none approach the wide-ranging U.S. footprint.  China, for example, has just one base in Africa – a facility in Djibouti.

According to the documents obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act, AFRICOM’s network of bases includes larger “enduring” outposts, consisting of forward operating sites, or FOSes, and cooperative security locations, or CSLs, as well as more numerous austere sites known as contingency locations, or CLs. All of these are located on the African continent except for an FOS on Britain’s Ascension Island in the south Atlantic. Teil’s map of AFRICOM’s “Strategic Posture” names the specific locations of all 14 FOSes and CSLs and provides country-specific locales for the 20 contingency locations. The Pentagon would not say whether the tally was exhaustive, however, citing concerns about publicly providing the number of forces deployed to specific facilities or individual countries. “For reasons of operational security, complete and specific force lay-downs are not releasable,” said Tresch.

While troops and outposts periodically come and go from the continent, and some locations used by commandos conducting sensitive missions are likely kept under wraps, Teil’s map represents the most current and complete accounting available and indicates the areas of the continent of greatest concern to Africa Command.

“The distribution of bases suggests that the U.S. military is organized around three counter-terrorism theaters in Africa: the Horn of Africa — Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya; Libya; and the Sahel — Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso,” says Moore, noting that the U.S. has only one base in the south of the continent and has scaled back engagement in Central Africa in recent years.

U.S. Africa Command’s “Strategic Posture” — listing 34 military outposts — from a 2018 briefing by Science Advisor Peter E. Teil. (Source: U.S. Africa Command)

Niger, Somalia, and Kenya

Teil’s briefing confirms, for the first time, that the U.S. military currently has more sites in Niger — five, including two cooperative security locations — than any other country on the western side of the continent. Niamey, the country’s capital, is the location of Air Base 101, a longtime U.S. drone outpost attached to Diori Hamani International Airport; the site of a Special Operations Advanced Operations Base; and the West Africa node for AFRICOM’s contractor-provided personnel recovery and casualty evacuation services. The other CSL, in the remote smuggling hub of Agadez, is set to become the premier U.S. military outpost in West Africa. That drone base, located at Nigerien Air Base 201, not only boasts a $100 million construction price tag but, with operating expenses, is estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers more than a quarter-billion dollars by 2024 when the 10-year agreement for its use ends.

Officially, a CSL is neither “a U.S. facility or base.” It is, according to the military, “simply a location that, when needed and with the permission of the partner country, can be used by U.S. personnel to support a wide range of contingencies.” The sheer dimensions, cost, and importance of Agadez seems to suggest otherwise.

“Judging by its size and the infrastructure investments to date, Agadez more resembles massive bases that the military created in Iraq and Afghanistan than a small, unobtrusive, ‘lily pad,’” says Moore.

The U.S. military presence in Niger gained widespread exposure last year when an October 4 ambush by ISIS in the Greater Sahara near the Mali border killed four U.S. soldiers, including Green Berets, and wounded two others. A Pentagon investigation into the attack shed additional light on other key U.S. military sites in Niger including Ouallam and Arlit, where Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed in 2017, and Maradi, where SOF were sent in 2016. Arlit also appeared as a proposed contingency location in a formerly secret 2015 AFRICOM posture plan obtained by The Intercept. Ouallam, which was listed in contracting documents brought to light by The Intercept last year, was the site of an SOF effort to train and equip a Nigerian counterterrorism company as well as another effort to conduct operations with other local units. Contracting documents from 2017 also noted the need for 4,400 gallons per month of gasoline, 1,100 gallons per month of diesel fuel, and 6,000 gallons of aviation turbine fuel to be delivered, every 90 days, to a “military installation” in Dirkou.

While the five bases in Niger anchor the west of the continent, the five U.S. outposts in Somalia are tops in the east. Somalia is the East Africa hub for contractor-provided personnel recovery and casualty evacuation services as well as the main node for the military’s own personnel recovery and casualty evacuation operations. These sites, revealed in AFRICOM maps for the first time, do not include a CIA base revealed in 2014 by The Nation.

All U.S. military facilities in Somalia, by virtue of being contingency locations, are unnamed on AFRICOM’s 2018 map. Previously, Kismayo has been identified as a key outpost, while the declassified 2015 AFRICOM posture plan names proposed CLs in Baidoa, Bosaaso, and the capital, Mogadishu, as well as Berbera in the self-declared state of Somaliland. If locations on Teil’s map are accurate, one of the Somali sites is located in this latter region. Reporting by Vice News earlier this year indicated there were actually six new U.S facilities being constructed in Somalia as well as the expansion of Baledogle, a base for which a contract for “emergency runway repairs” was recently issued.

According to top secret documents obtained by The Intercept in 2015, elite troops from a unit known as Task Force 48-4 were involved in drone attacks in Somalia earlier this decade. This air war has continued in the years since. The U.S. has already conducted 36 air strikes in Somalia this year, compared to 34 for all of 2017 and 15 in 2016, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Somalia’s neighbor, Kenya, boasts four U.S. bases. These include cooperative security locations at Mombasa as well as Manda Bay, where a 2013 Pentagon study of secret drone operations in Somalia and Yemen noted that two manned fixed-wing aircraft were then based. AFRICOM’s 2015 posture plan also mentions contingency locations at Lakipia, the site of a Kenyan Air Force base, and another Kenyan airfield at Wajir that was upgraded and expanded by the U.S. Navy earlier in this decade.

Libya, Tunisia, and Djibouti

Teil’s map shows a cluster of three unnamed and previously unreported contingency locations near the Libyan coastline. Since 2011, the U.S. has carried out approximately 550 drone strikes targeting al Qaeda and Islamic State militants in the restive North African nation. During a four-month span in 2016, for example, there were around 300 such attacks, according to U.S. officials. That’s seven times more than the 42 confirmed U.S. drone strikes carried out in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan combined for all of 2016, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a London-based nonprofit news organization. The Libya attacks have continued under the Trump administration, with the latest acknowledged U.S. drone strike occurring near Al Uwaynat on November 29. AFRICOM’s 2015 posture plan listed only an outpost at Al-Wigh, a Saharan airfield near that country’s borders with Niger, Chad, and Algeria, located far to the south of the three current CLs.

Africa Command’s map also shows a contingency location in neighboring Tunisia, possibly Sidi Ahmed Air Base, a key regional U.S. drone outpost that has played an important role in air strikes in Libya in recent years.

“You know, flying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones out of Tunisia has been taking place for quite some time,” said Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, last year.  “[W]e fly there, it’s not a secret, but we are very respectful to the Tunisians’ desires in terms of, you know, how we support them and the fact that we have [a] low profile…”

Djibouti is home to the crown jewel of U.S. bases on the continent, Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion outpost and AFRICOM’s lone forward operating site on the continent. A longtime hub for counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia and the home of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF–HOA), Camp Lemonnier hosts around 4,000 U.S. and allied personnel, and, according to Teil, is the “main platform” for U.S. crisis response forces in Africa. Since 2002, the base has expanded from 88 acres to nearly 600 acres and spun off a satellite outpost — a cooperative security location 10 kilometers to the southwest, where drone operations in the country were relocated in 2013. Chabelley Airfieldhas gone on to serve as an integral base for missions in Somalia and Yemen as well as the drone war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

“United States military personnel remain deployed to Djibouti, including for purposes of posturing for counterterrorism and counter-piracy operations in the vicinity of the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and to provide contingency support for embassy security augmentation in East Africa,” President Donald Trump noted in June.

Cameroon, Mali, and Chad

AFRICOM’s strategic posture also includes two contingency locations in Cameroon. One is an outpost in the north of the country, known as CL Garoua, which is used to fly drone missions and also as a base for the Army’s Task Force Darby, which supports Cameroonian forces fighting the terrorist group Boko Haram. Cameroon is also home to a longtime outpost in Douala as well as U.S. facilities in Maroua and a nearby base called Salak, which is also used by U.S. personnel and private contractors for training missions and drone surveillance.  In 2017, Amnesty International, the London-based research firm Forensic Architecture, and The Intercept exposed illegal imprisonment, torture, and killings by Cameroonian troops at Salak.

In neighboring Mali, there are two contingency locations. AFRICOM’s 2015 posture plan lists proposed CLs in Gao and Mali’s capital, Bamako.  The 2018 map also notes the existence of a CSL in Chad’s capital N’Djamena, a site where the U.S. began flying drones earlier this decade; it’s also the headquarters of a Special Operations Command and Control Element, an elite battalion-level command. Another unidentified contingency location in Chad could be a CL in Faya Largeau, which was mentioned in AFRICOM’s 2015 posture plan.

In Gabon, a cooperative security location exists in Libreville. Last year, U.S. troops carried out an exercise there to test their ability to turn the Libreville CSL into a forward command post to facilitate an influx of a large number of forces. A CSL can also be found in Accra, Ghana, and another CSL is located on a small compound at Captain Andalla Cissé Air Base in Dakar, Senegal.

“This location is very important to us because it helps mitigate the time and space on the continent the size of Africa,” said AFRICOM commander Waldhauser while visiting the Senegalese capital earlier this year.

Only one base lies in the far south of the continent, a CSL in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, that is run by the Army. To its north, CSL Entebbe in Uganda has long been an important air base for American forces in Africa, serving as a hub for surveillance aircraft. It also proved integral to Operation Oaken Steel, the July 2016 rapid deployment of troops to rescue U.S. personnel after fighting broke out near the American Embassy in Juba, South Sudan.

“We Have Increased the Firepower”

In May, responding to questions about measures taken after the October 2017 ambush in Niger, Waldhauser spoke of fortifying the U.S. presence on the continent.

“We have increased, which I won’t go into details here, but we have increased the firepower, we’ve increased the ISR [intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity, we’ve increased various response times,” he said. “So we have beefed up a lot of things posture-wise with regard to these forces.” This firepower includes drones. “We have been arming out of Niger, and we’ll use that as appropriate,” Waldhauser noted this summer, alluding to the presence of armed remotely piloted aircraft, or RPAs, now based there.

AFRICOM did not respond to multiple requests to interview Waldhauser.

After months of reports that the Defense Department was considering a major drawdown of Special Operations forces in Africa as well as the closure of military outposts in Tunisia, Cameroon, Libya and Kenya, the Pentagon now says that less than 10 percent of 7,200 forces assigned to AFRICOM will be withdrawn over several years and no bases will close as a result. In fact, U.S. base construction in Africa is booming. Air Forces Africa spokesperson Auburn Davis told The Intercept that the Air Force recently completed 21 construction projects in Kenya, Tunisia, Niger and Djibouti and currently has seven others underway in Niger and Djibouti.

“The proliferation of bases in the Sahel, Libya, and Horn of Africa suggests that AFRICOM’s counterterrorism missions in those regions of the continent will continue indefinitely,” Moore told The Intercept.

Hours after Moore made those comments, the Pentagon announced that six firms had been named under a potential five-year, $240 million contract for design and construction services for naval facilities in Africa, beginning with the expansion of the tarmac at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.

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O presidente francês, Emmanuel Macron, ordena a Nicolas Maduro que não reprima a oposição MAS ELE ESQUECE as 3 300 prisões e os 2 000 feridos ligados à repressão do movimento dos coletes amarelos.

O presidente do governo espanhol, Pedro Sanchez, dá oito dias a Nicolas Maduro para organizar eleições MAS ELE ESQUECE que não está no seu posto senão graças a uma moção de censura e não por eleições livres.

O presidente dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, acusa Nicolas Maduro de não ser legítimo por o presidente venezuelano foi eleito senão por 30,45% dos inscritos, MAS ELE ESQUECE que apenas 27,20% dos eleitores estado-unidenses o escolheram.

O presidente colombiano, Ivan Duque, grita à “narco-ditadura venezuelana” MAS ELE ESQUECE que 65% da cocaína no mundo é fabricada na Colômbia, sob o olhar complacente das autoridades do país.

O presidente brasileiro, Jair Bolsonaro, está preocupado quanto aos direitos humanos na Venezuela MAS ELE ESQUECE ter declarado que os movimentos sociais que se opusessem à sua política seriam considerados como organizações terroristas.

O presidente argentino, Mauricio Macri, acusa Nicolas Maduro de ser um corrupto MAS ELE ESQUECE que só o seu nome aparece nos Panama Papers, não o do presidente venezuelano.

Portugal deplora a crise venezuelano que, segundo a ONU, empurrou 7,2% dos venezuelanos para os caminhos da emigração MAS ELE ESQUECE que 21% dos portugueses tiveram de abandonar seu país e vivem no estrangeiro, segundo as mesmas fontes.

O presidente peruano, Martin Vizcarra, grita à ditadura na Venezuela MAS ELE ESQUECE que foi nomeado à frente do seu país sem o menor voto popular, apenas em substituição do presidente anterior destituído por corrupção.

No Reino Unido, os dirigentes denunciam os atentados à liberdade de expressão na Venezuela MAS ELES ESQUECEM que mantém, sem nenhum motivo válido, o jornalista Julian Assange em reclusão.

A Bélgica alarma-se com a situação da economia venezuelana MAS ELA ESQUECE que em Bruxelas a empresa Euroclear retém 1,25 mil milhões de dólares pertencentes ao Estado venezuelano.

Estas inversões acusatórias, próprias desta ” Escola do mundo invertido ” descrita por Eduardo Galeano, fazem parte do modus operandi da propaganda contra a Venezuela. Elas visam preparar a opinião pública internacional para a legitimidade de uma acção violenta contra o Povo venezuelano.

As bombas mediáticas já começaram a chover.

O original encontra-se em www.romainmigus.info/2019/01/propagande-contre-le-venezuela.html

Propagande contre le Venezuela 

Par Romain Migus, 28 janvier 2019
l
Traduçao : http://resistir.info/

Há duas semanas, Washington proclamou Presidente da Venezuela, Juan Guaidò, apesar de ele nem sequer ter participado nas eleições presidenciais e declarou ilegítimo, o Presidente Maduro, juridicamente eleito, anunciando a sua deportação para Guantánamo.

Na semana passada, anunciou a suspensão USA do Tratado INF, atribuindo a responsabilidade à Rússia e, assim, abriu uma fase ainda mais perigosa da corrida aos armamentos nucleares.

Esta semana, Washington dá mais um passo: amanhã, 6 de Fevereiro, a NATO sob comando USA, expande-se ainda mais, com a assinatura do protocolo de adesão da Macedónia do Norte, como seu 30º membro.

Não sabemos que outro passo Washington dará na próxima semana, mas sabemos qual é a direcção: uma sucessão cada vez mais rápida de acções de força com as quais os USA e outras potências ocidentais tentam manter o domínio unipolar, num mundo que se está a tornar multipolar. Essa estratégia – expressão não de força, mas de fraqueza, todavia não menos perigosa – espezinha as normas mais elementares do Direito Internacional.

Facto exemplificador é o lançamento de novas sanções USA contra a Venezuela, com o “congelamento” de activos de 7 biliões de dólares pertencentes à estatal petrolífera, com o objectivo declarado de impedir a Venezuela, país com as maiores reservas de petróleo do mundo, de exportar petróleo.

A Venezuela, além de ser um dos sete países do mundo com reservas de coltan, também é rica em ouro, com reservas estimadas em mais de 15 mil toneladas, usadas pelo Estado para adquirir moeda de reserva e comprar produtos farmacêuticos, alimentares e outros géneros de primeira necessidade. Por esta razão, o Departamento do Tesouro USA, juntamente com os ministros das Finanças e com os governadores dos Bancos Centrais da União Europeia e do Japão, concretizaram uma operação secreta de “expropriação internacional” (documentada pelo ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’).

Apreendeu: 31 toneladas de lingotes de ouro pertencentes ao Estado venezuelano:

–  14 toneladas depositadas no Banco da Inglaterra,

– 17 toneladas transferidas para este banco, pelo Deutsche Bank alemão, que as havia prometido como garantia de um empréstimo, totalmente reembolsado pela Venezuela em moeda de reserva.

Uma rapina, verdadeira e oportuna, ao estilo da que, em 2011, levou ao “congelamento” de 150 biliões de dólares dos fundos soberanos da Líbia (agora em grande parte desaparecidos), com a diferença de que, esta contra o ouro venezuelano, foi levada a cabo secretamente. O objectivo é o mesmo: estrangular economicamente o Estado alvo a fim de acelerar o seu colapso, fomentar a oposição interna e, se não for suficiente, atacá-lo militarmente, do exterior.

Com o mesmo desrespeito pelas regras mais elementares de conduta nas relações internacionais, os Estados Unidos e os seus aliados acusam a Rússia de violar o Tratado INF, sem apresentar provas, enquanto ignoram as fotos de satélite divulgadas por Moscovo, que provam que os Estados Unidos começaram a preparar a produção de mísseis nucleares proibidos pelo Tratado, numa fábrica da Raytheon, dois anos antes de acusarem a Rússia de violar o Tratado.

Finalmente, no que diz respeito ao novo alargamento da NATO, que será ratificado amanhã, deve recordar-se que, em 1990, na véspera da dissolução do Pacto de Varsóvia, o Secretário de Estado dos EUA, James Baker, assegurou ao Presidente da URSS, Mikhail Gorbachev, que “a NATO não se estenderá, nem uma polegada para Leste». Em vinte anos, depois de ter demolido com a guerra, a Federação Jugoslava, a NATO aumentou de 16 para 30 países, expandindo-se cada vez mais para Leste, em direcção à Rússia.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo em italiano :

Washington, la ragione della forza

il manifesto, 05 de Fevereiro de 2019

Tradutora Luisa Vasconcelos

VIDEO (PandoraTV) :

Due settimane fa Washington ha incoronato presidente del Venezuela Juan Guaidò, pur non avendo questi neppure partecipato alle elezioni presidenziali, e ha dichiarato illegittimo il presidente Maduro, regolarmente eletto, preannunciando la sua deportazione a Guantanamo.

La scorsa settimana ha annunciato la sospensione USA del Trattato INF, attribuendone la responsabilità alla Russia, e ha in tal modo aperto una ancora più pericolosa fase della corsa agli armamenti nucleari.

Questa settimana Washington compie un altro passo: domani 6 febbraio, la NATO sotto comando USA si allarga ulteriormente, con la firma del protocollo di adesione della Macedonia del Nord quale 30° membro.

Non sappiamo quale altro passo farà Washington la settimana prossima, ma sappiamo qual è la direzione: una sempre più rapida successione di atti di forza con cui gli USA e le altre potenze dell’Occidente cercano di mantenere il predominio unipolare in un mondo che sta divenendo multipolare. Tale strategia – espressione non di forza ma di debolezza, tuttavia non meno pericolosa – calpesta le più elementari norme di diritto internazionale.

Caso emblematico è il varo di nuove sanzioni USA contro il Venezuela, con il «congelamento» di beni per 7 miliardi di dollari appartenenti alla compagnia petrolifera di Stato, allo scopo dichiarato di impedire al Venezuela, il paese con le maggiori riserve petrolifere del mondo, di esportare petrolio. Il Venezuela, oltre ad essere uno dei sette paesi del mondo con riserve di coltan, è ricco anche di oro, con riserve stimate in oltre 15 mila tonnellate, usato dallo Stato per procurarsi valuta pregiata e acquistare farmaci, prodotti alimentari e altri generi di prima necessità.  Per questo il Dipartimento del Tesoro USA, di concerto con i ministri delle Finanze e i governatori delle Banche Centrali di Unione europea e Giappone, ha condotto una operazione segreta di «esproprio internazionale» (documentata da Il Sole 24 Ore).

Ha sequestrato: 31 tonnellate di lingotti d’oro appartenenti allo Stato venezuelano:

Ø  14 tonnellate depositate presso la Banca d’Inghilterra, più altre

Ø  17 tonnellate trasferite a questa banca dalla tedesca Deutsche Bank che li aveva avuti in pegno a garanzia di un prestito, totalmente rimborsato dal Venezuela in valuta pregiata.

Una vera e propria rapina, sullo stile di quella che nel 2011 ha portato al «congelamento» di 150 miliardi di dollari di fondi sovrani libici (ormai in gran parte spariti), con la differenza che quella contro l’oro venezuelano è stata condotta segretamente. Lo scopo è lo stesso: strangolare economicamente lo Stato-bersaglio per accelerarne il collasso, fomentando l’opposizione interna, e, se ciò non basta, attaccarlo militarmente dall’esterno.

Con lo stesso dispregio delle più elementari norme di condotta nei rapporti internazionali, gli Stati uniti e i loro alleati accusano la Russia di violare il Trattato INF, senza portare alcuna prova, mentre ignorano le foto satellitari diffuse da Mosca le quali provano che gli Stati Uniti avevano cominciato a preparare la produzione di missili nucleari proibiti dal Trattato, in un impianto della Raytheon, due anni prima che accusassero la Russia di violare il Trattato.

Riguardo infine all’ulteriore allargamento della NATO, che sarà sancito domani, va ricordato che nel 1990, alla vigilia dello scioglimento del Patto di Varsavia, il Segretario di Stato USA James Baker assicurava il Presidente dell’URSS Mikhail Gorbaciov che «la NATO non si estenderà di un solo pollice ad Est». In vent’anni, dopo aver demolito con la guerra la Federazione Jugoslava, la NATO si è estesa da 16 a 30 paesi, espandendosi sempre più ad Est verso la Russia.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 05 febbraio 2019

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Donald Trump’s Twenty Biggest Follies

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, February 04, 2019

The list of Trump’s ineptitudes is very long, and we tend to forget previous ones as the next one hits the headlines. Many suspect that the rise of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency has been tainted by fraud. The biggest folly of all is to enter politics when one is inexperienced and incompetent

Afghanistan: From “Soviet” Occupation to American “Liberation”

By Nauman Sadiq, February 04, 2019

During the election campaign of 2008 before he was elected president, Barack Obama made an artificial distinction between the supposedly “just war” in Afghanistan and the unjust war in Iraq.

The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics in a Multipolar World Order

By Federico Pieraccini, February 04, 2019

The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia.

As Malaysia and Ireland Find Out, You Stand Up for Palestinian Rights at Your Peril

By Miko Peled, February 04, 2019

It takes an enormous effort for any country to oppose Israel, but particularly a small country that has to rely on bigger powers. It is even harder to impose effective pragmatic measures against Israel, as in the case of Ireland and Malaysia.

Back to the Dear Old Cold War

By Eric Margolis, February 04, 2019

Later this month, the US and China are due to try to end their long-running trade war which has damaged the economies of both nations. At the heart of the trade dispute are soya beans and pork, the two principal American exports to China, as well as China’s efforts to grab US technology.

Canada’s Left Party Blinks at US-led Coup in Venezuela

By Yves Engler, February 04, 2019

Ottawa has adopted illegal sanctions, supported opposition groups, built an anti-Venezuela regional coalition, pressured Caribbean countries to join their campaign and taken a complaint about the Venezuelan government to the International Criminal Court.

John Bolton’s Plan to Starve Millions of Venezuelans into Submission

By Kurt Nimmo, February 04, 2019

It is true that some of Venezuela’s economic problems are due to the ineptitudes of the Bolivarian government’s  “socialist command” economy, but this overlooks the role played by the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union.

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, February 04, 2019

As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

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American President Donald Trump has done a lot of unheard-of things since his 2016 election, most of them have been controversial and some have been utterly scandalous. The latest one to date was his shutting down of part of the U.S. government for 35 long days, on a whim, with the intention of bullying the newly elected Democratic majority of the House of Representatives. However, this time he hit a wall—a democratic wall—as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called his bluff and defeated him at his own game.

But the list of Trump’s ineptitudes is very long, and we tend to forget previous ones as the next one hits the headlines. For the record, here are 20 among his more damning ones.

1. Donald Trump has been accused of having cheated to get elected

Many suspect that the rise of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency has been tainted by fraud. This was made clearer on August 21, 2018, when his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted on eight felony counts, in a Virginia courtroom.

The confessions made by Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to eight felony charges in a New York courtroom, are possibly even more damaging. Mr. Cohen, Trump’s enabler and “fixer”, also confessed under oath that he had openly violated U.S. campaign laws, with the coordination and under the direction of Mr. Trump, besides having arranged illicit payments to two women to keep them silent on damaging revelations about Mr. Trump, with the explicit purpose of influencing the results of the November 2016 American presidential election. Cohen has also confessed that he paid a company to rig online polls with the purpose of influencing the electorate, at “the direction of and for the sole benefit of” Donald Trump.

2. Donald Trump has surrounded himself with ideologues and incompetent yes-men and he runs a disorganized administration

The background: When hotel and casino mogul Donald Trump entered politics, he had no experience in public office or in government. This is not an insurmountable liability if such a person can surround himself with knowledgeable and experienced people. In Donald Trump’s case, he did exactly the reverse. He did not tolerate for very long competent people around him and he ended up attracting only people with no reputation to lose but who could flatter his clinical narcissism.

Indeed, Donald Trump has fired or forced to resign experienced and competent people (Exxon President Rex Tlllerson, General James Mattis, general H.R. McMaster, economist Gary Cohn, etc.) who were ready to serve their country but who were not ready to swear allegiance to a mafia-like boss. Because Donald Trump was on the lookout for people who would only work for himself and could contribute to his aggrandizement, he finally succeeded in attracting clones of himself, essentially sycophants of the likes of Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Peter Navarro, etc.

Thereafter, he has run a government mired in chaos, dysfunction, improvisation and irresponsibility, even boasting that he trusted his “guts” above everything else, while shamelessly pursuing his own private interests, political and financial, in making important public policies. As a result, Donald Trump has made a travesty of the American presidency. — This is not how a democratic government ought to function. It must exhibit competence, trust, inspire confidence, show integrity and honesty, and be devoted to the pursuit of the common good.

According to an author who has served in Trump’s White House and who has witnessed first-hand the chaos, the disorganization and the daily intrigues in and around the Oval Office, the current U.S. President has surrounded himself with a team of vipers. In the final analysis, it may be New York Times renowned economist Paul Krugman who best summarized the situation when he branded the Trump administration as a team of morons, under the direction of an undignified, unprepared and incompetent president.

3. Donald Trump‘s relations with other politicians, journalists, personalities and some foreign leaders have been marred by insults, lies and threats

The list of persons and places that a boorish Donald Trump has insulted verbally or on Twitter, since taking office, is very long. Indeed, he is a champion in the art of insultery to the point of childishness, sometimes using crude and offensive language. As of last December, the New York Times has estimated that he has insulted some 551 politicians, journalists, personalities, heads of state and places. He does not seem to have any decency or restraint in dealing with people. And ironically, when someone throws an insult at him, he makes a terrible fuss about it.

Here are only a few examples:

Donald Trump insulted his Democratic presidential adversary, Hillary Clinton, by calling her “crooked” and “shrill”. Trump, who found a way to avoid being drafted in the army to go to Vietnam, declared the late Senator John McCain “not being a hero” because he had been captured, even though the latter spent five years in a Vietnamese jail as an American combat man.

Donald Trump has insulted scores of personalities. He has lashed out at famous actress Meryl Streep, calling her an “overrated actress”. He called NBA football player Lebron James “stupid” and he has repeated that insult to many other persons.

Trump has called the President of North Korea Kim Jong-Un “short and fat”. He called Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “very dishonest and weak”. He insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel by saying that she “was ruining Germany” and that “the German people will throw her out”. During a visit to France, Trump found a way to insult his host, French President Emmanuel Macron, saying that it was “very insulting” for him (Macron) to suggest that Europe should have a European army, etc.

Donald Trump has even found a way to insult the population of an entire continent. In January 2018, he branded African nations as “shithole countries”! Need we say more?

4. Donald Trump has violated time and again the Free Press Guarantee enshrined in the U.S. Constitution

Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. [The U.S. Constitution]

Trump has often violated the Free Press Guarantee in the U.S. Constitution by lying constantly to journalists, by abusing them with false accusations and by encouraging distrust and even hatred of professional journalists, and by constantly disregarding veracity. More generally speaking, Donald Trump, as an individual, does not know nor understand history and the way a democratic government functions under a constitution, and his incoherent statements on these topics are a fair reflection of such ignorance and disability.

Through his statements and by his behavior, Donald Trump resembles more and more Turkey’s de facto dictator Recep Erdoğan. He has stirred up violence against journalists, because they do not think like him or do not praise him enough.

Trump does not seem to have any decency and any limits when his personal interests are at stake. According to his biographers, that is what he has done all his life.

5. In 2017, Trump bombed Syria on false flag information

As a show of force, Donald Trump launched a bombing attack against the country of Syria, on Friday morning, April 7, 2017, under the spurious pretext that the inhabitants of a Syrian town had been the victims of a chemical attack. All this, not only in the absence of proof but also after there were numerous indications that such an attack was a false flag operation that had been staged by U.S.-backed Islamist rebels to embarrass the Syrian government, to blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to manipulate the American president and to hoodwink the American public.

Nevertheless, thinking only about his own persona and wanting a PR show as a “strong man”, Trump launched an illegal military attack against the sovereign country of Syria, under false pretenses, just as George W. Bush had done in 2003 against the country of Iraq. —In Washington DC, under the influence of money and neo-conservatives in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, « plus ça change, plus c’est pareil »!

6. Trump has stirred more hatred and created more problems in the Middle East, especially in Syria, in Palestine and in Yemen

US President Donald Trump, flanked by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), delivers remarks after a wreath-laying at the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on 23 May, 2017

By acquiescing to demands from his Zionist campaign donors, especially casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to cancel the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump has fulfilled his main campaign promises to them. For Trump, U.S. foreign policies seem to be for sale to the highest campaign bidders, whatever the consequences.

And, to make sure that this would be the case, Trump designated Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a fervent Zionist, to frame American foreign policy in the Middle East, in association with neocon John Bolton. It is no wonder that the Middle East is a daily human tragedy, with refugees fleeing in droves to Europe.

More generally, it can be said that the U.S. government under Donald Trump, as it was also the case under George W. Bush and previous American presidents since WWII, has an unchecked hubristic complex, and thinks it has a god-given  right to meddle in other sovereign countries’ domestic affairs.

7. Trump may have compromised himself and his office by being complicit with foreign governments

In pursuing his own private financial interests, even while in government, Donald Trump has been accused of soliciting favors from foreign governments.

The entire issue of complicity of conspiracy with foreign governments will most likely be front-page news when the report by the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is made public.

8. Trump has befriended foreign dictators and despots while attacking allies and foreign democratic leaders

With his autocratic style of government, Donald Trump has been more at ease with foreign dictators than with democratic leaders. The list of strongmen and despots he has befriended and endorsed is long. Equally long is the list of democratic leaders and countries he has insulted and snubbed.

Trump has distanced himself from other democratic countries, in particular when he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and when he pulled out of a global climate agreement.

9. Trump has extended huge tax reductions to corporations and rich individuals, who in turn bought stock shares and created a stock market bubble

Possibly the Trump administration’s biggest economic and social blunder was the huge tax bonanza given to large corporations and super rich individuals, thus exacerbating income and wealth inequalities in the United States. Such large tax reductions are pushing the federal fiscal deficit above $1 trillion a year, thus saddling future generations with a huge public debt.

This is more surprising if one considers that during the 2016 political campaign, presidential candidate Donald Trump promised he would eliminate the U.S. public debt in eight years. — In fact, Trump did just the reverse. As a result of Trump’s fiscal policies, it is estimated that his administration will add $8.3 trillion to the public debt during his first term. Meanwhile, the U.S. public debt will balloon to a total of $25 trillion. There is a term for that and it is called fiscal irresponsibility and campaign promise cynicism.

In the year 2018, for example, the S&P 500 companies (Qualcomm, Apple, Oracle, etc.) used their Trump tax cut bonuses to spend an estimated staggering $770 billion to buy back their own shares, thus contributing to generating a stock market bubble. For CEOs, whose compensation is tied to the stock price because it makes the stock more valuable, this was the best of times, i.e. high salaries and lower taxes.

Many small investors, however, who bought at the top of the market, will be singled out to lose a lot of their savings when the stock market bubble bursts, while workers’ real wages are still lingering.

10. Trump has implemented pro-cyclical economic policies that will worsen the next economic downturn and hurt the poorest Americans

Through large tax cuts and large increases in deficits and debt, the Trump administration has pursued a pro-cyclical fiscal policy at the top of the business cycle, when economic growth is positive and unemployment is low. In so doing, this is likely to reduce the federal government’s capability to fight the next recession.

With wise fiscal policy, the public budget deficit usually falls during economic upswings and rises during downswings of the economy. For short-term political considerations, the Trump administration has done the contrary. If the next recession is unusually severe, people will know whom to blame.

11. Donald Trump has bullied the Fed, thus endangering its independence and its credibility

Donald Trump has made disparaging and damaging remarks about the Fed and its Chairman, thus endangering the Fed’s independence and credibility internationally. A central bank has no responsibility to cater to politicians’ short-term political interests. Its sole responsibility is to stabilize the economy, smooth the business cycle, avoid financial bubbles and prevent inflation.

As mentioned above, the Trump administration has pursued a pro-cyclical fiscal policy, increasing deficits and the public debt at the top of the business cycle, besides feeding a stock market price bubble. Such a policy can temporarily stimulate economic growth, but at the expense of higher inflation and lower growth later on. Thereafter, the Fed was placed in a difficult position and it felt obligated to adopt a monetary policy of adjusting upward extraordinary low interest rates. Indeed, negative real interest rates, i.e. when market short-term interest rates are lower than inflation rates, can result in unviable investments and encourage risky speculation.

The Fed has embarked on a policy of slowly reducing its bloated balance sheet, a result of the financial crisis of 2008, when the central bank bought mortgage bonds from the banks (Fed’s assets) and when it increased the banks’ reserves (Fed’s liabilities) to prevent the largest banks from failing. This means a gradual adjustment of short-term interest rates upward. What has been unusual was Trump’s attempt to attack the independence of the Federal Reserve System and to undermine its reputation.

12. Trump’s known numerous instances of sexual misconduct and legal entanglements thereof have been an albatross around his neck, which has impaired his credibility

There have been many instances when Donald Trump has publicly degraded women. There also have been numerous assertions of sexual misconduct made about Mr. Trump. Nobody expects a politician to be a saint. However, because the person in the White House used to be looked upon as a model for American youth, his character and his behavior count. Instead, Donald Trump has projected a personal image of depravation.

13. Trump’s penchant for abuse of power, and autocratic and demagogic government, could lead to a constitutional crisis

Even before his official inauguration on January 22, 2017, Donald Trump projected himself as a de facto American would-be dictatorwho has utter contempt for the sanctity of the division of powers (the system of Checks and Balances) inscribed in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1). His first instinct was to govern by decree, with as little congressional input as possible.

In the past, other American presidents have attempted to concentrate power in the Oval Office. One thinks of Andrew Johnson in the 19^thCentury, and Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton in the 20^th Century. They were all politicians who tried to stretch the U.S. Constitution in their favor. But none has strained American democratic institutions as Donald Trump has done. Trump seems to have a profound disrespect for American institutions.

14. Donald Trump has been a factor of division and of polarization in the United States

With his tactic of confrontation and through his incendiary speeches, his attacks ad hominem, his tantrums and his bullying tactics toward Congress and toward American celebrities, Donald Trump has divided and polarized the United States and widened divisions among the public like no other politician before. Indeed, it is a safe to say that with Donald Trump in the White House, the United States is more divided than ever.

15. Trump’s inhumanity and lack of compassion towards immigrant children is appalling

Every country has the right to defend its borders against illegal immigration. Nowadays, human traffickers encourage fake refugees to bypass the legal immigration system. This is a problem in Europe but also in North America. But there are humane ways and inhuman ways to deal with such a problem.

On that score, the Trump administration has pursued a reprehensible family separation policy for children of immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally. Maybe fake refugees should have their requests analyzed before being allowed to enter the country. But separating children from their parents is uncivilized.

Indeed, a majority of Americans have decried such a policy of establishing detention camps for children. In so doing, the Trump administration has demonstrated a frightening absence of moral probity and compassion.

Americans in general are more moral and ethical than the Trump administration and its family-separation policy.  Various polls have shown that such a policy is unpopular, with about two-thirds of Americans opposing it.

Donald Trump has also played political games with the lives of the so called DACA children, i.e. children who were allowed in the United States when they were at a very young age, after natural and political disasters in their countries (in Haiti and in some other countries), and who have since grown up and worked as Americans. Many of these children are now young adults who speak only English and have no memory of or connection to their country of birth—but they have been threatened with deportation by the Trump administration.

There are about 800,000 young adults in that precarious situation. They are called DREAMers because of a proposed act, the DREAM Act, which would have provided a conditional pathway to U.S. citizenship or legal residency to a certain number of them, in order to allow them to go to college, to be employed and/or to serve in the military, while maintaining a good record. A large proportion of Americans, in fact 82 percent according to a CNN poll, would support such a humanist approach to a very specific human problem.

However, on Saturday January 19, 2019, President Trump tried to bargain the fate of these young adults in exchange for $5.7 billion, if the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives voted funds for his project of building a steel wall between the United States and Mexico. This is tantamount to placing narrow political interests above the fate of young people who find themselves in a very precarious situation.

16. Trump’s promise to fight political corruption in Washington D.C. has been an empty promise

The promise that Donald Trump made while on the campaign trail to fight political corruption—to drain the Washington corruption swamp, as he said—has fallen flat. In fact, he has done anything but drain that swamp. Trump has been accused of having indulged in political corruption by accepting huge sums of money from lobbyists, thus placing himself in conflicts of interest. Some observers have concluded that the Trump presidency is the most corrupt in modern history.

His position on conflicts of interest since the beginning of his mandate has raised a lot of suspicion. He does not seem to be able to separate the affairs of the state from his personal affairs. Trump has surrounded himself with family members and he has appointed advisers who’ve been accused of conflicts of interest, many of whom have either been convicted or pleaded guilty, etc.

He has gone as far as giving the keys of the Pentagon to the arms industry in naming a Boeing executive as the acting secretary of the Department of Defense. —What he has done is to simply reorganize corruption to his own advantage.

17. Trump has ignored the problems related to global warming

The phenomenon of a warming planet may be the biggest challenge facing humanity in the future. It has been observed that summers are warmer and winters are colder, both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Some believe that a slight increase in the tilt of the Earth’s axis toward the Sun could play a role. Indeed, many people think that because of this increase the observed temperature changes can be caused by the Earth being closer to the Sun in summer and farther from the Sun in winter. Others place more emphasis on a rise in the level of the gas CO2 and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect, for the observed warming of the climate.

Whatever the causes or combination of causes, the Earth’s warming and its consequences are undeniable. The year 2018 was the Earth’s fourth warmest on record. Indeed, the world suffered last year from severe heat waves that killed people, from extreme rain that created huge flooding, and from drought that destroyed crops.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration has been oblivious to the problem, and has even denied that the Earth’s warming could be a problem. Rather than acting, the Trump administration has made matters worse by reducing regulation to control pollution and by making it easier for companies to pollute.

A new poll, however, reveals that Americans are increasingly worried about global warming. It is the children of today and of tomorrow who will pay for the heedlessness and irresponsibility of the Trump administration.

18. Trump has started a trade war and a new arms race, which could have negative consequences for global prosperity and for world peace

There is presently an intense technological competition around the fifth-generation (5G) chipset, which is bound to influence the global smartphone industry, telecommunications and cellular networks in the future. Many governments, not the least the U.S. government, are worried that Chinese companies such as Huawei could dominate that next-generation technology.

The Trump administration fears that the Chinese advances in that field could make it possible for the Chinese government to spy on other countries. For example, it has imposed restrictions and sanctions on Huawei and barred that company and other Chinese companies from installing telecommunications equipment in the United States. The Chinese company has also been accused of “violating American extraterritorial sanctions against the country of Iran” and of “stealing trade secrets” from an American partner.

No country should be allowed to impose its domestic laws on other countries. When this is the case, we have to talk about imperialism. However, a country has always the right to protect its own companies against industrial espionage.

In the final analysis, nobody can understand the rationale behind the trade war that the Trump administration has initiated against China without understanding the technological conflict that is going on.

Similarly, the Trump administration has launched a new arms race against Russia and China, both in space and in Europe, which could degenerate into a military conflict. It has also placed nuclear missiles in countries bordering Russia, a provocation, thus openly threatening Russia’s security. If it were the reverse, the United States would surely object to having Russian nuclear missiles in a neighboring country. As a matter of fact, this was precisely the basis of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, under President John F. Kennedy. —If Nikita Khrushchev was wrong, in 1962, in provoking the United States, Donald Trump, in 2019, is wrong in provoking Russia.

19. Donald Trump gambled with the fate of humanity with his decision to unilaterally cancel the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

When Donald Trump announced, in October 2018 and when this was officially confirmed on Friday, February 1, 2019 that, without consultation with European allies, his administration is unilaterally withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), he opened a huge Pandora Box from which a lot of human misery could come out. That important treaty was first signed in December 1987 by Republican President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev. One of its objectives was to make sure that Europe would not become the theater of a disastrous nuclear war. But Trump does not care: “Après moi le déluge“.

That reckless decision has been called Trump’s Nuclear Folly as it indicates that allies don’t count for the Trump administration. It seems that Trump and his neocon advisors want a war with Russia. First, they place nuclear missiles in countries bordering Russia; then they get out of a nuclear treaty to prevent a nuclear war in Europe. Pitiful!

20. The biggest folly of all is to enter politics when one is inexperienced and incompetent

The list of Donald Trump’s very close associates and aides who have worked with him and who have declared him to be a “man-child”, a “moron” or an “idiot”, and to be unfit to be U.S. president, is very long. This is most unusual and most relevant.

The first person to call Donald Trump a “moron” was the former president of Exxon and Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Indeed, NBC News reported that Mr. Tillerson made the devastating comment after a meeting at the Pentagon, on July 20, 2017, with other members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials.

Then followed a string of similar disparaging assessments of Trump’s character and capabilities. Veteran journalist Bob Woodward, in his 2018 book “Fear: Trump in the White House”, has documented the chaos and disrepute that Donald Trump brought into the American White House: His own first chief of staff Reince Priebus called him an “idiot”. Trump’s second chief of staff, General John Kelly, has also called him “an idiot”, and he added that he was “unhinged”! —Mind you, these are experienced people who worked with Donald Trump on a daily basis. Now it is reported that Trump has chosen his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to be his de facto chief of staff, thus turning the White House into an exclusively family enterprise.

Also, Defense Secretary General James Mattis has declared that Donald Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader”. Such a severe assessment coming from a retired United States Marine Corps general, who served in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. Such an evaluation cannot be brushed aside.

Another noteworthy book, by Michael Wolff, entitled “Fire and Fury”, disclosed other negative assessments of Mr. Trump by his close associates. For example, it reveals that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has also called Trump an “idiot”; that former national security adviser, general H.R. McMaster, has referred to the president as a “dope”; and that Trump’s former economic adviser Gary Cohn has said that Donald Trump is “dumb as s_***”!

A former FBI counterintelligence officer who now lectures at Yale University, Ms Asha Rangappa has concluded, in a piece for Politico,that Mr. Trump cannot distinguish fact from fiction. For a head of state, this is a huge liability!

On his part, former FBI Director James Comey, a man who has seen a lot, went one step further and he has said that Mr. Trump has the character of a “Mob boss”.

— Does one not get the picture!

Conclusion

Let us remind ourselves of the fact that Donald Trump is the only post WWII American president who has never been able to rally 50 percent or more of the American people behind him. Not only was he elected in 2016 with some 3,000,000 fewer votes than his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, but his approval ratings have always been below 50 percent, ranging between 34 and 44 percent.

Trump’s basic unpopularity has been undeniable and persistent, to the point of making him an illegitimate president. And there are profound reasons for that, as outlined above.

That may also be why a 57 percent majority of Americans do not want Donald Trump to run for re-election in 2020, according to a 2019 January poll. —They seem to have had enough!

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay’s site: http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.com/

We are by nature electric; but the man-made ‘synthetic’ variety, that apes nature’s version, is not helping us to live a full and healthy life, but is rather stultifying that condition. In fact Edison, Tesla et al. were not really doing the world a favour when they invented and put to use ‘synthetic electricity’ on this planet. 

It is not that they didn’t mean well, no doubt they did, but the revolution that electric light first brought about, also took man a further step away from his origins as ‘a being of nature’.

In a medical hypothesis by Samuel Milham of Washington State Department of Health (2009) entitled “Historical evidence that electrification caused the 20^th century epidemic of diseases of civilisation” Milham reveals that once Thomas Edison began electrifying New York City in 1880, the onward march of electrification correlated with sharp rises in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, suicide and cancer.

Whereas on farms and countryside areas which lagged a long way behind urban areas in acquiring electrification, incidences of such disease were barely ever seen. It was not until the 1950’s that the majority of US farms got hooked-up onto electrical power.

Somehow this information which has been known about for decades, never got into the public domain. Milham states

“It seems unbelievable that mortality differences of this magnitude could go unexplained for over 70 years after they were first reported  – and 40 years after they were first noticed.”

So, long before WiFi, cell phones, Dect’s and tablets hit the scene, thousands were already dying from sicknesses brought-on by living tight-up against electromagnetic currents. To be more precise, power frequency magnetic fields typically of 60 Hz output. Later on, the introduction of fluorescent light bulbs, halogen lamps, wireless routers and dimmer switches added significantly to the ‘dirty electricity’ already prevalent. 

According to the author, in 1900 heart disease and cancer in the USA were 4^th and 8^th on the list of leading causes of death, and by 1940 heart disease had risen to 1^st and cancer to 2^nd place and have remained in that position ever since. The authors of a separate study of 1930 mortality statistics noted that the cancer rates for cities were 58.2% higher than those for rural areas; yet diets were very similar. 

I am communicating this evidence in order to focus our minds on the background to the explosion of microwaved EMF ‘dirty electricity’ (Electromagnetic Field) which first arrived on the scene around 30 years ago and which has grown exponentially ever since. To a point where some 2 billion people carry a mobile phone or similar device.

What all this appears to tell us is that ‘advanced’ technology and ‘un-advanced man’ present a very dangerous equation. Almost all forms of what are sometimes referred to as ‘sophisticated technologies’ have caused havoc in the hands of a population with an undeveloped appreciation of what such man made energetic devices actually do – to man, to nature and to the biosphere.

People – well beyond the age of childhood – still love toys. And for the boys, mechanical one’s in particular. A large number of adults, it seems, never develop the instinct that all animals have, to be wary of something they know nothing about. So instead of taking a precautionary approach, millions rush to buy the latest device which, they are informed, will make their lives so much more pleasurable, so much easier and so much more comfortable. For which – if one is using one’s wits –one can substitute “so much more complicated, so much more stressful and so much more dangerous”.

But when corporations are in charge of planetary life and ever larger profits are the be and end to all of existence, that other story is never available, except perhaps in the very small print. So much of mankind continues to walk into a trap, set by itself to imprison itself, while thinking it has found the new freedom. And this has never been more true than with the advent of the ‘smart phone’, ‘smart meter’, ‘smart watch’, ‘smart city’ –  ‘smart everything’.

Yes, everybody wants to be ‘smart’; after all, smart accessories are fun, fashionable and cool, right? But you must first sacrifice your intelligence in order to have ‘fun’ in this toxic playground. In this world, there’s little doubt that you have to be stupid to be smart.

The paradox is making itself felt everywhere. It took half a century and millions of deaths to get a ban on cigarettes. How long will it take to get the same end with EMF’s?

If Barrie Trower, a world leading expert on electro magnetic microwave frequencies, is to be heeded – and there is very good reason to believe he should be – within less than a decade, a world wide ban of WiFi and all transmissions of EMF’s must be in place. If not, Barrie Trower warns that within 3 generations only 1in 8 children will be born healthy; and within 5 generations animals and insects will be wiped out. *

Today, just 27 minutes of a day of cell phone exposure leads to a 40% chance of developing cancer. Children pick-up 60% more radiation than adults, and because the blood-brain barrier only hardens after 20 years, the brain of children is highly susceptible. 

The effect of 2 minutes on a cell phone lasts for 2 hours. The neurological disturbances involved mean it can take 6 weeks for brain patterns to return to normal for people using cell phones regularly. There are 64 peer reviewed papers linking cell phone use to cancer, and Russian research has revealed high rates of miscarriages and stillborns resulting from mothers who use cell phones during pregnancy. 

WiFi is a weapon of war. It should never have been invented, let alone used, even for military purposes. It is now almost impossible to go anywhere where it is not active. The frequencies to be used in the present 5G roll-out involve a further drastic raising of the transmission levels already described above. 5G uses a frequency almost identical to that used by the US military police for intensive crowd control. 

Arthur Firstenberg, author and administrator of the International Appeal ‘Stop 5G on Earth and in Space’ states 

“Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming. The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution – forms a literature of well over 10,000 peer reviewed studies.” 

He continues

“If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens of hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without ant possibility of escape anywhere on the planet.”

A number of professors from Jageillonian University Medical College in Krakow, Poland and the Janus Maxwell Institute for Electromagnetics Research, Krakow, co-writing a paper under the title ‘Electromagnetic Field Induced Biological Effects in Humans’ state:

“The intensity of electromagnetic radiation in the human environment is increasing and currently reaches astronomical levels that have never before been experienced on our planet. In today’s maximum exposure, standard EMF’s are 10 ‘to the power of 15’ and 10 ‘to the power of 18’ times higher than the natural Earth electromagnetic field.. The current phase of environmental degradation by artificial microwave frequency electromagnetic fields have become dangerous for biological life. The most influential process of EMF impact on living organisms, is its direct tissue penetration.”

As our planet – and indeed all planetary life, including humans – reel under the attack of institutionalised toxic pollutants that are considered ‘essential’ for ‘economic growth and expansion’ we have cause to reflect on the nature of our disposition for self destruction.

It is a salutary exercise which I believe everybody, who still has the capacity to function humanly, needs to meditate on from time to time. Then one can assess how many features of this disease each of us contributes to in our daily lives. Then, providing one is capable of taking rational actions, one can start the process of detoxifying and regaining a level of internal balance through establishing and maintaining a direct connection with natural background resonance; The Schuman Resonance of 8.73 Hertz.

For it is here that we find balance, peace of mind and natural wisdom. It is the electricity of truth. Whereas the synthetic electricity which we have lived amongst for the past century, turns out to be a poor copy of this truth; a force essentially alien to our natural biology. 

What one does with this information is up to each individual. But, if by the grace of God and sheer human guts, we manage to save this planet and ourselves, from the suicidal addictions that obsess us, then let us build a new society without the interference of that which fails to resonate with our deepest nature. For, not doing so, simply fast forwards oncoming death. Whereas to nurture our true rhythmic relationship with the pulses and resonances of nature and of love, has the potential to make actual – the gift of eternal life.  

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Julian Rose is an international activist, writer, organic farming pioneer and actor.  In 1987 and 1998, he led a campaign that saved unpasteurised milk from being banned in the UK; and, with Jadwiga Lopata, a ‘Say No to GMO’ campaign in Poland which led to a national ban of GM seeds and plants in that country in 2006. Julian is currently campaigning to ‘Stop 5G’ WiFi. He is the author of two acclaimed titles: Changing Course for Life and In Defence of Life and is a long time exponent of yoga/meditation. See Julian’s web site for more information and to purchase his books www.julianrose.info He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

During the election campaign of 2008 before he was elected president, Barack Obama made an artificial distinction between the supposedly “just war” in Afghanistan and the unjust war in Iraq. In accordance with the flawed distinction, he pledged that he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, but at the same time, he indicated that he would increase the number of US forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The unilateral intervention in Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration was highly unpopular among the American electorate. Therefore, Obama’s election pledge of complete withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq struck a chord with the voters and they gave an overwhelming mandate to the ostensibly “pacifist” contender during his first term as the president.

In keeping with the election pledge, President Obama did manage to successfully withdraw American troops from Iraq in December 2011 during the first term as the president, but only to commit thousands of American troops and the US Air Force to Iraq just a couple of years later during the second term as the president when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in early 2014.

The borders between Iraq and Syria are poorly guarded and highly porous. The Obama Administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian government for the first three years of Syria’s proxy war from 2011 to 2014 was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Regardless, when President Obama decided to withdraw American troops from the unjust war in Iraq, at the same time, he pledged that he would commit additional American troops and resources into the purportedly “just war” in Afghanistan.

Consequently, the number of US troops in Afghanistan spiked from 30,000 during the tenure of the neocon Bush Administration to more than 140,000 during the term of the supposedly “pacifist” Obama Administration.

No one can dispute the assertion that the notions of “just wars” and “good militants” do exist in the geopolitical lexicon; empirically speaking, however, after witnessing the instability, violence and utter chaos and anarchy in the war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the onus lies on any interventionist hawk to prove beyond doubt that the wars and militants that he justifies and upholds are indeed just and good.

More surprisingly, however, if Afghanistan was perceived as an occupied country by the gullible audience of the mainstream media during the years of Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1988, then how did it become an independent state after the American occupation of Afghanistan since 2001-onward?

Furthermore, if the Afghan so-called “mujahideen” (freedom fighters) nurtured by the Reagan administration with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and Saudi money constituted a legitimate resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, then by what principle of consistent logic, the resistance against the American occupation of Afghanistan can be reviled as “terrorism”?

In international politics, the devil always lies in the definitions of the terms that are employed by the spin-doctors of the foreign policy think tanks and the political commentators of the corporate media. And the definition of the term “terrorism” has been deliberately left ambiguous by the Western powers to use it as a catch-all pretext to justify their military presence and interventionist policy in the energy-rich countries of the Middle East.

After invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and when the American “nation-building” projects failed in those hapless countries, the US policymakers immediately realized that they were facing large-scale and popularly rooted insurgencies against foreign occupation; consequently, the occupying military altered its CT (counter-terrorism) approach in favor of a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy.

A COIN strategy is essentially different from a CT approach and it also involves dialogue, negotiations and political settlements, alongside the coercive tactics of law enforcement and military and paramilitary operations on a limited scale.

The root factors that are primarily responsible for spawning militancy and insurgency anywhere in the world are not religion but socio-economics, ethnic differences, marginalization of disenfranchised ethno-linguistic and ethno-religious groups and the ensuing conflicts; socio-cultural backwardness of the affected regions, and the weak central control of the impoverished developing states over their remote rural and tribal areas make them further susceptible to armed insurrections.

Additionally, if we take a cursory look at some of the worst insurgency-wracked regions in Asia and Africa, deliberate funding, training and arming of certain militant groups by regional and global powers for their strategic interests has played the key role.

Back in the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan War, the Afghan jihadists did not spring up spontaneously out of nowhere. The Western powers with the help of Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies trained and armed the erstwhile “freedom fighters” against their archrival the former Soviet Union. Those very same Afghan jihadists later mutated into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Similarly, during the proxy wars in Libya and Syria, the Western powers with the help of their regional client states once again trained and armed Islamic jihadists and tribal militiamen against the governments of Colonel Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.

And isn’t it ironic that those very same “moderate rebels” later mutated into Ansar al-Sharia and Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya; and the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and scores of other jihadist groups in Syria?

Notwithstanding, on November 9, Russia hosted talks between Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, the members of the Taliban from its Doha, Qatar office and representatives from eleven regional states, including China, India, Iran and Pakistan. The meeting showcased Russia’s re-emergence as an assertive global power and its regional clout.

At the same time when the conference was hosted in Moscow, however, the Taliban mounted concerted attacks in the northern Baghlan province, the Jaghori district in central Ghazni province and the western Farah province bordering Iran.

In fact, according to a recent report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US-backed Kabul government only controls 55% of Afghanistan’s territory. It’s worth noting, however, that SIGAR is a US-based governmental agency that often inflates figures.

Factually, the government’s writ does not extend beyond a third of Afghanistan. In many cases, the Afghan government controls district-centers of provinces and outlying rural areas are either controlled by the Taliban or are contested.

If we take a cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the Bush administration.

The number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during George Bush’s tenure as president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan, Washington invaded Iraq in March 2003 and American resources and focus shifted to Iraq.

It was the Obama administration that made the Afghanistan conflict the bedrock of its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s electoral pledge of withdrawing American forces from Iraq in December 2011. At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in 2010, the American troops numbered around 140,000 but they still could not manage to have a lasting effect on the relentless Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban are known to be diehard fighters who are adept at hit-and-run guerrilla tactics and have a much better understanding of the Afghan territory compared to foreigners. Even by their standards, however, the Taliban insurgency seems to be on steroids during the last couple of years.

The Taliban have managed to overrun and hold vast swathes of territory not only in the traditional Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan, such as in Helmand, but have also made significant inroads into the northern provinces of Afghanistan which are the traditional strongholds of the Northern Alliance comprising the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups.

The main factor behind the surge in Taliban attacks during the last couple of years appears to be the drawdown of American troops which now number only 14,000, and are likely to be significantly scaled back after Donald Trump’s announcement of withdrawal of American forces from Syria and the reports of Trump’s decision – which hasn’t been officially announced yet – that the Trump administration has decided in principle to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan by at least several thousand.

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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 21st Century Wire

Late on February 2^nd, a US-led coalition warplane attacked an artillery position of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the area of al-Sukkariya west of the town of al-Bukamal in the province of Deir Ezzor. According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, one artillery piece was destroyed and 2 SAA soldiers were injured.

In December, the Syrian military accused the US-led coalition of launching ground-to-ground rockets at positions of the SAA’s 21st Brigade around the area of al-Tanaf. However, the coalition claimed that the attack targeted an ISIS commander.

It’s interesting to note that the February 2 strike came a day after the SAA ambushed a group of ISIS members and destroyed their vehicle. Government forces seized weapons, IEDs and medical equipment belonging to the ISIS members.

Some sources say that the terrorists had attempted to deliver medical supplies to their counter-parts operating within the US-occupied area of al-Tanf. ISIS successfully exploits the US-led coalition hostile behavior towards the Damascus government and hide from SAA operations in the US-proclaimed “security zone” near al-Tanf.

 

More than 800 foreign terrorists from over 40 countries are detained by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Department of Defense spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson told CNN on February 2. According to reports, U.S. officials believe that the number of detained foreign terrorists is likely to grow as many of those fighters remaining in the ISIS-held pocket in the middle Euphrates River Valley will fail to escape.

Despite this, at least one group of ISIS members was able to reach the border during a recent counter-attack in the Euphrates pocket and to flee to western Iraq.

Meanwhile, reports circulate that the US Special Operations Forces have deployed a special unit in eastern Syria to search and capture wanted ISIS members, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In the Idlib de-escalation zone, clashes and artillery duels continue to erupt in northern Hama, southern Idlib and western Aleppo. The situation is expected to become even worse as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has once again found understanding with another al-Qaeda-like terrorist group operating in the area, Houras al-Din.

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Rome has effectively derailed an EU statement meant to recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim leader if President Nicolas Maduro fails to set up snap elections, a Five Star Movement source confirmed to RT.

The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia.

In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the elite.”

This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government, and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world, leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing demonstrations.

In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over the last few months.

In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution. The Western mainstream media beams images and videos of massive pro-government Bolivarian rallies and falsely portrays them as anti-Maduro protests. We are dealing here with acts of journalistic terrorism, and the journalists who push this narrative, instigating clashes, should be prosecuted by a criminal court of the Bolivarian people in Caracas. Instead, the West continues to tell us that Assange is a criminal for doing his job, that Wikileaks is a terrorist organization for publishing true information, and that Russia interfered in the US elections. All of these deceptions are carried out by the same Western journalists, media publications and US government that are currently plying their mendacious trade in Venezuela. What double standards!

In Venezuela, the people are with Maduro, and before him they were with Chavez. The reason is simple and easy to understand, having everything to do with the economic policies adopted by the government of Caracas, which during just over a decade in power, reduced the level of poverty, illiteracy and corruption in the country, lengthening life expectancy and increasing access to education. The leftist model followed by dozens of South American countries during the 2000s favored the poorest layer of society by redistributing the wealth of the top 1%.

The contrast between events in France and Venezuela perfectly encapsulate the state of the world today. In France, the people are fighting against Macron, austerity policies and globalist superstructure. In Venezuela, the the opposition (synonymous with the rich population) is leveraging external interference from the governments of Colombia, Brazil and the United States to try and overthrow a government that enjoys the full support of the people thanks to its domestic policies. Even as many in France are not conscious of it, they are actually protesting against an unjust, ultra-capitalist system imposed by the globalist elite of which Macron is a major cheerleader. In Venezuela, the ultra-capitalist class, backed by the transnational globalists, seek to overthrow a socialist system that places the interests of the 99% before those of the 1%.

Maduro has an approval rating of around 65%, higher than any European or American leader. In France, Macron’s approval ratings hover around the single digits, with only Ukraine’s Poroshenko scoring lower. Poroshenko, quite naturally, dutifully joined the chorus of those egging on a coup against the Bolivarian government of Maduro, even as he leads a country besieged by out-of-control neo-Nazis.

The protests in France are driven by two decades of impoverishment as a result of European diktats that prescribe austerity and the need to strip the middle class of its wealth to favor the influx of cheap labor. This strategy of reducing labor costs has already been employed in other countries, the aim being to increase profits for multinational companies without the need to relocate production to low-wage countries. The large-scale importation of exploited people from Africa has continued unabated for years, and now the average French citizen not only finds himself in an increasingly multi-ethnic society (with the government giving little incentive for newcomers to integrate) but also sees his lifestyle suffering due to a combination of lower wages and increasing taxes, making it increasingly difficult for him to make ends meet every month.

In Venezuela, the crisis stems entirely from external interference coming from the United States, which has economically strangled Venezuela for over a decade. The methodology is that of sanctions and economic destabilization, the same as has been applied against Cuba over more than 50 years, albeit in that case unsuccessfully. Chavez and Maduro have drawn the ire of the global elites by blocking their international oil corporations from access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. It must be noted that Venezuela is one of the most important members of OPEC, with Riyadh and Moscow advancing the creation of an oil conglomerate known as OPEC +, with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as influential members. The West is of course deploying the “democracy promotion” canard to justify its shenanigans in Venezuela, one of its go-to tactics drawn from its well-used PSYOP toolkit.

The French and Venezuelan situations also serve as a barometer for the general state of international relations in a multipolar context. While the US has little trouble interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs, Russia, China and India employ a completely different approach, maintaining a uniform foreign-policy line on Paris and Caracas. They express total support for their Bolivarian ally, which is an important source of trade for New Delhi, a strategic military-oil partner for Moscow, and a major seller of crude oil for Beijing. Each of the three Eurasian powers has every interest in actively opposing Washington’s attempts to subvert the Maduro government, given that Venezuela performs important regional-stability functions, as well as, above all, offering these Eurasian powers an opportunity to respond asymmetrically to Washington’s destabilization efforts in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. There has been talk of creating particular synergies between Venezuela and other countries similarly struggling to free themselves from under Washington’s boot. China and Russia’s sending of naval ships and military aircraft to the Americas, violating the Monroe doctrine, represents a riposte to the continued pressure placed on the borders of Russia and China by the US and NATO as part of their containment strategy.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF

As internationalists, we don’t shy away from defending a people’s right to determine their fate. That is why we have been so ardent in opposing the illegal U.S. intervention in Venezuela. Read and share our statement on Venezuela. (If you already have done so, please share it again!)

We are proud to say BAP members have been on the forefront of U.S.-based voices against U.S interventions. BAP member and Black Agenda Report publisher Glen Ford writes this week,

“The same forces that resist Black community control of police and schools in the United States seek to overthrow any government in the formerly colonized world—that is, non-white nations—that claims the right of self-determination and national sovereignty.”

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley condemns warmongering Democrats in her latest piece, writing,

“Venezuela is the proverbial line in the sand. One either supports the right of self-determination or not. The obvious fascists like Trump and Bolton and their smarter, smoother collaborators like Trudeau are cut from the same cloth. They must all be opposed.”

As you can see below, BAP member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture spoke January 26 on behalf of BAP at a Philadelphia rally in opposition to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela.

BAP member Margaret Kimberley also spoke about BAP’s position on Venezuela and the U.S. occupation of Africa on the Wider View Radio podcast and Sputnik Radio’s “Fault Lines with Nixon & Stranahan”. BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman appeared on RT America’s “Watching the Hawks” to discuss the link between the United States interfering in Venezuela and in Africa.

In the coming weeks, we ask you to join anti-war groups that are organizing demonstrations to oppose NATO and the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. Check out the United National Antiwar Coalition’s rally on March 30. Sign the Alliance for Global Justice’s petition to oppose the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. Attend the “No to NATO, Yes to Peace Fest” on April 3.

Then join us April 4 for our event that celebrates both our second anniversary and condemns the 70th anniversary of NATO, which falls on the 51st anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. BAP member Glen Ford will keynote the event. He will be joined by organizers and activists including Jaribu Hill, Jacqueline Luqman, Netfa Freeman, Thenjiwe McHarris, Margaret Kimberley and Vanessa Beck. We’ll provide more information on the event in the coming weeks.

Curiously, a story that should be big news is not getting the attention it deserves. The United States is involved in talks that could end the 18-year-old quagmire of Afghanistan. Soon, we will have more to say on this matter.

Another important item to follow is the Trump administration’s decision to suspend its participation in the 32-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which escalates the possibility for a global nuclear war. In response to this dangerous move, Russia suspended its participation as well.

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Featured image is from Black Agenda Report

1996 C-SPAN interview with Gary Webb

Gary Webb died mysteriously in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner’s office.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry credits Gary Webb for being responsible for the following government investigations into the Reagan-Bush administration’s conduct of the Contra war: On December 10, 1996, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block announced the conclusion of his investigation into the issue, publishing a summary of the investigation at a press conference. He announced at the press conference that “We have found no evidence that the government was involved in drug trafficking in South-Central.” Nevertheless, the report included information that supported some of the charges. Charles Rappleye reported in the L.A. Weekly that Block’s “unequivocal statement is not backed up by the report itself, which raises many questions.”[20] Much of the LAPD investigation centered on allegations made in a postscript article to the newspaper’s “Dark Alliance” series.

On January 29, 1998, Hitz published Volume One of his internal investigation. This was the first of two CIA reports that eventually substantiated many of Webb’s claims about cocaine smugglers, the Nicaraguan contra movement, and their ability to freely operate without the threat of law enforcement.[21]

On March 16, 1998, Hitz admitted that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals the CIA knew were involved in the drug business. Hitz told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that “there are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations.”[22] Senator John Kerry reached similar conclusions a decade earlier in 1987. (See:[5])

On May 7, 1998, Rep. Maxine Waters, revealed a memorandum of understanding – item 24 between the CIA and the Justice Department from 1982, which was entered into the Congressional Record. This letter had freed the CIA from legally reporting drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan rebels.[4]

On July 23, 1998, the Justice Department released a report by its Inspector General, Michael R. Bromwich. The Bromwich report claimed that the Reagan-Bush administration was aware of cocaine traffickers in the Contra movement and did nothing to stop the criminal activity. The report also alleged a pattern of discarded leads and witnesses, sabotaged investigations, instances of the CIA working with drug traffickers, and the discouragement of DEA investigations into Contra-cocaine shipments. The CIA’s refusal to share information about Contra drug trafficking with law-enforcement agencies was also documented. The Bromwich report corroborated Webb’s investigation into Norwin Meneses, a Nicaraguan drug smuggler.[23]

On October 8, 1998, CIA I.G. Hitz published Volume Two of his internal investigation. The report described how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected more than 50 Contras and other drug traffickers, and by so doing thwarted federal investigations into drug crimes. Hitz published evidence that drug trafficking and money laundering had made its way into Reagan’s National Security Council where Oliver North oversaw the operations of the Contras.[5] According to the report, the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement. To that end, the internal investigation revealed that the CIA routinely withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, Congress and even the analytical division of the CIA itself. Further, the report confirmed Webb’s claims regarding the origins and the relationship of Contra fundraising and drug trafficking. The report also included information about CIA ties to other drug traffickers not discussed in the Webb series, including Moises Nunez and Ivan Gomez. More importantly, the internal CIA report documented a cover-up of evidence which had led to false intelligence assessments.

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A lot has happened and we have learned more since last week when we wrote, Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup. This article updates activists so we remain well-informed and can educate others in the face of a bi-partisan and corporate media narrative supporting the coup.

This weekend, there were competing protests in Venezuela. At a protest celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Bolivarian Process, the day Hugo Chavez was sworn into office, tens of thousands watched as President Maduro called for National Assembly elections. The current Assembly has been in contempt of court since July 2016 and their decisions were nullified because they have refused to remove illegally-elected members. The defunct legislature’s president, Juan Guaido, appointed himself president of the country in violation of Venezuelan law and is under investigation.

Some scenes at Guaido’s rallies were surreal. At the Caracas rally where Guaido spoke, the stage featured massive US and Israeli flags and in the crowd, there were pro-Trump puppets, one with Trump as the Statute of Liberty with a Christian cross around his neck. At another rally, opposition protesters removed the Venezuelan flag replacing it with the US flag.

Numerous US and pro-Trump symbols at Venezuela's opposition march today. pic.twitter.com/ezrC672VlJ

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) February 2, 2019

Opposition protesters today in Punto Fijo lower the Venezuelan flag to raise the US flag. pic.twitter.com/nXOg1YBS3L

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) February 2, 2019

Images from the pro-Guaido rally in Caracas. From Twitter, Telesur.

Details of long term plan for Venezuela’s oil and domination of Latin America

First, it is important to understand why the US is supporting this poorly thought out and poorly planned coup. The Trump coup is a new phase of the long-term goals of US foreign policy when it comes to Venezuela and Latin America.

Vijay Prashad describes the long-term reality of US coups and domination of Latin America in The U.S. 12-Step Method to Conduct Regime Change, writing what is happening in Venezuela is “nothing unique in American history.” Prashad describes the coup in Chile, which Nixon and Kissinger began in 1970 and completed in 1973. In Venezuela, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and CIA have been involved in regime change operations and building opposition to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro from the beginning of this century. The US spends tens of millions of dollars annually to support opposition oligarchs and big business interests.

The Grayzone Project documents the more than ten-year effort by US regime change operatives that created a series of young opposition leaders including fake president Juan Guaido. Guaido was a little known right-wing politician who came in second in a legislative election in the second smallest state in Venezuela. He was thrust on the national scene by the coup. In our last article, we described how Canadian and US officials encouraged him to become a self-appointed president.

In our next Clearing the FOG, we interview Dan Cohen of the Grayzone Project. You’ll find it here.

The Wall Street Journal, in “U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America,” reveals the motive is to place Latin America back under US control. Commenting on this article, Yves Smith expresses how the US seems to have not learned from the failed wars in the Middle East, which cost the US trillions and created chaos and suffering while weakening the US’ global standing.

Eric Draitser at Counterpunch focuses on how this coup is about defeating what is perceived as socialism in Venezuela. The defeat of Chavismo is critical to the US controlling the region. Venezuela cannot be allowed to refuse US domination. John Bolton made the coup very personal this week, threatening Maduro to accept Guaido’s offer of amnesty or find himself in the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Mexico and Uruguay announced an international conference set to take place in Montevideo on February 7,  but the US is rejecting dialogue. The US and coup plotters do not want dialogue, they want regime change and nothing less.

Dimitri Orlov points to the end of the fracking boom in the US as a reason why there is haste in trying to dominate Venezuela.  He writes “the fracking bonanza is ending. Most of the sweet spots have already been tapped; newer wells are depleting faster and producing less while costing more.” Fracking is already losing billions and soon will be losing trillions of dollars. As a result, a “rather large oil shortage is coming, and it will rather specifically affect the US, which burns 20% of the world’s oil.” While a sensible country would use this as a reason for a rapid transition to a clean energy economy, the US seeks to prop up its oil companies by stealing Venezuela’s oil.

The US signaled how abusive it could become by appointing war criminal Elliot Abrams to the coup team. The Intercept details Abrams’ long-term work of violently crushing democracy. His record: In the 1980s, 75,000 Salvadorans died mostly from government death squads; in Guatemala, he supported a government that committed widespread human rights violations in a war that killed 200,000 people; in the Contra War in Nicaragua, Abrams pled guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra Deal that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. After he was pardoned by George H.W. Bush, Abrams returned to the White House of George W. Bush where among other things he gave the green light to the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.

The Economic War as An Excuse for Humanitarian Intervention

The Grayzone Project reports on documents that expose US plans for economic war in Venezuela. Ben Norton writes, the “documents acknowledge that Washington has been using what it clearly describes as ‘financial weapons’ to wage ‘economic warfare’ on the oil-rich South American nation.” Sanctions began under Bush in 2004, escalated under Obama when he declared Venezuela a national security threat in 2015 and escalated under Trump. Sanctions imposed by Trump have bled Venezuela of billions of dollars.

WikiLeaks published an excerpt from what it titled the “US coup manual,” which describes how the US uses “financial weapons” to wage “economic warfare.” These documents describe how sanctions and other punitive economic policies are not a mere prelude to war; they are a form of war. As Norton writes, the US is not considering war, but has “already been waging a war, for years.”

Even under this tremendous economic war, which worsened with a drop in oil prices, the Maduro government has focused on uplifting people. Telesur describes gains made under Maduro’s administration:

• Venezuela expanded its free health care coverage to more than 60 percent of the population.
• Earlier this year, the United Nations Program for Development placed Venezuela among the countries with the highest Human Development Index, surpassing most Latin American countries.
• Venezuela has built 3 million homes for the poor and working class, 1.6 million under Maduro, to house up to ten million people in a population of 30 million.
• Maduro’s administration has provided more than 4,800,000 computers, over 100 million technology textbooks to students across the country, and more than 20,000 schools have received new computer equipment.
• Venezuela ranks sixth in the world in terms of enrollment in primary education and has increased its coverage of secondary education to 73 percent of the population.
• There have also been gains in civil rights of historically oppressed sectors of Venezuelan society, like women, Afro-Indigenous people and the LGBTQ community.

These gains do not make Venezuela a socialist economy, indeed Norway is more socialist than Venezuela. Venezuela remains a capitalist country with 70% of the economy in private businesses. Some on the left criticize Maduro for not moving the country more rapidly to institute a socialist economy. Why is Venezuela attacked and not Norway? Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report argues another reason they are targeted is racism. Another is that Venezuela has rejected US domination.

The combination of tremendous drops in oil prices, the US economic war and oligarch’s undermining the economy has resulted in the economy shrinking by 50% in five years – worse than the US depression.

This week, John Bolton offered to send humanitarian assistance at the request of Guaido. When Venezuela has tried to buy essential goods and pharmaceuticals, they have been blocked and offered humanitarian aid instead. This presents a problem because if Venezuela accepts humanitarian aid, then it would provide an excuse for the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene. And it would allow US institutions such as USAID into the country to bring the aid.

The irony of the US offering aid while conducting an economic war is evident. The UN rapporteur said that sanctions are killing people in Venezuela. Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies writes that the US is seeking to take control of Venezuela even if their actions are illegal and kill thousands of people.

Venezuela wouldn’t need aid if it were not for the sanctions and blockade. Venezuela, which has the second largest gold reserves, is currently raising hundreds of billions of dollars by selling 29 tons of gold reserves to UAE as well as selling gold to Russia.

The Flawed Coup is Failing Because of Mistaken Assumptions

An eye witness account from Venezuela describes how the coup is lacking popularity. A protest called earlier in the week had a very small turnout. Jessica Dos Santos, who writes about daily life in Venezuela, describes people trying to live normal lives and while people have criticisms of Maduro, they are more opposed to US intervention. She writes

“when it comes to fighting against foreign intervention, then there isn’t much to think about: Our home country is and must be first. And this is because of our love for it, but also because we have historical awareness. There isn’t one single nation that has come out better after a US or NATO intervention. In addition to that, intervention presupposes that we don’t have the capacity to solve our own problems.”

Moon of Alabama described big flaws in the poorly thought out Trump coup. This includes false perceptions on the ground in Venezuela where they underestimated support for Maduro and opposition to US imperialism among people and the military. He describes the lack of support for the coup in the Venezuelan constitution, with their misinterpretation of Article 233, which requires the president to be unable to serve in order for the president of the National Assembly to replace him. Further, he describes how Guaido has no support base and how the coup was rushed without input from the Pentagon, Southcom, or Department of Justice, who were likely to oppose such a measure.

Guaido is now being investigated in Venezuela. His assets have been frozen and he is not allowed to leave the country. In most countries, he would already have been imprisoned. The vast majority of the military has stood by Maduro.  CNN interviewed fake “veterans” not even in Venezuela asking for US military aid. And there have been false reports that the military was recruiting minors (youth) to rise up against Maduro.

Support the Venezuelan People: End the Sanctions and Prevent War

Maduro sent a video message to the people of the United States describing the false media coverage and urging people of the United States to stop their government from intervening in Venezuela. He said “If the U.S. intends to invade us, they will have a Vietnam worse than they can imagine. Let’s not allow violence,” urging viewers to “not permit a new Vietnam in Venezuela.”

People in the United States have a lot of work to do to convince the government not to intervene in Venezuela, i.e. end economic sanctions, stop military threats. Max Blumenthal interviewed members of Congress and asked them about whether the US was meddling in Venezuela. Most denied it or were misinformed and those that understood what was going on refused to speak out. Some have spoken out against the coup, notably, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Bernie Sanders, and the Progressive Caucus, although even some of them perpetuate falsehoods about the situation.

Being in solidarity with the people of Venezuela means opposing war and intervention. A recent poll found 86% of Venezuelans oppose war and 81% oppose the economic sanctions.

The threat of war against Venezuela is real. The US already has military bases in Colombia. There was more evidence this week. John Bolton displayed a notepad that said “5,000 troops to Colombia” and US military transport planes are flying over and landing in Colombia.

Activists must demand the United States follow the rule of law. The coup and sanctions violate international law as this letter from NGOs to the United Nations explains. Idriss Jazairy, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures, explains how the US economic sanctions violate international law.  He wrote, “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.” The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recognized Maduro as president and rejected Guaido’s claim to the presidency.

The OAS, which is dominated by the United States, refused to recognize Guaido and rejected intervening in Venezuela. Even the Lima Group, made up of right-wing governments in Latin America that oppose Venezuela, has rejected military intervention.

This article and Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup, provide people with the information they need to combat the false media narrative about Venezuela. The Alliance for Global Justice has prepared an activist tool kit on Venezuela.

Protests have already been held in the US and around the world have already been held and more are being organized. On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 3PM, at the United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations located on the corner of 45th Street and First Avenue, NYC. On February 23, the one month anniversary of the soup, there will be a national day of actions protesting the coup.

This week Popular Resistance joined a call for a national march on Saturday, March 16, in Washington, D.C. against the Trump administration’s effort to engineer a coup in Venezuela and start a new devastating war there. If we unite and mobilize, we can stop this war and end US sanctions in Venezuela.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

It takes an enormous effort for any country to oppose Israel, but particularly a small country that has to rely on bigger powers. It is even harder to impose effective pragmatic measures against Israel, as in the case of Ireland and Malaysia.

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In a move consistent with the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, BDS, against Israel, the Malaysian government has refused entry visas to athletes representing Israel in the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships that were slated to be held in Sarawak, Malaysia this July. As might be expected, the Malaysian government has come under severe attack as a result of this move and has, in fact, been stripped of the of the right to host the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships altogether. The move to punish Malaysia was made by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

Holding Firm

In an interview with the BBC, Syed Saddiq, Malaysia’s Minister of Youth and Sports, stated:

If hosting an international sporting event is more important than safeguarding the interests of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, than we have lost our moral compass.”

Malaysia’s prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, said, “Israel is a criminal state and deserves to be condemned,” according to a piece in the Malay Mail. Dr. Mahathir also called for “those who sympathize with the Palestinian cause to voice their condemnation.”

In the summer of 2013, I had the opportunity to visit Malaysia on a speaking tour. The tour coincided with a visit by guests from Gaza, who included Yousef Aljamal and Dr. Mahmoud Alhirthani. Dr. Alhirthani subsequently translated my memoir, The General’s Son to Arabic. During this visit, we all had the opportunity to meet and speak to Dr. Mahathir, who at that time was not in office, and with the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. It was clear that the stance taken by Malaysia was one of the most favorable in the world towards the issue of Palestinian rights.

The Irish Parliament

Ireland too has shown that it is serious about supporting the rights of the Palestinian people. According to a report in the Middle East Monitor, the Irish lower house of parliament passed what is officially known as the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, which penalizes anyone importing or selling goods or services originating in the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem or West Bank settlements. In response, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, canceled a planned visit by Israeli parliamentarians to Ireland. Furthermore, according to the Irish Examiner, the passing of the bill resulted in Israel threatening Ireland with retaliatory measures.

It takes an enormous effort for any country to oppose Israel, but particularly a small country that has to rely on bigger powers. It is even harder to impose effective pragmatic measures against Israel, as in the case of Ireland and Malaysia. Israel invests in diplomacy and in actual on-the-ground work by supporting governments around the world, supplying expertise and equipment — be it military, agricultural, intelligence or anything else — that a particular government might want. A country that manages to bypass all of that and still break through with meaningful sanctions against Israel has managed to do the impossible.

Preparing for retaliation

The next step is retaliation. In the fall of 2015, the Icelandic capital Reykjavik voted to boycott Israeli products. By the time I visited the country several months later, the city council had voted to withdraw that decision. When I asked why, it was explained to me that they were intimidated by the reaction of Israel and Jewish-Zionist organizations in the United States that were promising to retaliate. Israel was not going to allow a European capital to declare a boycott without fighting back, and a severe reaction and retaliation were to be expected.

Here again was an attempt by a small country to do what the U.S., the U.K., and even Russia, did not dare — to stand up to Israel and act to stop to the crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

Spineless politicians

As this drama unfolded in Kuala Lumpur and Dublin, in Washington the United States Senate was prepared to vote on a bill that would do the exact opposite of what these smaller countries dared to do. S-1, the first bill proposed in 2019, includes a clause which would penalize companies who boycott Israel. It was a challenge to get this bill on the calendar for a vote thanks to the U.S. government shutdown, but once that hurdle was cleared S-1 passed with 74 senators voting in favor. A large majority of spineless politicians who care little for the rights or the lives of Palestinians and have lost what moral compass they may have had in the past.

If people of conscience want to see justice, freedom and peace in Palestine, then they must urge, and indeed pressure, their elected representatives and their governments to follow the Malaysian and Irish examples and place real sanctions on Israel. Israel has learned a great deal from the history of other oppressive regimes, not the least of which was the apartheid regime in South Africa. One of those lessons is to pre-empt any attempts to boycott or impose sanctions on it.

The Senate bill, and hundreds of local bills that had been passed throughout the United States, are also part of the pre-empting campaign. Israel is relying on spineless politicians who will succumb to Zionist pressure and ignore the plight of the Palestinian people.

There is a call to boycott the 2019 Eurovision song contest, which is slated to be held in Tel Aviv, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry is already hard at work trying to convince Europeans to ignore this call.

One can expect that the pressure and retaliation against Malaysia and Ireland will continue, not only from Israel but the also from the U.S. and the U.K., and this may impact these countries for the foreseeable future. However, if Palestinians are to one day see the justice they deserve, other countries must follow in these countries’ courageous footsteps, and the pressure on Israel must grow.

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Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

President Donald Trump and the neocon sofa samurais who surround him seem determined to pick a fight with China or Russia, or both at the same time.

Later this month, the US and China are due to try to end their long-running trade war which has damaged the economies of both nations. At the heart of the trade dispute are soya beans and pork, the two principal American exports to China, as well as China’s efforts to grab US technology.

I find it amazing that, in 2019 high-tech America, the most important exports to China, aside from aircraft, are the humble soya bean and pigs. Of course, they come from farm country, the heartland of Trump’s political support.

Not a thought has been given to the hellish mistreatment of the pigs themselves, intelligent animals who are turned into inanimate objects known as ‘pork’, or the foul conditions their industrial breeding creates.

China will likely be the first to blink in this test of national wills. It imports less from the US than it exports and is thus vulnerable to trade pressure.
But history amply shows that it’s a bad idea to push China into a corner and make it lose face.

Suave diplomacy is the way to deal with the proud, prickly Chinese. They have refused to play by world trade rules, it is true, and need some serious arm-twisting. But not at a time when the Pentagon is ostentatiously planning a war against China in the western Pacific. The fuse has already been lit.

Meanwhile, the far right neocons, led by the unbalanced John Bolton, have convinced Trump to break the 1987 US-Soviet short and intermediate missile treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. This landmark agreement led to the removal of all US and Soviet land-based missiles from Europe. The pact was regarded as the first major step in reducing nuclear weapons.

The 1987 treaty was a godsend for Europe, which would have been ground zero in any nuclear exchange. It was also a huge relief for Moscow which rightly feared that the highly accurate US Pershing missiles based in Europe could deliver a devastating surprise strike, known as decapitation, on Soviet government leadership targets. Moscow’s retaliation would have razed Paris, London, Frankfurt, Brussels, Amsterdam and other important targets.

Over recent months, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been responding to growing US nuclear threats by vaunting new developments in his nation’s missile technology. If accurate and actually deployed, these new hypersonic and nuclear-powered missiles with immense range will make obsolete all of US anti-missile defenses, a topic much loved by Trump.

Now, Trump & Co. are preparing to junk this crucial piece of Cold War architecture and resume the arms race with Russia. Pentagon sources say the real reason is to counter China’s missiles, which were not a factor in 1987, and have proliferated in recent years. Increasingly accurate, these Chinese tactical and strategic missiles are a major source of concern to the US Navy and US Asian bases.

But the US still has ample land, air and ocean-based nuclear forces to inflict immense damage on China. Violating the bedrock 1987 treaty with Moscow hardly seems worth adding some US nuclear-armed missiles in Guam, Japan or South Korea.

We must also suspect that the Trump White House has resurrected the old Cold War notion of bankrupting the Soviets/Russia by drawing them into a ruinous arms race. The US and its NATO satraps and Japan had a five times larger military capability than the old Soviet Union or today’s threadbare Russia. ‘We’ll spend them into the ground,’ went the old battle cry in Washington. This at least is preferable to a nuclear exchange.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev just denounced the Trump administration’s nuclear policies as a gigantic mistake and threat to mankind. NATO, showing its subservience to Washington, bleated its support for US plans to deploy new medium-ranged missiles in Europe. But, in truth, Europeans are aghast at the prospect of a nuclear war fought in their backyards.

When the history of our era is written, Trump’s reincarnation of Cold War nuclear missile rattling will surely rank as a monumental historic folly. No amount of soya bean or pig sales can make up for that.

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Featured image is from The Seattle Times

In a desperate attempt to cover its tracks, the propaganda network linked to Britain’s security services, the Integrity Initiative (II), has wiped its website and locked its Twitter account “pending an investigation into the theft of data.”

The decision was taken shortly after the Anonymous hacking group released new II documents targeting Russia as supposedly the greatest threat to world peace, based on claims that it is the country most likely to use nuclear weapons.

The documents reveal yet more of the disinformation campaign used to justify NATO preparations for war with Russia, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Minutes from a joint workshop of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS), which runs the II, and the US government-funded Center for Naval Analyses discuss what would happen if the “West” intervened to “push back” a Russian advance in the case of a localized conflict.

“The reality of the Russian nuclear doctrine is that it will not back down. … War games usually start with Russia about to, or using a nuclear weapon,” the minutes conclude.

Citing the inevitability of Russian use of nuclear weapons is used to justify their “pre-emptive” use by the NATO powers in the type of “pre-emptive war” made infamous by President George Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq and which now forms the bedrock of the Pentagon’s National Security Strategy. Last Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced US withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty as part of the reorientation of the US military toward “great-power” conflict with Russia and China.

Registered as a Scottish charity promoting good “governance and statecraft” and working to “counter disinformation,” the IfS and II privately list their “top three” objectives as:

• “Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology”—that is, creating various national networks of assets in government, the military, the media and academia to covertly coordinate anti-Russian propaganda. The “silencing [of] pro-Kremlin voices on Serbian TV” by the Serbian political analyst and director of the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Jelena Milic, is given as an example.
• “Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack by Russia,” as seen in the II’s coordination of the media response to the Skripal affair.
• “Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of the ‘golden minute.’” That is, creating fraudulent “popular” campaigns and “independent” news stories to push an anti-Russian agenda, as with the successful effort to prevent the promotion of an insufficiently Russophobic general in Spain and the attack on Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

This work is overseen by military intelligence operatives and run in service to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on behalf of a network of pro-British and US imperialist outfits.

The IfS co-founder and director, Daniel Lafyeedney, is a Senior Member, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His online university biography notes,

“As Senior Associate Fellow at the Advanced Research and Assessment Group at the Defence Academy of the UK (2004-2010) he specialised in the development and implementation of capacity-building projects for high-level governance of the security sector in European and middle-Eastern countries …”

It adds,

“His military service, legal background and career as an entrepreneur have given him an understanding of the importance of the link between business and national security.”

Speaking in Israel in 2018, Lafyeedney explained,

“We have supported the creation of special Army reserve units (e.g., 77 Bde and SGMI—Specialist Group Military Intelligence) with which we now have a close, informal relationship” and how the work of the IfS and II feeds “into the highest levels of MoD and the armed forces.”

In return, the IfS and II receives £2.6 million in funding for 2018-19 as well as office space in central London provided by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Funding also comes from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy, the US State Department, the “German business community,” the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence, the US think tank the Smith Richardson Foundation and other named “partner institutions.”

II is involved in a concerted anti-Russian offensive in Eastern European states. Ukraine, the Baltic states, Moldova and Armenia are all referenced as crucial areas of II work. One document on the Baltics refers to the need to be “educating our audience to understand how Russia sees this world as being at war.” Another on the war in Eastern Ukraine claims “aggression is inherent in the Russian condition.”

A file called “Moldova Democracy” explicitly argues for regime change, demanding that “A new team of people with integrity must come to power” or else “Moldova will remain a captured state forever, under Russian direct influence.”

During the 2018 protests in Armenia, the II published articles and intervened in social media to encourage a break with Russia after a change in government.

One of its key partners in Ukraine is Stopfake, which defends the far-right Ukrainian regime and the fascist forces which put it in power. An II document resolves to “Provide guest articles from … our clusters for StopFake’s printed material published and distributed along the contact line in Eastern Ukraine.”

In the UK the II is engaged in efforts to shut down uncooperative media outlets, accusing them of precisely the dirty tricks that it itself engages in. The most notable target is Russia Today (RT), which, II laments, is finding an audience because of “growing mistrust of western media among westerners.”

RT has been the target of an escalating campaign of attempted censorship with MPs demanding its broadcasting license be revoked. In December, the regulator Ofcom threatened to fine RT, claiming it had broken impartiality rules. There was no prior announcement from Ofcom that any RT shows had received more than 10 complaints from the public—as is standard practice. The II’s hidden hand is suggested in an II “Production timetable” document, which included the item in “eight complaints forwarded to Ofcom on RT’s failure to ensure due impartiality with request to launch a formal investigation.”

Other II plans include efforts to investigate “likely target[s] (e.g., a university with an anti-fracking agenda)” in receipt of Russian funding—even where those organisations are not in breach of the law.

A 2016 report by Péter Krekó and Lóránt Győri of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute on “pro-Russian far-left parties in Europe” names parties such as Syriza in Greece, the Left Party in Germany, and Unsubmissive France and essentially accuses them of being Russian stooges. Invoiced for payment to the II, the report ends with the recommendation that states “need to assess in more detail the security implications” of these parties’ alleged Russian connections.

In the UK—and this helps explain the complete absence of media coverage of its sordid activities—the leaked II documents list the names of a “cluster” of top journalists and TV reporters including the Times’ David Aaronovitch and Dominic Kennedy, the Guardian’s Natalie Nougayrede, Carole Cadwalladr and Paul Canning, the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus, the Financial Times’ Neil Buckley, the Economist’s Edward Lucas and Sky News’ Deborah Haynes.

Leading Blairite Labour MP Ben Bradshaw is listed, as are “individuals who are very senior civilian experts in some relevant area, such as Hedge Fund managers, senior bankers, Heads of PA companies, etc., i.e., people whom the Army could never afford to hire, but who donate their time and expertise as patriots.”

The drawing together of such figures is a manifestation of the strategy laid out in the recent British National Security Capability Review, which singled out Russia as enemy number one for British imperialism. It called for a “Fusion Strategy” to advance the UK’s strategic interests against Moscow, which would make use “of all our capabilities; from economic levers, through cutting-edge military resources to our wider diplomatic and cultural influence on the world’s stage” to “project our global influence.” The BBC and “collaborative programmes with industry and academia” are listed as examples.

The II is proof that these plans are far-advanced and have been able to proceed without a word of criticism from a complicit bourgeois media.

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What should the leader of Canada’s left wing party say about what’s happening in Venezuela? Here are a few suggestions: “Canada should respect international law in its dealings with Venezuela.” Or, “Canada shouldn’t select the president of Venezuela.” How about, “The US has a long history of overthrowing governments in Latin America and Canada should never take part.”

Any (or all) of these statements would be clear, reasonable positions for a social democratic party that claims to be in favour of international law and to represent the interests of ordinary people, rather than billionaires, to express. Instead, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has issued vague, contradictory words about the Liberal government’s aggressive effort to topple Venezuela’s elected president.

Over the past two years, Justin Trudeau’s government has steadily ramped up its campaign to oust Nicolas Maduro’s government. Ottawa has adopted illegal sanctions, supported opposition groups, built an anti-Venezuela regional coalition, pressured Caribbean countries to join their campaign and taken a complaint about the Venezuelan government to the International Criminal Court. Last week, it recognized a little-known opposition politician — who has never garnered even 100,000 votes — as president of the country. And before making this Trumpian, anti-democratic, over-the-top-interference-in-another-country’s-internal-affairs decision, Canadian diplomats spent months preparing the move with the opposition to ratchet up tensions in the South American country. It seems the “Trudeau Doctrine” has been proclaimed, similar in purpose to the USA’s “Munroe Doctrine” first issued in 1823.

All of which should have offered a wonderful opportunity for a political party of the left to differentiate itself from the pro-big business, pro-American, pro-imperialist Liberals. But, despite Ottawa openly violating the UN and Organization of American States charters, the NDP leadership has barely mustered any criticism of Canadian policy. After Ottawa recognized National Assembly head Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela last week Jagmeet Singh tweeted a largely meaningless general message. Under pressure from activists — and with NDP MP Niki Ashton, as well as current candidates Svend Robinson and Jesse McClendon, making much stronger interventions —the party subsequently published a slightly better statement.

The Canadian Green and Communist parties’ statements are far better. So are those released by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Canadian Labour Congress, Vancouver and District Labour Council, Common Frontiers, Rights Action, Kingston Peace Council, Hugo Chavez People’s Defence Front, Canadian Network on Cuba, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the NDP Courage Coalition.

While many of the party’s activists are probably confused by the leadership’s indifference to Canada’s push for a coup/invasion, NDP foreign-policy is run by a former Canadian diplomat who has aligned herself with Venezuela’s far right. A year ago I published an article in the Canadian Dimension titled “Has it become NDP policy to support US-backed coups in Latin America?” Among numerous criticisms of Venezuela’s government, foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière called the vice-president “a drug lord” from whom “the American government has seized billions of dollars of his assets for drug trafficking.” Laverdière should have been removed as foreign critic the day after repeating this obviously absurd claim from Venezuela’s lunatic far right. (In what may be the first ever resolution to an NDP convention calling for the removal of a party critic, the NDP Socialist Caucus submitted a motion to last February’s convention titled “Hands Off Venezuela, Remove Hélène Laverdière as NDP Foreign Affairs Critic.”)

Beyond Laverdière, the party leadership is largely aligned with the foreign policy establishment or those, as long time NDP MP Libby Davies put it, who believe a “Time Magazine version” of international affairs. As I detail in Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada, the party leadership fears corporate media backlash and only challenges official international policy when activists force the issue. (Can you imagine if the NDP never challenged government policy inside Canada? There would be no reason, aside from providing a third set of faces, for the party to exist.)

On Venezuela, the party leadership would probably prefer the issue simply disappear from public discussion. But, that’s unlikely. The Liberal government has made Venezuela, reports the Globe and Mail, “one of the government’s top foreign policy priorities.” In a town hall speech on Thursday that Global News headlined “Trudeau says clause in Venezuela constitution shows Guaido is interim president,” the PM boasted that “I’ve been making calls to a significant number of global leaders” (including the heads of France, Spain, Ireland, Colombia, Italy and the EU) to convince them to join their campaign against Venezuela.

For his part, Donald Trump, reports the Wall Street Journal, has “long viewed Venezuela as one of his top three foreign-policy priorities, including Iran and North Korea.” The clique of extremists driving US policy have set up a situation that may require an invasion to succeed.

On Monday the “Lima Group” of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected government are meeting in Ottawa. A protest is planned there, as well as in at least two other Canadian cities. Before the “Lima Group” summit the NDP should release a statement challenging Canada’s coup planning and Niki Ashton, or another MP, should be allowed to speak at the rally.

It’s not too late to do the right thing.

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One would have to have had his head in the sand for the past two years not to know that Donald Trump is committed to the idea of building a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Trump famously said during his official announcement that he was a Republican candidate for president,

I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.

It has been two years now since Trump was inaugurated and still no wall.

According to the “Immigration” section on the White House website,

The United States must adopt an immigration system that serves the national interest. To restore the rule of law and secure our border, President Trump is committed to constructing a border wall and ensuring the swift removal of unlawful entrants. To protect American workers, the President supports ending chain migration, eliminating the Visa Lottery, and moving the country to a merit-based entry system. These reforms will advance the safety and prosperity of all Americans while helping new citizens assimilate and flourish.

Some of Trump’s more conservative supporters are furious that he agreed to reopen the government without first obtaining funding from Congress for a border wall. For many of them, the issue of a border wall seems to be the only issue they care about. It doesn’t matter what Trump says, what he believes, or what he does, as long as he gets the wall built before the end of his term.

Trump is not the only one preoccupied with building a border wall. An Air Force veteran and Purple Heart recipient who lost three of his limbs while deployed to Iraq started a GoFundMe page late last year to raise money to help build Trump’s wall. Said the page’s initial description,

Like a majority of those American citizens who voted to elect President Donald J. Trump, we voted for him to Make America Great Again. President Trump’s main campaign promise was to BUILD THE WALL. And as he’s followed through on just about every promise so far, this wall project needs to be completed still.

It’s up to Americans to help out and pitch in to get this project rolling. “If the 63 million people who voted for Trump each pledge $80, we can build the wall.” That equates to roughly 5 Billion Dollars; even if we get half, that’s half the wall. We can do this.

If we can fund a large portion of this wall, it will jumpstart things and will be less money Trump has to secure from our politicians. This won’t be easy, but it’s our duty as citizens. This needs to be shared every single day by each of you on social media. We can do it, and we can help President Trump make America safe again!

More than $20 million has been raised so far.

But wall or no wall, there are many things that will still be true about life in “the land of the free.” Here are twenty-five of them.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have an income tax that robs them of the fruits of their labor.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a government that subsidizes some Americans at the expense of other Americans.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a national debt of more than $22 trillion.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have civil asset-forfeiture laws that allow police to seize and sell any property they allege to have been involved in a crime even if the property owner is never arrested or convicted of a crime.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a military that bombs, maims, and kills foreigners who are no threat to the United States.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have socialist programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have occupational-licensing laws that make them get permission from the government to work or engage in commerce.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a national government with a budget of more than $4 trillion a year.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a war on drugs that is a monstrous evil and has ruined more lives than drugs themselves.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a U.S. global empire of troops and bases that occupy the world.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have laws that forbid legal adults younger than 21 years old from purchasing alcohol even though they can get married, serve in the military, and enter into contracts.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still be subject to laws that forbid them from engaging in certain kinds of commerce on Sundays.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have anti-discrimination laws that restrict freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and property rights.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a government with a foreign policy that is reckless, belligerent, interventionist, and meddling.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have federal gun-control laws that violate the Second Amendment.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a government that owns millions of acres of land, including more than half of the land in some states.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a welfare state that transfers wealth from some Americans to other Americans.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a TSA that treats the traveling public as potential terrorists.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a police state where government spying, surveillance, and searches continue unabated.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still be restricted from freely traveling to Cuba.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have laws that criminalize the commission of victimless crimes.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a government that forces some Americans to pay for the health care of other Americans.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a Patriot Act that endangers civil liberties.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a deep state and a military-industrial complex.

Wall or no wall, Americans will still have a Constitution that is violated every day that Congress is in session.

If the wall is ever built, America will merely go from being a welfare/warfare/police state to a walled-in welfare/warfare/police state. The United States has deep systemic problems that building a wall will never solve.

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Laurence M. Vance is a columnist and policy advisor for the Future of Freedom Foundation, an associated scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a columnist, blogger, and book reviewer at LewRockwell.com. He is the author of Gun Control and the Second Amendment, The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom, and War, Empire and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy. His newest books are Free Trade or Protectionism? and The Free Society. Visit his website: www.vancepublications.com. Send him e-mail.

As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

From engineering coups in Chile and Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American strongmen at the School of the Americas in torture techniques to control their people, the United States has meddled, interfered, intervened and undermined the democracies it claims to protect.

Now, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and the infamous Elliott Abrams are working with opposition groups in Venezuela to carry out a coup d’état.

In 2002, the George W. Bush administration, through the CIA, aided and abetted an attempted coup, according to attorney Eva Golinger, an award-winning author and journalist. Golinger, a close confidante of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, obtained evidence of US intervention from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, which she discusses in her new book, Confidante of ‘Tyrants’: The Inside Story of the American Woman Trusted By the US’s Biggest Enemies.

There is a major difference, however, between the 2002 coup attempt and the Trump administration’s current effort to change the regime in Venezuela, Golinger says. She told Truthout that unlike the situation in 2002,

“when the Bush administration worked behind the scenes to back a coup d’état against Chávez with multimillion-dollar funding and political support to the opposition, the Trump administration is now pursuing regime change in Venezuela in plain sight.”

US Aided and Abetted 2002 Coup Attempt

Golinger came to Chávez’s attention after her investigation revealed proof of US involvement in the 2002 attempted coup. Since Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, the United States tried overtly and covertly to overthrow his “Bolivarian Revolution” by furnishing opposition groups working for regime change with millions of dollars, Golinger writes. Chávez used Venezuela’s vast oil wealth to eradicate illiteracy and poverty, and to provide education and universal health care.

After Chávez’s death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro was elected president after promising to carry on the Bolivarian Revolution. But the punishing sanctions President Obama imposed in 2015, combined with corruption, mismanagement and autocratic leadership, caused economic hardship. Falling oil prices in 2016 led to hyperinflation two years later, and Venezuela’s economy collapsed.

Nevertheless, Maduro was re-elected in 2018. The opposition’s boycott of the election and the US government’s support of that boycott resulted in Maduro’s victory over Henri Falcón.

Team Trump Is Engineering Regime Change in Venezuela

Elliott Abrams is a disturbing, but not surprising, choice to serve as US special envoy to Venezuela. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal and later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. The new envoy supported General Efraín Ríos Montt, the Guatemalan dictator who directed the torture and mass murder of Indigenous people in the 1980s, and was later convicted of genocide. Moreover, Abrams was linked to the 2002 attempted US coup in Venezuela.

“The naming of notorious ‘dirty war’ expert Elliott Abrams to oversee the Venezuela operation, the public threats against Venezuela of ‘consequences’ should they defy the US made by Trump’s hawkish John Bolton, and Trump’s own multiple statements that a military option is ‘on the table’ for Venezuela, clearly show that the table is set,” Golinger told Truthout.

The “US is not just ‘behind’ this coup,” Ben Norton wrote in a series of tweets. “The US is openly leading the coup.”

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported that on January 22, Pence called Juan Guaidó and “pledged” US support “if he seized the reins of government from Nicolás Maduro.” Guaidó was a little-known player whom the United States had long cultivated to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. Guaidó swore himself in as “interim president” of Venezuela the following day.

“That late-night call set in motion a plan that had been developed in secret over the preceding several weeks, accompanied by talks between U.S. officials, allies, lawmakers, and key Venezuelan opposition figures, including Mr. Guaidó himself,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “Almost instantly, just as Mr. Pence had promised, President Trump issued a statement recognizing Mr. Guaidó as the country’s rightful leader.”

“Opposition leaders have already met in the White House with Pence, and Trump himself telephoned Guaidó to express US support for his de facto regime. If this is what they are doing overtly, we can only imagine the depth of their covert ops in Venezuela,” Golinger told Truthout.

In fall of 2017, Trump broached the subject of invading Venezuela with top White House officials, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then National Security Ddviser HR McMaster. Although they tried to dissuade him, Trump was “preoccupied with the idea of an invasion.” He raised the issue with the president of Colombia at a private dinner during a UN General Assembly meeting. McMaster finally talked Trump out of it.

But as recently as a few weeks ago, Trump reportedly asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina),

“What do you think about using military force?”

Bolton held a yellow legal pad with the words “5,000 troops to Colombia” prominently written on it at a January 28 press briefing. Although Bolton didn’t mention sending troops to Colombia, which shares a border with Venezuela, his well-placed prop serves as an ominous warning.

Sanctions Hurt the Venezuelan People

On January 28, the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Venezuela that amount to an oil embargo. They forbid Venezuela’s state-owned oil company from doing business with most US companies (except Chevron and Halliburton).

These penalties are projected to deprive Venezuela of $7 billion in assets, resulting in $11 billion in export losses during the next year. That’s on top of the $6 billion that Trump’s August 2017 financial sanctions cost Venezuela in one year.

The new sanctions against Venezuela “could turbocharge what is already the world’s worst inflation, worsening fuel shortages and compromise the state’s ability to buy and distribute food,” the New York Times reported.

“[A] problematic idea driving current US policy is the belief that financial sanctions can hurt the Venezuelan government without causing serious harm to ordinary Venezuelans,” Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist, wrote in Foreign Policy. “That’s impossible when 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sold by the state-owned oil company. Cutting off the government’s access to dollars will leave the economy without the hard currency needed to pay for imports of food and medicine.”

As a result, Rodríguez, added,

“Starving the Venezuelan economy of its foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe.”

The United States used the same flawed strategy in 1960 when the Eisenhower administration imposed an embargo on Cuba. A State Department memo had proposed “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the [Fidel Castro] government.” Although the embargo continues to hurt the Cuban people, it failed in its stated goal.

In addition to the oil sanctions, the US State Department turned over control of Venezuela’s property and bank accounts in the United States to Guaidó, in what The New York Times called “one of Washington’s most overt attempts in decades to carry out regime change in Latin America.”

Regime Change and Sanctions Are Illegal and Unwanted

Forcible regime change in Venezuela is illegal under international law.

“The shocking aggression and illegal interference against a sovereign nation by the Trump administration is a blatant violation of the charters of the United Nations and Organization of American States, which recognize the principles of national sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes, and a prohibition on threatening or using force against the territory of another state,” the National Lawyers Guild said in a statement.

Moreover, the organization states

“directly fomenting a coup in a sovereign nation is not only illegal and outright shunned by the international community, it fundamentally undermines any pretextual concern about interference by other nations in U.S. elections.”

Indeed, the United Nations Charter requires that countries settle their disputes peacefully and forbids the use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another country. Military force is only permissible in self-defense or with the assent of the Security Council. Further, the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) says no country can intervene, for any reason, in the internal or external affairs of another country.

US imposition of economic sanctions against Venezuela is also illegal. The OAS Charter proscribes the use of coercive economic or political measures to force the sovereign will of another country and obtain any advantages from it.

“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state,” said Idriss Jazairy, a UN special rapporteur concerned with the negative impact of sanctions. “The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law.” Jazairy also noted that, “Precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred-Maurice de Zayas says the United States is waging “economic warfare” against Venezuela. In his report to the Human Rights Council, de Zayas recommends that the International Criminal Court investigate whether “economic war, embargoes, financial blockades and sanctions regimes amount to geopolitical crimes and crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.”

Moreover, in order to impose sanctions under US law, the president must declare a national emergency and state that Venezuela constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the United States. That claim is patently false.

De Zayas is a signatory to an open letter released last week, signed by 70 experts and academics who condemned the US-backed coup attempt against the Maduro government.

Although ostensibly aimed at helping the Venezuelan people, Team Trump’s sanctions and threats of military invasion are overwhelmingly unpopular in Venezuela. Eighty-six percent of Venezuelans oppose US military intervention and 81 percent are against sanctions.

It’s the Oil, Stupid

Why is the United States so intent on regime change? Because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, and the United States is its biggest customer.

Within two days of his self-inauguration as “interim president,” Guaidó began a process to restructure and privatize Venezuela’s oil industry for the benefit of multinational corporations.

Drawing a parallel with George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tweeted, “It’s about the oil … again.” Indeed, Halliburton, exempted from the new sanctions against Venezuela, is once again benefitting from regime change, like it did in Iraq.

Bolton didn’t pull any punches when he stated at a press conference that, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now. … It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot of stake here.”

The Trump administration appears intent on privatizing Venezuela’s oil in order to maximize the profits of US oil companies at the expense of the Venezuelan people and the rule of law.

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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.

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Cutting to the chase, if you consider yourself to be ‘On the Left’ then you have to be a Socialist. Period!

Now, there are many different levels under the banner of Socialism. Some may be Marxist, Trotskyite, Syndicalism etc. Yet, the unifying denominator is that all believe in the common ownership of the means of production and services.

Many socialists do honor the existence of Mom and Pop private ownership of small business. Under a truly socialist system banking, energy, health & dental care, housing and all necessary services would be owned and operated by the community, whether it be local, state or federal.

Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks, where the only interest charges would be for overhead. Translated: Even in these so called ‘low rates’ times, where a mortgage rate is around 4 or 5%, with non- profit community banks the rate would be perhaps 1%. Plus, the mortgage paper would remain with that bank. Today’s renters would be tomorrow’s owners of their own abode.

A truly socialist system would similarly own and operate the energy that goes into your home or apartment. For perhaps a fraction of what we pay now, everyone would have complete medical and dental coverage. (This writer has already spent $ 5000 this past year, CASH, with no insurance, for root canals, crowns and one extraction).

The real crime of it all is when we have less than  1/2 of 1% of our populace earning over a million dollars a year, and being treated in the same tax basket as those earning a couple of hundred thousand a year. In 1961, when JFK took office, the top rate was at 91% for a joint return of a couple earning $ 400,000 or more a year. By the time their accountant sharpened his or her pencil, the couple perhaps paid 40-50% of that. Nowadays,  couples filing jointly and earning between $ 400,000 – $ 600,000 pay at the rate of 35%. After their accountant does the deed, maybe they pay at 20%. See the loss for Uncle Sam? I could go on and on but you should be getting my drift.

A truly socialist society would not need to have our military all over the world, pointing our majestic force and power at everyone. There is no way, if we curtailed the Corporate War Economy being run by private individuals and investors, that all those phony wars we conducted (or plan to conduct) would ever occur! Cutting the obscene military spending, which is over 50% of our federal tax revenues at present, to  maybe 25% or much less than that, would ensure money for safety net programs (like National Health and Dental  for All). In addition, we would still be as safe as we are now… NO, actually safer. Why? Well, with no phony wars and excursions into all those Middle Eastern countries (and soon to be Venezuela) the question of ‘Why do they hate us’ would not even be brought up.

Now let’s look at the group I name the ‘Phony Left’. The Democratic Party, continued to be subsidized by the super rich, have a large segment (especially recently) considering themselves as ‘Left wing’. Really? Bottom line: They all still serve the Military Industrial Empire. When do you see them advocating a real pullback of this empire by closing a majority of our nearly 1000 foreign bases, and cutting with muster this fiscally bankrupting military spending?

Matter of fact, Bernie Sanders, who is in reality a decent and caring guy, calls himself a ‘Democratic Socialist’. Yet, his group supported both John Kerry’s run in ’04 and Obama’s run in 2008.

Sanders supported the NATO (US led) carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011 and our incursions into Syria… and now our banging the drums for a new Cold War with Russia. Sadly, he referred to the late Hugo Chavez, democratically elected leader of Venezuela, as a ‘Dead Dictator’! 

This ‘Phony Left’ still won’t come out in favor of nationalizing Big Business, especially the real  culprits, the Wall Street banks! Do you ever hear these folks ditto that in regard to Big Pharma or Corporate Absentee Landlords? As far as taking on the Super Rich, new ‘Phony Left ‘ presidential candidate Sen. Warren wants to assess a whopping 2% surtax on any assets over 50 million dollars. Wow! You got to be kidding me! The real tragedy is that this ‘Peanut plan’ of hers is already being slammed by the embedded mainstream media. When will this comedic material, right out of a Marx Brothers film, cease?

Ok, now as to the title of this column, what’s left on the Amerikan plate?

Well, and again sadly, we have over a hundred million of our fellow citizens who still buy into this ‘Free Enterprise’ garbage that the right wing and centrist Phony Left have been selling for seems forever. So many decent working stiffs still will defend to their (fiscal?) death the right for anyone to earn as much as possible.

Why? Well, any mention of true socialism as been tangled together with what we have been propagandized to believe as the hated and feared Communism. Orwell’s Big Brother hangs over them like a vulture, ready to devour. Little do they realize that the Nazi gang sold this same Kool- Aid to the masses of Germans in the 1920s and 30s. Thus, Fascism became the antidote, and you should know the rest folks.

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

It is true that some of Venezuela’s economic problems are due to the ineptitudes of the Bolivarian government’s  “socialist command” economy, but this overlooks the role played by the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union.

Over the last five years, the US has imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela. It has cut it off from western financial markets and this has resulted in oil production shortfalls. Venezuela is unable to raise capital to address deficiencies in the oil sector of its economy. This situation was exacerbated when the price of petroleum fell sharply around the world. Venezuelan debt instruments are banned by the US Treasury, thus preventing it from acquiring loans to address its severe economic problems and feed the people. 

Trump’s national security adviser has tweeted in Spanish:

Al alto rango militar venezolano, ahora es el momento de estar al lado del pueblo de Venezuela. ¡Es su derecho y responsabilidad defender la constitución y la democracia para Venezuela! https://t.co/3z0R4XtSAU

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 3, 2019

This is unprecedented—Bolton publicly announcing a military coup (usually with hundreds if not thousands of deaths). He deliberately showed off his notebook with scribbled invasion plans, so there would be no question about the agenda. 

But that’s how the neocons operate. Lies, falsifications, grandiose claims, and invasions to forcibly install “democracy,” which is nothing of the sort. 

Bolton’s “democracy” is doublespeak in action. It’s a thinly disguised euphemism used to obscure the actual objective—the destruction of entire nations, cultures, and societies at the cost of hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. Untold millions of lives have been destroyed by the sort of “democracy” Bolton is talking about.  It was put into action when Bolton was a toddler. 

Let’s get real. Bolton doesn’t care about the people of Venezuela. If he did the US would not be imposing harsh sanctions that are resulting in malnutrition and starvation. Bolton is using the age-old technique of starving and depriving people so they will overthrow the government (this tactic rarely works—leading me to believe it is inflicted out of pure sadism—leading to the exact opposite reaction). 

The people know the rule of the elite in Venezuela results in endless poverty and a large underclass of desperate people. This is primary reason they voted for Hugo Chávez and his version of the Bolivarian Revolution. His Bolivarian missions provided access to food, housing, healthcare, and education. Standard socialist nationalization took control away from transnational corporations and banks eager to financialize everything in sight. 

At this point it appears Trump’s neocon and CFR wizards will strive to get the military to go against Maduro, who is dedicated to not backing down. Trump may convince (bribe, threaten) the generals to go over to the self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó, but there is one very large obstacle—the National Boliviarian Militia and the so-called Peasant Militia, the latter “responsible for protecting poor farmers from mercenary groups organized and financed by ranchers and wealthy landowners,” that is to say the people supporting Guaidó. 

“The peasant militia will also assist the regular army ‘against any foreign aggressor,’ wrote Chavez, who has warned that the U.S. military could invade Venezuela in order to seize control of its vast oil reserves,” explains Kiraz Janicke. 

“The peasant militias, which are active in rural areas, will complement the primarily urban-based Bolivarian Militias, which were incorporated into the reform of the Armed Forces Law that came into force on October 22, 2009.”

In short, if the US invades, it won’t be a clean sweep like Bush the Elder’s invasion of Panama. It also won’t be a “cakewalk” like Iraq where the army was defeated in short order. It will be guerrilla warfare in a rugged tropical environment, not a sprawling Iraqi desert where there is no place to hide.

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

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from South China Morning Post

On the subject of the Islamic State’s weaponry, it is generally claimed by the mainstream media the Islamic State came into possession of state-of-the-art weapons when it overran Mosul in June 2014 and seized large caches of weapons that were provided to Iraq’s armed forces by Washington during the occupation years from 2003 to 2011.

Is this argument not a bit paradoxical, however, that Islamic State conquered large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq before it overran Mosul and Anbar in early 2014 when it supposedly did not have those sophisticated weapons, and after allegedly coming into possession of those sophisticated weapons, it lost ground?

The only conclusion that can be drawn from this fact is the Islamic State had those weapons, or equally deadly weapons, before it overran Mosul and that those weapons were provided to all the militant groups operating in Syria, including the Islamic State, by the intelligence agencies of none other than the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

In fact, Washington exercised such an absolute control over Syria’s theater of proxy war that although the US openly provided the American-made antitank (TOW) weapons to Syrian militant groups, it strictly forbade its clients from providing anti-aircraft weapons (MANPADS) to the militants, because Israel frequently flies surveillance aircrafts and drones and occasionally carries out airstrikes in Syria, and had such weapons fallen into the wrong hands, they could have become a long term security threat to the Israeli Air Force.

In the final years of Syria’s proxy war, some anti-aircraft weapons from Gaddafi’s looted arsenal in Libya made their way into the hands of the Syrian militants, but for the initial years of the conflict, there was an absolute prohibition on providing MANPADS to the insurgents.

Last year, a report by the Conflict Armament Research (CAR) on the Islamic State’s weapons found in Iraq and Syria was prominently featured in the mainstream media. Before the story was picked up by the corporate media, it was first published [1] in the Wired News in December 2017, which has a history of spreading dubious stories and working in close collaboration with the Pentagon and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

The Britain-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) is a relatively unknown company of less than 20 employees. Its one-man Iraq and Syria division was headed by a 31-year-old Belgian researcher Damien Spleeters.

The main theme of Spleeters’ investigation was to discover the Islamic State’s homegrown armaments industry and how the jihadist group’s technicians had adapted the East European munitions to be used in the weapons available to the Islamic State. Spleeters had listed 1,832 weapons and 40,984 pieces of ammunition recovered in Iraq and Syria in the CAR’s database.

But Spleeters had only tangentially touched upon the subject of the Islamic State’s weapons supply chain, documenting only a single PG-9 rocket found at Tal Afar in Iraq bearing a lot number of 9,252 rocket-propelled grenades which were supplied by Romania to the US military, and mentioning only a single shipment of 12 tons of munitions which was diverted from Saudi Arabia to Jordan in his supposedly ‘comprehensive report.’

In fact, the CAR’s report was so misleading that of thousands of pieces of munitions investigated by Spleeters, less than 10% were found to be compatible with NATO’s weapons and more than 90% were found to have originated from Russia, China and the East European countries, Romania and Bulgaria in particular.

By comparison, a joint investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) uncovered [2] the Pentagon’s $2.2 billion arms pipeline to the Syrian militants.

It bears mentioning that $2.2 billion was earmarked only by Washington for training and arming the Syrian militants, and tens of billions of dollars [3] that Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf states pumped into Syria’s proxy war have not been documented by anybody so far.

More significantly, a Bulgarian investigative reporter, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, authored a report [4] for Bulgaria’s national newspaper, Trud News, which found that an Azerbaijan state airline company, Silk Way Airlines, was regularly transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey under diplomatic cover as part of the CIA covert program to supply militant groups in Syria.

Gaytandzhieva documented 350 such ‘diplomatic flights’ and was subsequently fired from her job for uncovering the story. Not surprisingly, both these well-researched and groundbreaking reports didn’t even merit a passing mention in any mainstream news outlet.

It’s worth noting, moreover, that the Syrian militant groups, including the Islamic State, were no ordinary bands of ragtag jihadist outfits. They were trained and armed to the teeth by their patrons in the security agencies of Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the training camps located in Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan.

Alongside Saddam’s and Egypt’s armies, the Syrian Baathist armed forces are one of the most capable fighting forces in the Arab world. But the onslaught of militant groups during the first three years of the proxy war was such that had it not been for the Russian intervention in September 2015, the Syrian defenses would have collapsed.

The only feature that distinguished the Syrian militants from the rest of regional jihadist groups was not their ideology but their weapons arsenals that were bankrolled by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and provided by the CIA in collaboration with regional security agencies of Washington’s traditional allies in the Middle East.

Fact of the matter is that the distinction between Islamic jihadists and purported ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria was more illusory than real. Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition and enjoyed close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria.

It bears mentioning that although turf wars were common not just between the Islamic State and other militant groups operating in Syria but also among rebel groups themselves, the ultimate objective of the Islamic State and the rest of militant outfits operating in Syria was the same: to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority was comprised of Islamic jihadists and armed tribesmen who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by their regional and global patrons.

Islamic State was nothing more than one of numerous Syrian militant outfits, others being: al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the militant groups that were operating in Syria were just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The only feature that differentiated the Islamic State from the rest was that it was more ideological and independent-minded.

The reason why the US turned against the Islamic State was that all other Syrian militant outfits only had local ambitions that were limited to fighting the Syrian government, while the Islamic State established a global network of transnational terrorists that included hundreds of Western citizens who became a national security risk to the Western countries.

Notwithstanding, Damien Spleeters of the Conflict Armament Research (CAR) authored another report [5] in November in which he stated that South Sudan’s neighbors, Uganda in particular, had breached an arms embargo by funneling East European weapons to the South Sudan conflict.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation which gained independence from Sudan in 2011. The United States is often said to have midwifed South Sudan by leading the negotiations for its independence from Sudan, because South Sudan is an oil-rich country and produces about half a million barrels crude oil per day.

But a civil war began in 2013 between Dinka tribal group of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Nuer rebels led by warlord Riek Machar, and has triggered one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies. Millions of South Sudanese have sought refuge in displacement camps in the country or in neighboring countries.

The Conflict Armament Research’s report on the weapons found in South Sudan notes:

“One of the most astonishing findings is that 99 percent of the ammunition tracked by CAR is of Chinese origin. Some of it was legally transferred to South Sudan, but much of it was delivered secretly to the opposition via Sudan in 2015 and is still being used.”

Unsurprisingly, the Britain-based monitoring group has implicated China, Eastern Europe and South Sudan’s neighbors for defying the embargo and providing weapons to the belligerents, and has once again given a free pass to the Western powers in its supposedly ‘comprehensive and credible’ report.

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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.

Notes

[1] Tracing Islamic State’s weapons supply chain:

https://www.wired.com/story/terror-industrial-complex-isis-munitions-supply-chain/

[2] The Pentagon’s $2.2 billion Soviet arms pipeline to Syria:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/the-pentagon-s-2-2-billion-soviet-arms-pipeline-flooding-syria-09-12-2017

[3] Mark Curtis’ book review, Secret Affairs: How Britain Colluded with Radical Islam?

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-britain-engaged-covert-operation-overthrow-assad-1437573498

[4] Journalist Interrogated, Fired For Story Linking CIA And Syria Weapons Flights:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-28/journalist-interrogated-fired-story-linking-cia-and-syria-weapons-flights

[5] Uganda breached arms embargo in funneling European weapons to South Sudan:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/11/29/uganda-funneled-european-weapons-south-sudan-breaching-arms-embargo-report/

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Selected excerpts of article published in the South China Morning Post in April 2018.

Recent US foreign policy initiatives led by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton corroborate the statements of Lawrence Wilkinson, former chief of staff of Colin Powell.

Both John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are prepared to risk a military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons with Russia and China. 

According to the SCMP:

Bolton would use military force to coerce compliance from China, which US President Donald Trump has painted as an adversary, the Post was toldThe new US national security adviser is willing to risk a military conflict with China to achieve President Donald Trump’s goals for America, two former senior US officials have told the South China Morning Post. 

John Bolton, who is fond of quoting the ancient Roman battle philosophy, “If you want peace, prepare for war”, would use military force to coerce compliance from China – which an increasingly hawkish White House has painted as a competitor, if not an adversary, the former officials who worked with Bolton said in interviews. (…)

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told the Post he doubted Trump would tolerate Bolton’s disagreeing with him at any point, in light of the bad endings that have come to Trump’s relationships with White House officials who have questioned the president’s past actions on trade, foreign policy and other issues.

However, “if Trump surprises me and does warm to Bolton, we are all in trouble – from North Korea to China,” Wilkerson said.

A major witness during Bolton’s Senate UN ambassadorship hearing in 2005, Wilkerson has labelled Bolton “the most dangerous American” for US foreign security policy.

Bolton’s views on ending the North Korean nuclear crisis are already well-known. He has advocated launching a pre-emptive strike on North Korea over its threat to use nuclear weapons against the US.

It is unclear what Bolton’s endgame for China would be.

It remains unclear now whether an aggressive Bolton could work with his new colleagues on the president’s national security team, including incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

When Mattis met Bolton in late March at the Pentagon, he was captured in an off-microphone exchange saying [jokingly]: “I heard you’re actually the devil incarnate.”

To read complet SCMP article click here

First published by Global Research on January 24, 2017

Flemish Father Daniël Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Father Daniel has been a witness to the “civil war” and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: “the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country.”

Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?

Father Daniel: “The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I’ve been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.

Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.”

Interviewer: Mother Agnès-Mariam, of your Mar Yakub (“Saint Jacob”) monastery, is accused of siding with the regime. She has friends at the highest level.

Father Daniel: “mother Agnès-Mariam helps the population: she has recently opened a soup kitchen in Aleppo, where 25,000 meals are prepared five times a week. Look, it is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to the army of Assad’s government and to Vladimir Putin, because he decided to intervene when the rebels threatened to take power.

When thousands of terrorists settled in Qara, we became afraid for our lives. They came from the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Turkey, Libya, there were many Chechens. They formed a foreign occupation force, all allied to al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Armed to the teeth by the West and their allies with the intention to act against us, they literally said: “This country belongs to us now.” Often, they were drugged, they fought each other, in the evening they fired randomly. We had to hide in the crypts of the monastery for a long time. When the Syrian army chased them away, everybody was happy: the Syrian citizens because they hate the foreign rebels, and we because peace had returned.”

Interviewer: You say that the Syrian Army protects civilians, yet there are all sorts of reports about war crimes committed by Assad’s forces, such as the bombardments with barrel bombs.

Father Daniel: “Do you not know that the media coverage on Syria is the biggest media lie of our time? They have sold pure nonsense about Assad: It was actually the rebels who plundered and killed. Do you think that the Syrian people are stupid?Do you think those people were forced to cheer for Assad and Putin? It is the Americans who have a hand in all of this, for pipelines and natural resources in this region and to thwart Putin.”

Saudi Arabia and Qatar want to establish a Sunni state in Syria, without religious freedom. Therefore, Assad must go. You know, when the Syrian army was preparing for the battle in Aleppo, Muslim soldiers came to me to be blessed. Between ordinary Muslims and Christians, there is no problem. It is those radical Islamic, Western-backed rebels who want to massacre us. They are all al Qaeda and IS. There are not any moderate fighters anymore.”

Interviewer: You once mentioned Hillary Clinton to be a ‘devil in holy water’, because as foreign minister, she deliberately worsened the conflict.

Father Daniel: “I am happy with Trump. He sees what every normal person understands: That the United States should stop undermining countries which possess natural resources. The Americans’ attempt to impose a unipolar world is the biggest problem. Trump understands that radical Islam is a bigger threat than Russia.

What do I care whether he occasionally takes off his pants? If Trump practices geopolitics the way he has promised to do so, then the future looks bright. Then it will become similar to Putin’s approach. And hopefully then, there will be a solution for Syria, and peace will return.”

Interviewer: You understand that your analysis is controversial and will encounter much criticism?

Father Daniel: “I speak from personal observation. And no one has to believe me, right? But I know one thing: The media can either contribute to the massacre of the Syrian people or help the Syrian people, with their media coverage. Unfortunately, there are too many followers and cowards among journalists.”

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Venezuela Confirms Coltan Deposits, $100 Billion in Gold Reserves

By Latin American Herald Tribune, February 03, 2019

The Venezuelan government has confirmed the existence of “significant” coltan deposits south of the Orinoco River, as well as proven gold reserves valued at $100 billion.

Is Oil Behind Washington’s Venezuela Coup Madness?

By F. William Engdahl, February 03, 2019

The Washington “recognition” of Guaido as “legitimate” president of Venezuela is not only a blatant breach of international law. It goes back on Donald Trump’s repeated campaign promises to stop US meddling in internal affairs of other countries.

In Zimbabwe, Capitalist Crisis + Ultra-neoliberal Policy = “Mugabesque” Authoritarianism

By Prof. Patrick Bond, February 03, 2019

The 14-17 January nationwide protests were called by trade unions against an unprecedented fuel price hike, leading to repression reminiscent of former leader Robert Mugabe’s iron fist.

US Intervention in Venezuela Portrayed as a “Humanitarian Mission”. “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P)

By Marc Vandepitte, February 03, 2019

Great powers invariably disguise foreign interference or military intervention as a humanitarian mission. The refrain may vary but in fact always comes down to the same thing: out of concern for the local population we have no other choice than to intervene.

Does the US Provide Covert Support to the Islamic State in Afghanistan?

By Nauman Sadiq, February 03, 2019

Last year, Russia’s seasoned Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of providing material support to the Islamic State Khorasan militants based in Afghanistan in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan.

China-US Trade Negotiations Approach Final Phase

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, February 02, 2019

China continues publicly to offer concessions to the US on market access to China, US corporate and bank majority ownership of China companies, and China resumption of purchases of US farm and other goods.

Will Iran Sanctions Herald the Fall of the Imperial Dollar?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, February 02, 2019

When the Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement in May 2018 and announced it would reimpose sanctions against Iran, the European Union (EU) declared its commitment to preserving the agreement and finding ways for its companies to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

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It is truly an amazing site: monstrous US hotels and casinos, just a few hundred meters from the Mainland China. All that kitsch that one usually associates with Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but bigger, much bigger! In fact, Macau is the biggest casino sprawl in the world.

Casinos, most of them confined inside the US mega-hotels, make approximately 5 times more money here, than in Las Vegas.

You want Venetian; a tremendous mind-blowing temple of bad taste, complete with a fake San Marco Square, canals, gondolas (gondoliers don’t sing O Sole Mio, thank God, as they are mostly from Portugal) and overcooked pasta – it is all here; one of the largest buildings on earth, and the biggest casino in the universe!

Biggest casino in the world – Venetian Macau

You want Parisian; yet another vulgar monstrosity, complete with a fake Eiffel Tower which lightens up right after dark to the great delight of the armies of selfie-takers? It is also here, in Cotai, Macau, together with the fake Champ de Mars that doubles as an (phony again) ice-skating rink.

Parisian Macau – fake tower

Macau is tiny, measuring only some 115 km square. But with around 650,000 people, it is one of the most over-populated places in the world. There is no space to move around here, anymore. Macau is a total, thorough urban nightmare and failure, propelled and ‘justified’ only by greed. But its plans are still Napoleonic. The territory wants more and more. Or more precisely: the Macau government, together with big business from the West, want more and more visitors, more and more casinos, luxury retail stores, and of course, profits.

24 hours a day, 365 days a week, Macau sucks in like a monstrous turbine, millions, in fact billions of dollars, yuan or whatever currency manages to enter its territory. It attracts like a magnet, masses of people from the PRC, who are often still naïve, innocent and defenseless when confronted by brutal and extreme forms of capitalism and its advertisements.

In January 2019, I visited several casinos in Macau, and not surprisingly, there are very few traditional roulette tables there, but masses of electronically controlled machines. Everything is noisy, confusing and lacking transparency. Western casinos treat Chinese people like some brainless children. At least the classic roulette mainly wins (for casino) on ‘neutral’ 0 (zero), giving a gambler very fair chance. But electronic, futuristic machines are a sham, and can ‘strip’ an unseasoned gambler of everything, in just a few hours, even minutes. But that is, obviously, precisely the goal.

Fake canals inside Venetian Macau

I am horrified to see hordes of good Chinese (PRC) citizens who work hard, building their beautiful country, and then crossing to that fake universe of Macau, where they are literally blowing their savings in spasmodic, insane sprees.

On 23 January, 2019, CNN reported from Hong Kong:

Chinese authorities say they have busted an underground money-smuggling ring used to launder more than $4.4 billion through the Asian gambling hub of Macau.

The case is a high-profile example of Beijing’s crackdown on attempts to dodge its capital controls, which it has tightened in recent years to prevent money from flooding out of the country and destabilizing the economy.

Macau’s Judicial Police said the syndicate was formed in 2016 and relied on point-of-sale machines — the devices used by shops to conduct transactions with credit cards or debit cards — which were smuggled in from China. 

These in theory would allow Chinese citizens to make withdrawals from their bank accounts that appeared to be domestic transactions, thereby avoiding China’s strict limits on how much money people can move across its borders.

In theory, Chinese citizens are only allowed to take out of the country no more than 100,000 Yuan, which amounts to approximately $15,000 annually. But local businessmen and gangs are always looking for loopholes.

Macau gangs are brutal and they are dealing with huge amounts of money. Antagonizing them is dangerous. Even journalists and academics connected to this tiny but super rich territory, prefer not to speak openly; only on condition of anonymity. One of my good colleagues replied, sarcastically, to my request for a quote:

“I don’t think I could contribute anything to your open eyes approach – and for me to write the truth on what I see in this fishing village making firecrackers turned capitalist paradise of Macau would be like you risking lèse-majesté in Bangkok by mocking the golden towers of the royal palace.”

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In the old, Portuguese historic area of Macau, which happens to be a UNESCO-inscribed world heritage site, there is hardly any place left to move. Weekends are the ‘deadliest’, with monstrous ‘pedestrian traffic jams’ and more than one hour-long taxi lines. However, weekdays are not much better.

Beijing tried to crack down on gambling and for some time it worked, but during the last months, casinos have been bouncing back. The loopholes are too numerous. In the meantime, the territory panicked (‘God forbid it could not make as much money as before!’) and began trying to attract even more tourists, mainly from the Mainland, by all means available: a new bridge, advertisements…  It also began to cater to the lowest of tastes; historic houses have been painted in kitschy pink, vulgar bluish and greenish, as well as yellow colors. Culture and art has almost disappeared. And everything has become mass-produced and fake, including ‘Portuguese food’.

Frankly, all that Macau represents is wrong: it has already ruined millions of human lives through mass gambling. It robs Mainland China of billions of dollars. Instead of educating people, it offers fake culture, in fact a disgusting parody ‘Las Vegas-style’. It is brainwashing Chinese people, so they see ‘the world according to Disney, Hollywood and big US hotel chains’.

Many hotel managers come from Portugal (for ‘authenticity’, I suppose). They are arrogant, more North American than North Americans themselves, ambitious and unscrupulous. Many of them speak about Mainland China sarcastically, with spite. Typical Western ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of speech’ nonsense.

In historic Macau pedestrian traffic jams

Stripped of authenticity and decency, Macau adopted a gold-digging, repulsive culture. Talk about ‘fake news’ and fake culture! Everything that is fake, is here, in Macau.

Across the water, in the PRC, beautiful modern cities are growing, simple, elegant, and confident; built for the people.

In Macau, morale, socialist spirit, as well as family savings, are getting ruined and burned.

‘One country two systems’ has gone too far in Macau. This territory produces nothing. Not even those traditional firecrackers, perhaps. It only consumes, and perverts.

One of Sheraton Macau’s employees, a Philippine lady born in Macau, explained:

“I don’t recognize my own home city, anymore! It used to be a dormant, beautiful place. Now it is thoroughly ruined.”

I don’t recognize Macau either. And people who come here, from Mainland China, tend to change, quickly. Is this yet another Western subversion, an attempt to break China into pieces? Definitely. The government of the PRC should take more decisive action, soon; protecting its people and funds.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author. Featured image: Venetian Casino Macau – the biggest casino on earth

On February 2, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minuster Sergey Shoigu briefed Vladimir Putin on the history of US Treaty breaches – since the Clinton co-presidency.

It’s nothing new, ongoing for the past 20 years or longer. In 1987, the treaty was agreed on by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, a landmark agreement.

According to Lavrov, the US has been violating the treaty at least since 1999 – by “testing combat unmanned aerial vehicles that have the same characteristics as land-based cruise missiles banned by the treaty,” adding:

Since then or perhaps earlier, the US has been “us(ing) ballistic target missiles for testing their missile defense system, and in 2014 they began (deploying) their missile defense system in Europe” close to Russia’s borders – capable of carrying nuclear warheads for offense.

“(T)his is an outright violation of the treaty,” Putin stressed. Russia has been aware of US treaty breaches at least for the past 20 year. Moscow is in full compliance. No evidence suggests otherwise, none cited by the Trump regime in its pullout announcement.

According to Lavrov, the US deployed illegal missiles in Romania. Preparations are underway to position them in Poland, Japan, and elsewhere, including in US territory.

The Trump regime’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review calls for developing low-yield mini-nukes, capable of being mounted on INF Treaty banned intermediate-range missiles. They’re being produced in America, Lavrov explained.

Last October, the Trump regime declared its intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty.

“We did everything we could to save the treaty, considering its importance in terms of sustaining strategic stability in Europe, as well as globally,” said Lavrov – its efforts in vain based on Friday’s US pullout announcement.

Russia’s Defense Ministry “proposed unprecedented transparency measures that went far beyond our obligations under the INF Treaty in order to persuade the US that Russia was not in violation of this essential instrument.”

“However, the US torpedoed these proposals. Instead, the US presented yet another ultimatum. It is obvious that we cannot accept it since it contradicts the INF Treaty in both letter and spirit.”

Trump’s selection of neocon extremists Pompeo at State and Bolton as national security advisor doomed the treaty, along with any possibility for improved relations with Russia – all the moreso because of overwhelming congressional hostility.

Only five congressional lawmakers (3 House members and 2 senators) opposed the Orwellian July 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA – imposing stiff illegal sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea besides others in place. Only Security Council members can legally impose sanctions on UN member states.

The Trump regime’s INF Treaty pullout increases the risk of nuclear confrontation by accident or design.

Despite Russia’s best efforts, the Bush/Cheney regime withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Soviet Union and US in 2002.

It limited the number of anti-ballistic missile systems in defending against ballistic missiles able to carry nuclear warheads.

The treaty dissolved because of “the unwillingness of the United States to take up Russia’s concerns in earnest,” Lavrov explained, adding:

“In 2007, we made another gesture of good will at your instructions by coming forward with an initiative that consisted of working together to resolve the problems related to US missile defense system’s third positioning area in Europe. Once again, the US” rejected the proposal.

In 2010, Russia urged the US and Europe to work cooperatively on a continental missile defense system. The Obama regime rejected the idea.

The US demands all other countries “come to terms with its missile defense approach,” said Lavrov – despite “the obvious risks and threats to our security posed by this approach” – by positioning its missile defense systems for offense close to Russia’s borders for a preemptive first strike advantage with nuclear weapons.

Further Russian outreach to the US on this issue achieved nothing. In 2014, US dialogue on missile defense ended when the Obama regime declared its intention to deploy its missile-defense systems for offense in Eastern Europe, East Asia, Alaska, and on America’s east coast.

Time and again, the US breaches its treaty obligations, including the landmark 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – agreed to by all nations except Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and South Sudan.

“(D)espite numerous reminders on our part, the United States commits serious violations of the Treaty in its actions within NATO. The Treaty commits nuclear powers to refrain from transferring the corresponding nuclear technologies,” Lavrov explained.

US-led NATO engages in so-called joint nuclear drills with non-nuclear states, a flagrant NPT violation. The Obama regime failed to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), breaking a campaign promise.

Russia is a CTBT signatory. Its entry into force requires US participation, what it refuses to do. Notably it’s “completely off the radar,” now, said Lavrov – given the Trump regime’s rage to increase the power and destructiveness of its nuclear arsenal.

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties I and II remain in force. START I expired in 2009. The US and Russia agreed to continue observing its terms. For how much longer remains uncertain.

New START agreed on by Obama and Russian President Medvedev in 2010 expires in 2021 if not renewed. Given extreme US hostility toward Russia, renewal is highly unlikely.

According to Lavrov, talks with the US to assure it complies with its treaty obligations have achieved no results since 2015, adding:

“(R)epeated proposals by Russia to launch talks on extending the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty beyond 2021, when its first term is set to expire, have fallen on deaf ears in the United States. All we hear is that the decision on the New START has yet to be taken.”

“(T)he situation is quite alarming. (T)he decision taken by the United States on the INF Treaty is of course a matter of serious concern for the entire world, especially for Europe.”

“Nevertheless, the Europeans followed in the footsteps of the United States with all NATO members, speaking out in explicit support of the position adopted by the United States to refrain from any discussions on mutual concerns.”

“All we hear are groundless ultimatums requiring us to take unilateral measures without any evidence to support unfounded accusations.”

Defense Minister Shoigu explained that US treaty violations have been going on for years, including development and production of short-and-intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, serious INF Treaty breaches before Friday’s announcement.

Shoigu proposed the following retaliatory measures:

1. Undertaking R & D efforts to “creat(e) land-based modifications of the sea-based Kalibr launching systems.”

2. R & D “followed by development and engineering to create land-based launchers for hypersonic intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.”

Putin agreed, saying

“(t)his is what we will do. Our response will be symmetrical,” including by “suspending” Russia’s participation in the INF Treaty in response to the US pullout.

At the same time, Putin wants to avoid an expensive arms race, asking if the above proposals can be accomplished through existing budget allocations.

Shoigu believes so in 2019.

Putin: “This should not entail any increases in the Defense Ministry’s budget.”

Shoigu: “Yes.”

Putin: “Good,” adding he proposes modifying the format of meeting every six months “to discuss the implementation of the state defense order with the commanders of the armed forces and the defense sector representatives.”

He wishes to stay current on how defense initiatives are progressing, including for Russia’s most advanced weapons systems.

The US announced plans to weaponize space. Putin wants to know what’s being done to neutralize them.

He asked Lavrov and Shoigu not to initiate talks with the US on arms control issues unless and until the US is “ready to engage in equal and meaningful dialogue on this subject that is essential for us,” Russia’s allies, “and the entire world, adding:

Moscow will develop and produce but not deploy weapons violating the INF Treaty unless the US takes this step first.

If this occurs, which is highly likely, he asked Lavrov and Shoigu to “closely monitor developments and promptly submit proposals on ways to respond.”

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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.

Shrugging off what’s called cabin fever, I depart, slowly, to test my car and traction on the roadway. I follow the country road along the Beaverkill River to town.

A mile out, I notice something unusual—cars standing in front of each of two neighbors’ houses. I regularly pass these houses. I know that their owners aren’t here during winter months. And with several inches of snow already on the ground, I’m wondering: Why are they here at all? (A blizzard is forecast.)

Not suspicious; just curious.

As I drive on, this curiosity leads to fantasy. They’ve come simply to enjoy a day of softly falling snow. Having lived here year-round when the children were young, they’re recalling the enchantment of fresh snow, how they frolicked at night in the fluffy heaps, flakes still descending on them. After the children sleep, she and her husband walked together under a bright midnight sky.

The stillness of fresh snowfall is unsurpassed. Early morning is glorious… before rumbling plows arrive. Gentle whiteness obliterates flaws on the fields– all that debris flung down by November winds. Through today’s leafless trees, they’ll see a whole new landscape; hopefully they’ll sight the great bald eagles, identify their nests.

Possibly they’ll spot a snowy owl, some winter finches, maybe a sapsucker. Juncos, snow buntings and the tit mouse will be plentiful. Cardinals too, their redness even more pronounced in winter. The best treat would be a pileated woodpecker. Gold finches and grosbeaks too.

(So maybe she’s come simply to refill bird feeders.)

If they don’t see those wild winter turkeys, they’ll certainly hear them. What a noisy lot, sometimes a herd of 60 or more, clacking in the woods. They’re such fun to watch, but skittish. Even months after hunting season ends, those creatures don’t like people.

Source: author

These neighbors’ visits are brief and practical. After loading the feeders, they’ll check the water. Frozen pipes are a threat; trees too. But what can be done about ice-laden trees falling on wires? With a forecast for freezing temperatures, shut the water main and pour antifreeze through the pipes.

Before leaving they’ll check with Big Tim to have him plow the drive and leave a sack of dirt or rock salt on the porch. Never know, you may really need it, he warns. (Although residents near the river shouldn’t apply salt to the roads.)

Driving slowly at 20 mph feels comfortable. Remember: there are patches of ice under this snow.

The scanty tracks I follow signal that not many villagers have been out. The few vehicles coming from the other direction are pickup trucks, plows fixed in front. Despite hazards, their drivers welcome these snow days—the time when they become heroes. They’ll stop and help anyone, delighted to clear a driveway, often without charging. Need some dirt on that ice outside your door? “Sure. Me and my brother will get some tonight.”

And what if these fellows vote for Trump or local Republicans? What if they like hunting too? (We assume pickup truck owners here will be Trump supporters.) Should I check their politics before I ask them to plow?

Remember gearshift cars? Now I recall that feeling of control in snow with a gearshift car. Whatever mechanics and dealers say, gears in snowy weather are unbeatable. Anyway, never brake on ice. Seeing an oncoming truck, I’m tempted. Those snow packed shoulders narrow the roadway. Don’t, I warn myself.

It’s not a trip where you want to let your mind wander. Forgot to pick up some munchies? The Mail? Never mind.

Don’t go out unless absolutely necessary, newscasters advise. Well, I’ve decided I must, as least drive out this cabin fever. I bundled up, cleared the passage to the car, placed the shovel in the trunk, etc. and made my way into town. That’s when I’d spotted those cars out of season; maybe their owners were just chucking their urban apartment fever.

And it’s still January!!

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. She is the author of “Tibetan Frontier Families” and numerous articles on Tibet and Nepal, has been working in Nepal in recent weeks. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.